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Yesterday I referred to Andrew Bolt's Aussie Idol article but couldn't find a link.

It's here today, and here:

So, who's racist?
Even though it wasn't trying to, Australian Idol gave us a wonderful glimpse of what our great nation is all about.

MARCIA Hines, the much-loved singer, was near tears as she told Shannon Noll and Guy Sebastian: "You have both represented what the youth of Australia is."
The raucous crowd behind her at the Sydney Opera House screamed, cheered, clapped and whistled. They sure agreed.

And then the winner of Channel 10's Australian Idol contest -- chosen by hundreds of thousands of phone-voting suburban Australians -- was finally named, as millions of viewers held their breath.

Yes! The Australian Idol, who most "represented what the youth of Australia is", was . . . Sebastian, a clearly Asian boy from Malaysia. The people's choice.

What chance, do you think, of the reverse ever happening -- of an Australian being voted the winner of a Malaysian sing-fest?

Yet it is Australia that is so casually demonised as racist, not just by Malaysia's now retired prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, but by our own intellectuals.

We're xenophobes who "invite the region's contempt", declares academic and former diplomat Alison Broinowski in her recent book, citing approvingly a rabid Malaysian commentator who accuses us of liking beer and talking Strine.

It astonishes me how easily and often we're dismissed as racists, particularly in intellectual circles. How can so many of our finest minds think so badly of such a decent and generous country?

Take this week -- or any week, really. Film director George Miller was asked to explain why so many Australian films were such stinkers at the box office.

You might think the reason is simple: most are bad or boring. And lately they've been insulting, too -- insulting to us, our country and our intelligence. I mean, how many films nag about the racism that is supposed to sleaze out of our every gaping pore, but which few of us can actually see?

Yet Miller, like so many of his class, insists this toxic make-believe is the only kind of story we're fit for.

"We really don't have significant stories to tell, perhaps apart from the indigenous story," he told The Australian.

"And Australia at its heart is so racist that I don't think we can stomach it."

Actually, George, what we can't stomach is such condescending and self-congratulatory bull. Hines herself tackled the racism lie when a Fijian-born contestant on Australian Idol, Paulini Curuenavuli, was voted off in one of the final rounds.

Did this prove Australians didn't like dark-skinned folk, one newspaper eagerly asked?

Hines, a beautifully black singer who came to Australia from the United States nearly 25 years ago and was an Idol judge, treated that whip-me suggestion with the disdain it deserved.

"The Australian public voted me, through TV Week, Queen of Pop three times," she reminded her interrogator.

"Paulini and I are about the same colour."

As are Cathy Freeman, Ernie Dingo, John Ah Kit, Adam Goodes, Kamahl, Evonne Cawley and many other admired Australians.

Racist? What proof do our critics -- many of whom lurk around pulpits, lecterns and newspaper offices -- have for such a serious charge against their countrymen?

It is true that Australians don't much like strangers who come into our house through the back window, or who, once in, want to rearrange all the furniture.

But while most Australians reject -- with good reason -- illegal immigrants and multiculturalism, they have always welcomed the newcomers who demonstrate a proper respect and affection for this land they've chosen to call home.

This was made clear in the mass-immigration 1950s by They're a Weird Mob, a book by a man posing as Nino Culotta, an open-hearted Italian migrant happily doing his clumsy best to become an Australian.

This book by John O'Grady didn't become a best-seller because we hate foreigners or are racist. It sold well, in the year my parents arrived, because it was funny, and said what we were keen to hear -- that this was a country that hundreds of thousands of migrants would be proud to be part of. To belong to.

That's all the reassurance most Australians have ever needed to make them welcome strangers. If you like us, you're one of us.

Idol demonstrated that famed tolerance of ours so very well. Sebastian and Shannon Noll, the runner-up, showed us in the final weeks that they'd become good mates, yet how different they are.

The Malaysian-born Sebastian is a Pentecostal Christian teacher from Adelaide, and professed virgin. Noll is a drawling farmer from New South Wales who is not married to the mother of his two children.

All the two men seem to have in common -- apart from fine voices -- is that they're both easygoing, respectful of others, self-deprecating, ready for a laugh and loyal to family and friends. And they're triers, with a bit of dash.

It may not seem very distinctive, but to me it spells Australia, and it's wonderful. Why don't George Miller and his tribe think this story of our country -- of tolerance, spunk, good humour and mateship -- is significant and worth telling?

All they need do is to look at Guy Sebastian to see what a marvel Australia is.

Or they could listen to his single, to be released next Monday. It's called Angels Brought Me Here. And of course they did. Where else would angels live?

This article brought to you courtesy of Ynot Rolyat Media Research.

Comments

[Raena]

"It astonishes me how easily and often we're dismissed as racists, particularly in intellectual circles. How can so many of our finest minds think so badly of such a decent and generous country?"

Casually comparing us to Malaysia and saying "See! We're not racist!" is like comparing Pauline Hanson to the KKK, saying "See! She's not so bad!" Malaysia is freaky. Just cause we're not as bad as they are, it doesn't make it okay to say that we have nothing else to do.

"Racist? What proof do our critics -- many of whom lurk around pulpits, lecterns and newspaper offices -- have for such a serious charge against their countrymen?"

Well, I guess all the rest of the evidence clearly just doesn't stack up when compared to a reality TV show about a manufactured pop star. Jesus friggin Christ.

[Tony.T]

A flawed analogy agreed, Raena. But we're still not racist.

[Brett Pee]

Mind you, i've never met a nice South African. Rude, racist, ignorant, bigoted meat stuffing buffoons- and that's just the sheilas.

[Tony.T]

Come to think of it, I hardly know any South Africans. But I'm not in Perth.

[Me]

I've never met a nice South African either, they do seem to be extremely arrogant and the male ones are very chauvinistic and need bringing kicking and screaming into the 21st Century. Contrary I've never met a nasty Australian they all seem really nice!