The Steve Bannon solution was always "flood the APS with party appointed shits" Flood the ABC board with shits" Be the Party of Politics not one of Government" " Service the Nation don't provide Service". "Win at all costs and make money". Morrison is playing the game and gaming the play. He will only leave when he's dead or somebody gives him a job with more money. Currently he's asking for money not to write a book, not to stay, and not to open his mouth. We came to this in only 23 years. Australia your reputation is being trashed by the L/NP
John Hewson
The only time Racism was unknown in Australia was prior to being imported and introduced by the white colonists who justified their invasion by claiming "nobody" lived here, killing and exploitation the "black nobodies"that did. With them came a hardened demand for religious and cultural conversion they still call Assimilation, forced and not by any mutual osmosis barely suggested today. Back then it was of the increasing numbers of half castes developing in the colony that was an anathema. While there was an increasing inter-racial marriage indigenous blacks were still seen as a possible threat to British Crown. Churches of all denominations were given a free pass to convert black to white.Today there are proportionately more devout practicing Christians among Indigenous Australians then there are among white community
While most remote mobs were ignored and left to family and community other men of color were black-birded. The kanakas exploited for their labor were isolated from their families and community and more easily controlled. Meanwhile Assimilation laws banned Indigenous Australians from speaking their native language and performing cultural rituals, dances or songs. Men were required to carry certificates entitling them to work but not live in white communities. The taking of half caste children whether through marriage or not became a matter of course and a "welfare business". Generations of stolen children declared a myth today were denied not only their culture their families but their lived experience by broad casters like Andrew Bolt.
Assimilation meant even differing religions in Australia like , Catholics, Muslims, and Jews barely passed the acid test of prejudice and were locked out of the elite clubs whether white or not and were always regarded with a level of suspicion. They too remained second class while the Australia grew from a colony and the "squatocracy" still ran a country that after all belonged to the British Crown.
The Asia Pacific in which this new Anglophile Nation found itself longed to be "governed" It's general populace never really welcomed or trusted any "free settlers"from the region Few pragmatic exceptions were made but statues built in town centers but accepted along very narrow parameters and universally white. Immigration wasn't the heated rush until gold was struck. Today Australia might be held up as an example of a land of opportunity for multicultural equals. But it really grew out of a failure to attract labor of the "ten pound poms" scheme didn't work. It was the need for labor that made us " really multicultural" sweeping under the carpet the "voiceless" and hardships experienced by those rejected. Minorities who aren't really seen as equal even today. Peter Dutton's Muslims, Africans and Pacific Islanders have been given a hard time but never as hard as first Nation's peoples
Our history as a Nation is reflected shamefully in our social statistics. The history of real numbers created by our current social systems. Systems that still supported by yesteryear's false cultural beliefs that justify, inequality, and superiority and which heven't greatly changed from those imported in1788. By 1901 the White Australia policy or Immigration Restriction Act was
adopted which saw all persons of color institutionally as unwanted scabs ready to push the price of white labor down. Australia was never going to give blacks in or out of Australia a "fair go " This nation's First peoples were condemned to remain a "problem" from the very beginning to be administered but not listened to.
Australia isn't classless, never was. The belief that this is a God given English country with it's own breed of Knights and Dames still exists. It's a view that may embarrass and be denied b but it still dominates and pervades the minds of the entrenched powerful, and those enriched and through generational inheritance. It's a view called " ultra conservative" and still found in the exclusivity of the Melbourne Club, the Private English Church schools and the widespread the attention given to the Coronation of King Charles.
The belief that Australia is still a loyal British Christian Country isn't exactly true but it's held over and taught over and above the realities of the Frontier Wars, the Rum Rebellion, the Eureka Stockade,and the formation of labor unions. It brushes under the carpet that wealthy, not that long ago, believed in their right to exploit the indigenous, Chinese and Kanakas in order to drive the price of white labor down. The wealthiest paid them a pittance and basically did whatever they liked with their wages. Today they've been replaced by backpackers, asylum seekers and students. Immigration has been a history of the shortage of labor rather than a desire of multicultural enthusiasm during which Indigenous Australians remain left out as they have been for 250 years only to be left administered and accompanied by negative social stereotyping.
Indigenous Australians were always feared for their numbers, their sense of community,their family loyalty. They aren't 'migrants' so were seen as dangerous, degraded really even shown the opportunities of isolated migrants. They were never lifted up or respected on their own terms.So they were left culturally isolated and in poverty to languish and be sold booze drugs and at best administered. Of course there were breakaways but it was harder for First Nations peoples to cross the cultural divide than migrants who crossed the world and so we ignored them. We cemented, institutionalized and racialised patterns of our thoughts and behaviours into our social systems passed down from before 1788 that said we were doing the right thing denying any blame for the negative that persists today. The widening gap reflected in the current social statistics. Imagine a Community of Aborigines walking into a bank and asking for a loan in 1788, 1888, 1988, imagine it now money to buy land a house to invest in their communities on their own terms for their own kids. Imagine if it were done 100 years ago. Even Stan Grant or Adam Goodes haven't even that great an imagination because they remember what it was really like.
They encourage violence. Their ideology demands it. And their escalating fixation toward Indigenous women in a position of power cannot be taken out of context. It poses a danger in Australia through the current Referendum debate and the target it has painted on Indigenous women in politics and so, too, in Aotearoa where young Maori women running for Parliament are being made to fear for their lives by the far-Right.
Who is next to get dragged into their fold as a result of all this press they’re getting and how far might that new recruit dare to go? Will the next lonely dreg these neo-Nazis goad on to violence, whether it be toward Senator Thorpe or whoever they fixate on next, make good on all the talk? Will we begin to take this problem seriously only after an Indigenous woman in politics is hurt?
I am as surprised as Lidia Thorpe is that a sitting senator cannot expect prompt and effective protection from this rising threat. But what I do know is that for whatever it’s worth, Lidia will receive unending solidarity and support from activists and grassroots anti-fascists in Australia, in whatever way we can provide it. I hope that our communities won’t let her down where so many insufferable liberals, racists, cops and spooks can’t help but do time and again.
Following violent threats online, Senator Lidia Thorpe has now received vitriol on social media after standing up for herself.
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