Popular memory of the First World War knows little or nothing of the racial dimensions of Australia’s commitment to Gallipoli, the Middle East and the Western Front. But few of us ever stop to think about what the policy meant, how the first parliament of the new commonwealth clamoured to introduce the racist immigration laws and, not least, how the notion of white Australian supremacy impelled Australia into the first world war at such onerous cost. We might learn a little in school about how the last vestiges of the white Australia policy were done away with in the early 1970s. White supremacy was, after all, the mainstay of the new federation – the very DNA Commonwealth of Australia. They say these things – about Muslims or Jews, about Africans or people from the Middle East – because they know some people want to hear them and will vote and click. There was no broad parliamentary condemnation of either Andrew Bolt’s column decrying the “foreign invasion” of Australia (and more) or of Sky hosting a threatening Nazi whose views carried roughly the integrity of Anning’s. Meanwhile, a number of senior government types have been out there race baiting (albeit marginally more subtly) almost weekly for most of this parliamentary term.
The media – hang on, no, not the “the media”, but News Corp outlets Sky and its biggest Australian papers – have been assiduously provoking the ugliest sentiments on race and Australian national supremacy in recent times. But he has an audience (we don’t really know how big or small but it’s there) and he’s reached it.
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