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.

Most countries in the world have experienced similar - should I get angry at the Italians for what the Romans did to England? What about the Normans?

So the existence of a written history makes things worse? I can look at my family records and see that my great grandfather was sent to war, that he ended up with ptsd and no one have a shit. Who do o sue over that?

It was only 14 years after Anita Cobby, not 4.

You are right. I missed that whole decade.

Still, no riots.

Despite gang rapes occuring before and after by young australian men, including some well known sporting clubs, it is only ones that are able to add fuel to a very particular fire.
When it is white men, particularly sportsmen, the suspicion will generally fall on the young women. Often by women themselves.

We need to care just as much about all violence against women and if we are going to use particular crimes and incidents as a justification for vile behaviour against particular groups, it's not about the victims at all

The problem you guys are having with 'racism in Australia' is that you don't know

1. the history of immigration to Australia or
2. the settlement pattern.

The recent protests are fueled by settlement pressures in capital cities (housing, medical, etc) Those protests that have occurred outside our capital cities have been a joke because they show how low the % of people are who are protesting.

Outside capital cities, settlement was often driven by those racial groups now being vilified. eg the Qld coastal towns were mainly populated by Lebanese, Italians, Greeks, Maltese and Pacific Islanders well over 100 years ago. The northern sugar and tobacco trades would have fallen over without them, and like it or not, those trades were the main impetus for establishing all those Great Barrier Reef tourist towns.

The capital cities were bastions of white society, true. 40 years ago if I had spoken to my Sydney relatives about 'racism', they would have mentioned (apologies in advance, I will use the words they did use) the "wogs, dagoes and eye-ties". 40 years ago my husband's family in Mackay would have mentioned (again apologies in advance) the "abos". Two wildly different communities, with their own wildly different perspectives. In the far NW the "whities" were the minority group.

The current disquiet is caused by 1) lack of resources (housing) and services (medical) and 2) a perception (often by fairly recent immigrants themselves who know nothing of history and settlement patterns) that the newbies are "taking our houses and jobs".

And while those pressures are very real (everywhere now has homeless living in tents, not just big cities), the demonising of new immigrants is being done by a few. Really, the govt needs to step up. It's not racism, it's govt inaction.

Yep.

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

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.

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!

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.

There is no such thing as 'illegal immigration'.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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".

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

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.

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.

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.

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.