Wednesday, July 18, 2007

We're Apparently Full

All of that custom licence plate stuff from the other day helped me cast my mind back a few years to when I paid a visit to Townsville, Queensland. Amongst Australians, Queenslanders are second only to Tasmanians in the national objects of derision standings. This photo should help you understand why.



You see that orange/yellow map of Australia just above the naked woman? Let's get a closer look at it.

"Fuck off we're full"!?! If there's any country in the world that could stand to absorb a couple of million people it has to be Australia. German tourists routinely disappear without a trace after embarking on "short walks" in and around Coober Pedy. It's possible to literally drive for days on highways in Australia without passing another car. Nut-job religious types flock to the great Australian expanse in order to escape the human world and discover "God" somewhere out there in the Outback.

Check the list of countries ordered by population density. At the top is Monaco, with a density of 23,660 people per square kilometre. Australia is six shy of the bottom at number 224, supporting a density of 2.6 people per square kilometre and rubbing shoulders with such people-packed nations as Mongolia (1.7 people per square kilometre), Western Sahara (1.3 people per square kilometre) and Greenland (0.026).

This should make it abundantly clear to everyone on the whole freakin' planet that there is absolutely NOTHING full about Australia—nothing! Walk in and take up some space, please. There's loads to share.

And real Aussies do indeed drive utes. Just ask my brother.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

First of all, what are Utes?

And secondly, is that a Woolworth's store in the picture? I thought they went out of business everywhere?

RBT said...

The vehicle in the picture is a ute. My brother drives this kind of ute.

As for Woolies, they're still going strong in Australia, although it's a completely independent company from the one formerly trading in the USA.

Anonymous said...

the real trouble is australia is too empty to be full, if you get enidd's meaning. all those deserty bits in the middle would need a little work before you put in some housing estates and a multi-screen cinema, wouldn't they?

(not that enidd really thinks oz couldn't take a few more immigrants.)

Little sausage said...

Most Aussies drive utes. They were EVERYWHERE. And darn, some of them are huge. Utes and Holden saloons. I'm surprised that ute didn't have frangipani stickers in the rear window!

Anonymous said...

What this sticker is trying to say, is fuck off, we're full of Asians and Lebanese. I have just come back from 2 years in Australia (and yes they do drive utes and Woolworths is a very good value supermarket), and I personally have nothing against the Asians and Lebs as a race, but considering Asians make up 55 percent of Sydneys population, I have noticed that it is 'spot the Aussie', and most true Aussies are getting fed up of this influx of people who refuse to intigrate with the original Australian fun, sun and surf culture. As for the lebs, they are responsable for 72% of the racial and sexual crime in New South Wales.
So, taking these figures into account, I do defend the sticker. On the other hand, the population of Australia is 22 million, which accounts for the entire population of London. Maybe the Australian government should start making it easier for white Europeans to get citizenship and stop letting in all the asians who cant even speak English just becuase they have a commmodoties trade going on with China?

Anonymous said...

to right!! Were sick of the chinese n lebs taking over our cities!!! (which are fairly populated)

Anonymous said...

couldn't agree more. seems to me these immigrants do more harm then good. those statiscitcs are not surprising! yeah, they do all the shitty jobs that no one else can be tossed doing, but i find they do not embrace the great aussie culture, and prefer to remain outcasts. and too many of them take the easy life not working and being on the dole... not why i pay taxes. they are the reason i want to move out of melbourne. australia USE to be a country full of nice, polite people, but in years to come it will be like living in any other shit hole like the states or london, and we don't want that.
keep australia beautiful....

Anonymous said...

A ute is a car with a tray attached at the back. I must point out, that the HABITABLE parts of Australia are almost full, there's one hell of a lot of desert. The parts that we could expand to we want to keep, climate change, ladies.

Anonymous said...

Queensland: Beautiful one day, perfect the next. The only reason Queenslanders get bagged out is because of the state of origin. It puts NSW & QLD at a sports war with one another. And the anonymus guy said it how it is. We have suburbs and cities that are overpopulated by asians and muslims. Its a joke. I doubt you'd come across many other western countries that have massive towns/cities completely populated by muslims with dozens of muslim churches everywhere. Like in Kuraby in Brisbane, you see 1 aussie for every 15 muslims. So yeah, f*** off, WE ARE FULL.

Anonymous said...

We are full. Well and truly.

That we have a relatively low population density is irrelevant - we also have the poorest soils and least available fresh water of any continent on earth, with the exception of Antarctica (which, by the way, has a lower population density than Oz).

You see, it's one thing to have the space. But every person has an environmental 'footprint' that's much bigger than the land they occupy. This is because everyone needs to eat and drink, and it takes land - productive land with fresh water - to produce those things. Australia has less decent agricultural land than France.

And the more you fill the coastal strips of Australia with people and housing, the more food you need to produce and the less fertile land is left to produce it.

Australian of the Year, Tim Flannery is on record as saying that Australia is already overpopulated at 21 million. A whole swag of eminent scientists, including Prof Ian Lowe and the CSIRO's Doug Cocks agree.

The myth that Australia needs population growth is pushed by business lobby groups like the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, because in the short term population growth stimulates demand and therefore profits. Politicians of all stripes like the short term profit perspective -it's consistent with election cycles and very few look much past the next election.

In the long run though, the economic effects of mass immigration are questionable.

The social and environmental effects are clear though - and they're not good.

So while the sticker might be a bit on the crude side, it's not wrong.

.

RBT said...

Yay! Finally someone who doesn't come across as being inexcusably racist, can spell and has a grasp of the rules of grammar.

Jingelic, you're absolutely right. The little fact that Australia has effectively run out of water—what's the flow rate out of the Murray Mouth these days?—serves to bolster your argument as well as any.

But when I originally threw the post together I decided to overlook such arguments since they got in the way of some fun rhetoric.

As for the rest of you, here are a few pointers...

Muslims have mosques, not churches. Churches are for Christians. Synagogues are for Jews. There's your Abrahamic trifecta. Store it away in a useful place.

You need to spend more time working out what is meant by "true Australian". Is an aboriginal Australian a "true Australian"? How do we go about measuring the "trueness" of our Australianism? Presumably a "true Australian" is someone who's as white as you and hates anyone who looks a bit different.

And lastly, the White Australia Policy is dead. You see there's this thing called Human Rights that we now generally consider to be a good thing. I'm sorry but it's true.

Anonymous said...

FUCK YEH AUSSIE PRIDE!!!! fuck the lebs and gooks
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Anonymous said...

we are not racist,we are just protecting us and our later generations.I am a emigrant, I understand that how it feels when ppl comes to own land and cheap, which also makes us cheap! sorry you white aussie. born to be asian not my fault.

Anonymous said...

fuck off you dirty asian cunt, we dont want you here. if i ever see you ill slit your throught like the yellow pig you are

Anonymous said...

I don't get it! We are a country founded by the unwanted criminals, our first police force was made up of the best behaved criminals, our hero Ned Kelly, a criminal! We have Ivan milat a serial killer specialising in killing backpackers! You hear about tourists goin missing in the outback all the time! Worlds deadliest snakes! Crocs!....... Now y the fuck would u think we want YOU here? Fuck off back to where ya came from mate Australia IS bloody full.