Every now and again I count my blessings.

I was born and live in a relatively rich and free country whose far seeing policy makers have recognised that multiculturalism is the best way forward to peaceful nationhood.

My recent trip to Bosnia and Herzegovina was a sad reminder of what a poisonous concept nationalism is.

Here in Australia there are those who feel that immigrants should become “Aussies”, which by their standards means Anglo-Celtic. The idea that new comers should assimilate is based on the erroneous idea that Aussies are white people of Anglo-Celtic descent. In fact the first Aussies were the aboriginals and what a lot of people don’t realise is that they weren’t a nation in the European sense, and in fact if cultural identity and language are the basis of our concept of nationhood, then Australia before European settlement was made up of about 260 countries.

Thanks to disease, slaughter and alcohol the Aborigines are no longer the dominant race in Australia. As the English repopulated Australia with their own kind, they came to think of it as theirs and that to be Australian was to be of Anglo-Celtic descent.

Eighteenth century attitudes of superiority and precedence coloured the way so-called “Aussies” saw themselves in relation to other people who didn’t come from the same background. Aborigines were marginalised to the extent that they weren’t even considered citizens in their own country until the late 1960s. Non-white races were discouraged to immigrate to Australia by the “white Australia policy” which was state sponsored racism that wasn’t done away with until 1975.

One of the arguments used by opponents of multiculturism is that they are afraid that “their way of life” which built our wonderful country was going to be swamped by “the yellow peril“; foreign ideas, customs and ideals which would lead to a fall in the quality of life as living standards and ethics went down the toilet. 

In my opinion, people come to Australia to embrace our way of life rather than to change it into what they left. I have quite a few friends of Asian descent and all of them are great consumers and supporters of the culture on offer here.

Back in the early 1970’s I left Australia because I hated it. I felt that is was a narrow minded red-neck backwater. I came back to Australia 11 years later in 1985 and I was amazed at the change.  In such a short time Australia had turned itself totally around. No longer was my country looking to the past for a vision of itself but forward into the future for a vision of what we could be.

Many of the changes that I saw could be directly attributed to foreign influences. Not only had Australia opened up its doors to people from all over the world, no matter what race, many Aussies had been overseas and brought back new ideas and tolerance with them.

What happened in Yugoslavia should stand as a warning to us all that being exclusive about who you want, based on race or creed,  in a society only leads to misery and weakness.

Multiculturism is just about doing the right thing, it’s also about doing the smart thing.

Segways have never made any sense to me.

Years ago while I was waiting in line at Disneyworld’s (Florida) Space Mountain, I saw a display sponsored by RCA. As we waited on a “peoplemover” (Disneyspeak for conveyor belt) to get on the ride, we passed various windows that showed with the aid of Disney animatronics, RCA’s vision of the future.

It seemed to me that RCA thought that our future would be spent doing nothing but sitting down and pushing buttons. One display showed a housewife of the future sitting down looking at a video screen to see who was at the door that was just behind her. Another widow showed a kid doing some virtual skiing in front of a large TV screen. In short, RCA’s prescient view of the future showed us all using consumer goods to live more sedentary lives. I can remember thinking to myself that the future that the “imagineers” had conjured up for us looked very boring and unhealthy.

Although I’m loathe to say it, RCA was right in a lot ways and many of us can no longer have a good time without first spending some money to buy a device so we can “interface” with the physical world. It would seem that for many of us, if it hasn’t got a motor, lens, screen or wheels we don’t want to know about it. How many people have to buy a powerboat to enjoy the water, or a dirtbike to enjoy the bush?

To me, the product that epitomes this attitude is the Segway, which I’d like to nominate as one of the most pointless transportation devices ever devised.

Even though the streets of Brugge are cobblestoned, I think a much better way to work off all the chocolate that one eats when there, is to cycle.

This little water spigot has been the object of a lot of attention. Firstly its design lends itself so well to a bit of ribald fun and secondly there is the acknowledgement of the fact that it is so photogenic.

What I also find interesting is what I see as the subtext of a low regard for fresh water.

What I’m constantly amazed at when I’m out and about near waterways is how so many short sighted and selfish people think nothing about polluting them. I’m not just saying this about Spain, I’m talking about the world in general. It would seem that just about anywhere in the world, people take water for granted. Even people in places that don’t have much water will pollute it.

When we were in Mostar in Bosnia, we saw a guy with a stick flicking plastic waste that was caught up in some rocks located in the middle of a tributary stream, into the main stream. I guess he thought he was cleaning up the place and the river would take the rubbish away. He didn’t appear to have the slightest concern about the people down stream or the health of the waterway.

Time and time again, we hear on the TV about how countries like Israel are stealing water from other countries by pumping out their aquifers near the borders, or how Turkey’s dams are stopping Syria getting enough water.

Here in Australia there is huge cotton farm (Cubbie Station) up in Queensland that has no consideration for the people downstream and has basically cut off with a huge dam, the seasonal waters from the Murray Darling basin. Vast wetlands have been destroyed while many ancient little rivers have dried up, not to mention siltation, salination and decreasing water quality downstream. Adelaide’s tap water is the lowest quality water in any major city in Australia and it’s just about undrinkable because of all the bad water management occuring upstream.  

Cotton farming with its high use of fertilizer, insecticides and water in the area where Cubbie Station is located, shouldn’t in my mind, be called agribusiness, but rather, “a bloody-minded act of environmental vandalism”.

A few years ago I was at a Christmas party with some seriously rich people (with hundreds of millions to their name) and I was talking to them about the doing the right thing by the environment, and their response was, “the government should subsidise the private sector to make it worthwhile for business to clean up their act”.

Do these people come from some other planet? Do they think that the mess they make isn’t going to affect them and their offspring at some stage?

It just goes to show that the old question of, “if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?” Is such a stupid proposition. I’m beginning to think that to be filthy rich, one doesn’t have to be that smart, just sociopathic.

A pox on all their houses!