QED

SBS TV – A case of racial vilification


Australia is not a nation based on racism, quite the opposite – it is a vibrant, free, multi cultural nation built around the notion of equality. The exact same notion of equality which fuelled demands for fair and equal wages in 1901.


How then should we approach a professor of history, a documentary producer and a taxpayer funded television station who, in the SBS television series Immigration Nation: The Secret History of Us, wove together a sackcloth of half truths, conspiracy theories and lies in a serious attempt at racial vilification. Is it in fact OK to vilify white Australians? Are white Australians considered to be exempt from the Racial Vilification Act? Is truth considered important in Australia? Phillip Adams wondered on recently whether or not the public really want to know the truth. Well, I think they do. Ghandi reminded us that ‘Truth is God’ of all things. The public know that in the end they will get the truth, whether they like it or not. However, in the meantime, while the truth remains suppressed or obscured, the people will be condemned to division and confusion.

SBS is an organization made up mainly of first and second generation Australians who clearly believe they have a mandate to re-write Australian history. They seem to believe that white Anglo Saxon/Celtic Australians are to be feared or hated. They seem to suspect that we have lied about our history. A genre of ‘hate Australia’ documentaries, films, soap operas, and news programs has constantly applied the blowtorch to Australia and Australians. It seems the movers and shakers in SBS think of white Australians and their history as fertile ground to apply their more sophisticated European minds. Australia and Australians (more than three generations old) are considered to be cultureless, cringing, dumb, uneducated bushwackers or naïve working class clerks and criminals. They appear fair game for ambitious, progressive historians and lefty wannabees to debase and defame. SBS purports to represent the underprivileged, the aboriginal people and immigrants who have been subjected to Australian racism. SBS seems to be made up of people who feel that they too have suffered the great Australian racism – when they were young, at school, just arrived, perhaps unable to speak English yet – someone called them ‘a wog’. Now is their chance at payback. Now they will show the Australians a thing or two!

In all the arts, Australia’s alleged racism has provided a consistent core. It is the foundation on which the genre has been built. Yet the accusation has never been proved and is based on carefully constructed lies. It has generated a culture of victimhood amongst its adherents which keeps isolated aboriginal communities illiterate, alcoholic, drug addicted and unemployed. It has factionalized Australians into a ‘them’ and ‘us’. It keeps white Australians in shame and silence and it teaches our children that they are born with an extra original sin. The ‘Stolen Generation’ remains highly contested history, as does the accusation of ‘genocide’ – Keith Windschuttle’s two volumes on The Fabrication of Aboriginal History are the definitive works on these issues – yet apparently they have been ignored and remain unread by anyone at SBS. What then is to be done about this continuing genre of a seemingly unstoppable juggernaut of fabrication – ‘The Fabrication Genre’?

This latest massive insult could require something like a class action to be brought by interested Australians. If absolutely necessary, it could be brought through the Racial Vilification legislation. However there ought to be a less legal, yet necessarily compelling, forum, tribunal or commission, where matters of academic rigor and ethics, which this case brings into play, can be adjudicated. Professor Henry Reynolds displayed a charming, camped up, jeering and delinquent demeanour whilst being interviewed on Immigration Nation. He seemed almost cheekily aware of the outrageous manipulation he was perpetrating by making the case for his theory that Japan attacked Australia because of the White Australia Policy. Reynolds is provocative in his calumniate destruction of the white Australian psyche. He attributes white Australians nothing but invasion, genocide and the stolen generations. He considers white Australians manifestly racist. Yet it is this intent and attitude itself which is firstly prejudiced and then finally, when the lies must be told, racist.

Who should bring an action against the pre-eminent Australian historian, the television station that is perceived as the arbiter of racism and definer of multi culturalism and the producers of Immigration Nation?

Australians should – all Australians, black, white, European, Asian or African. Australians who are the friends and relatives of the people whose names are chiselled into the granite of the war memorials in every country town, suburb and city throughout its seven states, should. There could be hundreds of thousands, in fact, millions of Australians who should be outraged by the claims and theories presented in Immigration Nation.

As I write, my sister has sent me the defence records of our mother and our father which she obtained in our search to find out more about them after their deaths. They each spent five years of their lives in their early twenties fighting the Japanese. My mother nursed soldiers who had survived Changi prison in Borneo. My father was a coast watcher behind Japanese lines in New Guinea for four years. My brother says our father was a member of Z force – a highly secret unit also working behind Japanese lines. However there are no records of this. My father knew about the tortures applied to Australian intelligence officers if caught. He knew of men who had their heads cut off – he had seen the photographs. Z force was an assassination squad – they cut the throats of Japanese officers while they were sleeping in their own camps at night and then waited for the enlisted soldiers to find them in the morning. They struck fear into the Japanese army. I may be the son of an assassin and there will be many other sons, daughters, friends and relatives – descendants of the rest of Z force. The feelings of assassins may be hereditary, like the silence and solitude my father maintained in RSL Clubs for the rest of his life – amongst all the rest of the silent trauma that was passed on to our family and which we, in turn, have passed on to our children. My parents were not fighting the Japanese to defend racism. They were fighting to maintain a free and equal Australian democracy. They were fighting against an expansionist, ruthless, cruel and racist aggressor intent on regional and world domination.

The families of those who fought the Japanese, or those who died fighting the Japanese believing they were fighting for the Australian way of life, did not believe they were defending racism, in fact, quite the opposite. I invite those who have been upset by this documentary, who wish to defend the good name of their ancestors against the unwarranted accusation made by Immigration Nation to email me at mccauley@wimmera.com.au with their concerns. I will keep a register. I would also invite anybody who may have ideas on how this whole matter should be approached, what legal avenues might be appropriate etc, to also contact me.


See also: John Izzard on ““The deceit of Immigration Nation” here…


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