This has been shown time and time again in areas right across Australia. Indeed the entire history of Australia is made up of refugees of various kinds landing on these shores.  And most of them whether they were English convicts, brawling Irishmen or Lebanese ‘Tigers’ have, after the initial problems of dislocation and isolation, found their part in the largely harmonious whole.

The predictable but no less despicable political point-scoring from Canberra when it comes to issues with the Sudanese community in Melbourne, are no exception. If the Sundanese contribute to less than 1 percent of the crime rate it is hardly a ‘tsunami of crime’ no matter how gleefully the word gang can be thrown around. It is worth considering the immense contribution the vastly overwhelming majority of law abiding Sundanese migrants contribute to Australia, before lazily contriving the complex problems of a few into an easy label of race. 

Ballarat has a significant number of miscreants, albeit like the Melbourne - small in number but disproportionately contributing to the damage and crime. But no one yet has taken solace in the easy label of ‘white trash’, when the contributing factors and in turn the most effective and lasting solutions demand a more intelligent and varied approach.  

Far from the ghettos that it has always been easy to label over our history, the resettlement of refugees from often war-torn homelands has been a tremendous filip for Australian society. These kind of experiences have been repeated in communities large and small right through the nation and have proven an overwhelming success given the diversity of cultures living side-by-side.  Add to this a conspicuous skills shortage in many regions and you have a double economic success in the idea of relocating refugees into regional areas with one key addition; meaningful employment.

Few of these community building stories are as good as Luv a Duck in Nhill, the operation whose success this week will see it grow into BWEZ, but there are plenty more even if they are less celebrated or known about.

The starting point is to see the potential, not the fear, and history has shown in Australia that that is what real nation builders are capable of.