Hurry up with the Hawke and Keating assignment Howes, here's some extra homework

THE Australian's history lessons for young union leaders continues. Today: the yellow peril

Lesson one. The Australian's editorialon February 17:

AWU national secretary Paul Howes was still in nappies when the Hawke government and then-ACTU secretary Bill Kelty created the Prices and Incomes Accord. But if he is to have any future in public life, he should read up on history. Mr Howes could do worse than begin his excursion into history with the words of Winston Churchill: "The gospel of envy and its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery".

Lesson two. The Australian's editorial on February 18:

With his limited life and workplace experience, Mr Howes, 29, who became a union official at 17, shows little understanding of the aspirations of working people. He would be better off getting a real job, or a better education.

Chinese for beginners. Howes on ABC1's The 7.30 Report, February 16:

They're laughing at us. Beijing is laughing at us. What will happen if we lose the aluminium extrusion industry in this country, do you think China will continue to export goods into Australia that they are making a loss on? Of course not. They are trying to wipe out our domestic industry here.

Henry Parkes, 1861:

It is because I believe the Chinese to be a powerful race, capable of taking a great hold upon this country, and because I want to preserve the type of my own nation, I am and always have been opposed to the influx of Chinese.

Jack Lang in I Remember (1956):

In the very first Labor League Conference in 1891 a motion was carried and placed on the party's platform providing all furniture made by Chinese labor should be stamped. The Labor Party platform adopted by the 1909 conference passed a resolution to be implemented by the first Labor government to be elected: (a) All Chinese furniture factories be restricted to 48 hours per week, and that the 48 hours be worked between 7.30am and 6pm Mondays to Fridays inclusive, and between 7.30am and 1pm on Saturdays, and that overtime can only be worked after obtaining the sanction of the Department of Labor and Industry. (b) All Chinese furniture and other manufactures be so stamped.

Alan Mitchell in the Australian Financial Review yesterday:

Howes is just trying to put a respectable face on his attempt to rip off the Australian consumers of aluminium and steel by making them pay unnecessarily high prices. The so-called anti-dumping that he and Abbott and the aluminium and steel manufacturers are complaining about is just plain old price competition. Chinese competition might cost jobs in the local extruded aluminium industries, but it creates jobs in industries that use the aluminium. That is why any protection against dumping must be subject to a national interest test and why those demanding protection oppose such a test. They are concerned only with furthering their own interests.

Oops! Howes walks straight into the Calwell trap in The Sunday Telegraph, October 10, last year:

It's not easy, and often it's not popular. Ben Chifley's immigration minister Arthur Calwell showed immense courage in the post-war era by confronting community fears and convincing the public that the massive post-war waves of immigration were necessary to build a prosperous and fair society. He is the type of leader we need today.

Arthur Calwell in his autobiography, Be Just and Fear Not (1972):

What is wrong with most coloured migrants is that they form hard-core, anti-white "black-power" pressure groups in every country that accepts them. I have never been a lone voice in my advocacy of a homogeneous Australia. Only a small minority of Australians who are too blind to see will continue to ignore the hideous tragedy of the UK and the US. Why should Australia, always so free of racial strife, wish to import trouble? Do we want or need any of these people here? I am one red-blooded Australian who says no!