(HT: Tim Wilson)
The Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union is demanding that if employees are to be made redundant, those on controversial 457 visas should go first – before Australian workers – despite past legal advice to the government that laying off 457 visa holders first could breach some state anti-discrimination laws.
Permanent residents and Australian citizens should “have the primary right to Australian jobs”, the union says.
The history of unions and the White Australia policy is well explained here (although I don’t agree that the WAP was introduced for ‘cultural’ as opposed to racist reasons). William Hutt tells a similar story in the context of South Africa and apartheid. (Rafe’s precis here).
The ALP and unions have always hated non-whites.
Gough Whitlam actually wanted Vietnamese boat people to be imprisoned and shot by the communists rather than come here. He was also a big admirer of Pol Pot.
C.L.
5 Jan 13 at 11:41 am
Every time you see a “buy Australian!” sticker, or hear the same sentiments piped incessantly through the loudspeakers at Coles, remember this is the same old WAP in the age of containerised shipping.
Ooh Honey Honey
5 Jan 13 at 12:01 pm
An election and referendum winner for Unions.
if it’s the best workers you want to retain regardless I want my next Landcruiser imported from Japan’s best auto workers without having it taxed to subsidise the Aussie battler inferior auto units.
Alfonso
5 Jan 13 at 12:04 pm
I thought the employers could choose who they employed, and not be coerced by a union.
candy
5 Jan 13 at 12:11 pm
They don’t make Landcruisers in Australia. (I’m typing this from inside the Toyota factory in Altona). Landcruisers probably come from Thailand.
Ooh Honey Honey
5 Jan 13 at 12:19 pm
Errr…did you think Cruisers were made in Aust?
The same applies to Thai or Kenyan Toyota production being taxed inbound to support Aust auto workers.
Alfonso
5 Jan 13 at 1:12 pm
That’s one of the stupidest things I’ve read on this blog. A consumer exercising their choice to buy Australian, or a producer advertising that they are Australian has nothing to do with the WAP.
It is like accusing BMW of being extremists for advertising that they are German.
Adrian
5 Jan 13 at 1:27 pm
I say the first 457 visa holder to be sacked should be John ‘gut churnin’ McTernan.
Not any more Candy. Managers have had a lot of power and discretion taken away from them with the advent of the fair work act. Yet somehow the union movement finger the quality of management in Australia as the prime culprit in our woeful productivity performance. Amazingly shocking that they can’t see the contradiction here.
Skuter
5 Jan 13 at 2:33 pm
Dougie Cameron should be the first one on the boat.
Thieving foreigner.
Econocrat
5 Jan 13 at 2:45 pm
RAAAACIST!!!!!
Can’t wait for the Left and their love media to start tearing shreds off these racist bastards.
If securing Australia’s borders makes John Howard a racist, or if Pauline Hanson’s concerns about Asian immigration make her a racist, then demanding that people get sacked based on their place of birth is just as racists.
Come on ABC, time to crank up the old ‘bash the racist’ assault.
johno
5 Jan 13 at 2:47 pm
Johno
You’re assuming these scumbags even care about appearing hypocritical. That part of the brain doesn’t work for lefties. I really believe that. They don’t understand hypocrisy and logical inconsistency.
JC
5 Jan 13 at 2:50 pm
We could possibly get a bulk shipping rate if we throw in McTernan and the red underpants gnome too.
I can’t stand these arsehole pommy unionists and political activists who come over here and stir up shit. Their brand of class warfare is not wanted here.
Skuter
5 Jan 13 at 3:16 pm
Econocrat,
surely Gillard would be in front of them, her heritage is as a Welsh immigrant
Tator
5 Jan 13 at 4:12 pm
I’m amazed that Sinclair disagrees with the Windschuttle thesis on the WAP, leaning instead to the Reynolds view that the WAP was clearly a manifestation of Auistralian’s racism at the time (and obviously since). I haven’t read the Windschuttle’s book referred to but I did read his book on the Fabrication of Aboriginal History. He was of course despised for that by Manne and Quiggin, but he showed a hell of a lot more scholarship and research work than either of them.
Windschuttle’s Quadrant article is quite convincing, and I think Paul Kelly tended to agree with this approach in his first chapter of The End of Certainty when he wrote about The Australian Settlement, which was certainly all about economics.
whyisitso
5 Jan 13 at 4:17 pm
I only disagree with Windshuttle’s conclusion that racism played no part in the WAP. His analysis is excellent and I highly recommend the book. I am not surprised that unionists and their ALP pawns would be racist.
Sinclair Davidson
5 Jan 13 at 4:23 pm
Although sold to the public in part by appealing to their fear of “asians”, the WAP was fundamentally about protecting Australian jobs, in industries where Asians could do a much better job for much less money and with a whole lot less whingeing. They do all that now but the product comes to us in containers, which was not possible or economically viable in 1901.
This is just the modern manifestation of that same protectionism.
I hope that clears it up for you Adrian.
Ooh Honey Honey
5 Jan 13 at 5:14 pm
I agree with Skuter about macturd,surely amongst all the corrupt ,lying,totally disgusting scum in the onion movement and its alp subsidary ,there is an Aussie born Scubag who could do the pommy shits “job”?
He might even have an accent like his boss jooLiAR!
Borisgodunov
5 Jan 13 at 5:16 pm
http://m.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/immigration/miners-warn-of-racist-innuendo-as-pauline-hanson-backs-doug-cameron-on-jobs-for-aussies/story-fn9hm1gu-1226375682546
I’m sure the PM’s job (welsh) and that of Australian Senator Doug Cameron (scottish) should be held by decent Australians rather than immigrants…
I’m surprised the irony is lost on them.
Combine Dave
5 Jan 13 at 5:31 pm
Sinc
I really think it’s difficult to judge those earlier times to present day standards.
Yes of course there was racism, but in those days everyone hated each other.
My parents came from towns in Italy where people from other towns were considered sub-human and intermarriage was considered a mixed marriage.
JC
5 Jan 13 at 5:48 pm
JC – yes I agree. But it was racist nonetheless.
Sinclair Davidson
5 Jan 13 at 5:50 pm
I’m with Joe on this. I’m sick and tired of leftists elevating themselves above us ordinary mortals like the Pharisee- “not as other men”.
Quite frankly I’m surprised you’d fall for that line, Sinc.
whyisitso
5 Jan 13 at 7:18 pm
Because the WAP was racist then.
Sinclair Davidson
5 Jan 13 at 7:21 pm
Fine – the left and unions are hyporcrites. But really is there anything wrong with foreigners being first out in a redundancy situation ?
Podsnap
5 Jan 13 at 9:58 pm
Well the real question for this advanced blog Podsnap, is there anything wrong with employers enjoying the right to hire and fire anyone, anytime, anyhow they fucking please?
Ooh Honey Honey
5 Jan 13 at 10:12 pm
(Alfonso, sorry, you just want the tax removed. Yes. I misunderstood.)
Ooh Honey Honey
5 Jan 13 at 10:15 pm
Wanting to have Australians employed before Importing workers has nothing to do with racism.
Unless of course every Australian worker is of that same race that is different to foreign applicants, which they aren’t.
jumpnmcar
5 Jan 13 at 10:31 pm
Sure – but the freedom of the employer to sack who they want wasn’t the point of the fucking post, the fucking racism of the unions was….
And I agree with Adrian up the thread, this -
Every time you see a “buy Australian!” sticker, or hear the same sentiments piped incessantly through the loudspeakers at Coles, remember this is the same old WAP in the age of containerised shipping.
is one of the stupidest things I’ve read on a blog for some time.
Podsnap
5 Jan 13 at 11:03 pm
And everything to do with preventing employers from circumventing the unions.
wreckage
6 Jan 13 at 12:44 am
It was the A.L.P.’s Arthur Calwell who said: “Two Wongs don’t make a white!”.
Thankfully, the world has moved on from those views.
I have often wondered what that sour, po-faced bloke who is our current A.L.P. Federal Minister of Finance and Deregulation, thinks of that. It obviously didn’t cause Penny Wong to join the Liberal Party.
Penny Wong’s entry on Wikipedia, says that she originally trained to be a surgeon, but discovered that she had a profound aversion to blood.
She is now an A.L.P. Federal Cabinet Minister, where she displays a similar profound aversion to thinking.
Up The Workers!
6 Jan 13 at 6:36 am
Ooh, Import / luxury car taxes and mandating non preferred workers over preferred workers both act to subsidise rent seekers in ‘domestic’ car manufacture. A pox on rent seekers…..be they Union and / or Corporate.
Alfonso
6 Jan 13 at 7:16 am