A current survey discovered that 75 per cent of Australians maintain an implicit bias towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
By:
Amit Roy
NHS medical doctors and nurses, who usually are not getting the wage rises they assume they deserve – and I’m, like a lot of the public, sympathetic to their trigger – are threatening to give up Britain for the sunny seashore lifetime of Australia the place their wages will apparently double in a single day. There are advertisements within the British Medical Journal providing medical doctors a six-figure wage and 20 days off every month to “journey, swim and surf within the solar”.
However, is leaving multicultural Britain smart? I pose this query as a result of a brand new six-part BBC TV drama, Ten Pound Poms, portrays Australia as a singularly unattractive and deeply racist nation.
In 1956, white British households have been lured to Australia by guarantees of a sunlit paradise. However after they obtained there, they discovered that as an alternative of the beautiful properties featured within the deceptive advertisements, they have been thrown into Nissen huts (semicircular corrugated iron prefabricated shelters) which have been stiflingly scorching and filled with cockroaches and different creepy crawlies.
Within the TV drama, one new arrival describes the lodging as resembling a “prisoner of warfare camp”.
Adults have been charged £10 (£450 in in the present day’s cash) to make the journey half means the world over. On arrival they needed to give up their passports for 2 years. In the event that they nonetheless needed to return again, they needed to pay a superb equal to £5,000.
In the actual world, 1.2 million Brits signed up for the “Assisted Passage Migration Scheme”, created in 1945 by the Ben Chifley authorities and its first minister for immigration, Arthur Calwell, as a part of the “Populate or Perish” coverage. It was meant to considerably improve the inhabitants of Australia and to produce staff for the nation’s booming industries.
The TV drama follows the fortunes of the Roberts household from depressing post-war Stockport – husband Terry (performed by Warren Brown), his spouse Annie (Faye Marsay), and their teenage daughter Pattie (Hattie Hooks) and younger son Finn (Finn Treacy).
Terry, who’s a certified builder, is given the possibility of digging ditches as long as an Australian doesn’t need the job. He’s banned from the outside bathroom at work as a result of that’s reserved for Australians. He’s instructed to make use of the bush. When the Brits complain of the situations, they’re dismissed as “whinging Poms”. One Australian psychopath tells Terry: “You might have blacks in Britain, don’t you? Effectively, over right here, you’re the black.”
When the person knocks down an Aboriginal youth whereas driving at evening with out lights, he leaves the sufferer mendacity within the street as a result of the latter just isn’t thought of value saving.
The truth is, on arrival, we see one darkish complexioned individual taken away by unfriendly immigration officers who say Australia admits “whites solely”. On one other event, when Annie ventures right into a division retailer on the town, she is visibly shocked when an aged Aboriginal lady is instructed by the store assistant to return to the again of the queue.
The TV drama is written by an English author, Danny Brocklehurst, who stated in a single interview: “Australia was marketed as sunny and optimistic, however when the Ten Pound Poms obtained there, they have been handled as second-class residents.”
One reviewer famous: “Racism looms massive, largely directed on the Aboriginal Australians who’re thought of by some to be little greater than vermin.”
The drama, which has most likely taken some inventive liberties, however is claimed to be traditionally correct, is ready in 1956. Certainly it’s a special Australia in 2023? Nevertheless, a current survey discovered that 75 per cent of Australians maintain an implicit bias towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Earlier than reserving a ticket to down beneath, NHS medical doctors and nurses meaning to give up Britain ought to maybe watch Ten Pound Poms.
