All in all, I reckon Australia, under governments of all stripes, has generally handled the immigration thing pretty well.

This is absolutely right. Having seen some of the alternatives, I think Howard’s handling of Hanson was magnificent. The la-la land treat her with public contempt and dismiss all her ideas approach would work if she hadn’t had any support for those ideas - but she clearly did.

Re ghettoes, I could be wrong, but didn’t that start with Jewish ‘enclaves’ to use a neutral word, first in Venice and later anywhere the Nazis went. I have always thought that it referred to a place where an ethnic group was more or less forced to live.

Since these days the only pressure that ‘forces’ people to live together in that manner is lack of cultural and linguistic assimilation, ie ethnicity, we end up with a correlation with crime and poverty, the very existence of which (anecdotally) proves Ken’s point.

If you are not Aboriginal, and you patently are not, then who gives a fuck about your opinion on any matters indigenous?

If you are not thoughtful, and you patently are not, then who gives a fuck about your opinion on any matters thoughtfully explored here.

“an immigration policy biased towards family reunion with little if any emphasis on skills lead to clusters of poorly-skilled minorities”

But really really really motivated to work hard and build a better life for their next generations. See USA circa 1850s to 1910s - Irish, Jews and Italians in particular. And who can really predict the skills we’ll need by 2050?

Yep, I join with Geoff, James and Jacques in nominating this post for BBP07.

“The Brough intervention was characterised by a complete lack of co-operation with Indigenous people and other governments.” is pretty the core of it. Meet the new Canberra solution. Same as the old one.

However, I do join others in suggesting Ken that you’re perhaps overemphasising the formation of ghettos as a general negative. If you moved to China next week, I doubt you’d settle in a suburb far away from any mart stocking some domestic home comforts and staffed by english-speaking staff.

“The Cronulla riots, Middle Eastern gang rapes and Lebanese crime gangs”

That’s the worst we can come up for the downside of Australian immigration policies?

I reckon that stacks up pretty well against some of the shit that’s gone down in the EU and the US over the past century. As I recall, our last serious murderous racial battle involving non-white immigrants was Lambing Flats over 120 years ago. Hell, we killed more yanks during the Battles of Brisbane and St Kilda in WW2.

Compare and contrast with other OECD racial explosions from the sixties to mid nineties alone. 50 plus dead during the 1992 Rodney King riots. And no one’s ever accurately counted the hundreds of dead Arabs that choked the Seine in October 1961 when the Frog security apparatus went berko as the Algerian War went critical.

All in all, I reckon Australia, under governments of all stripes, has generally handled the immigration thing pretty well.

The most promising sign yet that Rudd Labor has no interest in the Luvvies’ Culture Wars is Julia Gillard’s statement that Australia was ’settled’ by the British, not ‘invaded.’

Oh FFS, you obsessive petulant little prune, why don’t you and Philly get a chew toy together.

Ken, thanks for taking the time to write a really a great, in-depth response, with what I totally agree is a digression to your original post.

I accept your contention that Lakemba, etc. do indeed have high numbers of certain ethnic backgrounds. And that ethnicities commit crimes.

I’m familiar with the study by Mukherjee - you’re right, that is the only really good Australian study (though there are a couple of others), there has been some international research that’s quite interesting. I would, however, say that the case that immigrants - any immigrants - commit higher crime rates is a highly debatable one at best. Given your familiarity with the subject you would be well aware of the problems of studying this, as all the studies actually report are not crime rates, but arrest rates. Mukherjee included.

Moreover, I totally reject your assertion that the word ghetto has a reasonable or common definition that doesn’t include poverty and crime. Here is one. Poverty, crime and desperation play a huge role in that definition, and I looked at three other dictionaries that didn’t substantially differ.

By the commonly accepted definition, many - if not the majority - of ethnic concentrations do not, in fact, occur in ghettoes. I live in one such suburb.

It was a bad - and frankly racist - choice of words - nothing to do with being politically correct or otherwise. It’s cool, you wrote a great post, the fact I’m nitpicking this at all is a testament to that, but I feel that such prejudices, even small ones like this, should be called out.

Interesting how you are silent on that other group of non-immigrants; aborigines.

As you observed in passing, this post is mostly about indigenous policy. Immigration issues are a sidelight and I didn’t really want the comment thread sidetracked by it. Nevertheless, I’ll comment anyway. The core meaning of “ghetto” certainly involves concentrations of an ethnic group living in close proximity in very poor, slum-like conditions. However if you look at just about any dictionary you’ll see that there is a range of broader meanings involving ethnic concentrations but not necessarily great poverty or slum conditions. You would be hard-pressed to argue that south-western suburbs of Sydney like Lakemba and Punchbowl do not house major concentrations of people of Middle Eastern background, just as you would be hard-pressed to argue that there isn’t a large concentration of Vietnamese and Cambodian people around Cabramatta.

As for the argument that migrants have lower crime rates than Australian born people, it is generally true but there are some exceptions, most notably Lebanese, Turks and Vietnamese (and Kiwis). The only significant study I know of on this is one by Mukherjee (1999, Australian Institute of Criminology). Although handicapped by the fact that only Victoria kept consistent statistics on the ethnicity of offenders, its findings were:

For those born in Australia, the distinct offender rate during the last five years has ranged between a low of 1212 and a high of 1309 per 100,000 population. The distinct alleged offender rates for those born in Lebanon, New Zealand, Turkey and Vietnam have been higher than the rate of Australian-born during these five years. Although population data for Romanian, Russian Federation, and former Yugoslav-born migrants were not available for the first two years, the numbers of distinct offenders in Table 4.13 indicate that the rates for migrants from these countries would be much higher than that of the Australian-born. Thus, distinct offenders born in these seven countries have been processed at a higher rate than those born in Australia during the entire five-year period. The rates of those born in Cambodia and Fiji have moved ahead of the rate for the Australian-born some of the years. Offender rates for those born in the remaining countries continue to be lower than that of the Australian-born.

Hence, while some may find references to ethnic ghettoes and associated crime gangs an affront to political correctness, it is a factually accurate statement. Moreover, I’d wager that the NSW figures if available would show an even larger discrepancy now in relation to Lebanese/Middle Eastern offenders. I think I accept (though with hesitation) that denying public access to such figures can be justified to avoid fomenting even more social tension and division, but I also think that no issue should be immune from critical examination.

In particular, although Blainey later went over the top in some of his public utterances, he had a legitimate point in relation to the pace of immigration from any particular ethnic group and the associated tendency towards social problems and division. Both major political parties now tacitly accept the point and carefully ensure that our migrant intake is ethnically diverse, and that lower skilled refugee and compassionate arrivals are spread around a range of cities and regional towns to reduce the creation of large ghetto-like concentrations in the major cities, which may impede the pace of absorption into the Australian community and create or exacerbate social tensions. The Cronulla riots, Middle Eastern gang rapes and Lebanese crime gangs are all hangovers from the 70s and 80s when those precautionary principles were ignored in Australia’s immigration policy, although in polite latte left circles it is rather like farting in church to dare to discuss such things.

immigrants are far less likely to break the law than their whitey counterparts, and you’ve got yourself an argument there.

Ah dude, you would do well to know that the vast majority of immigrants are, er, er, “white.”

That’s the weakest contradiction I’ve ever seen. In fact, it sounds like positive endorsement of Ken’s point.

Not really. The point is: poor people live in high crime suburbs, rich people don’t. Middle class people not usually. This is a pattern that holds regardless of ethnicity.

Couple that with research that shows - quite clearly - that immigrants are far less likely to break the law than their whitey counterparts, and you’ve got yourself an argument there.

The principles of disaster and recovery management empahasize the importance of local involvement and control in the emergency response to disasters. This is primarily for simple practical reasons - locals understand the situation, resources, and people best. External agents are brought in, but even then, co-ordination and consultation at the local level remains vital. The local element is recognized as important for longer term reasons as well - it’s known to reduce the traumatic effects of a disaster on a population by maximising people’s sense of control over the situation.

Ignoring the best advice on “what works” by appealing to the idea of an emergency situation, possible only by also ignoring the principles associated with that, doesn’t inspire much confidence. And what I’ve seen on the ground only confirms my doubts.

The ecological succession model is a valid framework for poor immigrants from Indo-China, but it does not apply to patterns of housing consumption behaviour among well-to-do immigrants from North and South-East Asia.

That’s the weakest contradiction I’ve ever seen. In fact, it sounds like positive endorsement of Ken’s point.

And he isn’t igmoring skips, it’s just hard to say you have an ethnic ghetto that largely consists of the wholy city.

You have to pay for it, but I’ll quote the abstract, my bolds:

n recent immigration policy debates in Australia, it has been asserted that Asian immigrants concentrate in ethnic ghettos, thus posing a threat to the social cohesion of Australian society. This assertion has been based mainlyon selective observations made by anti-immigration groups. Nevertheless, it is more or less consistent with expectations of an ecological succession model that has guided studies on patterns of housing consumption behaviour of new immigrants in the West.

The ecological succession model contends that new immigrants concentrate in ethnic ghettos or low-cost housing areas and will move to good neighbourhoods only after they improve their socio-economic position in the host society.

Using data from the 1991 Housing and Location Choice Survey conducted in Melbourne and Sydney, the article shows that the assertion concerning the poor housing condition of Asian immigrants in Australia is unfounded. There is no ecological succession among them because they lived in good neighbour-hoods in Melbourne and Sydney shortly after their arrival in Australia.

The ecological succession model is a valid framework for poor immigrants from Indo-China, but it does not apply to patterns of housing consumption behaviour among well-to-do immigrants from North and South-East Asia.

Though tangential, this is a much more complicated issue than you seem to credit, and not something to be tossed off blithely as an aside.

Seems like Ken is making a late push to increase his representation in the BBP07 selection.

I’ll treat that as a nomination, Jacques.

that approach led directly to the Vietnamese and Middle Eastern ghettoes and associated crime gangs which continue to blight Sydney and Melbourne to a considerable extent,

I know evidence can be a tiresome bother at times, but care to cite any? That’s a bloody long bow at best, and frankly racist at worst.

If you care to take a look into the research about this, you will see in fact that it doesn’t bear that conclusion out in any way, shape or form. I will try and find it for you - Australian study, but not sure if it’s online.

Unfortunately dude you’ve fallen for two cardinal errors: 1. Believing what’s reported in the news as representative and 2. Paying attention when it’s a wog or a gook, but not so much when it’s a skip.

As to the question of self-determination for indigenous peoples the international work is significant. Self-determination is useful when it applies to programs and projects that share knowledge and apply indigenous knowledge and design at its core. However, promoting it as an over-arching policy framework fails to account for the inter-dependant and integrated nature of social networks. That is why individual capabilities are also important (a merit based education, safe communities, et cetera) because they recognise the space of social frameworks after we account for those aspects pertaining to self-determination.

More analysis here…
http://rawnsley.wordpress.com/2007/09/24/ik-economy-and-development-concepts/

Leading on from the last part of Ken’s blog one way to assert greater community ownership and control is to invest in a strategic approach to the indigenous knowledge economy…

http://rawnsley.wordpress.com/category/ik-economy/

I hope someone forwards this post - and Ken’s number - to Jenny Macklin’s office.