Ethnic bells tolling under the white Southern Cross

There is little doubt the bells are tolling the demise of the once superior ability of the ALP "to work the ethnic votes".

On Friday 21 March, due to security concerns about protesters intent on telling their local MP that he was "not welcome", Tony Burke, Minister for Multicultural Affairs, was forced to leave a Muslim prayer event at the Australia National Sports Club in western Sydney.

One reason advanced is that he had failed to stand up for the unconscionable bombing and killing of Palestinians in Gaza, women and children in particular.

It was a protest borne of the failed expectations of the government, and a potent omen of the democratic spirit under duress, heralded with roughly written words on placards, and not quite the Eureka Stockade flag of 1854 with the white Southern Cross on a blue background, professionally printed on to textured cloth.

All the same it was an ethnic revolt that challenged the mantra of our being the most successful multicultural nation on earth.

On 28 March, at the Golden Lane Restaurant in Moreton, Queensland, Peter Dutton, Opposition Leader, in front of a group of assembled Chinese community leaders, pledged $225,000, for the Chinese Museum of Queensland (CMoQ) to develop its website and start planning for a permanent building.

It all started with Senator Paul Scarr doing the iconoclastic, at the launch of the new CMoQ website on 1 March 2025.

He was touched by how the Chinese were treated on the evening of the Brisbane North elections in 1888, curated for CMoQ's online exhibition, Remembering Brisbane's Night of Broken Glass. He said that it was not enough just to tell the happy stories: unhappy ones ought to be told too. History must be confronted.

Until then the only Chinese the two Parties embraced were those who make good fellows of themselves before their white VIPs.

Paul Scarr broke that taboo. He has given the Chinese a licence to speak up from their perspective.

"Anti-Chinese riots had a consequence" he told us, naming two Chinese merchants who had filed for insolvency the following year.

The last Liberal incumbent of Moreton, Gary Hardgraves, was said to have been rewarded by John Howard for his demonstrated ability to work the ethnic communities in Moreton.

Most of the Chinese voters in Queensland reside in Moreton, so it is no accident that Peter Dutton chose Moreton to deliver alms to the Chinese.

The Year of the Snake seems to have brought the Chinese a nice little red packet.

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Meanwhile our democracy is under siege, buffeted by one gale-force farce after another.

1. The Donfather's Law, rammed through last month by the duopoly, has strengthened the grip of the two old Parties and set in law a process to strangle the Teals and Community Independents. The noose will be tightened in the 2028 elections.

It will get us closer to Trump's democracy.

What a farce.

2. On 26 March, what was in effect the Tasmania salmon industry protection bill was rammed through at the 11^th hour, with "no proper process, no proper scrutiny", apparently to win the seat of Braddon for the government. No doubt the opposition did not want to offend the big corporate owners of the salmon farms either.

Thus, both the government and His Majesty's Loyal Opposition have shown themselves to be in the pockets of big business.

Winning is everything. Offending big corporate owners is a no-no. Just strangle the voices of intruders who have sneaked into their hallowed chamber. And Donfather's Law will weed out these intruders eventually.

Another farce in our beleaguered democracy.

3. On 30 March, the second day of the campaign, another call for the duopoly to preference the Greens last was front page "news" of one broadsheet.

Let us be reminded: the Greens had 10% of the votes in 2019, but not even 1% of the seats in the Lower House. Democracy by sham.

Yet it seems that the Greens are to be stopped altogether.

The fig leaf is now removed.

We want to become a little America.

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Thankfully ethnic voters are rebelling. And they are potentially a reforming, a reckoning force.

It is commonly believed that PRC settlers at WeChat lost Morrison six seats in 2022.

It has also been said that since the Albo/Marles fulsome embrace of AUKUS some of those WeChat habitués who switched to Labor in 2022 have now cooled.

Meanwhile the Muslim voters have had enough.

Unlike the Chinese, they have organised under the banner of Muslim Votes Matter to target MPs who fail them, say, in their barely audible responses to the drastic rise in Islamophobia, and our nation in general as in the two Parties' dismal response to gambling and domestic violence.

Ah, if only the Chinese, mainly allowed into Oz with skills or money and often both, would rise and help shape this lucky country into God's own country on earth.

Multiculturalism has been a fig leaf for maintaining white privilege for the last 50 years, and for keeping ethnics docile, begging, and lumbered with the "not quite one of us yet" badge. It is just like the 2-Party-Preferred electoral system that flaunts the best – compulsory, preferential - voting system in the world but keeps most newcomers out of Parliament.

There are six to twelve seats where the Chinese votes could be pivotal. Unlike the Muslims, the Chinese have no community leaders who dare to step out of line, to campaign for change to our corrupt two-Party system, to bequeath their heirs with a functional democracy for their homeland.

Simon Holmes a Court, the archangel of the Teals and Community Independents, loves proportional representation. But he remains pure. He will neither ask his flock to campaign on proportional representation nor insist on it as the first condition of support for a minority government. But there is the elephant in the room - doing more of the same will not neutralise Donfather's Law, nor hold back the receding tide that Morrison's unloveliness floated. Hopefully Simon will seize his Mandela moment, and change his mind. There is more than a week in politics left to voting day!

The Greens have proportional representation on their platform, yet they have not said a word about it. Their leader Adam Bandt, however, has said that he will not ask for a ministry to support a minority government. Herein lies a ray of hope. Bandt might be biding his time for asking for proportional representation, and be waiting for the 2028 elections, when he could expect something like 18 to 20 seats under proportional representation.

The redemptive features of proportional representation have been well canvassed by acknowledged scholars over the past decade and more and are cogently summarised in the Final Report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, published November 2023. I would just add that it would insure us against the fulsome visitation of the American evil.

Lamentably, the 1.4 million Chinese Australians, in the best position among ethnics to demand change for our polity, remain timid, uninspired, and derelict in their duty to their heirs. The Muslims have put them to shame.

Hopefully, the Snake will bring a big red packet, soon: a Chinese Poll Tax Trust Fund like the one Helen Clark set up in New Zealand in 2004. That fund would provide funds every year for projects that would rewrite the history of the Chinese in Oz with an unfiltered Chinese Australian perspective, like "Remembering Brisbane's Night of Broken Glass". In time this would lead to the Chinese finding their voice, at long last.

Anthony Albanese might just trump Dutton, at the last moment as he did with the Stage 3 tax cuts. And win forgiveness for his gratuitously fulsome embrace of AUKUS!