Australian Politics & History

Your number one choice for subpar analysis and commentary for everything going down under.

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[progressiveauspol]

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the last remaining group of Indigenous Australians to make contact with white Australia. The group of Indigenous Australians became known as the Pintupi Nine and they were discovered living a traditional hunter gatherer life almost 200 years after European invaders first landed on their shores. Listen to their interview with ABC radio here  ( you can also read the transcript as well)

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Look at my new cup

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I wish Labor would get back to what they are actually supposed to be and be a half decent opposition party. In a week where the Liberals have allegedly denied an asylum seeker the right to an abortion after being raped in an Australian detention centre,  and approved an environmentally damaging coal mine in Queensland, surely they could find something better to hound the Liberals on than a broken marble table?

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[progressiveauspol]

In order to get the Prime Ministership, Turnbull has agreed to leave the Liberal’s position on Gay Marriage and Climate Change unaltered. Two key areas, where he has vehemently disagreed with Tony Abbott. The Liberal Party is still the same racist, homophobic, climate change denying claptrap with a now charismatic articulate exterior. 

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The idea that our compassion and solidarity for our fellow human beings ends at an artificial line carved up by rich old white men is despicable. This is the biggest refugee crisis that our world has faced since WW2 and I can only hope that from Europe to Australia to America, we open our homes and give refuge to the millions of vulnerable desperate people fleeing their war-torn homelands.   

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“I’m not racist some of my best outfits are Indigenous”

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Goodes exposed a colonial psyche so fragile all it took was couple of seconds of black pride to send it into total meltdown. White Australia has long told its minorities to harden up. Its time it took its own advice - nobody likes a whinger

Aamer Rahman

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What a redneck wonderland footy has become. Every weekend, somewhere in Australia, Adam Goodes steps out onto a footy field. Simultaneously, an army of gutless drongos get ready to express their contempt for him, hiding anonymously in the choir of clowns who boo his every step. Hey, bigots, don’t get me wrong. I defend your right to express your unfathomable sense of outrage and injustice. It must burn long and deep. Probably over the spiralling price of a pie at the footy or the quality of the rubbish beer you force yourself to drink whilst acting like obnoxious school kids. Your worries and concerns must weigh heavily on your poor benighted souls. So knock yourselves out. Boo away. At least have the courage though to admit what it is. Racism. Naked, loud, contemptible, pathetic and unashamed. None of this crap about Goodes staging for free kicks, being a “sniper” or sweet talking the umpires as the reason for the booing. Don’t use football as shield for your prejudice. Adam Goodes has made it quite clear he hears those boos as a statement on his race and culture. Blokes like Goodes tend to have a finely tuned radar for racism. When you have been living with it all your life you learn to speak it’s many ugly languages.  So when he tells you what it means to him and you choose to boo, you’re confirming to him and every other indigenous footballer what you’re really about. What you don’t like and can’t abide is that Adam Goodes won’t be the Aboriginal footballer you want him to be. He refuses to simply be the smiling face of AFL Indigenous Round where the game’s self congratulation goes into over drive and Aboriginal people are celebrated in a set of proscribed rituals that say nothing about the true state of affairs and everything about our need to be absolved from responsibility. A smoking ceremony here. A ceremonial dance there. A welcome to country and then goodbye, onto the next costume party. No, Goodes wants to look you in the eye and talk about who we really are and where we’re really at. Goodes wants to confront racism and its uncomfortable truths. In the stands you sit in, the mines you work in, the boardrooms you meet in, the homes you live in. He won’t simply be the Aboriginal man you want him to be. And with your symphony of boos you’ve made it quite clear where you stand. The fact that you fuel your own sense of outrage at Goodes and Lewis Jetta’s “war dance”  shows how feeble minded and self righteous you are. Where’s your sense of outrage at the appalling gap in life expectancy for indigenous people? The massive over representation of indigenous people in jail? The continuing scourge of deaths in custody? Your silence is deafening on those issues. Your outrage reserved for a man who dances on the footy field. And whilst you’re booing ever louder and ever longer you can try drown out the truth of these things. You can’t. And you won’t. Because Adam Goodes’ legacy will endure long after your hollow howls ring out. And that must hurt the most. - Francis Leach

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Australia has really lost it when there is more outrage about Johnny Depp's dogs being deported than actual human beings facing the same fate

Toni from Prospect

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Let us not fall short of providing humanitarian relief and assistance that is asked of us, as we pride ourselves to be a compassionate and hospitable people

The Phillipines government on accepting the Rohingya refugees. After relentless persecution at the hand of the Burmese government, and with successive state after state rejecting them leaving thousands stranded at sea, it is a country with a GDP that is 1/5 of Australia and with a much poorer standard of living that steps up.

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The Black Rats of Tobruk

Hundreds of Indigenous soldiers fought in WW2, with many paying the ultimate sacrifice but little changed upon arrival back in Australia. While White Australians received pensions and soldier settlement blocks, Indigenous servicemen were denied these things. To add insult to injury some had their children taken away as part of white Australia’s insidious stolen generation policy , fined or jailed for drinking and faced continued harassment and vilification from their white neighbors. 

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Reports estimate that by 2050 all of Australia’s First Nation's languages would of died out. Before the invasion of Australia in 1788 there were an estimated 350-750 First nation languages and dialects in use in Australia. As of the 21st century 150 remain in daily use with almost all but 20 of them considered to be endangered. The largest of these groups such as Warlpiri and Tiwi retain between 1000-3000 native speakers.