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Friday 25 August 2017

Living in Truth in Democracy: Vaclav Havel


Without facing the truth and speaking the truth we cannot uphold freedom. This is a fine piece about Vaclav Havel, in Quadrant, July-August 2017, by M.A. Casey Havel: https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2017/07/vaclav-havel-living-truth-democracy/

Tuesday 8 August 2017

We Are Many but We Are One


The Australian Conservatives, on Wednesday, August 9, released their Immigration and Citizenship policy. The five-part programme covers everything from Visa reform to the demand that refugee intakes be determined by Australia itself, as a sovereign state, and not imposed on us by supranational organisations such as the United Nations.

The Left and the PC brigade will be scandalised by the notion that immigration should be in Australia’s “economic, social and cultural interest”. We have reached a strange juncture, surely, when looking after the best interests of our country has become contentious.

Cory Bernardi’s plan to halve our current net immigration makes sense. Why, we need to ask, is the Turnbull government running the largest per capita immigration agenda in the world? The ‘Big Australia’ vision of both Labor and Coalition governments resulted in our population soaring by more than 20 percent between 2003-2015. ‘Big Australia’, in reality, means unmanageable pressure on “services, infrastructure and family incomes”.

The Australian Conservatives are also prepared call out the family reunion stream. The family reunion provision has been a generous way to make it easier for new migrants to begin the path towards integration into Australian society. It was not intended to be exploited by those born in this country. The commitment by the Australian Conservatives to “legislate that family members may only be brought to Australia if those members are declared at the time of the initial visa application” is, therefore, a masterstroke.

The final component of the Australian Conservatives’ immigration policy addresses residency and citizenship, with ten years of crime-free and terror-free residence required before citizenship is granted. In the end, the Immigration and Citizenship policy of the Australian Conservatives asserts that citizenship should have the same meaning for the newcomer as it does for those inviting them into our democratic and free country.