national-conversation

You are deep in an enjoyable conversation when suddenly a loud blustering person arrives, diverting all the attention of your group to her. She shows no curiosity as to what you were discussing before she arrived, relating a story about herself as though assuming everyone had been waiting for her arrival to come alive ..

Has this ever happened to you? It’s a summer Saturday afternoon and you are sitting restfully in the backyard with friends, enjoying a conversation roaming from cinema, music, the local park, and local to international politics. One of your friends is in the midst of relating something exciting, when in bursts another person to the group. He is already talking loudly as he approaches. He turns everyone’s attention to himself, drowning out the previous conversation and taking over with a description of his perilous trip across town which hindered his progress,making him late. He offers a bottle of wine, apologizing fulsomely and flamboyantly for not bringing what he intended because he was held up with work prior to his traffic woes. He then notes aloud that things look as though they need some livening up and requests some loud music. The mood is broken.

Alternatively, it is a winter evening and everyone is seated around a table deep in conversation about the pressures of work and house payments and explorations as to why we never got our universal 3 day week. Suddenly a woman blusters in the front door, her penetrating voice, complaining of the cold echoes up the hallway to the dining area. The conversation at the table has reached a certain level of interest and consensus but with a jolt it is brought back to the mundane as this woman inserts herself, with the aid of the weather and her inability to predict it in order to dress adequately for the temperature. Suddenly all the attention is on this latecomer. She takes over. The conversation now revolves around the way this woman looks, her clothes , her hair, her life. It turns out that she is a last minute invitee and an extra chair and setting is brought in to accommodate her. Everybody moves up closer to their neighbour and the main course is served. The conversation never returns to where it was.

It occurred to me today that this is how I feel on a national scale about the way migration is treated by the media and by migrant advocacy groups in Australia . The reason I feel like this is that I cannot listen to any media without hearing about migrants to Australia. There seems to be nothing else to talk about except perhaps gay marriage. The airwaves are stuffed full of the migrant experience of Australia, be it a refugee experience a skilled migrant experience, be it a recent experience or one dating back to the 1950s. Nothing else seems to matter now in this country apart from migration. There is no other ongoing conversation .

I really don’t mind if people want to come and live here, but I am irritated with hearing about what they think of me and my compatriots day in and day out and how their expectations, somehow have not been met. Every interview with visiting luminaries on the ABC seems to light on the well -worn subject of immigration. It’s as though we had nothing to talk about before they started coming. Anyone who has just tuned to local media would think that this IS the only topic- that this is IT!

I’m also tired of hearing that we were not “vibrant” before the tide of migrants (I actually can’t remember a time when there were not migrants but their numbers have grown enormously in the last 10 years). The imposition of "vibrancy" is like the man who asks for loud music when people are enjoying a quiet conversation.

Come in if you wish but please just take a vacant seat and listen for a while to the conversation you have just joined.