This post might get a bit serious in parts, but I'll try and keep it light hearted.
I am currently in India working with our supplier here and came across a hilarious article about Indian Call Centres training their staff about how to handle Australian customers. The article refers to us as drunkards who haven't long had a tertiary education system. I think my favourite quote mentioned that if call us on a Friday we'll be "smashed". This guy obviously knows his Aussie culture. I don't know of any other nationality that uses that term. I also had to laugh at the comment refering to our choice of mobile phones as I sport my Nokia "four digit number" that I bought for $20 in Manila.
Now you might read this article and get a little hot under the collar. I'm sure one or two of you will fly off the handle. This is the precise reason why this article is considered news worthy. But is it really news worthy? Would Channel News Asia ever run a segment on how white people think Asians can't drive? Would the New York Times ever run an article on how the rest of the world thinks Americans are fucking annoying? Would an Indian newspaper ever publish an article on how Australians are commiting hate crimes against Indian students and calling them "opportunist"? Well actually yes on that last one they would, and they pumped the shit out of the thing.
But my point is, this is a perfect example of all the stupid things we think about one another. I may mention one or two stereotypes along the way as I blog our way through the eastern hemisphere, but there is reasoning behind it. I'm reminded of a sketch on the Dave Chappelle show where a couple of Arabs are sitting at the front of a plane talking in Arabic about American Idol. The camera then pans back to the row behind where two African Americans are thinking "great, we've got a couple of terrorists on our plane". The row behind has a middle aged white man with his daughter wondering how these African Americans could afford business class. He assumes they must be rappers and needs to keep an eye on his daughter. Behind him are two native American Indians who are worried the white guy will steal their in flight magazine or something in the same way the way white man stole his land. Then just to really slam it home, behind the natives are a couple of bison worried the Indians will kill and eat them. To finish the sketch the camera backs to Dave Chappelle passed out in his seat with a newspaper across his lap and the headline "America United".
And this is my point. We all think these absolutely ridiculous things about each other. Some of them are based on loose facts, some are a bit funny and some are just a fucking disgrace. Why I may make stupid racist jokes with tongue in cheek is to highlight just how stupid it is that some of us geniunely believe this stuff and hold it against one another. I think there are certain things that we do that we can all laugh at, as long as everyone is comfortable with it. But I think to say that one person can't be trusted or is lazy or are lesser than you just because of their background is laughable.
This is perhaps a strange tract to take in a blog that is primarily a pisstake. I think part of the reason I felt like writing this is seeing the signing of an agreement between Malaysia and Australia for an immigrant handover or whatever the fuck they're coining it. Watching the last election a thought crossed my mind. I watched two parties who weren't out to win an election, they were just trying not to lose one, who didn't want to say anything in case what they said meant they'd lose the election. So what became the key issue? Boat people. Boat people in my view is political code for "I have nothing worth saying that will change the course of this nation". It is a distraction. Think about all the other issue we have in everyday life. We are at a unique a point in time. We had the baby boomers generation where our parent's parents fucked like rabbits and pumped out kids in the "populate or perish" era. If you look at the make up of our population and plotted the number of people per age group in bands, the bands around the 50-60 age bracket are particularly swollen compared to those below it. Why is this an issue? Currently, and this is an issue across the western world who "laid back and thought of England(or their respective country)" all those years ago, there are about 3-4 employees to retirees bludging of welfare cheques. Over the course of the next 10 years or so, when the golden oldies start retiring, we are faced with having 2 people in the work force to every retiree. Welfare payments are already at level that is almost negligible. Imagine where they're heading in the coming years.
Now look around Aus and think of all the areas we have failed to invest in. We have a skills shortage, massive holes in healthcare, holes in our infrastructure. We have environmental issues that need to be addressed. We don't have a single public transport system in the entire country that operates adequately.
Now I might show flashes of my leftist twinge here, but these are all things that should have been invested in during the Howard years. In this country we saw sustained growth for some 13 years. Our tax receipts grew year on year over the course of this time. We had the funds to start to put in place some real plans to move the country forward. And what did Howard and Costello do with this? They paid off our debts.
Now on face value, great idea. Debt is never something we wish do live with, but unfortunately we are forced to in certain times. However, this is thinking in terms of the individual or the household. I like the analogy of economist Andrew Charlton who in his book "Ozenomics" made the point, that yes, the goal of your average household is to get to the point in life where you are debt free. However in the business world this just won't do. You tell me how long any CEO would survive if he kept a zero balance for liabilities on his balance sheet. What that says is the business doesn't think there is anything in the market worth investing in, meaning the business is either going to go broke or needs to change what market it is in. This is a little off topic, I'll admit, but I do like to harp on the fact that the last Liberal government was indirectly telling you they thought the nation had nothing going for it.
Maybe it wasn't that at all. If you think back to the Howard years, whether you view them as a triumph of Australian leadership or an era of nationlistic tyranny, what was the key platform they built their policies around? What did they bring to the election table every three years? Boat people.
To be fair, we did see the rise of one Pauline Hanson who had a hand in changing the Australian political landscape. She made enough noise to have the two major parties shut her down. But it was under Howard that the issue of immigration became a key focal point in Australian politics. Why is this? When you think about the issue of whatever your turn of phrase is for them, be it boat people, be it illegal immigrants, be it assylum seekers, be it those chop stick bastards coming here stealing our jobs (to whom I ask, will you drive me home at 4am on a Saturday morning while I try not vomit in the back of your cab and sing to whatever Gold FM are playing? Will you serve me my sausage roll at the 7-11 at 4am while I think I am the funniest person alive and try and work just how drunk I am right now? Will you clean the toilet in maccas after I've rained down hell on the thing from whichever orifice was appropriate at the time?) how do they honestly affect your everyday life?
For the average Australian are we geniunely impacted so heavily by people entering the country that we are willing to let an election be decided by it? And a more important question, because this really shows what happens when you take your eyes off the prize, are we willing to let 13 years of sustained economic growth pass by without seeing our government make any headway into solving our real key issues? The Howard government's legacy will be remembered forever as taking a strong stance on people illegally entering the country as long as we are not willing to accept that what it really did was create a distraction for long enough to save itself from having to make a decision about the direction of the country. Leave the poor bastards alone and get focused on the real problem facing Australia, a lack of real leadership.
Thanks for reading this if you read it the whole way through. I'll try to get back on assignment next time and
get some of the other posts I've been working on out. Who is your favourite genius, James Hird or James Joyce?
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