Now the Australians are protesting

The British government took out loans to pay this money. The loans have only recently been fully paid off a decade or so ago. The British taxpayer footed the bill. I’m hiding this thread now because as far as l’m concerned it’s a litany of what is wrong with the world. Wherever we are from, we are not responsible for the actions of our ancestors. That we have benefited from their actions is undeniable but to be suggesting monetary reparation is the answer 200 years after the event is divisive and unrealistic. The contempt with which some British people view their country is really quite disturbing.

The people there are now Australian. If you want you to use that argument, German, French and Italian people became British people who became Australians… 🤷🏼‍♀️

Well I wasn't the one who said it, and if you wanted the source, you could have just asked for it.
Start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Australia#Immigration_and_country_of_birth

Again missing the point. I have no idea if Australians are racist, I know they used to be as I'm old enough to remember the white Australia policies, my point was saying 50% of Australians have a parent born overseas as some sort of proof they aren't racist is useless unless we know where their parents came from and their race.

Sorry if you can't understand that, it's impossible to make it any simpler.

Why are you defining racists as white people? That's pretty strange. Most of the most heinous race based violence in recent years has been perpetuated by non white races. Even if 49% of the 50% were say white English then it's a bit strange for UK posters to be talking about how racist Australians are. Or did they just start being racist when they arrived?

The issue with the post was the use of the 50% to show people wouldn't be racist. If 49% were white what is the significance? Maybe all 50% aren't white. We weren't given that information and we have no idea from t he partial information given what it signifies.

Glad to help. Because of the extensive desert areas Australia is the 3rd least densely populated country in the world, after Namibia and Mongolia.

89% of the population lives in a handful of urban areas, where the European share of the population rose sharply in the late 18th and 19th centuries, but is now declining as a percentage.

Don’t be so ridiculous. When was the Romans invade England? The Normans? Do you have family that were directly affected by these invasions? Of course not, it’s 100s and 100s of years ago.

I however, do have family that were deeply affected by the English invasion of Ireland, my grandparents for example. The Good Friday agreement was not signed until 1998.

My point was in a discussion about racism your use of a statistic that 50% of Australians have a parent overseas tells us nothing about race. Is it the sort of use if statistics that confuses people. Quick read and it's easy to think that those 50% can't be racist but if the parent is white it actually tells us nothing.

Thank you for the map... it puts Australia's population distribution in perspective.

We have people from more than 200 countries here. Plenty of first gen Aussies with skin colour and possibly dress that signals them as being "not enough generations of anglo ancestry".

My neighbour at the time told me she had it coming. Because a nurse walking home from work in her home town is obviously doing something dangerous.

It was horrific alright.

And? What is your point? Australia is widely known as being one of the most culturally diverse places on earth - if you need to know specifics google exists. And then you can judge how racist we all are??

From the most recent 2024 ABS census: England is still the most common birthplace of migrants to Australia (15%), but that share is less than half our 1966 number. The big movers over the past five years have been China (from 6.0% to 8.3%) and India (5.6% to 7.4%). Their combined figure (16%) means that, for the first time, there are more Australians of Chinese and Indian birth than of English birth.

Being born overseas tells us nothing about race. So for the 50% with a parent born overseas where is "overseas" and what race are they? Racism isn't about where you were born.

It's often said that British heritage Australians are descendants of criminals, but I think it's worth pointing out that they weren't really criminals as we think of them today. Many of them (especially the women) were convicted of stealing food.

The youngest was Mary Wade, she was an 11 year old beggar and her and her friend had stolen a dress and sold it. Her punishment was to be death by hanging, but later changed to serve her sentence in Australia.

Most (about 75%) Australians of British/Irish descent come from the settlers, rather than the convicts. I can't imagine how hard the settlers life must have been, wherever they came from.

I wish I hadn't looked up the Anita Cobby case. 😔

And men wonder why we fear what they are capable of.

Thanks, yes, I’m aware. That wasn’t what I referring to though. Why the quotation marks around ‘stolen’?

The appalling treatment of aboriginal people isn’t historic. The Stolen Generations were still being “stolen” well into the 1970s.

Did you read the quote history? The poster I was replying to seemed somewhat ignorant of Australian history, and the poster should be read in that context.

In the 1790s, absolutely. In the 1990s, nope.

There is no such thing as 'illegal immigration'.

My point is the protests seem to have been organised in those cities and the few protests in smaller places were just embarrassing. Hardly anyone here attended.

I put the map up because I really doubt most people overseas have much idea about Australia, and ditto many of the newer Aussies. If they only live and work in the capital cities, they hardly know anything about the history of the place.
My late husband's family were all Lebanese and Greek and they'd all been here since before the start of the 20th Century. The Lebanese side opened up the tea growing trade on the Atherton Tablelands.

Can you explain a bit more what you mean about the map - with 50% of the population living in the 3 areas - and the relevance to the protests?

The 30% born overseas, and something like 50% having at least one parent born overseas, is something I wish people would remember when they come on claiming how racist Australia is! It's so strange because I look around at my family, friends and collegues and we come from all over the world. Is it my Greek born elderly neighbour who is racist (well yes she is a little), the family born in Australia from Korean parents in the next apartment, the Bangladesh family across the road or the elderly Chinese Australian in the house next door. I'm about to go into a work meeting with Australian collegues hailing from India, Sri Lanka, Iran, Hungary and England backgrounds.

So to the people who say Australia is so racist - is the theory is that we are all racist against each other no matter our ancestry - or is it that we are not considered sufficiently Australian if we don't have enough generations of anglo ancestry? Which is very offensive!

https://brilliantmaps.com/50-50-oz/
Fifty % of Australia's population lives in these 3 areas. 30% of them were born overseas. Of course they only think in terms of themselves and their own bubble in space and time.
When you see reports of racist protests in Australia remember this map.

Yep.

They don't give a shit about women. Never had, never will. We are nothing to them.