“Some groups don’t seem to be settling and adjusting into the Australian way of life as quickly as we would hope and therefore it makes sense […] to slow down the rate of intake from countries such as Sudan.”

That’s Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews responding to the murder of the 18-year-old Sudanese migrant Liep Gony.

You might have noticed the people charged with killing Mr Gony bear exotic names like “David” and “Dylan”. Yet Mr Andrews expresses no outrage about the violence of white culture – no, it’s the murdered Sudanese kid who refuses to accept the “Australian way of life”.

The whole episode seems depressingly familiar. In the thirties, for instance, thousands of Jews sought a haven from European anti-Semitism. Like the Sudanese, the Jews followed a strange religion. They dressed differently; they congregated together; they ate strange food; the women covered their faces.

And, like Liep Gony, they were seen to have brought persecution upon themselves, both in Germany and here in Australia.

“As we have no real racial problem,” explained the Australian delegate to an international conference on refugees, “we are not desirous of importing one.”

Funnily enough, the kind of people who once ran campaigns about Jewish ghettoes in Carlton today fulminate about Sudanese gangs in Noble Park.

In 2005, for instance, the ABC publicized claims by a certain Dr Jim Saleam that the Sudanese were dealing drugs in Newcastle. He explained:

Refugee migration is very disturbing because we’re dealing with people that have come from utterly fractured societies where the use of the gun and the knife is the common way to settle disputes.

Dr Saleam qualifies as something of an expert on the gun and knife, having himself served time in prison for shooting an African man while leading the neo-Nazi group National Action. (There’s that white culture again!)

In the thirties, the little Jim Saleams in Sydney (like the big Jim Saleams in Berlin) picked on the Jews. Today, Africans make an easier target.

Will Sudan become an issue in the forthcoming election? One hopes not – but you wouldn’t rule it out.

Forty years ago, British Tory candidate famously defied opinion polls to win the seat of Smethwick despite a Labour surge. His slogan? “If you want a n-gger for a neighbour, vote Labour.”

We may yet see a (slightly more PC version) of that charming tactic in this campaign.