We here in this country, now called Australia, need to be reminded that we started off as ‘boat people’.
The First Fleet arrived (including my ancestors, Major Johnson and Esther Abrahams) without an invitation from the Indigenous inhabitants, and most certainly without a visa. For
the next 140–150 years everybody came here by boat – without an invitation from the First Nations people who had lived here for 60,000 years – and none of them had a visa.
John Howard said ‘We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come’ yet his own ancestors came in boats, including a convict, William Tooley in 1816.
John Howard is a descendant of ‘boat people’. So is Peter Dutton. Without ‘boat people’ many of us wouldn’t be here.
the be fair, the country was colonised by the british under british law, and i haven’t seen any reparations for those actions, the current policy is australian law…
This Land was invaded and claimed by the British under the lie of ‘Terra Nullius’. It took the Mabo case to dismiss the notion of ‘Terra Nullius’ and to establish ‘Native Title’ in Australian Law. The First Australians never sold this Land, never gave away this Land, the Land was stolen from them – hence the term, ” Always Was, Always Will Be.”