Author: Kevin Rennie

Migrants are always praised for broadening the food we eat. The multicultural cuisine cliché is being put to good use this Wednesday 24 February. This follows the furore caused by violence against Indians living in Australia. Better community relations are being promoted through our restaurants:

Melburnians have always been known as foodies, but now they have a new reason to eat out.

The city's reputation has taken a battering in the last 12 months amid reports surfacing of racially-motivated attacks targeting Indian students.

Fed up with violence and the bad wrap her city was receiving, Mia Northrop decided to embrace Melbourne's love of food in a show of support for the Indian and migrant community.

On February 24, she is encouraging people all over Australia to take part in Vindaloo Against Violence.

Aussies urged to vindaloo against violence The Age

There is a dedicated blog, Vindaloo Against Violence:

Dine at your local Indian restaurant on Wednesday 24 February 2010.

This violence threatens all Melburnians’ sense of safety and pride in their home. I want the Melbourne Indian community -and all immigrant communities – to know that they are welcome and entitled to feel safe here.

How cool would it be if Melbourne displayed a show of force by all going out and eating Indian food on a certain night, to embrace and show solidarity with our local Indian community?

Protest racially motivated violence in Melbourne.

There is even a thread at JamieOliver.com.

The FOOTSCRAY FOOD BLOG aims “to illuminate Melbourne's maligned western suburbs and reveal them as the treasure trove they really are.” They have embraced the idea:

Now you may be thinking this is all a bit pat, that it's a lazy, empty gesture towards a serious problem. I disagree! This is a 100% grass-roots movement, started by one woman with no political aspirations or connections, because she was appalled at recent events.

Vindaloo Against Violence

FoodstuffMelb echoes these sentiments:

The debate continues to rage as to whether or not these attacks are racially motivated, however racially motivated or not, one thing is certain, the world’s attention has been turned to Melbourne and questions are being asked about the safety of our streets; particularly for those in our Indian community.

So what are you waiting for? Head on over to their website, register your interests and hopefully together we can all send a powerful message that Melbourne is proud of its Indian community and all that it offers.

Vindaloo Against Violence

There’s a Facebook Event that you can sign up to.

It’s also on twitter, of course, at http://twitter.com/VagainstV. One tweet among myriad positive responses: “a stranger just invited me to a home-cooked Indian meal at their place on 24 Feb. humbled. so glad this event means something to so many.” 1:12 PM Feb 16th from web

If you Google Blogs for this alliterative phrase, there are hundreds of posts. They include many from across the globe, as the idea has spread virally.

Indian online media have taken up the story with gusto:

A Melbourne web designer's Internet campaign to protest attacks against Indian citizens in Australia, “Vindaloo Against Violence”, has turned into a runaway success.

According to reports, more than 10,000 people have signed up on the Internet for Mia Northrop's campaign, some from as far away as New York.

… Dinners will be held in Amsterdam, Thailand, Malaysia and all Australian capital cities.

Oz anti-Indian violence ‘vindaloo' campaign proves runaway red-hot global success ANI

It’s a refreshing to spread a good news story for a change.

Come on! Join us in a ‘pappadum for peace', as one wag suggested.

Since the proposed bans on the wearing of the burqa in France, the issue has been simmering in the Australian blogosphere. An Australian radio shock-jock, and ex-police officer, drew criticism recently over his opposition to the wearing of the burqa in public.

Michael Smith argued that bank staff and shop assistants are concerned with possible criminal misuse. He also suggested that young children are frightened by encounters with women wearing the “full-on burqa”, comparing it to “kids crying, getting the fright of their lives when seeing Santa Claus”. A radio interview with Smith can be heard at Michael Smith Meets the Press.

When the French bans were proposed during the middle of 2009, Canberra journalist Virginia Haussegger argued on her blog for its prohibition on the grounds of gender equality:

By covering herself in a burka, a woman is relinquishing the right to express herself as a female. She is agreeing to suppress her own sexuality.

There is no place here for the burka. Australians must rally to have the burka banned.
Ban the Burka

Anna Greer at The Punch blogs about, “human rights and social justice issues and … the state of the world”. She has a totally different take on women’s rights:

No matter what you think of Islamic veiling one thing is for sure – criminalising the women who wear the burqa or niqab is only going to render them more invisible.

…This selective concern for women’s rights is merely a way for people to articulate their racist nationalism and it’s an attitude that can be found through all levels of society – in the general populace, in the media, in the government.

Anna finishes with a touch of irony:

Imposing dress codes on people in order to oppose the imposing of dress codes on people is completely counterproductive, but as I outlined above, that’s not the real reason these laws are being considered, is it?
Burqa ban is about our fears not their oppression

Smith’s views were probed at Andrew Landeryou’s online site VexNews:

It’s a scary debate that Smith has started at one level because vilifying people on religious grounds or for their religious customs that don’t harm others can be a slippery slope.

… Part of the complexity is that some Muslims – and other religions for that matter – wear hair-covering as part of their religious tradition. Presumably no one other than the bigoted have an issue with that.

Hopefully the legitimate issue of canvassing security concerns in banks or other vulnerable areas that could be terror or robbery targets won’t be confused with the agenda of those who wish to vilify one of the world’s great religions.
BURQA BAN BANK BRAWL: Radio host says no face covering in banks but is he race-baiting?

In a longer article at Online Opinion, Sadanand Dhume, the author of My Friend the Fanatic: Travels with an Indonesian Islamist, canvasses both sides of this emotive issue. He concludes with a positive view of the French debate:

In the end, though the French brand of in-your-face secularism may come under criticism by both Muslims and Western liberals, the country’s experience holds valuable lessons for the rest of the world.

France has not suffered a major terrorist attack since a spate of bombings in the 1990s linked to the civil war in Algeria. And in a 2006 Pew poll of Muslim attitudes, France was the only major European country where nearly half of Muslims felt they were citizens of their country before being members of their faith. (In Germany, Britain and Spain, overwhelming majorities claimed a primary allegiance to Islam.) Ultimately, this record more than anything else will guide French policy on a sensitive subject.
The French burqa ban: culture clash unveiled

Fortunately ‘bigots' do not have the support of the mainstream Australian political parties. Nevertheless, there was some disquiet recently when Tony Abbott, the leader of the Federal Opposition, raised the question of minority rights and multiculturalism:

Migrants would be more popular if minority leaders encouraged them to adopt more mainstream values and abide by the law, he said.

”The inescapable minimum that we insist upon is obedience to the law,” Mr Abbott said. ”It would help to bolster public support for immigration and acceptance of social diversity if more minority leaders were as ready to show to mainstream Australian values the respect they demand of their own.”
Obey the law at least, Abbott tells migrants

Even before the Copenhagen Climate Change conference the Australian Opposition parties had dumped their support for a Cap and Trade scheme and their leader Malcolm Turnbull. Last week new Liberal party leader and global warming sceptic Tony Abbott released an alternative carbon emissions plan.

Meanwhile Kevin Rudd’s government has reintroduced its Emissions Trading Scheme to the House of Representatives where Turnbull crossed the floor to vote against his own party. Last year the ETS was blocked twice by the Senate after the Opposition dumped a negotiated deal. Turnbull argued that:

This legislation is the only policy on offer which can credibly enable us to meet our commitment to a five per cent cut to emissions by 2020 and it also has the flexibility to enable us to move to higher cuts when they are warranted.
Speech In The House Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme

At Club Troppo Ken parish is concerned that Turnbull is the only politician effectively countering the sceptic and minimalist positions:

Tony Abbott, who thinks man-made global warming is “crap”, nevertheless promises to spend billions of taxpayers’ dollars in dealing with it, even though his predecessor rightly labels the Mad Monk’s policy as “a recipe for fiscal recklessness on a grand scale” that would increase taxes and fail to reduce emissions.

…Only Turnbull bothers to present a considered, analytical case for the ETS, but no-one listens because he’s yesterday’s man and neither policy nor principle nor even intelligent discussion are of the slightest interest to the reptiles of Australia’s political media.
The bemused person’s guide to global warming

The Piping Strike is a regular commentator on Oz politics with several posts this week. A key concern is how the ETS has been spun into a “new big tax”, similar to the Goods and Services Tax controversy of the 1990s:

Coalition politicians talking about the price of ice cream in supermarkets and Ministers rote-learning the prices of household goods makes it all seem as though we are having a re-run of the GST debate.

… As Abbott keeps reminding Rudd, after Copenhagen things have changed. While it reaffirmed that nearly all the world’s governments now feel the need to pay lip service to climate change action, coordinating to look as though they will do something about it is another matter.
How the ETS became the GST

Leo Shanahan, staffer at The Punch and perhaps one of Parish’s target media reptiles, is preoccupied more with the messengers than the message:

The head of the UN’s climate change panel (the IPCC) Rajendra Pachauri has released a novel that combines lessons on climate change with sexy story lines.

… Following last week’s visit from the Skeptic Dark Lord Mockton (who looks and sounds like an evil mastermind from a new climate themed Bond film) I can’t help but wonder if some of the increasing confusion about climate change stems from the eccentric oddballs who we’re told to believe.
No wonder we’re confused about climate change . . .

Meanwhile at self-styled ‘libertarian and centre-right blog’ Catallaxy files, Samuel J was unforgiving:

In one of the great betrayals in Australia’s history, Malcolm Turnbull today abandoned any pretense of support of small government and liberalism by throwing his weight behind the considerably corrupted Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

He is not worried about the political costs of a new tax, arguing instead for a carbon tax:

… In theory an emissions trading scheme can provide a sound market-based means of capping carbon emissions. But a necessary condition is for a world-wide trading scheme. It is clear that there is no such scheme. And it is clear that there is no possibility of such over the next decade.

Under these circumstances, for Australia to introduce a perfect ETS would be silly. But to pass the amended CPRS would be lunacy. It would be considerably superior to introduce an appropriate carbon tax, which would be more efficient and less prone to corruption and rent seeking.
Malcolm Bligh Turnbull – Australia’s Don Quixote?

Veteran political journalist Mungo MacCallum did not spare Tony Abbott a lick of his sarcasm at online journal Crikey:

To call Tony Abbott’s long-awaited policy on climate change an anti-climax is to heap it with undeserved praise.

Indeed, to call it a policy at all is to overstate the reality: it is closer to something you might find scrawled on the back of a beer mat after a long night on the turps.

Ever the optimist, Mungo finds a bright side for future public debate:

Still, even Abbott’s severest critics have to admit that there has been one useful spin-off already: Rudd has started to speak clearly about his own plan. His ETS has now been reduced from several pages of jargon and waffle to a simple grab: we put a cap on emissions; the polluters pay; and households get compensated for any price rises. Abbott’s policy does none of the above. End of story. Actually, of course, it’s rather more complicated and less ideal than that, but at least Rudd is now making it sound comprehensible.
Abbott meticulous about his jockstrap, no so on climate change

Like global warming, it's a debate that is not likely to cool for some time. Even the Federal election due by the end of the year is unlikely to bring the parties together.