Brexit and Anti-Immigration Sentiment in White Australia

There has been gross over simplification of Brexit to supposedly avoid bureaucracy, the EU, Europe and increasing antipathy towards immigration by ageing electorates through populist politicians.

However, many would suggest Australia had a form of Brexit upon colonisation via the First Fleet 1888 by the British, then after Federation in 1901 the bi-partisan 'White Australia Policy' inspired by British eugenics movement (and finally ended after mostly opposition by NGOs, churches etc.).

Fast forward to the supposed crisis of Tampa when then Australian Prime Ministers helped start the demonisation of refugees with able support from mainstream media including Murdoch's NewsCorp, then carried further by society in creating antipathy towards non-Europeans; a new proxy white Australia policy.

Further, there are clear links between ideology, political and media tactics of white nativism or white nationalism inspired by eugenics, which has been mainstreamed in the US and UK; with further links onto the fringes of Europe.

White nationalism, white nativism or eugenics all share a clear architecture including astro turfing, manipulation of media, fake news etc., that can also be linked to radical right libertarians or elements of neo-liberalism by global corporates, via think tanks, to deflect attention away from tax avoidance, interference in domestic policies, cast doubt on climate change etc.

Australia Ready for Anti-Immigrant Brexit? (Image copyright Pexels)

'The new conventional wisdom in Canberra doesn't stack up

By Sam Roggeveen

November 5, 2019 — 12.00am

It is Canberra’s new conventional wisdom: the government’s unexpected election victory gives Prime Minister Scott Morrison stature and stability that his recent predecessors all lacked. The last decade of political dysfunction is behind us. The trouble is, this view is based solely on very recent events in one country alone. What if we took a global perspective over a longer period?

A political transformation has been under way in Western democracies for decades now, quietly and in the background for most of that time, though in recent years it has broken cover. In the US it produced Donald Trump, in the UK Brexit, and in Europe the rise of new right-wing populist movements.

Western democracy has hollowed out. It has happened in two stages. First, the public has drifted away from major political parties, the institutions that once connected them to the political process. In every Western nation, mainstream centre-right and centre-left parties are in decline. In the early to mid-20th century, party affiliation was a question of class, religion and family inheritance – you voted a certain way because your parents and peers did too. But for decades now membership of the big parties has fallen and the share of the vote they can rely on has decreased.

In response (and this is stage two), the big parties have found new ways to survive. They have evolved from amateur mass-membership organisations to small, professionalised outfits financially reliant on big donors and, increasingly, the state. Other than at election time, the big parties don’t really need the public.

So, voters withdrew from political parties, and the parties responded with a withdrawal of their own. The result is that the public square is left empty and politics is hollow.

In Europe, right-wing populist parties have done well because the minority of voters who are attracted to those ideas have slipped from the grip of the big parties. But as France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Greens show, the big parties are not bleeding votes only to the right, they are losing them in the centre and on the left too.

In America, the weakening of parties helped mavericks like Trump and Bernie Sanders, who tied themselves to the big parties out of self-interest rather than conviction.

In the UK and Australia, the decline of the big parties has produced a different kind of instability. In both countries the voting system makes it hard for small parties to win seats even though their vote share has increased. Yet as the big parties have become less popular, they have also become less stable and more vulnerable to shocks from outsiders and ambitious MPs. That’s what caused Brexit, essentially an internal Tory Party dispute stirred up by Eurosceptic backbenchers and Nigel Farage’s UKIP.

It is also what has produced the leadership churn in Australian politics over the last decade, a succession of tight election results, and two periods of minority government. Australians are abandoning the major parties at record rates. At the same time, these shrinking and insular parties are increasingly cut off from a bored and unengaged Australian public.

Lacking genuine connections to a deep social base, major-party MPs look to their peer groups in politics and the media for inspiration, which is where they got the idea that changes of leadership might fix their problems and why, for instance, Morrison borrows Trumpian language on "negative globalism".

The 2019 election resolved none of these underlying problems. True, the Liberal and Labor parties have now changed their rules so that leadership coups are harder to mount, but this is much more than just a leadership issue.

Again, if we broaden our view beyond Australian shores, we can see why. Angela Merkel has been German chancellor for 14 years, yet in that period, German politics has been completely transformed – Alternative fur Deutschland, a populist party that didn’t even exist when Merkel took office, is now the official opposition in the Bundestag.

It would be foolish to assume that Australian politics, still dominated by two parties the public cares little for, is suddenly immune to upheaval on that scale.

Sam Roggeveen is director of the International Security Program at the Lowy Institute and author of Our Very Own Brexit: Australia’s Hollow Politics and Where It Could Lead Us.'

For more articles and blogs about white nationalism, immigration and Australian politics click through.

Tourism Australia Marketing Campaigns - Content or Channels?

Australian tourism campaigns have often been in the news, sometimes for good reasons attracting attention, other times questions about the campaigns including the most recent 'Philausophy'.

Tourism Australia Marketing Campaigns (Image copyright Pexels)

'The ‘Philausophy’ campaign is self-indulgent wank, and a crime against Australia

Tourism Australia's latest 'Philausophy' campaign has "desecrated" Australia and is appalling, self-indulgent wank, according to creative director and senior copywriter Mark Farrelly.

November 1, 2019 10:52

by MARK FARRELLY

What happens when you give a government department $38m dollars of our money? You get a pile of self-indulgent wank that’s an embarrassment to our nation.

You would think after the unmitigated disaster that was ‘Where the bloody hell are you?’, Tourism Australia would have learnt a lesson. But clearly, it did not.

The campaign after that was completely forgettable. Can you remember it? Bet you can’t. It passed like a ship in the night. The only thing memorable about it was the fact its weak, pathetic slogan was grammatically wrong.

There’s nothing like Australia? No people. Australia is a place. A location. It is somewhere, not something.

There’s nowhere like Australia would have made sense. I’m not saying that’s great. But it’s okay.
Rule one of tourism advertising: you are advertising a destination.

So it’s not surprising that when you have a team of people so unable to use even basic English, they are going to come up with something even more appalling than before…

…The campaign after that was completely forgettable. Can you remember it? Bet you can’t. It passed like a ship in the night. The only thing memorable about it was the fact its weak, pathetic slogan was grammatically wrong.

There’s nothing like Australia? No people. Australia is a place. A location. It is somewhere, not something.

There’s nowhere like Australia would have made sense. I’m not saying that’s great. But it’s okay.
Rule one of tourism advertising: you are advertising a destination.

So it’s not surprising that when you have a team of people so unable to use even basic English, they are going to come up with something even more appalling than before.’

What had happened before?

'Tourism Australia looks beyond 'controversial campaign'

‘"Where the bloody hell are you?" has gone the way of the "shrimp on the barbie" - into the dustbin of advertising history.

It is two years since the Government unveiled the confrontational slogan to sledge people into coming to Australia, and now it is being dropped.

The $180 million campaign generated much publicity around the world but did not generate any major increase in visitor numbers.

Tourism Australia is also set to review its contracts with advertising agencies as it opens one of the country's largest advertising accounts to tender.’

What is the issue or challenge round tourism marketing?

"The Best Job in the World" & Beyond in a Brave New Marketing World

"Not since Willy Wonka and the golden tickets hidden in chocolate bars, has something come along like this." Editor, The Sunday Times, United Kingdom

Investing heavily in content but not communication channels to reach prospective tourists, however, Queensland’s ‘Best Job in the World’ did gain attention globally through having travellers create the content.

The challenge was to convey to the rest of the world, in an already saturated global travel market, that surrounding this vibrant living organism was tangible product and a new tourism story for Australia…

….By the end of 2008 the groundwork was laid, the tourism regions and operators along the 2300 kilometre of the Great Barrier Reef had come on board under the "Islands of the Great Barrier Reef" banner, we had agreement from our international travel partners to start including Islands of the Great Barrier Reef product into their packages and marketing collateral had been produced.  Now all we needed was an idea or a "hook" to sell the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef to the world.

Stage two was the big idea itself.  Brisbane-based creative agency SapientNitro was given a brief to devise a campaign to promote the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef.  While several ideas were floated we realised that "The Best Job in the World" was The One; a dream job offering one candidate something priceless, the role of Caretaker of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef with six months to explore the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef while based in a luxury house on Hamilton Island for a pay cheque of AUD150,000.

While the caretaker’s duties, cleaning the pool, feeding the fish and collecting the mail, were tongue-in-cheek, for the campaign to work, it needed to be a real job…..

….Then on a cold January morning they opened up the newspaper or turned on the television and were hit by a ray of Queensland sunshine; an advertisement for "the best job in the world" with the initial criteria of "anyone can apply".  The application process simply asked people from around the world to submit a one minute video of themselves telling Tourism Queensland why they deserved the best job in the world….

….On 6 May 2009, Ben Southall, a 34-year-old British charity events organiser, was announced as the successful candidate for "the best job in the world".  In the first 24 hours of his announcement as the successful candidate, Ben undertook more than 100 media interviews and featured in news stories around the globe.

Two months later on 1 July 2009, Ben started his role as the Caretaker for the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef.  During his stint he visited almost 100 Queensland destinations, fielded more than 450 media interviews and posted more than 60 blogs of 75,000 words, 2,000 photographs, 47 video diaries and more than 1,000 tweets….

….The estimated publicity value of the campaign topped AUD430 million and penetrated almost every country on earth.  Not bad for an investment of around AUD4 million over the three-year life of the campaign.'

Ongoing issue of direct communication with prospective tourists

Campaign fantastic but let down by one oversight by QLD Tourism, no direct channel via their global web presence to contact or make an enquiry in one’s own language, locally.  However, this is where Tourism Australia has been quietly creating a global web presence and physically through local travel and related representatives trained as ‘Aussie Specialists’ with resources made available online via ‘Aussie Specialists Club’.

As important, mostly ignored, are the significant digital marketing resource created by Aussie Specialists developing their own web presence targeting geographic, cultural and linguistic regions.

Result?

Most related web searches would find the relevant Tourism Australia website then finding travel planning and an Aussie Specialist travel agent would only be three clicks away; digital marketing 101.

For more blogs and articles about digital marketing and marketing strategy click through.

Urban Youth vs. Ageing Regional Electors in the U.K.

The England and the U.K., like much of the developed and now developing world has an ageing population, even more so electorally, which is having a significant impact upon democracy and the economy, at the expense of younger generations.

Regional England and Ageing Demographics (Image copyright Pexels)

Not only are politicians catering to ageing and regional electorates, younger generations although ignored, are expected to support older generations through the tax system, but will not receive similar state benefits in future due to budget impairment.

From The Guardian:

‘Some parts of UK ageing twice as fast as others, new research finds
Study by thinktank Resolution Foundation warns divergence will have political and economic impacts.

Parts of the UK are ageing twice as fast as other areas of the country, while in some cities the population is getting younger, a divergence that will have a lasting impact on local economies, local government and national politics, according to new research.

A study by the Resolution Foundation, an independent thinktank, found that the populations of Maldon in Essex, Copeland in Cumbria and Richmondshire in Yorkshire are ageing twice as fast as the rest of the UK, while Nottingham and Oxford are growing younger.

The report, entitled Ageing, fast and slow: When place and demography collide, said that while the UK population as a whole is ageing – one in four will be older than 65 by 2041 – there are widespread divergences in the pace and even the direction of ageing.

The UK’s average age has been rising steadily, from 36 in 1975 to 40 today, but there is a 25-year gap between the oldest and youngest local authorities: North Norfolk, where the average age is 54, and Oxford, where it is 29, reflecting its large universities, the Resolution Foundation said….

….Charlie McCurdy, researcher at the Resolution Foundation, said: “Everyone knows we’re getting older, but how and where this ageing is taking place is less well understood.

“Britain is growing apart as it ages because many rural and coastal communities are welcoming fewer babies each year, while migration within the UK and from abroad has seen younger people concentrating in urban areas that are already relatively young.”

Middle-income areas are ageing fastest, while the richest and poorest areas age the slowest, the research found. There are two key drivers: young people are leaving rural and coastal communities, which are already older on average than other locations, for urban areas, and low local birth rates are a key factor in ageing in older communities.

Poorer urban ethnically diverse areas are ageing more slowly because of high birth rates. The high birth rate in Barking & Dagenham – 19 births per 1,000 people, compared to 11 in the UK as a whole – has given it the highest proportion of under 18s in the country (30%).

The think tank says increasing divergence between old and young areas will have a lasting impact on local economies, local governments and national politics.

MPs are becoming increasingly reliant on the demographics of their constituencies, with older and younger seats becoming safer for the Conservatives and Labour respectively.

For local economies, the foundation says that policymakers should tailor their economic strategies to local demographics, including benefitting from the potential of young graduates, or the greater spending power of pensioners.'

For more articles and blogs about demography, population growth and economy click through.