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The right-wing, anti-Asian, anti-environmentalist Labor backbencher from Kalgoorlie, Graeme Campbell, has finally been dumped by his party. The latest of his many outbursts against Asian immigration, at a meeting organised by Australians Against Further Immigration, proved too embarrassing for Paul Keating. Previously Campbell has addressed the racist Australian League of Rights, but at the AAFI meeting he publicly said he disagreed with ALP policy on immigration. Within days, the ALP national executive convened and reopened preselection for his seat. But while Campbell has been dumped by the ALP, his reactionary politics remain in this party. Deputy PM Kim Beazley was reportedly upset at Keating's decision to finally move against Campbell, and there are probably many others of less influence within the ALP who have even more in common with Campbell's reactionary politics. Anti-Asian immigration views have been a central part of the ALP's ideology since its foundation at the turn of the century. The ALP advocated a "White Australia" policy from the start, and the union officials who organised political support for the ALP from the working class banned Asian and Melanesian workers from the ranks of the trade unions until the 1940s. According to the racist "reasoning", long prevalent in the ALP, workers in Asia worked for a pittance not because of their exploiters' greed and cruelty but because these workers were not white. Instead of offering Asian workers solidarity against exploitation, Labor union officials urged tight immigration restrictions. The ALP adopted racism from the nationalist ideology of the emerging Australian capitalist class at the turn of the century. The party harnessed it to the futile hope of trade union officials who thought they could preserve the relatively better conditions of workers in Australia by restricting the supply of labour. While this exclusive, xenophobic and racist wish never actually stopped Australian capital from supplementing its labour force through immigration, it has proved a convenient ideological weapon to divide Australian workers from the rest of their class in this region. Former Labor leader Arthur Calwell coined the phrase, "two wongs don't make a white", and even as the ALP finally officially abandoned the White Australia policy in 1972, Calwell continued to rail against the "creation of a chocolate-coloured Australia". Today, as corporate Australia casts greedy eyes on the growing markets in Asia, its loyal politicians cannot afford to be seen to be anti-Asian. Both Labor and Liberal leaders are trying to improve their public images on this score. However, their basic ideology hasn't changed. Labor politicians like NSW premier, Bob Carr, still exploit the anti-immigration card to hide the real cause of unemployment and environmental degradation — corporate greed. They still want worker to compete against worker, and to sacrifice to boost corporate profits in the name of the "national interest". Graeme Campbell might be gone but his reactionary politics lives on in the ALP.