Now the Australians are protesting

[MiddleAgedMusings]

Their main target is Indians.
Indians. Who have come legally - not on boats - but on aeroplanes, with the correct visas, who are students seeking further education in order to train as doctors, nurses, or whatever so that they can give back to Australia - Or they are already trained in a profession that the government has outlined has a shortage.

Australia is absolutely solid to get into with specific qualifications or experience being a mandatory requirement and the financial means to support one self. The whole western world constantly puts Australia on a pedestal for not being a soft touch for immigration. How are these protesters questioning the value of this diaspora's contribution to the Australian economy, and how can anybody deny that it's pure racism?

Australia doesn't have a problem luring white British nurses and doctors to their shores with generous repatriation packages, but an Indian nurse or doctor aren't good enough. Australians don't have a problem with their white teenagers or graduates emigrating to western countries for 10 years before fucking off back to Australia when it's time to settle down, but god forbid anybody does it the other way

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/sep/05/melbourne-immigration-migrated-indians-targeted-racist-messaging-asking-why-ntwnfbArticle
Link will work without paywall, press downwards arrow.

Yes, and tens of thousands of Irish people immigrated ILLEGALLY. It's an inconvenient truth but it is the truth. How do I know? I was one of them! Lived in the US on a false social security number for years as did all of my Irish friends and family. Read about the Donnelly visa programme that was specifically established (due to political pressure) to legitimise the tens of thousands of illegal Irish immigrants in the US in the 1990s. And we were not fleeing war, persecution, or famine. We were economic migrants - the exact type of migrants that are being demonised now.

See… this is simply not true.

The influx of migrants has put huge strain on our health service, particularly our GPs and dental practices. We do not have the capacity for all of these extra people.

Same with housing… in my development of 55 houses, 20 of them have been handed over to house asylum seekers. That is 20 perfectly lovely houses that could go towards housing the 16,000 homeless Irish in this country.

How do you believe that the 1000s of people coming into this country are not putting a strain on housing and healthcare appointments? That’s just ludicrous!

And it’s is not racist to point these things out. It is fact. And the fact is, that the level of migration is putting huge strain on our infrastructure and housing to the point that the Irish are struggling and their children are leaving the country because they can’t get a leg up here.

It’s unsustainable!

@JHound

I’m no expert but I understand Denmark didn’t stop slavery in its colonies until 1848, after an uprising by slaves in the Danish West Indies

Sure.

I don’t treat them any different in ordinary circumstances. I do occasionally conduct job interviews though and sometimes we will specify a position for First Nations people, or particularly encourage them to apply. This is due to the endemic barriers they face entering the workplace. There are also traineeships available.

i think in general, compared to 20 years ago, Australia is doing much better with First Nations affairs. We didn’t even really talk about it then, or have education in schools.

I live on an acreage. Unfortunately, it’s the also the site of a historical colonial-era massacre. (I’ll spare you the details; they’re shocking.) The people the carried out this massacre were recently-arrived Englishmen.

Do you mean the land is yours now? Would you ever give anything up re your ownership to re address the balance?

No, because I was shocked anyone would actually put that idiocy into words and post it.

@VoulezVouz

Which part was the idiocy?

I’m not sure you’re actually thinking about what you’re reading.

If it's a historical problem, and therefore caused by non- modern Australians ( ?) , then why isn't it being solved now. British colonialism certainly caused harm globally, but I'm a bit sick of hearing how everything everywhere is always our fault.

Of course migrants need medical care, dental care, there are hse doctors assigned to care.
Increasing the lists.
Schools are squeezed.
Legal immigration is also pulling hard on these systems.
As for housing, of course migrants/immigration is impacting housing stock, Ireland has housed 1000's of migrants in HMO's, council housing, private rentals.
There is 5000 citizens, children in homeless accommodation in Ireland.
That's not counting the homeless children applying for asylum, all stuck in hotels and b&b, awful for them.
My lovely neighbours has 4 children, 2 severe asd, her landlord is selling October, no hope of finding a rental, she has no family, her DH works full time, they will be homeless, no idea what hostel yet.

Of course your post mentions the English and not Australians today. That would mean you might have to give something up, which you don't want to do.

I don't mind if you do that, just don't deflect onto us to absolve of your own actions now.

Who says it's not?

I think this is a really great post. It's so difficult to have a sensible discussion about immigration without being shut down by cries of racism. But the majority of Australians are not racist - just concerned about what is happening- and that includes non-white Australians too. The problem seems to be we have successive government who only know how to grow the economy via population and who bows to pressure from big business to keep wages down.

I think you should respond to what I wrote. Nowhere did I suggest modern guilt for past atrocities.

But if you want to congratulate yourself for Britain’s role as proud abolitionists you should equally recognise its role as enthusiastic slavers.

And yes I am aware of the common response “SLavERy exIStED iN AfRIca tO0!11!”.

I am fully cognisant (I suspect more than you) of the role of African traders, slaving trading nations such as the Kingdom of Dahomey, Aro Confederancy and the Ndongo (the latter of whom traded people for weaponry to fight the more technologically advanced Portuguese. None of these nations exist now.

But it’s a lazy trope, there were systems of slavery in Africa (not all of which we would class as slavery - the Asante as an example had a type of enslavement where you “volunteered” for it.) But not all match the Atlantic trade which was especially brutal, racialised and of an immense scale (80,000 victims trafficked per annum).

And to be blunt, Africa paid for that involvement.
While participation in the TAST enriched some coastal kingdoms the overwhelming impact to the continent was negative. Farmers turned to raiders, increased warfare, depopulation, halted development and all of this resulted in a complete inability to defend itself against
European colonial takeover (with those nice straight lines on the map).

But I digress. To repeat my point:

I think you should respond to what I wrote. Nowhere did I suggest modern guilt for past atrocities.

But if you want to congratulate yourself for Britain’s role as proud abolitionists you should equally recognise its role as enthusiastic slavers,

but it’s that white Australians are now sick and tired of the racism being directed at them and that they are being pushed out,

Now you might understand how the Indigenous communities feel.

This is a fantastic post.

Literally all of it.

Which countries deny citizenship on the grounds of race?

Well, it's set a tone which is continuing. Things haven't been fixed. And I dont know how you are going to unpick the cultural threads to work out who is an acceptable, authentic no - racist Australian, and who is s neanderthal, racist English throwback. Good luck with that.

Yes. That’s what I said. It emancipated enslaved people after Britain, but it banned its participation in the TAST before Britain.

For clarity in most slavocracies in the Americas abolition had two aspects:

1. Ending the slave trade (i.e halting the trafficking of enslaved Africans to the colonies throughout the Americas to replenish slave populations.)

2. Emancipation - freeing those enslaved within the colonies.

So for example in the USA 1) occurred in 1808
but 2) occurred only in 1865.

For Britain the years were 1807 and 1833/38 depending on viewpoint.

Denmark was the first European nation to do point 1, but Britain beat it to point 2.

Thanks!

Shame about my spelling errors though! 😂

I lived in Work in Australia and I saw some dreadful discrimination. Imagine people who were senior management at Deloittes Working stacking shelves at Coles because they couldn’t get jobs in there chosen profession despite the government conceding that there was a skills gap in their chosen profession people would rather have that gap that employ an Indian

@JHound I can’t disagree with any of that

And of course the slave trade, which the British Empire played a major part in, was wicked and completely abhorrent. I raised the UK’s leadership in its abolition because the previous posts on this thread were painting the UK as a nation carrying guilt as the ancestors of wicked colonisers. There is so much more to the story. And it’s an interesting concept, the legacy of guilt, because does this require some type of calculation as between the good and the evil, or do we just point to the evil? This type of calculation doesn’t really work.

Meanwhile the same posters completely overlook the intentionally racist White Australian immigration policy that existed until the 1970s. I have some skin in this game- my mother was a non-English speaking white migrant to Australia as a child. The racism she and her siblings endured was deliberate and cruel and has impacted her entire life. I don’t blame the British colonisers for her treatment, that would be crazy. I blame the racists who themselves carried out racist acts.

I also think the British leadership in the abolition of slavery is important because it demonstrates change- from leading an evil trade to leading its cessation. That is important, a nation that evolves. Otherwise we would all continue to admonish the Germans and Japanese for atrocities committed in past wars. We don’t do that because those nations have changed.

The counties which were colonised by Western nations were colonised for mineral wealth, agricultural wealth or potential for crops or other material. Governments and transport systems were set up. When the colonial nations gained independence did they destroy everything that the bad westerners did and restore a natural "way it was before" or did they capitalise on what was left, what had been developed etc?

Also the Islamic empire - do they get a free pass?