Sidharta Books & Print

A Hindu and Christian ex-Malaysian Australian, with a residence of more than half a century in Australia, and participating fully (and therefore atypically) in Australian civil society (and at leadership level), with his work and social life taking him across almost all levels of the Australian people, and a variety of industries and occupations. He has thereby been able to observe, most carefully, communities of immigrants, Anglo-Celt and other Australians, segments of the business and public sectors, a trade union environment, the work-shy and other welfare dependants, the asset-rich age pensioners, as well as many of those unable to offer long-term commitment in human relations, even within family. A marginal member of a community is often better enabled to identify the structures and operating inter-relationships of that community and, thus, its ethos and essence.
He has lunched with a Governor-General at Government House, and shared the head table as guest speaker, at different times, with State Governors and Federal Ministers. He has dealt officially with captains of industry and commerce, senior public officials and ethnic community leaders.
In spite of this highly intensive interactive community life, he has not lost himself culturally. His core values, formed in his youth in Malaya, have remained with him. A bulwark in his early years in the slipstream of a weakening White Australia ethos, his ?Asian values? perspective has enabled him to chart the waves of the sociological changes engulfing him without being drowned by the current. Being able to be an integral part of his essentially Western environment without losing his connections with his own.