Tagged with Matthew White

Labour exploitation? No, it’s Asians taking Aussie jobs (and strawberries)

Frances Simmons and Brynn O’Brien work at the Anti-Slavery Project at the University of Technology Sydney, a specialist legal service for trafficked and exploited people.

Referring to an upcoming episode of Today Tonight, they reckon it’s troubling that abuse of migrant workers is called ”reverse racism” (Asians taking Aussie jobs? No, it’s labour exploitation, Frances Simmons and Brynn O’Brien, The Age, July 22, 2010).

I reckon it’s “good ratings”, based upon a “lowest common denominator” approach, one capitalising upon “widespread anxiety” on the part of “White Australia” that “we are in danger of being swamped by Asians”.

Note that, despite PM Gillard’s protestations to the contrary, slavery has a proud history in Australia, and its rejection — or rather, the forcible ejection of its brown-skinned beneficiaries — helped form the foundations of the Australian state.

In September 2008, in her speech to The National Press Club titled ‘Introducing Australia’s New Workplace Relations System’ Gillard, also took the opportunity to burn her black armband, declaring in her opening remarks that:

The signature values of nations are often defined by the circumstances of their birth… And for us there’s one value above all others that we identify with as truly our own. It’s the value that emerged out of the circumstances of Federation, which coincided with the industrial turbulence of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. That value is fairness. Or as we like to put it: ‘the fair go’.

Which is all rather odd, especially given that — as angry White men across the country know — one of the first Acts of Federal Parliament was the Immigration Restriction Act 1901. This Act (together with the Pacific Island Labourers Act 1901) formed the legal cornerstone of the White Australia policy; the Conciliation and Arbitration Act 1904 — which in Labor Party mythology has ensured a ‘fair go’ for ‘working families’ for the bulk of the country’s history — was only assented to by Edward VII in 1904. Further, while 100 years ago the Gub’mint couldn’t get rid of the Pacific Islanders quick enough, they now wanna import them — albeit if only for a coupla years.

As for “the industrial turbulence of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries”…

There’s a side current here which is rarely looked at but which is also quite fascinating. That’s the working class literature of the nineteenth century. They didn’t read Adam Smith and Wilhelm von Humboldt, but they’re saying the same things. Read journals put out by the people called the “factory girls of Lowell,” young women in the factories, mechanics, and other working people who were running their own newspapers. It’s the same kind of critique. There was a real battle fought by working people in England and the U.S. to defend themselves against what they called the degradation and oppression and violence of the industrial capitalist system, which was not only dehumanizing them but was even radically reducing their intellectual level. So, you go back to the mid-nineteenth century and these so-called “factory girls,” young girls working in the Lowell [Massachusetts] mills, were reading serious contemporary literature. They recognized that the point of the system was to turn them into tools who would be manipulated, degraded, kicked around, and so on. And they fought against it bitterly for a long period. That’s the history of the rise of capitalism.

See also : Leave Tim Noonan alone! (July 21, 2010) | Reverse racism?msicar esreveR (February 21, 2010) | Reverse Racism on Today Tonight (February 18, 2010) | F___ Off I’m On Today Tonight! Or: Reverse racism. (February 16, 2010) | How to Make Trouble… // The Dole Army (November 6, 2009) | Justin Sheridan in Canberra (September 22, 2009) | Justin Sheridan : Australian of the Year (September 15, 2009).

Bonus Foley!

Reverse racism?msicar esreveR

From the Department of “What Have We Learned From Current Affairs This Week (Which Can Be Interpreted As A Form Of Critical Intertextuality)?”:

On Tuesday’s edition of tabloid current affairs TV show Today Tonight, David Eccleston filed a report on a bizarre new social phenomenon that he and host Matthew White (a former sports reporter whose bland appeal landed him the role in October 2008) termed ‘Reverse racism’. In an operant sense, ‘reverse racism’ is what happens when fair dinkum Aussie blokes like former meat worker turned restaurateur Craig Whitney, CFMEU NSW Secretary Andrew Ferguson, and Australian Protectionist Party spokesperson Darrin Hodges express misgivings over the negative influence migrants have on Australian work and culture.

The Walkley Award-winning duo — animated by the same deep and abiding concern for workers’ rights which characterises all reportage on Today Tonight — begin their tale of woe as follows:

White: But now to the issue of reverse racism in the workplace. Workers and trade unions claim it’s at the stage where certain jobs are being reserved for immigrants who are happy to work for less pay. As David Eccleston reports, there are concerns that racism is working in reverse, and threatening the Australian way of life.

Eccleston: Welcome to the new Australia, one where you can be pushed aside by migrants willing to work. Twice as long, twice as hard, and for half the pay.

Yes: immigrants are happy happy, joy joy when it comes to super-exploitation, and their easy acceptance of substandard (living and) working conditions functions in order to undermine our trust in Football, Meat Pies, Kangaroos and Holden Cars.

?msicar esreveR

The term ‘reverse racism’ is of course nonsense, something even a high school student understands — or is, at least, expected to. For the benefit of tabloid journalists however, the Racism. No Way website — designed for the use of such students — spells out why:

The notion of reverse racism is that people from the dominant culture are being discriminated against or not receiving the same benefits as people from minority groups. It needs to be understood that there is no such thing as reverse racism. At an individual level, all ethnic or cultural groups are capable of both discriminating against other groups and of being discriminated against, although minority groups are more likely to suffer from institutional racism.

Of course, it’s also possible to assume, quite reasonably, that White, Eccelston and the other members of the team at Today Tonight are aware of the fact that the term is bogus, but that, more importantly, it sells to an already primed audience.

Having introduced the concept of reverse racism — which, as a form of racism, is certainly objectionable, and being directed against the interests of the show’s presumed audience, more likely to elicit a strong reaction — Eccleston turns to a series of talking heads for further elucidation: former meatworker Craig Whitney, CFMEU NSW Secretary Andrew Ferguson, Australian Protectionist Party spokesperson Darrin Hodges and Race Discrimination Commissioner Graeme Innes.

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