Many of the older Italians etc that came out after WW2, particularly the stay at home mums which is what was very acceptable in those times, developed only a rudimentary knowledge of English through their lifetime.
At least they spoke pidgin English! Not like having Asian suburbs whose communities claim that there is no need to to learn English at all.
All levels of govts, from the local to federal departments are encouraging or abetting this type of attitude thru all forms of media - including SBS. All it has done is encouraged the development off multicultural industry leaching fundings from taxpayers.
Our politicians assured us, that our Asian population will only reach 2% by 2015 and under that definition it included some Middle Eastern country’s.
MT at a recent Australia-Chinese business conference proudly mentioned that the Australia population consist of 1.4 million Chinese and some of his family members have married people of Chinese descent.
This is a recipe for future racial problems - just poor multicultural planning.
