Diary

Wednesday, 24th February 2010

Melanie Phillips opens her diary

I arrive in Sydney to 40-degree heat and humidity to match. People talk about the weather almost as obsessively as they do in Britain. I admire the city’s exquisite waterfront, and note how much of Sydney’s recreational life is conducted on or around water. This surely contributes to the pervasive sense — despite the city’s troubling slum areas — of general well-being and high quality of life. Kind friends take me out for a spin round the harbour in their boat. The rain teems down and we put up umbrellas in the open stern, but despite the tropical deluge the views are still magnificent.

When the weather improves, I do the glorious walk from my hotel on Bondi Beach along the cliffs. I do no more than paddle in the ocean because I fear that I may be eaten by a shark. Brits like me probably think that Australian beaches are regularly scenes of carnage straight out of Jaws just as Aussies believe that England is still ruled by chinless wonders in ermine. To my joy, I discover a wonderful sea-water pool carved out of the rocks on Bronte Beach, provided for no charge by the munificent Waverley council. I bet such a pool wouldn’t be free in Britain. But then there aren’t so many sharks in Britain. Only in politics and the media.

I am bemused to read that the populist demagogue and reputed über-xenophobe Pauline Hanson intends to come to live in Britain. Talk about frying pans and fires! Doesn’t she realise that she’s coming to a multicultural paradise where we are fortunate to enjoy the benefits of a burgeoning parallel informal jurisdiction of Sharia law, where the burqa is more visible than the Beefeaters, and where our wise government employs Islamic radicals to advise it on countering Islamic radicalism? On the other hand, perhaps she does. The truly racist British National Party, which is making opportunistic hay with the mainstream parties’ refusal to address legitimate concerns about mass immigration and Islamisation, may be looking for a leader who doesn’t look like a thug. Just when so many Brits are going the other way, too. Australia gets Ben Elton, we get Pauline Hanson. Says it all, really.

Melanie Phillips is a British journalist who blogs at spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips