Winning race to be biggest hypocrite

FEDERAL Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd has launched a low-key attack on the Government's decision to cut back on the number of African refugees after earlier offering support to the controversial policy, according to his supporters at Brisbane's Courier-Mail.

Rudd's home-town newspaper, which relegated news of the multi-millionaire family's property speculation to a brief report placed on lowly page six, just as helpfully ran his highly questionable statement on African immigration on page seven. It quoted an innuendo-laden statement from Rudd in which he said that in "more than 11 years of power the Coalition had brought 130,000 to 150,000 refugees into the country, with many Africans among them - and on the eve of an election they decide to change course." Continuing, Rudd said darkly: "I think the Australian people will draw their own conclusions about whether they are fair-dinkum." Well, let's not take whatever Rudd says as gospel and do what the Courier-Mail failed to do - examine the facts and perhaps even answer some of the questions. For all Rudd's wonderment, the decision is not news. Former Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone foreshadowed the Coalition's concerns about the situation in the refugee camps on the Thai-Burmese border when she toured the Mae La camp in Thailand in July, 2006 - as Rudd and shadow immigration Tony Burke are aware. On that occasion she announced a $500,000 donation to help educate the estimated 55,000 children sheltering in refugee camps in Thailand. She again referred to that situation in February this year, as Burke has acknowledged. With due respect to Rudd's spin doctors, the changes to the makeup of Australia's refugee and humanitarian intake for 2007-2008 were announced by Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews two months ago. Rudd did not make any comment then, but now is attempting to invoke the change as evidence of racial factors being introduced to the campaign. As always, Rudd has pussyfooted around the issue, leaving the dirty work to a proxy, most notably former prime minister Bob Hawke. Speaking in Bennelong last week, the Silver Bodgie told 200 members of the Korean community race should be foremost in their mind when voting. He recalled a remark Prime Minister John Howard made 19 years ago when he said of Asian immigration: "I do believe that if it is - in the eyes of some in the community - that it's too great, it would be in our immediate-term interest and supporting of social cohesion if it were slowed down a little, so the capacity of the community to absorb it was greater." Oblivious to the hypocrisy of his remark, Hawke went on: "Those events from 19 years ago, August 1988, should be enough to determine the vote of each single person in the electorate of Bennelong of Asian origin. How could you support someone who plays you as a race card?" Just as he was doing, in fact. Hawke inexplicably failed to mention that he had railed against the migration of Vietnamese to Australia, or that his successor former prime minister Paul Keating, overruled a succession of Labor immigration ministers to ensure that the controversial Lakemba-based Sheik Taj el-dene Elhilaly was granted permanent residence in Australia despite a series of adverse security reports. And if Hawke had wished to poke around the immigration record, he might have told the Koreans the ALP was the party which supported the White Australia Policy, that former Opposition leader Arthur Calwell had made the famous "two Wongs don't make a white" remark, and that former prime minister Gough Whitlam had consigned people in the Baltic states to Soviet domination. Calwell was later to say that he had not intended his remark to have racist overtones but was merely a word play about all the Chinese named Wong and the name of the Liberal MP for the Victorian seat of Balaclava, Sir Thomas White. If you believe that, you'd believe that ALP candidate Maxine McKew's gushing acclaim for Mark Latham uttered when she was an unbiased ABC reporter was general reportage. Rudd knows race is a favourite card to play for his support squad among the doctors' wives and media and academic elites. He has played it on this issue. Labor wants to reverse the current ratio of immigration of 70 per cent skilled migrants and 30 per cent family reunions. In the past, the 70 per cent family reunion quota has been subject to the sort of rorts which ensured Elhilaly's residence here. When it comes to immigration, Labor has played the race card from the bottom of the deck and wants to be able to do so if it wins office.