Got something to say or just want fewer pesky ads? Join us... 😊

A (fake internet) Australian view of immigration



Indurain's Lungs

Legend of Garry Nelson
Jun 22, 2010
2,260
Dorset
I'm well aware of the "white Australia policy". It was developed and maintained by the British Protestant power base here for many years.

Nothing to do with my ancestors though. Some of those poor buggers were actually banned from having gravestones on their graves due to laws passed by the same British Protestant system that oppressed the Aboriginals.

You can't just decide that its all the Brits' fault, but that you're not entirely descended from Brits, therefore you get off Scot free. Australia became independent in 1901, so since then its been Australians ruling Australia not "the British Protestant system".

The Australian attitude that everything is brilliant if its Australian gets nauseating. "It's ok to be racist, we're Australian, our education system must be the best in the world, its Australian, ditto for healthcare." None of it's true.
 




Tyrone Biggums

Well-known member
Jun 25, 2006
13,498
Geelong, Australia
So now you DO accept that the lost generations is broadly factually correct and not all propaganda and/or the fault of aboriginals killing mixed race babies! But its nothing to do with your ancestors because they were Irish catholics and it was the Brits that did it. We'll gloss over the "Christian Brothers" and their physcial and sexual abuse of british immigrant boys for 40 years, shall we?

Broadly as in did it happen at times?

Absolutely.

Was it always done in the vicious and nasty manner in which left wing spin doctors paint it, absolutely not.

A lot of the people who were involved in taking children from their parents did so from a genuine concern for the child's well being.

Some of the conditions those kids were expected to live in were not fit for dogs.

Why bring up "christian brothers"? Got f*** all to do with the discussion at hand. We're talking about oppression of groups of people/cultures by Governments and their systems.
 


Seagull58

In the Algarve
Jan 31, 2012
8,516
Vilamoura, Portugal
Was it?

There's been plenty of academic studies that counter that argument. The fact you were not aware of the practice of killing mixed blood babies by Aboriginals shows you have great chunks of the full story missing from your data base.

We've apologized to the Aboriginals, when will you apologize to the Irish?

What the Irish endured was far longer and far more brutal at times than anything that happened out here.

Now we have the Irish victimisation! When are the French going to apologise for the Norman invasion and stealing most of the "English" land for the Norman barons?
 


Seagull58

In the Algarve
Jan 31, 2012
8,516
Vilamoura, Portugal
Broadly as in did it happen at times?

Absolutely.

Was it always done in the vicious and nasty manner in which left wing spin doctors paint it, absolutely not.

A lot of the people who were involved in taking children from their parents did so from a genuine concern for the child's well being.

Some of the conditions those kids were expected to live in were not fit for dogs.

Why bring up "christian brothers"? Got f*** all to do with the discussion at hand. We're talking about oppression of groups of people/cultures by Governments and their systems.

You brought up the Christian Brothers. It was quoted at length in the CBS Lost Children report that you posted the link to.Yet you claim it was all the fault of the English Protestants.
"John Hennessy was sent to a place called Bindoon, an institution run by the Christian Brothers, an order of Catholic monks 60 miles from civilization in the sweltering bushland of Western Australia. Bindoon was a home and school for boys. But this was no Boys Town, and education was not the priority.

The priority was construction. Brother Francis Keaney, an imposing, white-haired Irishman who ran the place, was obsessed with building the largest Catholic institution in Western Australia. He used his charges as labor. From sunrise to sunset, the boys built Brother Keaney's shrine, with no shoes, and no questions asked.

Bindoon is a real school now, an agricultural college. But it's still run by the Christian Brothers. And old boys are not welcome, particularly not when they're accompanied by newsmen. When Bob Simon went back with Hennessy, who helped build Bindoon, they were kicked off the premises. The Christian Brothers are not eager to showcase their past as users and abusers of child labor.

"They got us dirt cheap," says Norman Johnston, another boy who helped build Bindoon. "We might as well have been slaves. And, you know, we endured all of that when we didn't have to."

For these children, there was nowhere to run. At the Fairbridge institution, sponsored by the Church of England, Tony Jones tried to escape whenever he could. He once made it as far as the docks where the children had first arrived.

Says ones: "I got down to the beach. I remember looking all over the ocean, and I asked this couple, 'Which way is England?' If there was land all the way across, I would have walked there. I would have walked there."

The food at the institutions seemed to have been cooked up in a Dickens novel. At Bindoon, the boys were so hungry one Sunday, 12-year-old John Hennessy led a raid on the vineyard out back. They enjoyed their grapes, but after mass the next morning, Brother Keaney was in a rage. He'd learned of the raid, and he called out for his leading suspect.

Then the man whipped him. "He stripped me naked," he says. "In front of 50 boys, put me across the chair and nearly flogged me to death. I've-I've-I've got medical advice that that's where I got the stutter from." He had never stuttered before that day, and has ever since.

The children say that floggings and beatings were part of a daily routine. The nightly routine with the Christian Brothers included priestly visits to the children's beds. The brothers were taking away boys who were less than 10 years old."
 


Tyrone Biggums

Well-known member
Jun 25, 2006
13,498
Geelong, Australia
You can't just decide that its all the Brits' fault, but that you're not entirely descended from Brits, therefore you get off Scot free. Australia became independent in 1901, so since then its been Australians ruling Australia not "the British Protestant system".

The Australian attitude that everything is brilliant if its Australian gets nauseating. "It's ok to be racist, we're Australian, our education system must be the best in the world, its Australian, ditto for healthcare." None of it's true.

You're clueless when it comes to Australia's history.

If you think 1901 was when things changed you're deluded. If that was the case we'd never have sent and wasted so many young men's lives fighting your stupid poxy European wars like WW1.

What gets nauseating is the whole English/Australian rivalry. I couldn't give a flying f*** about it. Neither do most of the people I know.
 












Seagull58

In the Algarve
Jan 31, 2012
8,516
Vilamoura, Portugal
You're clueless when it comes to Australia's history.

If you think 1901 was when things changed you're deluded. If that was the case we'd never have sent and wasted so many young men's lives fighting your stupid poxy European wars like WW1.

What gets nauseating is the whole English/Australian rivalry. I couldn't give a flying f*** about it. Neither do most of the people I know.

You are joking, of course. I've been in Oz a number of times and the English/Australian rivalry is ALWAYS there, either on the surface or just below. Nobody cares about The Ashes do they?
 


Indurain's Lungs

Legend of Garry Nelson
Jun 22, 2010
2,260
Dorset
You're clueless when it comes to Australia's history.

If you think 1901 was when things changed you're deluded. If that was the case we'd never have sent and wasted so many young men's lives fighting your stupid poxy European wars like WW1.

What gets nauseating is the whole English/Australian rivalry. I couldn't give a flying f*** about it. Neither do most of the people I know.

Whether I know the specifics of Australian history (of which I knew about as much as a lot of the people I met in Australia) is not the point. You can't just wash your hands of things that were done because of close ties to another nation. I am British and will accept that we have behaved appallingly as a nation in parts of our history, I cannot say that its ok because I can only trace my family history back to a bunch of farmers in Sussex and not anyone that actually took part in said atrocities.

As for the rivalry, I was there for the Commonwealth games and the Ashes series - the Aussies prime concern was the sporting rivalry with us!
 


Seagull58

In the Algarve
Jan 31, 2012
8,516
Vilamoura, Portugal
No I brought up the fact that your Government put these children into these institutions. That's all that's relevant to this discussion. Without the Government's approval it wouldn't have happened, fact.

The Christian Brothers were an integral part of that system. It wasn't all British Protestants. Stop ducking and diving and claiming everyone hands are clean except for the Brits and the Aborigines who, according to you, brought it on themselves by killing mixed blood babies.
 




Tyrone Biggums

Well-known member
Jun 25, 2006
13,498
Geelong, Australia
Now we have the Irish victimisation! When are the French going to apologise for the Norman invasion and stealing most of the "English" land for the Norman barons?

Which points out your hypocrisy nicely.

You're more interested in lambasting the treatment of Indigenous Australians than you are to the brutality to the Irish.

Wouldn't you be better saving your indignation for native peoples rights and history for a genocide much closer to your own door step?
 


Tyrone Biggums

Well-known member
Jun 25, 2006
13,498
Geelong, Australia
The Christian Brothers were an integral part of that system. It wasn't all British Protestants. Stop ducking and diving and claiming everyone hands are clean except for the Brits and the Aborigines who, according to you, brought it on themselves by killing mixed blood babies.

They wren't an integral part, they were a mechanism for a government to jettison a problem it didn't want to deal with.
 


Hamilton

Well-known member
NSC Patron
Jul 7, 2003
12,953
Brighton
Which points out your hypocrisy nicely.

You're more interested in lambasting the treatment of Indigenous Australians than you are to the brutality to the Irish.

Wouldn't you be better saving your indignation for native peoples rights and history for a genocide much closer to your own door step?

I think you need to take a long hard look at yourself Tyrone. You seem to have a chip on your shoulder and be viewing your own back garden through rose-tinted specs. I'm more than happy for a critical view of the role that different nation states have played over the years, but you need to look at this more holistically.
 




Tyrone Biggums

Well-known member
Jun 25, 2006
13,498
Geelong, Australia
You are joking, of course. I've been in Oz a number of times and the English/Australian rivalry is ALWAYS there, either on the surface or just below. Nobody cares about The Ashes do they?

No I'm not joking.

Cricket is on the decline here. Shit sport that more and more people have little to no interest in. Which is why the number of junior players is declining.

The Ashes is one of the most boring sporting events on the planet. How anyone can sit around for 5 days and watch that crap I know not how.
 


Seagull58

In the Algarve
Jan 31, 2012
8,516
Vilamoura, Portugal
Which points out your hypocrisy nicely.

You're more interested in lambasting the treatment of Indigenous Australians than you are to the brutality to the Irish.

Wouldn't you be better saving your indignation for native peoples rights and history for a genocide much closer to your own door step?

Well, since the topic of this thread is racism in Australia I think it's reasonable to focus on the history of racism in Australia. For your information, my grandmother was from Dublin and my father lived in Dublin until the '23 uprising when he was lying on the floor of a tram with bullets flying over over his head as the nationalists and the british army took shots at each other across the street.
 


User removed 4

New member
May 9, 2008
13,331
Haywards Heath
No I'm not joking.

Cricket is on the decline here. Shit sport that more and more people have little to no interest in. Which is why the number of junior players is declining.

The Ashes is one of the most boring sporting events on the planet. How anyone can sit around for 5 days and watch that crap I know not how.
Not this old chestnut again, you know full well thats bollocks.You're only adopting that attitude because completely muller you at it these days.
 


Seagull58

In the Algarve
Jan 31, 2012
8,516
Vilamoura, Portugal
Which points out your hypocrisy nicely.

You're more interested in lambasting the treatment of Indigenous Australians than you are to the brutality to the Irish.

Wouldn't you be better saving your indignation for native peoples rights and history for a genocide much closer to your own door step?

I tell you what. If you want to start a thread about 800 years of British persecution of the Irish I will contribute. Just don't whitewash Australian history on this thread.
 




Seagull58

In the Algarve
Jan 31, 2012
8,516
Vilamoura, Portugal
No I'm not joking.

Cricket is on the decline here. Shit sport that more and more people have little to no interest in. Which is why the number of junior players is declining.

The Ashes is one of the most boring sporting events on the planet. How anyone can sit around for 5 days and watch that crap I know not how.

and no doubt the same applies to Rugby Union and Rugby League. There is nobody left in Oz who's interested in the rivalry. Of course, losing the Ashes 3 times out of the last 4 probably doesn't help.
 


perseus

Broad Blue & White stripe
Jul 5, 2003
23,461
Sūþseaxna
More immigrants in Australia than most countries, as a % of the population, Germany has the most in Europe and France has a larger & than the UK (from memory).
 


Albion and Premier League latest from Sky Sports


Top
Link Here