of feral foreigners and 'de-wogging' down under

I had blogged about  Australia's controlling Other Foreign Pests in "right to protect" . Here is  more on what has been proudly called "De -wogging" .

On Australia Day 1996, my family attended our citizenship ceremony in Hobart. Later that day Bob Burgess, a National Party electoral candidate, referred to this joyful occasion as ''de-wogging''. Ever since, after John Howard's Tampa, and after Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard made asylum seeking here another election issue, it seems intolerance of outsiders is entrenched as a common value in Australia.

This intolerance is categorical and extends to non-native animals too, but particularly the feral cat. It's a creature so detested in Australia that it has made it into the uncharmed circles of the ''un-Australian''.

Why are we so against the feral cat when other countries are not? Does it relate to our apparent fear of outsider humans?

In reviewing the scientific research three things baffled me: first, the scientists' agreement that there is no evidence linking feral cats to any native extinctions (apart from a few very exceptional island sites). Second, the absence of any statement reinstating feral cats as harmless animals and removing them from their current status as a ''serious pest''; third, the absence of any statement suggesting they be naturalised since eradication is not possible anyway.

The cat arrived in England ahead of the Romans, just. Feral cats trigger a sense of pity and charity. They embody the figure of the destitute and deserving poor, someone who must be looked after.

By comparison, since European settlement, Australia is a new country with a tiny population of white settlers occupying an island continent close to a heavily populated Asia. Since 1901, an intensely proud white majority feared being culturally annihilated through migration and the social fragmentation it imagined would ensue, especially from Asia. Ironically, for a migrant nation Australia has developed a sense of itself as under threat and in need of protection from the outside.

I think the feral cat has become a useful natural anomaly for those who want to uphold a state of anxiety about belonging and not belonging in Australia.

The feral cat looks perilously like a metaphor for the universal unwanted asylum seeker and migrant - they are creatures that cross boundaries of their own volition; independent, outsider figures accused of threatening a properly Australian ''natural'' order. They threaten to fragment that fragile and threatened reality: ''Australia''.

It is not about what they do but what they have come to represent that matters here. Hating the cat and performing acts of control and eradication maintains the idea of an Australia threatened from outside and creates a form of solidarity among insiders and on-siders who must remain vigilant.

The performance of these rituals establishes an important role for insiders. Through supporting ritual purification they become exclusive custodians, and the protection of nature offers an important, irresistible source of power. It upholds the dark promise of intolerance and exclusion; it worries much more than a term like de-wogging.

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/hatred-of-feral-cats-hides-a-sinister-truth-20130107-2ccqu.html