I’m watching SBS’ programme, Insight, with people talking about multiculturalism and Muslim and democracy and Australian values.  The Deputy Mayor from wherever (Ashfield; his name is Nick Mason) is a KNOB – “Australia is a paradise”??  Please!!  Bob from One Nation calling Pauline Hanson a political prisoner of the Labor Party nearly made me fall off the chair laughing.  Get rid of multiculturalism?? How does that work?  And what does it mean?  The suggestion was to replace it with integration… how boring!  What makes you Australian?  The values they’re espousing could be called the values of at least most Western democracies!  As one woman said, how jingoistic of us to call those ours!  I liked Libbie Gorr’s metaphor of Australia no longer being the nuclear family, but rather a blended family that needs to change its ideas. 

Yes!! Someone has just mentioned needing a Bill of Rights – hurrah!  Bring it on. 

I love that we can have this discussion – and I can write that Nick Mason is a slimy, self-satisfied fatcat – and no one is going to kick my door down.  Healthy discussion and democracy; oh yeh.

So sad that ‘mateship’ has been politicised; darn you Johnny!  I don’t like it for the mythologised ANZAC history – since I beleive that blokes at that stage wouldn’t have called their friends mates – but I like it because it implies a friendliness, but you don’t need to know the person.  It makes me think of Eddings’ Sparhawk, always calling people “neighbour” but it’s shorter.

I like the range of people in this discussion.  Long-time Aussies and immgirants; politicians, reporters, ad men, comedians (Mikey!  Libbie!), Mustapha (he’s cool – from some Muslim group, responded very well to Nasty Bob from One Nation), other totally random types.

One Aussie value?  Tolerance… commitment to equality… “a fair go”… embracing each other, indeed, instead of just tolerance – yes!

Nick Mason is truly slimy and nasty.