We debate endlessly whether we’re letting too many migrants, asylum seekers etc. into Australia.

Less discussed is why, every year, 40,000 people who migrated into Australia, turn around and leave again.

Plus another 40,000, born and bred here, also packing up, leaving, never to return.

We say this is the lucky country, best in the world etc.?

80,000 a year vote with their feet, expressing that this is definitely not the place for them.

* * *

Locally-born leavers mostly say they leave for economic reasons — better job opportunities overseas for their skills.

Are there other underlying dissatisfactions making them happy to leave — reasons of which they themselves may be hardly aware?

Disgust, perhaps, at the materialism engulfing Australia, the pervasive contempt for religious belief, the immoral media . . . .

Having reached their chosen destination, these folks may experience disappointment.

People over there, wherever it is, may turn out to be (just beneath the surface) equally as grasping, two-faced and self-seeking as those back at home,

Original Sin is everywhere, mate. You could have read about it in the Bible and saved yourself the trip.

* * *

You took your biggest problem with you. You took yourself.

If you think that wherever you live needs improving, best improve yourself.

Which you cannot do — unless you ask God to change you. Don’t ask him to if you don’t mean it. God does change people.

The Apostle Paul wrote, “I was once a blasphemer, arrogant, and a persecutor, but . . . Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the chief. For that reason I was mercifully treated, so that in me, Christ might display all his patience as an example for those who will come to believe in him . . . .”

* * *

It was true. Saint Paul, when young, was the worst possible sinner, persecuting Christian believers, turning them over to the authorities to be killed.

Later, when converted to the Faith, he himself was arrested, imprisoned and, it is said, executed by the Romans.

What God will have in store for you, if you let him take control of your life, is anybody’s guess.

You just have to trust him.

Last year (June 4, 2009) President Obama made a widely-publicised speech to the Arab world in Cairo.

He said that “for centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation”.

What he did not say was that Muslim countries in the Middle East and north-central Africa lead the world in human trafficking — not only in past centuries, but today.

A more recent U.S. State Department report shows that most of the 17 countries listed as the world’s worst offenders regarding slavery are Muslim-majority nations, among the most spectacular being Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria.

* * *

Nobody seriously disputes the fact that the prophet Mohammad himself sold Jewish and other women and children into slavery.

Islam is a powerful force in the world. But is it a religion? That depends on how you define the word.

Islam deals primarily in power.

But with the western ex-Christian nations now at such a low ebb — with prostitution legal and divorce and de facto relationships leaving children exposed to exploitation of all kinds — the non-Muslim world isn’t in a very good position to criticise Muslims for slave trading or anything else.

A groundswell of desire for moral justice and the protection of the innocent and poor from spiritual corruption would be very handy.

But where is it to come from?

* * *

Don’t wait for somebody else.

Make it start inside your own head, and inside your own house.

Do whatever you can at the local level to fight drugs, pornography, alcohol, television, gambling and blasphemy.

Pray to God. He can make the world better, and he will — one way or another.

If you want your prayers to count for something, abandon self-indulgence. Live for God alone.

Turn your back on the low standards surrounding you.

Distrust the secular media.

Never watch television – otherwise your mind will be enslaved like almost everybody else’s.

The Australian government of prime minister Kevin Rudd favours the notion of a “big Australia” — with a population rising from today’s 22 million to 35 million in 2050.

He plans mammoth numbers of immigrants to overcome our “labour and skills shortages”.

Already Australia is a nation with no culture except a shared belief that greed is good — and that the welfare state will feed us whether we work or not.

Most Australians still watch television, picking up their daily dose of me-first, celebrity-fixated, relativistic, materialistic, I-know-my-rights, she’ll-be-right-ism.

* * *

We know about Europe, but refuse to learn by their mistakes.

Like France’s “ZUS’s” (“Zones Urbaines Sensible, i.e. “Sensitive Urban Zones”). Over 750 neighbourhoods in France –with 5 million people living in them — which the French government no longer controls. The heavily Muslim city of Marseilles has 12 of them.

In England today, more Muslims than Christians attend religious gatherings each week. 60 percent of British Muslims want “Sharia” law, as practised in parts of Saudi Arabia, Iran etc.

In Australia we already have whole suburbs and shopping centres crammed with non-English speaking, non-Christian, ethnic communities.

So is it too late already? Arguably Yes. Anyway, Mr Rudd is committed to making it worse.

* * *

What could be done if we had a government which wanted to make Australia a better place for rational, spiritual beings to live in — a habitat suitable for creatures created by God for the purpose of seeking union with him and loving one another?

Firstly, we might give preference to migrants from Christian backgrounds. It hardly matters whether they are black, white, brown or brindle — but they need to be Catholic.

Is this stepping back to the unfashionable concept of a “White Australia”?  No. I just told you, colour is not the issue.

* * *

And we need to get our children away from television and other screens.

And out of co-educational classes where the boys are permanently distracted and learn little.

We need thousands (millions?) of recruits to the vocations of priests, religious sisters and Catholic teachers.

We need the Old Mass celebrated exclusively in Catholic churches, reminding people that God is not a social-worker in the sky, but a Father – supernatural, demanding, almighty and just — and yearning to share our love.

The Australian flag at the entrance to Ballina District Hospital (NSW) has flapped itself to pieces.

One and a half stars of the Southern Cross are gone.

The local branch of the RSL (Returned and Services League) has complained and wants something done about it.

Not a big deal?

It might be, if you had fought in a war to defend the flag and what it stands for.

* * *

A bigger deal, media-wise, was Australian athletes at the Winter Olympics draping a huge “boxing kangaroo” flag across a multi-storey Vancouver building.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) told them to remove it.

They didn’t.

Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, mocked the IOC, saying, “We want to see a lot of the Boxing Kangaroo, particularly now that we’ve had this ridiculous ruling.”

* * *

Is this flag affair just a matter of taste, or is there a serious issue involved?

What does a boxing kangaroo represent?

It signifies that we will do anything — except the obviously right thing — to defy everybody and draw attention to ourselves, threatening a punch-up or similar if not given our own way.

If we must be defiant, why not do something better than the conventional thing, rather than something stupider?

* * *

In Russia, in 2002, the government ordered regions to design their own local flags.

The city of Penza (600km east of Moscow, population 500,000) defied convention by designing a flag carrying an image of Jesus.

Yury Leptev, speaking for Penza’s Social Politics Committee, explained that there is a legend that in the 1500s Ivan the Terrible presented an icon of Christ to the people of Penza.

Leptev said they had held an unofficial referendum about the flag, and support for the chosen image was “strong”.

Some non-Christian leaders criticised it, saying it “blurred the lines separating Church and State”.  (St Petersburg Times)

To which one might reply, “No need for lines separating Church and State –  as long as it’s the right Church.”

In 2001, Islamic terrorists declared war on Western nations by destroying New York’s World Trade Centre.

In 2002, the UN Commissioner for Human Rights (a Catholic) said Islam is “entirely consonant with the principal of fundamental human rights and . . . bestowed rights upon women and children long before other civilisations.”

In 2008, the President of France called Islam “one of the most beautiful civilisations the world has known.”

In 2009, the President of the USA spoke of his “deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world – including my own country.”

* * *

It is intrinsic to the aims of Islam that ultimately all nations bend to Sharia law.

Non-Muslims are to be given the traditional three choices: (1) convert to Islam, or (2) die, or (3) become second-class citizens in one’s own nation, subservient and tribute-paying (they call it “dhimmitude”).

The Commissioner and the two Presidents quoted above seem to have volunteered themselves into dhimmitude without a struggle.

Everyone seems to be doing it — the rate of Westerners converting to Islam having supposedly doubled since 11/9/2001.

* * *

The only other alternative — that Muslims start converting to Catholicism — seems a long way off.

But we had better start making it happen soon, or it is going to be a very sad world indeed.

Where can the much-needed historical U-turn begin?

A good place would be in Catholic schools.

Let’s teach Catholic students that non-Christian religions are NOT good.

Let’s teach them why.

Let’s teach them how to understand their Faith — how to argue the case for Catholic belief – how to be living role models of the good that God can achieve in lives devoted to his obedience.

* * *

Let’s be willing to die, by all means.

But let us NOT be ready to sell ourselves to those who despise our weakness.

Saint Valentine was a Catholic priest, first clubbed almost to death — and then beheaded — by Roman Emperor Claudius, apparently on February 14, in about the year 270AD.

Claudius had ordered all Romans to worship the Roman pagan gods.

The alternative was execution.

Valentine had been famous for his real love for mankind, giving from his heart and assisting the poor, the needy and widows – and encouraging the well-to-do of his time to be generous to the less privileged in their communities.

* * *

In Saudi Arabia, celebrating Saint Valentine’s Day is prohibited.

The nation’s Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice is supposed to enforce bans against “pagan holidays”.

Virtue Commission spokesman, Sheik Ali Qarni, defends this ban, saying that Muslims know the true meaning of love — the love of God — and behave accordingly throughout the year.

Of course, wherever there is a ban there is a black market. Some Saudi florists are supplying bootleg bunches of red roses (at over three times the regular price) to those who will pay.

* * *

Meanwhile, polls are reporting that 40 percent of Muslims in the United Kingdom want Sharia Law introduced in Britain – more so young British Muslims than their elders.

Muslims now number 1,591,000 in the UK — 2.7 percent of the population — a proportion said to be rising 10 times faster than rest of society.

What about Australia?

At the 2006 Census there were 340,000 Muslims in Australia. In early 2010, WikiAnswers estimates it is now 446,500 (about 2 percent of the population).

How many Australian Muslims want Sharia Law? Nobody seems to know. Perhaps we don’t want to know.

* * *

This year, Melbourne’s Latrobe University is offering an 18-month course in Master of Islamic Banking and Finance – described as a “cutting-edge program built around a defined body of knowledge of proven relevance to the Islamic finance industry”.

The thin edge of the wedge, perhaps?

Certainly, it’s a long way from amputation for thieves, stoning for adultery etc. . . . .

And a long way from being clubbed and beheaded for being a Christian . . . .

But you have to start somewhere if you want “change”, as President Obama might say.