To be born in Australia is to win the lottery of life", a former prime minister once said. To which I might add, "... which is also won by those who are lucky enough to be allowed to immigrate to this wonderful country ...", but, of course, there are always those who don't know when they are well off.
In the past we had the proverbial "whinging Pom" and sometimes also an "arrogant Kraut", whose complaints we then cut short with the forthright Australian interjection "If you don't like it here, why don't you piss off?" How many "whinging Poms" or "arrogant Krauts", do you think, would've stood a chance to sue you over making such a remark? Exactly! ZERO!
Times have changed and we now have the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 under which Pauline Hanson copped it sweet after replying to the above tweet that Faruqi had immigrated to take "advantage" of Australia, and told the Lahore-born Muslim to return to Pakistan, using an expletive.
The post was racist, nativist and anti-Muslim, the judge said, which allowed me to add a new word to my vocabulary: nativist. Look it up!
Times have changed! Only this morning I said to Padma across the breakfast table that I don't like the juice, and immediately hastened to spell it out to her: J - U - I - C - E. You can't be too careful these days!
