Australia - Are we becoming Americans?

[Lilah-Clover]

Well Pernally I am not worried about Australia being like America.

What do you guys think about Kevin Rudd wanting to join forces with Asia Pacific and make it easier for Asians to come to come to Australia and work. He also wants us to learn Japanese and things like that.?  

[kixsy]

I think learning languages would be a great part of life and many people strive to learn Japanese in particular. I have not heard about this since I don't get a lot of time to watch news although I feel that Australia welcomes people and that as long as the people coming here are good people I don't know why it should need to be complicated.  

[Lilah-Clover]

kixsy

I think learning languages would be a great part of life and many people strive to learn Japanese in particular. I have not heard about this since I don't get a lot of time to watch news although I feel that Australia welcomes people and that as long as the people coming here are good people I don't know why it should need to be complicated.

I will have to find a link...I know it is a good thing to learn another language.. but what our PM wanted was to build an alliance with them...  

[kixsy]

Sometimes alliances are for the best?  

[DNA_Guru]

kixsy

That is such a heavy realisation for someone to carry. You are almost removing the history from the culture. Our history is what has let to the culture we have. You are almost claiming the majority of us homeless simply because we are not Aboriginal descendants. What does this say about us? Native Australian descendants have adapted to the same culture whether by force or integration but either way today's Australian culture consumes all nationalities. Many countries welcome immigrants and happily accept new citizens. Australian culture is purely Australian no matter how general that is or isn't. We may have picked up a few things from other people and all Australians are different, but aren't all people different? We welcome variety and without variety we would not be true Australians.

I'm not saying we're homeless. I mean we're as Australian as the aboriginals in most respects as they themselves immigrated to Australia albeit some 40,000 year previous to white colonisation.
What I am trying to say is that to assert any national culture is more or less pulling at straws, it won't get you anywhere as we don't all fit into one nice package. As much as the mind wants to, we don't all fit into neat categories. I for example carry heavy Australian traits, I'm amazingly patriotic and whatever else, but I don't embody all the stereotypes that national culture tells us.
And that's what 'national culture' is, it's a stereotype, and we all don't adhere to that.
To try a different tack, it's easy to be on the inside looking around. If you're an outsider you perform certain summaries saying a group of people is this or that. So it's easy for us to say the Chinese are this, the Germans are that, but when we hear perceptions from those countries about us we simply say 'No it's not like that! I'm different!'.
This is what I'm trying to say at least.

Lilah-Clover

Well Pernally I am not worried about Australia being like America.

What do you guys think about Kevin Rudd wanting to join forces with Asia Pacific and make it easier for Asians to come to come to Australia and work. He also wants us to learn Japanese and things like that.?

We live in the Asia-Pacific region, it'd be stupid not to team up with our neighbours. Even the warring Europeans figured that one out some time ago. He's heading in the right direction, we need to show our neighbours that we can help them if they help us and whatever else, get a bit of financial co-operation going on.

I also believe 'The Rudd' wants children to learn a second language, nothing specific, and I admire that. It's something I would support entirely. As an L2 in Japanese, I feel it opens up so many avenues for you. Language learning is a great skill, the more you know the better. Hell, I'm going to study Korean next year.

Chinese is probably the best suck-up language to learn at the moment. Japan is in economic decline and it's going to be South Korea and China that'll be jumping out of the blocks soon. Best to speak their language to help our international relations.

Building alliances with other countries is what Australia does best. We make friends as we're not strong enough to piss anyone off. Plus it's better for World Politics if we play nice anyway. Kevin's forging some trade agreements with the Chinese as I understand which is a damn good idea as they will be the next economic super power.
We're in a microcosm of Asia and we need to take advantage of that as being the only Western developed country in arms length. Asia is out oyster at the moment, we can make big strides if we set up the right trade agreements.  

[kixsy]

What seems to be an issue at the moment is the outlook people have on other countries. It seems that if you aren't allies or in some kind of agreement with us then you are out enemies. I'd rather there were no allies like in some Survivor show.  

[b r a x t a s t i c]

It bugs the hell out of me about how Amercanized Australia's becoming - I mean, I love America and all, but I want to go to it, not have it come to me D<

It also annoys the hell out of me about how R.M Williams got bought out by a Japanese company, I believe it was. They even adjusted the logo o.O  

[kixsy]

Sadly Australia has lost many companies.  

[DNA_Guru]

kixsy

What seems to be an issue at the moment is the outlook people have on other countries. It seems that if you aren't allies or in some kind of agreement with us then you are out enemies. I'd rather there were no allies like in some Survivor show.

Well, the global economy doesn't really work all that well without international agreements. Plus we as humans like to know we're pretty safe when doing our bargaining. Trade agreements and the like help with that. Plus there's a lot of stuff we don't have in Australia we need to import from other countries and vice versa. Australia could probably have a good crack at being subsistant, but it wouldn't be all that successful particularly if we have a bad drought or so.  

[kixsy]

Yes but perhaps a realising that we depend so heavily on other coutries for resourses will make us realise that we don't need to boost our population with internationals and immigrants (not that they aren't great people)  

[DNA_Guru]

Boosting the population boosts the economy. We're not nearly as badly off as Japan is at the moment, but we do need a bit of a population injection as we do have an aging population. The Baby Boomers are getting on and there's a lot of them.  

[kixsy]

What seems to be the issue is we are so spread out that there are staffing issues in small schools etc where students and customers etc are limited. We merely need people to fill jobs meanwhile our own essential resources like water are depleting  

[Kats Scratches]

Isn't Bundaberg Rum owned by America? I keep looking at the bottle in a state of drunkenness and I can't find the australian owned symbol.  

[kixsy]

xp maybe u should look at the bottle before you get drunk lol