I had the dis­plea­sure this morn­ing of read­ing an opin­ion piece in the Syd­ney Morn­ing Her­ald enti­tled “The com­ing storm”, in which “IT spe­cial­ist” Gary Ellett bemoans the threat “Chin­dia” dis­plays to Aus­tralia. Quoted, for pur­poses of crit­i­cal review, is the first para­graph of the article:

The glob­al­i­sa­tion jug­ger­naut will be cat­a­strophic for the island con­ti­nent of Aus­tralia. While our eyes are turned to events in the Mid­dle East, an even more per­ni­cious ter­ror has stealth­ily found its way into Aus­tralia. We do not see any news head­lines about it, but grad­u­ally over the last three years, thou­sands of Aus­tralians have lost their liveli­hoods to the hordes from Chin­dia, through out­sourc­ing ser­vices to off­shore companies.

I think I re-read that para­graph three times before finally decid­ing that it wasn’t being far­ci­cal or satir­i­cal, and that the writer was in fact seri­ous. I’m eth­ni­cally not part of the group that Ellett so blithely and flip­pantly attacks, but, as one who belongs to the pop­u­la­tion he claims to rep­re­sent, I’m insulted.

Per­haps the con­tent is valid — off­shoring of jobs results in dimin­ish­ing employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties for Aus­tralians. Or not. Read the rest of this entry »