What do you think?
Among the Barbarians The Dividing of Australia
Shelf wear from time on shelf like you would see on a major chain. Prev. owner s name on first page. Some browning on pages. Immediate shipping.
- GenresPoliticsNonfiction
338 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 4, 2020
Sheehan was a Fairfax journalist with a known conservative bias, and his book is over 20 years old, so on each count I was a bit dubious whether it would be worth reading. Nonetheless, his primary premise – that the charge of racism has been used to silence those critical of public policy on immigration, multiculturalism and Indigenous affairs – was not easily dismissed. I've had several personal experiences in which ludicrous allegations of discrimination were made as a counter-attack by people I'd confronted on a matter of policy or behaviour.
[One example will suffice: a young man at the football, pumped up on bourbon (and probably suffering from 'roid rage), took offence at my delight at his team's incompetence and became physically aggressive. I've spent 40 years in "standing room" at the footy and was well versed in such confrontations, so I stared him down - but a mate beside me was concerned at his escalating behaviour and called security, who duly arrived. The young man, beside himself with rage, was taken aside and questioned – and as he wouldn't calm down, was escorted from the stadium. The head security guard came back to me, concerned at the man's allegation that I had provoked the confrontation by calling him a "Lebbo". It was an appalling slur. Racial vilification is, rightly, grounds for immediate eviction and a potential ban from all future games - and even some of the opposition supporters came to my defence, not only refuting the specific claim, but assuring the guard that I was well known over many years for loudly condemning any racist (or homophobic, or mysogynist) comments.]
Alas, it doesn't take long for Sheehan to nail his colours to the mask, using the same language of the new (conservative) Prime Minister in attacking the multicultural "industry", indigenous activists, and anyone else who PM John Howard had decried as belonging to the "special interest groups" the previous Labor Government had so generously supported. Sheehan selectively quotes from many of the darlings of the far right – demographer Bob Birrell, historian Geoff Blainey, economist Des Moore, political commentator Gerard Henderson – to back up his contention that funding to support ethnic groups fosters ethnic ghettos rather than helping them assimilate with the dominant (white, Anglo) culture. Sheehan then trots out the crime statistics for specific ethnic groups – Chinese, Vietnamese, Lebanese – to prove his point that lax immigration policies have helped us import powerful ethnic crime syndicates.
Sheehan's blind spot is that powerful crime syndicates flourish wherever there is social disadvantage. If an ethnic difference must be highlighted, it's that Anglo Australians are generally too individualist and laconic to organise a highly efficient and hierarchical syndicate, and even when they do, it's at the level of bikie gang or mobster clan functioning as the local distributors and enforcers for their overseas drug lords.
Social disadvantage corrodes social cohesion and sows the seeds for both criminality and political instability, but Sheehan's politics points him in the wrong direction. He doesn't want a Scandinavian welfare state where big government funded by high progressive taxes raises everyone's standard of living and ensures the vulnerable are well cared for; he prefers the U.S. approach, where Pioneers, Entrepreneurs and Good Ol' Boys are rewarded for their hard work, patriotism and risk-taking, and everyone else can perish.
Where is Sheehan's lament about the widening gulf between rich and poor – a gulf that Labor PM Bob Hawke sought to bridge in 1987 when he pledged (bravely, importantly, but naïvely) that by 1990, "no Australian child will live in poverty"? Where is his condemnation of PM John Howard, who urged Australians to abandon the egalitarianism that had built both prosperity and social cohesion and instead invited them to become "aspirational"?
To be fair, Howard had been elected for less than two years when Sheehan's book was published; I wonder how Sheehan would assess the disastrous legacy of Howard's full 11 years in office, during which time the dominant and politically stable middle class (representing 80% of all Australians) shrank to half its size, with those who had taken up Howards's call to greed swelling the affluent ranks from 10% to 30%, while those lacking aspiration (or perhaps just the means to achieve it) became casualised, the "working poor" and "underemployed", swelling the ranks of poverty from 10% to 30%. Is this the Australia Sheehan was looking forward to?
It's a genuine shame that Sheehan so frequently lapses into rightwing polemic, because he raises many contentious issues that deserve fuller treatment. Or, to put it another way, Sheehan frequently identifies the shades of grey, the policy responses needing complexity and nuance, only to return in the next chapter to his black-and-white, "I'm right, you're wrong" conservatism.
For example, Sheehan goes to some pains to document China's rising economic power, strategic influence and willingness to flout international law, and the dilemma this presents for Australia, given our standard of living is predicated on a strong trade relationship with this corrupt, genocidal, authoritarian super-bully (my words, not Sheehan's). Do we look the other way and pocket our prosperity? Or do we stand up for what is right (e.g. leading the call for a U.N. investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic) and suffer the rapid, inevitable retribution (increased trade tariffs that threaten entire domestic industries, or threats that Chinese students should look elsewhere for their university degrees)?
What about immigration versus population? Recognising that ours is a fragile continent with a limited carrying capacity, should we strictly limit immigration to only those who can deliver economic benefits (fee-paying students; fruit-picking European backpackers; workers with skills we lack such as in IT and hairdressing; business leaders and entrepreneurs; and - increasingly - Chinese millionaires)? Or do we acknowledge our obligation as a rich nation (and one proud of its "fair go" tradition) to maintain a strong humanitarian intake, including formal refugees under the UN Convention, and parents, spouses and children under the family reunification category, and the inevitable flood of environmental refugees as climate change renders uninhabitable significant portions of our neighbouring nations?
How do we respond to our historic legacy of dispossession and racism towards Australia's First Peoples? Sheehan temporarily abandons his far-right condemnation of indigenous activists and the Human Rights Commission (he's apoplectic in rejecting the Commision's finding of historic genocide, dismisses the proposition of a Stolen Generation, and ridicules the prospect of a Government apology: wrong on all counts!) to cite the issue of tribal law vs "white" law. Should courts take into account a person's willingness to submit to punishment under tribal law back in their own community? Wouldn't it be grossly unfair for a person to be punished twice, once under each culture's law? On the other hand, Westerners would regard the tribal punishment of spearing as barbaric, and how could a court approve something prohibited under the U.N. Convention on Torture?
Sheehan turns to prize-winning Aussie author David Foster for another perspective. Foster has a "white" son who has been fully initiated as an Aboriginal man, and three mixed-blood grandsons who (at the time) lived Western in urban Darwin. Foster asks how Aboriginality should be defined? Is it by blood, or by cultural recognition, or by personal identification?
These are challenging questions, for which a nuanced response based on genuine consultation is the only solution with any prospect of success. You'll never satisfy the extremists, but most Australians are comfortable with complexity if they feel their own needs and perspectives have been taken into account. Not pandered to, but listened to.
Perhaps the most powerful and relevant point that Sheehan makes, for all his opinionated rightwing humbug, is that people who perceive unfairness but are silenced by the smear of "racist" (and we can now add "homophobe", "misogynist", etc) only end up having their fears confirmed: that their own culture, lifestyle and future prosperity is under attack, while the Other is being given undeserved special treatment. The modern Australian champion of these views was elected to Parliament in 1996: Pauline Hanson.
Howard refused to condemn Hanson's objectionable statements about immigration and indigenous Australians, astutely recognising that she represented a portion of the electorate he could garner votes from. But by pandering to these views, rather than confronting them and seeking to address and resolve the causes, Howard gave these views legitimacy and created a monster that has torn his beloved party apart.
The global financial crisis of 2008-2011 (with austerity measures for most, while the rich bankers who caused the crisis were left unpunished) was the trigger for similar reactions in other Western nations, leading inevitably to the unexpected (yet totally predictable) successes of Brexit and Trump, and the claim of "Cancel Culture" that unites their supporters. Sheehan accurately describes and examines this phenomenon nearly two decades before its most dramatic manifestation.
While I found much of Among the Barbarians: the Dividing of Australia biased and distasteful, I upgraded my original rating from 1 star to 2. I'd be prepared to put my own political bias aside and give it a 3, but despite being well researched it's not well written, giving the appearance of having been rushed to the presses to capitalise on timing, rather than allowing for a final edit to eliminate some inconsistencies and structural defects. Nonetheless it does have inherent value, and I'm grateful for having my own views challenged.
And – I find myself amazed to acknowledge this! – it has significantly changed my own behaviour. I am vehemently opposed to Pauline Hanson's politics, but I'm appalled to realise that a key element of my reaction to her is class condescension. Sheehan quotes the federal Race Discrimination Commissioner, Zita Antonios:
Guilty as charged: I've played the person, not the ball. I am ashamed and remorseful. Ok Paul Sheehan: for giving me a valuable life lesson, you get a bonus star. Three stars for this book.
[One example will suffice: a young man at the football, pumped up on bourbon (and probably suffering from 'roid rage), took offence at my delight at his team's incompetence and became physically aggressive. I've spent 40 years in "standing room" at the footy and was well versed in such confrontations, so I stared him down - but a mate beside me was concerned at his escalating behaviour and called security, who duly arrived. The young man, beside himself with rage, was taken aside and questioned – and as he wouldn't calm down, was escorted from the stadium. The head security guard came back to me, concerned at the man's allegation that I had provoked the confrontation by calling him a "Lebbo". It was an appalling slur. Racial vilification is, rightly, grounds for immediate eviction and a potential ban from all future games - and even some of the opposition supporters came to my defence, not only refuting the specific claim, but assuring the guard that I was well known over many years for loudly condemning any racist (or homophobic, or mysogynist) comments.]
Alas, it doesn't take long for Sheehan to nail his colours to the mask, using the same language of the new (conservative) Prime Minister in attacking the multicultural "industry", indigenous activists, and anyone else who PM John Howard had decried as belonging to the "special interest groups" the previous Labor Government had so generously supported. Sheehan selectively quotes from many of the darlings of the far right – demographer Bob Birrell, historian Geoff Blainey, economist Des Moore, political commentator Gerard Henderson – to back up his contention that funding to support ethnic groups fosters ethnic ghettos rather than helping them assimilate with the dominant (white, Anglo) culture. Sheehan then trots out the crime statistics for specific ethnic groups – Chinese, Vietnamese, Lebanese – to prove his point that lax immigration policies have helped us import powerful ethnic crime syndicates.
Sheehan's blind spot is that powerful crime syndicates flourish wherever there is social disadvantage. If an ethnic difference must be highlighted, it's that Anglo Australians are generally too individualist and laconic to organise a highly efficient and hierarchical syndicate, and even when they do, it's at the level of bikie gang or mobster clan functioning as the local distributors and enforcers for their overseas drug lords.
Social disadvantage corrodes social cohesion and sows the seeds for both criminality and political instability, but Sheehan's politics points him in the wrong direction. He doesn't want a Scandinavian welfare state where big government funded by high progressive taxes raises everyone's standard of living and ensures the vulnerable are well cared for; he prefers the U.S. approach, where Pioneers, Entrepreneurs and Good Ol' Boys are rewarded for their hard work, patriotism and risk-taking, and everyone else can perish.
Where is Sheehan's lament about the widening gulf between rich and poor – a gulf that Labor PM Bob Hawke sought to bridge in 1987 when he pledged (bravely, importantly, but naïvely) that by 1990, "no Australian child will live in poverty"? Where is his condemnation of PM John Howard, who urged Australians to abandon the egalitarianism that had built both prosperity and social cohesion and instead invited them to become "aspirational"?
To be fair, Howard had been elected for less than two years when Sheehan's book was published; I wonder how Sheehan would assess the disastrous legacy of Howard's full 11 years in office, during which time the dominant and politically stable middle class (representing 80% of all Australians) shrank to half its size, with those who had taken up Howards's call to greed swelling the affluent ranks from 10% to 30%, while those lacking aspiration (or perhaps just the means to achieve it) became casualised, the "working poor" and "underemployed", swelling the ranks of poverty from 10% to 30%. Is this the Australia Sheehan was looking forward to?
It's a genuine shame that Sheehan so frequently lapses into rightwing polemic, because he raises many contentious issues that deserve fuller treatment. Or, to put it another way, Sheehan frequently identifies the shades of grey, the policy responses needing complexity and nuance, only to return in the next chapter to his black-and-white, "I'm right, you're wrong" conservatism.
For example, Sheehan goes to some pains to document China's rising economic power, strategic influence and willingness to flout international law, and the dilemma this presents for Australia, given our standard of living is predicated on a strong trade relationship with this corrupt, genocidal, authoritarian super-bully (my words, not Sheehan's). Do we look the other way and pocket our prosperity? Or do we stand up for what is right (e.g. leading the call for a U.N. investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic) and suffer the rapid, inevitable retribution (increased trade tariffs that threaten entire domestic industries, or threats that Chinese students should look elsewhere for their university degrees)?
What about immigration versus population? Recognising that ours is a fragile continent with a limited carrying capacity, should we strictly limit immigration to only those who can deliver economic benefits (fee-paying students; fruit-picking European backpackers; workers with skills we lack such as in IT and hairdressing; business leaders and entrepreneurs; and - increasingly - Chinese millionaires)? Or do we acknowledge our obligation as a rich nation (and one proud of its "fair go" tradition) to maintain a strong humanitarian intake, including formal refugees under the UN Convention, and parents, spouses and children under the family reunification category, and the inevitable flood of environmental refugees as climate change renders uninhabitable significant portions of our neighbouring nations?
How do we respond to our historic legacy of dispossession and racism towards Australia's First Peoples? Sheehan temporarily abandons his far-right condemnation of indigenous activists and the Human Rights Commission (he's apoplectic in rejecting the Commision's finding of historic genocide, dismisses the proposition of a Stolen Generation, and ridicules the prospect of a Government apology: wrong on all counts!) to cite the issue of tribal law vs "white" law. Should courts take into account a person's willingness to submit to punishment under tribal law back in their own community? Wouldn't it be grossly unfair for a person to be punished twice, once under each culture's law? On the other hand, Westerners would regard the tribal punishment of spearing as barbaric, and how could a court approve something prohibited under the U.N. Convention on Torture?
Sheehan turns to prize-winning Aussie author David Foster for another perspective. Foster has a "white" son who has been fully initiated as an Aboriginal man, and three mixed-blood grandsons who (at the time) lived Western in urban Darwin. Foster asks how Aboriginality should be defined? Is it by blood, or by cultural recognition, or by personal identification?
These are challenging questions, for which a nuanced response based on genuine consultation is the only solution with any prospect of success. You'll never satisfy the extremists, but most Australians are comfortable with complexity if they feel their own needs and perspectives have been taken into account. Not pandered to, but listened to.
Perhaps the most powerful and relevant point that Sheehan makes, for all his opinionated rightwing humbug, is that people who perceive unfairness but are silenced by the smear of "racist" (and we can now add "homophobe", "misogynist", etc) only end up having their fears confirmed: that their own culture, lifestyle and future prosperity is under attack, while the Other is being given undeserved special treatment. The modern Australian champion of these views was elected to Parliament in 1996: Pauline Hanson.
Howard refused to condemn Hanson's objectionable statements about immigration and indigenous Australians, astutely recognising that she represented a portion of the electorate he could garner votes from. But by pandering to these views, rather than confronting them and seeking to address and resolve the causes, Howard gave these views legitimacy and created a monster that has torn his beloved party apart.
The global financial crisis of 2008-2011 (with austerity measures for most, while the rich bankers who caused the crisis were left unpunished) was the trigger for similar reactions in other Western nations, leading inevitably to the unexpected (yet totally predictable) successes of Brexit and Trump, and the claim of "Cancel Culture" that unites their supporters. Sheehan accurately describes and examines this phenomenon nearly two decades before its most dramatic manifestation.
While I found much of Among the Barbarians: the Dividing of Australia biased and distasteful, I upgraded my original rating from 1 star to 2. I'd be prepared to put my own political bias aside and give it a 3, but despite being well researched it's not well written, giving the appearance of having been rushed to the presses to capitalise on timing, rather than allowing for a final edit to eliminate some inconsistencies and structural defects. Nonetheless it does have inherent value, and I'm grateful for having my own views challenged.
And – I find myself amazed to acknowledge this! – it has significantly changed my own behaviour. I am vehemently opposed to Pauline Hanson's politics, but I'm appalled to realise that a key element of my reaction to her is class condescension. Sheehan quotes the federal Race Discrimination Commissioner, Zita Antonios:
Whatever one thinks about her position on any of the issues that she speaks about, it is supremely offensive to me that she is ridiculed because she lacks a formal education, or because her grammar is poor, or because she struggles over reading speeches, or indeed that she is a fish and chip shop owner. I grew up with fish and chip shop owners. It's symptomatic of the very things we are arguing against ...
Guilty as charged: I've played the person, not the ball. I am ashamed and remorseful. Ok Paul Sheehan: for giving me a valuable life lesson, you get a bonus star. Three stars for this book.
August 4, 2013
The election is looming , thought this might be appropriate reading
was it a rant or justified are we living in the misconception that all is well .found it hard to get the flow of this book. It did give food for thought and was provoking.
was it a rant or justified are we living in the misconception that all is well .found it hard to get the flow of this book. It did give food for thought and was provoking.
November 25, 2018
I didn't read this in minute detail, but at times I couldn't tell if he was for or against multiculturalism, although he's more honest than most in detailing some of the problems it has brought. At the same time, he seems to think it's a success.
Twenty years on, and multiculturalism around the world is hardly an unqualified triumph, to say the least.
Paul Sheehan is a good writer and journalist though, and this is a good read.
Twenty years on, and multiculturalism around the world is hardly an unqualified triumph, to say the least.
Paul Sheehan is a good writer and journalist though, and this is a good read.
September 15, 2025
Read this when I was 27 and now 27 years later as a 54 year old, many of the things Sheehan theorised have come to be - Australia is more divided than it has ever been. Very prescient.
November 10, 2014
Very hard to get into. The author does a lot of early talking up about how controversial his points are, what hate mail he got etc. I got about 1/3 of the way through it and still wasnt clear exactly what the key points of his argument was. Not very clear or compelling, so gave it up at that point.
October 26, 2016
A book that was a bit tedious and over-rated when it was first published, now a dated look into the mind of the Australian right-wing of politics. Not nearly as important or predictive as it was believed to be at the time.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews