• Concerns about race-based gangs.
• Reports of altercations between Africans at nightclubs.
• Conflict and assaults between some African families.
• Reports of a developing trend of young African males drinking alcohol in parks at night.
• African community organisations arguing about who received favoured treatment.

The racism test is easy. If you can delete or replace the italicized words with the word ‘people’ or ‘people’s’ and find that the statements are still applicable in Australia, without intervention by the Minister, then the unedited version is racist. D’oh! . . read more

But that doesn’t make us racist. The poverty of the Hey Hey sketch is the price we pay for our healthy multiculturalism. We must be careful not to throw out the baby with the bath water  . . read more

we are still able to help each other
without producing invoice
or lawyer
as seen in our response
to national emergencies

Yet on the edge of awareness
a ghostly predator gnaws
at our self confidence
and tradition of tolerance

On Australia Day
too many citizens
flew too many flags

"We're full!" was a slogan on t-shirts,
meaning, "Muslims piss off".

A high profile social commentator
And climate-change denier
said "greenies" were responsible
for the ferocity of the bushfires
and deserved to be
"strung up on lamp posts".

What is it that makes
hate-mongers
and war mongers so angry?

A subliminal awareness
that their enthusiasm for invasions,
aerial bombardment,
assassinations and torture ....

has helped to accelerate
the decline of the West. . . read more

No, instead of a safe choice like Steve Waugh or plastic surgeon Fiona Wood the Australian of the year is Patrick McGorry.

Here is a man who used his acceptance speech to bite the hand that hasn't fed the poorest amongst us by saying that detention centres were:

"Factories for producing mental illness and mental disorder''

Can't argue with that.

Maybe today we should take some time out from our pissed up back patting to realise that there isn't much to celebrate.  . . read more

Hexpletive is an Australian female blogger. You can read more from her at Hexpletive by clicking the view button below  . . read more

Marcus Kapitza was sentenced to 12 months jail after pleading guilty to one charge of riot.

Brent Lohman was sentenced to 11 months jail with a parole period of six months for repeatedly punching a man of Middle Eastern appearance in the head at Cronulla railway station.

Yahya Serhan, a Lebanese Australian was convicted of one count of being an accessory after the fact of malicious wounding over an attack outside Woolooware Golf Club in Sydney's southeast on 11 December 2005, that ended when a knife snapped off in the victim's back. Serhan had acted as the "getaway driver" during the attack and was convicted in April 2007 to which he was sentenced to thirteen months jail with a non-parole period of nine months. However, he was released on the day of his sentencing as he had already spent nine months in prison.

What is the difference between these men? Lex Wotton led a riot that caused no physical harm to a human being. Lex Wotton is also an Indigenous Australian.

I'm fluctuating between being stoked the sentence was so much smaller than expected, and horribly depressed that we were forced to keep our expectations so low that this seems like a positive outcome.

It's not. 

So lucky us, we were safe. Our Prime-Minister had pushed the hard line on asylum seekers and the Asian hordes were temporarily held at bay. But lo and behold once our 'protections' were removed the influx of illegals has increased and now, sitting in a harbour in Indonesia is a veritable boatload of hunger-struck Tamils fleeing oppression and possible genocide in Sri Lanka. Seems simple enough.

But, to wade through the shitstorm and create a dialogue what I want is for anybody that supports a hardline immigration policy to stand up, write in and try and convince me why you're not a xenephobic redneck that is futhering debasing the already shattered memory of Australian dignity. Good Luck.

  . . read more

Medicare, the dole, public housing, a just judicial system the list goes on. But what does this have to do with being afraid?

Well in recent weeks I’ve watched so many of us squirm, wiggle and slip out of giving any meaningful response to the refugees sweating it out on a Tasmanian fishing boat off the Indonesian cost.

My question that I pose to all of you is, On what basis do you as a safe, happy and secure Australian, have the right to tell these helpless broken people that Australia is closed?

Is it so the supposed flood of refugees just behind them, just turn around and except the horrific fate facing them in their home countries?

Or maybe the idea of one day meeting one of these refugees in the supermarket might just bring you a little too close to the painful realities that exists outside this country’s cotton wool culture.

It doesn’t take bravery to close doors and forget, but it does take bravery to keep them open!

I think as damn lucky Australians we can afford a little heart!

Don’t you?  . . read more

First in the subjugation of the Aboriginal peoples of this land, and later in how we dealt with the various waves of migrants to our shores. We all know we had a White Australia Policy until the late 60’s, with bipartisan support. We have had a rather uneasy relationship with Asia for much of the postwar period. Phrases such as “the yellow peril” and “two wongs don’t make a white” exemplify the darker tendencies of our history.

Over the years this relationship has matured, as our self perception has broadened. But this aspect of our history can still resonate today.

Part of Senator Penny Wong's maiden speech to parliament in 2002. . . read more

There are only a few times when somebody should lose their right to free speech- for Julia Gillard on the issue of Indian students- this is one of them.

It began right after this week's killing of Nitin Garg when we were treated to her robotic drone of a voice which sounded a tad unsympathetic when she said that:

"To say it's a race-based crime is not only premature, but stupid".

She followed that up by dismissing India's travel warning to Australia, saying:

"In big cities around the world we do see acts of violence from time to time; that happens in Melbourne, it happens in Mumbai, it happens in New York, it happens in London"

How fantastically irrelevant.

India is annoyed because their citizens are dying in Australia in what looks from the outside to be a concerted, racist attack. At the moment the media and the police have absolutely no reason to prove it isn't.

We haven't heard from any attacker, we've heard no motive, we have so little information.

No wonder families thousands of miles away are a little scared.

And that's why Gillard should shut-up.

A sensitive (and clever politician) would understand how emotionally charged an issue this is, and would realise that spouting political non-charlance will only inflame a story based on feeling rather than facts.

Instead of sounding like emotionless cardboard, why didn't she say something like?:

"Due to last year's terrible spate of racist attacks directed at Indian students we have every reason to believe this homocide may have been affected by Mr Garg's Indian ethnicity".

"We will wait till a police investigation can confirm this, but at the moment we are treating this as the beginning of a new wave of hate crimes that will be stopped...."

Also, for a country that prides itself on its tough skin why are the police and government getting so ancy about a pretty bland and obvious cartoon?

Especially a cartoon that makes a pretty good point.

Let's look at the facts:

- In Melbourne the police have known for over a year that Indian students have been disproportionately represented in official assault and robbery figures.

- Analysis of these figures led police to say that Indian students were being regarded as 'soft targets' for would-be attackers.

- If this is true, then the attackers are making a distinction based on race.

- The Oxford Dictionary defines racism as "the belief that there are characteristics, abilities, or qualities specific to each race"

- If the police want to discount this, and try to argue that these recent attacks are not race related they look like idiots.

-The KKK are racist idiots.  

  . . read more