Racism links to Aussie car flags

[Matilda]

11. Racism has always been with us.

It's a documented part of our history that after WWII, many Australians didn't want us to take in Jewish refugees, and I believe it was quite ugly.

And after Vietnam, there were many who objected to the Vietnamese boat people being allowed to stay here.

And then there was the White Australia policy, deliberately set up to exclude anyone from a non-White background. That was repealed finally by Whitlam in the early seventies.

Overt racism died down a lot after the Whitlam years, but then John Howard made a deliberate choice to revive it in order to win the 2004 election, which he stood a good chance of losing. Tony Abbott is continuing the policy, and that both of them see the issue as a vote winner says something about our country that isn't very nice.