To summarise….

So, to cap off our little sojourn into the back-alleys of Australia’s multicultural utopia, what you really need to deal with in Australia is not so much its racism, but its five hundred kilo mother of a progenitor — xenophobia.

You can be blue-skinned with yellow polka-dots, but you will be lauded by Australians as long as you can relate dinky-di, heart-warming stories about the blue cattle dog you rescued from a shelter and how easy and — oh, ha ha! — hilarious it can be to jump from your own culture to the Australian one and back again. Say, loudly, that Australia is the best country in the world, and at least the comments about you being some kind of Asian whore will take place behind your back rather than to your face.

But, gentle reader, do not criticise. Ever. Even if well-intentioned, believing it is your right as a citizen in a so-called First World democracy to try to improve society’s lot by pointing out pitfalls.

If you criticise, then even your white/freckled, Celtic/Anglo ancestry will not save you. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a garbage-collector or the Prime Minister of Australia. Paul Keating, my most favourite of Australian PMs despite his insane and ultimately counter-productive love for deregulation, knows this to his peril. He is one of the, shall we say, less favoured, living public figures of the country and it wasn’t because of “the recession we had to have”, or his extremely sharp, Armani dressing style and antique clock collection (although those didn’t help). It was because of two famous quotes. The first he made on 14 May 1986 while still Treasurer, talking about the dangers Australia faced and that if it could not:

get manufacturing going again and keep moderate wage outcomes and a sensible economic policy, [Australia] will end up being a third-rate economy . . . a banana republic.

The second was when, as Prime Minister he called Australia:

… the arse end of the world.

And, oh my dogs, was there great wailing and gnashing of teeth, yea up unto the heavens, each time! You could hardly talk above the din. He’s the politician everyone loves to hate.

Look, here’s the sitch. You can be a migrant in Australia and have a happy life. And you can be a Real Australian™ in Australia and have a happy life. Just don’t try to change anything or be different in any way. It’s up to you whether you can live with that.

POSTSCRIPT: One thing Paul J Keating was famous for was his acidic wit and propensity for coming out with the best insults ever. A group of students from the Computing and Information Technology faculty at the University of Western Sydney put together a website on Keating insults way back in 1995 and it’s still live. For actual quotes from Paul John Keating, go here. Ah, politics was so much more interesting when he was around. Happy reading!

POSTSCRIPT 2: After retiring from the public spotlight, more or less, Keating divorced his wife and, I believe, partnered with an Indonesian man. But I seem to be one of very few people who actually remember that. Even his Wikipedia entry doesn’t contain a whiff of it. What is everyone being so coy about?