A journalist told the truth in public. Shock! Horror! Of course Australia is a racist country, and always has been.
This country was founded on racist assumptions (we can take what we want, ignore our own laws, and yours, because we have the required firepower, diseases and hypocrisy). We will pretend no one was here when it suits us (terra nullius) and then divide families when the original inhabitants don’t conveniently lie down and die.
When the ALP was formed in 1891, its very first federal objective was the ‘cultivation of an Australian sentiment based upon the maintenance of racial purity.’ Aboriginal workers in pastoral industries across the country were given no wages for generations. The cane industry was established by kidnapped South Sea Islanders, and non-Anglo racism was formally built into government for generations in the form of the White Australia policy.
Chinese people in the gold rush were forced to walk from South Australia to Victoria, where they faced gangs of violent thugs at Buckland, Lambing Flat and elsewhere. In 1934, the Czech-Jewish journalist Egon Kisch (who spoke multiple languages) was forced to take a test in Scotch Gaelic to keep him out of Australia. Immigrants from Europe who didn’t speak English as their first language were given hell when they arrived after World War II. Likewise Vietnamese people a bit later, and African and Middle Eastern people after them.
This is a country which has more racist insults than there are Inuit words for snow (and that’s probably a racist analogy too).
Try catching a taxi if you have dark skin, or applying for a job if you have an unusual name, or wearing a veil to the dog park, or taking an unusual lunchbox to school if you live in an Anglo-dominated area.
Remember children overboard? Adam Goodes and Nicky Winmar? The assaults on Indian students? Sovereign Borders? The racist lies about the referendum on the Voice?
Things are better in many parts of Australia than they used to be, yes, but this is still a fundamentally racist country. There is no other reading of Australian history that makes any sense.
Racism, schmacism
To the always erudite Barnaby Joyce though (last seen the wrong side up on a Canberra footpath), this very suggestion is ‘mad left wing’ and cause for one of Australia’s most respected political journalists Laura Tingle to be raked over the coals, first by the Murdoch press, then Peter Costello’s Nine media, and finally by her own boss at the ABC, never mind that Ms Tingle was not working for the ABC when she made the comments.
Any excuse for fake outrage will do, for the endlessly starboard-drifting Titanic of fossil media and its pathetic social media offspring. As Michael West has pointed out, there has been no corresponding outrage in response to former treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s recent suggestion that Australia is becoming more racist and anti-Semitic.
Across the Pacific, it’s possible to go a long way politically without trying too hard to hide the racist underpinnings of your own family, or country, or policies, as the rise of Donald Trump has shown, but here we like to pretend we are better than that.
The problem is that Peter Dutton’s rewards in the polls each time he plays the race card (which is what sparked the whole Laura Tingle comment in the first place) shows that the politics of racism, and division, are never far from the surface for those whose desire for power outweighs the potential harm done to others (especially the ‘othered’).
Australia is one of the most successful multicultural nations on this planet, by most metrics, but this is not guaranteed into the future. Those who deny that racism exists are also denying the conversation, and delaying potential solutions.
You can’t fix a broken leg if you keep walking on it, and you can’t fix a broken country if you pretend everything’s fine. The first step to doing something about racism is admitting it exists, and has been a part of the culture here since at least 1788.
Laura Tingle deserves our admiration, and support.
Originally from Canberra, David Lowe is an award-winning film-maker, writer and photographer with particular interests in the environment and politics. He’s known for his campaigning work with Cloudcatcher Media.
Long ago, he did work experience in Parliament House with Mungo MacCallum.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
