Australians in 2013: happy, confident – but not as friendly as we used to be
This year, 28% of us disagreed with the proposition that “accepting migrants from many different countries makes Australia stronger”; and 25% admitted to having “negative feelings” to migrants from the Middle East and Lebanon in particular. Markus takes this to be code for Muslim.
Intolerant Australia appears to be becoming more intolerant. Markus reports a sharp rise in discrimination. The 2013 survey revealed 40% or more of all new arrivals from Malaysia, India, Sri Lanka, Singapore, China and Hong Kong have experienced discrimination because of their colour, race or religion.
Markus is loth to tie this deteriorating situation directly to the politics of the boats. He found our attitudes to asylum seekers have further hardened in the past year: 33% of us now want all refugee boats turned back and only 18% support our treaty obligations to give refugees arriving by boat permanent residence in this country.