RACE TO THE BOTTOM
Outgoing Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane pop rivets the current state of play to the outhouse wall in his article Race politics is back…… from Monday’s ‘The Sydney Morning Herald’. Racism is alive and well in the lucky country and its tenacity can be measured in the new and exciting ways that it manifests itself. Soutphommasane reflects: Five years ago, when I began my term as Race Discrimination Commissioner, I wouldn’t have said it was likely that we would see the resurgence of far-right politics. I wouldn’t have expected that the biggest threats to racial harmony would come from within our parliaments and media. I reckon that the legislators and the Murdochs are only part of the problem. By articulating ‘fear’ and ‘division’, they seek to engage punters in the twin processes of marginalisation and, with increasing frequency, vilification. Hordes of African gangs roaming around built landscapes, welfare-sucking Aborigines who refuse to ‘get...