In that article, the 'the' could be replaced by 'a', if you were being pedantic, but that is still grammatically fine. It's a generally acceptable way of saying it in a way which means one group of many.

Not if it leaves the meaning vague. If you're referring to something that is likely to be presumed the object of conversation out of many, sure, you can use "the". Otherwise, you point it out specifically.

If this is a local article, sure, it works. If it's national, it implies weird things, and should be "the local" or something similar.

Well, not exactly. In terms of prescriptive grammar, it is incorrect. Sylphas is correct although my linguistics teacher would beat Sylphas over the head with a book. Prescriptive grammar is the devil in her mind (linguists are crazy like that). We should be more concern if our speech community can understand what is being not said not focus upon tedious rules.

-shrug- Usually I'm cool with it as long as it's understandable. Not sure how you can write this rule off as one you can really ignore, though, since the only reason I mentioned it was because it honestly confused me, and I had to consciously go back and rethink the impression I got from it.

Anyway, enough hijack, back to the topic.

It's a state article, I think. I see your point but the meaning is clear anyway.

Not specific to the Aussies now.. but I think one of the main sources for intolerace is simply because there are way too many people everywhere now. So many that you feel their existance alone takes everything away from you (ie. jobs, 'beaches', etc etc). I mean.. sure there was racism 100 and more years ago but for other reasons and it was different than it is now.

EDIT: Let's say all those of a different skin colour were removed from Australia. How long do you think it would take for the 'real Aussies' to find another minority group they want gone?

The 'the' is in reference to specifc units of the NSW police. There may be many PolAir choppers, but there is only one NSW PolAir, for example. It wasn't perfect, but it does make perfect sense.

We have racism in spain, wich is a country who has been invaded so many times in the past 2k years that none of us can be called even remotedly pureblood.
Of course, said racism isn't applicable to great futball players, it's more oriented, as always, to poor people who're going to accept being paid less and living miserably thus giving "natives" the impression they're stealing their jobs.

I hate people.

I'm still waiting for the real native australians to stand up and throw all those "foreigners" out of "their beaches".

And: There just is no such thing as a pureblood. That's just yet another alibi for people to hate other people because it makes their life more comfortable.

Quote I saw on tv: "I am a citizen of the world."

You know, I reckon I'm never going to look at being a "citizen" of something the same. It will feel so weird saying I'm a citizen of the united kingdom. I'll want to correct myself and say "commune, not city."

I'm telling Lucius Malfoy on you. Your days are numbered, dirty muggle. /Harry Potter reference

I have pure vasque blood in my family! We're the first generation with dirty spanish blood, until us they all lived in a small village where invaders didn't ever bother to look (besides it being incommunicated in winter due to snow).

Just take a look at the vasque stereotype of having all O- blood type You need generations of inbreeding to get such a recesive in the majority of population

And we should tell Mr Malfoy that its better to have your blood line sullied than have huge amounts of deformety(? Cant spell ) And then we should go beat him, for he hurt the little House Elf who is so very snuggly cute