Our nation better than One Nation?

August 22, 2008
Steve Lewis

Dr Nelson ... his populist stance against a Pacific guest worker scheme ... is outrageously shrill and just a tad racist. He's exhibiting elements of Hansonism as he panders to the lowest common denominator.

A guest worker scheme makes sense, not only for the positive effect it will have in easing acute labour shortages in the bush.

It should also pave the way for a pan-Pacific economic and trade pact...

Rudd's employment scheme, which will initially allow 2500 "guest workers" into Australia, is the first tranche of an eventual Pacific "common market"...

The smouldering mess that is Fijian democracy suggests a new Pacific path is needed to give nations a viable future.

Dr Nelson is barking up the wrong tree as he chastises the Rudd Government for putting foreign workers ahead of Aussies...

Offering Pacific islanders a temporary place in the Australian labour market is good policy, part of a new strategic vision.

Instead of playing the politics of fear, pandering to those who backed One Nation when its dumbbell leader Pauline Hanson was running amok, Brendan Nelson would be better placed offering constructive support for the Government's new foreign policy agenda.

The common market leads to neither Our Nation or One Nation, but to No Nation. The common market means the free movement of labour, as in the European Union. Regarding Fiji, what's the cause of that smouldering mess? The ethnic tension between Fijians and Indians. Indians who where brought there, ironically, as guest workers and then immigrants. Which is exactly where our guest worker and record immigration programs are headed - down the road of ethnic conflict. Steve Lewis and Labor will repeat Fiji's "smouldering mess" here in Australia.