You can buy the truly wonderful Haigh's chocolates online, or pop in to stores in Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne. Alfred Haigh started business in rural Jamestown in 1896, moved on and expanded throughout South Australia. He got his big break in 1915 during World War I when he was able to buy the current flagship store in Adelaide from one Carl Stratmann.
Stratmann had trained in Europe and then worked in Sydney. He was a great chocolate-maker. But when WWI started, anti-German sentiment was running high and he had to sell up. He was probably lucky to find the ambitious Alfred Haigh as a buyer. 
We don't seem to have learnt much from history. The blanket anti-German sentiment caused many innocent people great harm. Most, if not all, were decent people working hard to make a futures. They wanted Australia to prosper.
We see something similar today with the rise of anti Muslim-sentiment. Yes, the terrorism problem is directly related to the Islamic religion, but it is not something that is in any way related to every Muslim.
Recently Pauline Hanson, who is again running for the Senate and may again secure a nice wad of public funding, called for a royal commission into Islam. What does she think it will tell us that we don't already know? There are different strands of Islam, as there are of Christianity. If she cares to read just a few articles or books she will discover all she needs to know. To judge all Muslims as being the same is just stupid.
Hanson is a very paranoid person. She travels through life telling the rest of us who we need to watch out for. In her world all Muslims are bad. She appears to hate Chinese investors as well, without reflecting on the fact that it's Australian farmers and property owners who are choosing to exercise their right to sell. She says you can't trust politicians, but she desperately wants to be one again. There's always someone for her to hate.
Leaders unite us. All Hanson does is divide.
We Australians are also, like Hanson, riddled with inconsistent positions. Many of us squeal and squirm at giving law-enforcement agencies greater data access. But then, when a Man Haron Monis lets loose, when something horrific such as the Paris attacks happens, we sit back and watch the hunt for the security agency that missed some tiny hint among the oceans of material that flows past them every day. We in effect say they can't watch us, but they'd better watch everyone else.
After the shocking events in Paris we lit up buildings in the tricolour and marvelled at the French security guard whose actions may have saved hundreds of lives. But only hours before, in Beirut, 40 or more people died in a suicide bombing. Decent people. A nurse on his way to work at the American hospital. A 14-year-old boy who stopped peeling vegetables and ran outside to see what had happened unluckily copped the second blast. An otherwise ordinary man, 32-year-old Adel Termos, was in a coffee shop and threw himself at the second bomber, saving many, including his children.
There's no diminishing the role of the security guard in Paris, but Termos was a ordinary citizen - it wasn't his job to be the protector and yet he stepped instantly into that role. We never know where heroes might emerge; they are often ordinary people who do extraordinary things.
Many media outlets did cover the story. But how do we explain the vastly different response in the West? Are we so shallow that we are just over everything and everyone in the Middle East, but care for Parisians?
Like so many things in life, there is no simple solution. We can be sure, however, that we will not defeat this enemy by dividing ourselves. We need leaders to help unite us, not ones who seek to divide. We need people who accept the nuances of this complex mess, not those who think there's a simple solution to every problem. We certainly don't need people who need to exclaim "Please explain".
One of the most quintessentially Australian characteristics is that unless you are a full-blood Indigenous Australian you have migrant blood in your veins. You have the DNA of people prepared to risk everything for a better life, to work hard and make it happen.
If you let people turn us against ourselves, you have given up and they have won. We need good and decent people - Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist and agnostics - to sit down and work together to do the best we can to defeat these crazy extremists. It's the story of old: United we stand, divided we fall.
Over the coming festive season I think I will whip up a few croquembouche to remind myself of so much that is civilised in the French way of life. That will be preceded by plenty of barbecued lamb, hummus and tabbouleh to remind myself of the Afghan camel drivers who were here well before most of us and after whom our most famous train is named.
But there will be no carrot/coriander salads ... orange frightens me.
Amanda Vanstone is a Fairfax Media columnist and was a minister in the Howard government.