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Apparently he's happy we're helping out NZ at the moment because "they're family, not foreigners".
Firstly there's the unpleasant implication that foreigners should *not* be gladly helped, which I am happy to see that several people are grumbling about in the letters page of the SMH.
But there's also the strange idea that family and foreigners are mutually exclusive categories.
Show of hands all those whose family ARE foreigners!
I myself am not possessed of any overseas family - my nearest immigrant ancestor was my great-grandfather, back before England counted as foreign in the Australian mind - and so far as I know the only one of my relatives to *leave* Australia permanently since then is a second-cousin who moved to Canada and hasn't had anything to do with my branch of the family since then. But non-indigenous Australians have *always* come from places overseas (obviously; otherwise we wouldn't be here), and there have always been (sufficiently affluent) Australians traveling back to wherever it was their family had come from, or on to other places for all sorts of reasons. People who travel sometimes stay. Sometimes they marry and bring new families back with them.
Foreigners are our family, Tony.
*goes off grumbling*
Firstly there's the unpleasant implication that foreigners should *not* be gladly helped, which I am happy to see that several people are grumbling about in the letters page of the SMH.
But there's also the strange idea that family and foreigners are mutually exclusive categories.
Show of hands all those whose family ARE foreigners!
I myself am not possessed of any overseas family - my nearest immigrant ancestor was my great-grandfather, back before England counted as foreign in the Australian mind - and so far as I know the only one of my relatives to *leave* Australia permanently since then is a second-cousin who moved to Canada and hasn't had anything to do with my branch of the family since then. But non-indigenous Australians have *always* come from places overseas (obviously; otherwise we wouldn't be here), and there have always been (sufficiently affluent) Australians traveling back to wherever it was their family had come from, or on to other places for all sorts of reasons. People who travel sometimes stay. Sometimes they marry and bring new families back with them.
Foreigners are our family, Tony.
*goes off grumbling*