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Once upon a time, the offspring of a Russian immigrant yearned to stamp his presence on the Australian landscape.
The resulting impact could be likened to the thud a parasite-ravaged dead autumn leaf makes as it plops to the ground.
Nicholas Hunter Folkes started his relentless quest for Führerdom with the Australian Protectionist Party, founded by former Nazi Darrin Hodges.
Seeking some sort of respectability and by now enamoured of Dutch far right politician and Muslimhater Pursuivant Geert Wilders, Niqi (named for his favourite piece of women’s clothing) and his ragged band of disciples then split from the APP and founded the Party for Freedom, named after Gertie’s little lot in the Netherlands.

Niqi’s revered mentor Geert Wilders in a landmark contemplative moment
You can read some of Niqi’s history here, slackbastard has more here and you can actually watch him in a rool TV series here (provided you pay cash-strapped SBS for the privilege).
Far right self-styled “white nationalists” are universally dim bulbs at best but even Niqi seems to have realised that going hard on Muslims might be not the way to go at the moment, given the sad fates of fellow Muslim haters and white supremacists Nathan Abela and ADF KP veteran Ralph “Sad Sack” Cerminara , both of the ADL.

Ralphski fights the Islamic hordes
To date to the best of our knowledge Niqi has not yet been charged with anything but there is always a first time.
You don’t have to look very far to see that Niqi has a long history of Chinese-hate. On the other hand he has stated on several occasions his preferred Australian is something called an “Anglo-Celtic”.
Since Niqi is neither Anglo nor Celtic we find that rather puzzling.

So Niqi and his faithful body servant Radka Smith (AKA “Ozzie Possum”) along with a scattering of really weird people are taking on the supposed fiscal might of the PRC and the billions of Chinese poised to invade the Great Golden Mountain and steal all our McMansions.
The Yellow Peril strikes again!
Now the way in which you’d expect the pffs to conduct their research would be to do drive-bys of auctions and open houses and count the number of Asian faces they see then extrapolate that into a tsunami of fear and loathing against the Chinese. We’ve seen them do that sort of “research” before with other minorities and it lets the pffs pretend they are normal people with amazeballs knowledge of demography and economics.

Amazeballs
The facts
There are 1.5 million people of East Asian descent living in Australia. The forebears of some of those families have lived here longer than Niqi’s family. However contrary to the pffs’ delusions they are not all Chinese.
The largest group of East Asians are people of Chinese descent, and they range from new arrivals to second, third and fourth generation Australians.
The next largest East Asian group is Filipinos. Filipinos have lived in Australia since the beginning of the 20th Century. The smallest group is the Tibetans, most of whom are refugees.
However as you can expect pffs cannot tell the difference between Chinese and all the other East Asian people who live here. It’s a bit like assuming all Europeans are the same, or all Africans. It’s called prejudice.
So if an East Asian family or (shock horror) a mixed couple fronts up to an auction or open house, the pffs scramble back to their sewers and declare that Straya is being invaded by Chinese.

Josh Qong Tart – part of the imaginary Chinese invasion?

Japanese, Chinese – to the PFF they are all the same. From a racist flyer littered around the inner west and lower North Shore of Sydney.
Actually an Opera House done up as a Chinese flag would be cool for the Vivid Festival. Tourists would love it.
According to FIRB data, the dollar value of real estate investment approvals by country last financial year looked like this:
China $12,406m
USA $6,135m
Singapore $4,303m
Canada $2,945m
Malaysia $2,038m
UK $1,795m
Netherlands $1,720m
NZ $1,362m
Hong Kong $1,279m
Germany $1,169m
South Korea $1,083m
And that esteemed body the Reserve Bank notes in its report that:
The available data, while incomplete, suggest that for much of the past decade or so approvals granted for foreign investment in the residential sector have remained around 5–10 per cent of the value of dwelling turnover in Australia, and perhaps half that share of the total number of dwellings turned over. The actual level of foreign purchases of dwellings has been significantly lower. Foreign purchases appear to be most concentrated in new rather than established dwellings,in higher- rather than lower-priced dwellings, in medium- and high-density dwellings rather than detached dwellings, and in inner-city areas of Sydney and Melbourne rather than other locations
And this article tells us the following:
Blaming foreigners for astronomical prices is nothing but a scapegoat for the policies enacted by government on behalf of bankers and landowners that makes housing unaffordable. Those who are discontented with the current states of affairs should focus their attention on our own government rather than searching for foreign influences.
Add to that the universal tendency of the residential property market and developers to talk up their offerings, to oversell and to bully councils and communities into accepting unsustainable developments and you have the reasons why housing costs so much.
Maybe Niqi with his cosy perch in one of the wealthiest suburbs in Sydney with at least one property in Rozelle does not get that.
We do.
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