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dog whistle issue

dog whistle issue
 n.— «The message from the Howard Government in its early days was that Australia was not part of Asia and never would be. To a considerable degree, it was part of a dog-whistle campaign by the Coalition. At a time when rural voters and elements of blue-collar Australia were rallying around Pauline Hanson’s simplified nostrums for dealing with what she portrayed as the Asianisation of the nation (and the featherbedding of Aborigines), Howard was, with some fanfare, cutting back immigration numbers.» —“Closer to Asia than you think” by Shaun Carney The Age (7) Nov. 2, 2002. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)

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