{"id":14082,"date":"2021-01-26T23:52:42","date_gmt":"2021-01-26T23:52:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newmatilda.com\/?p=139883"},"modified":"2021-01-26T23:52:42","modified_gmt":"2021-01-26T23:52:42","slug":"true-blue-australia-for-whom-does-it-really-exist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/01\/26\/true-blue-australia-for-whom-does-it-really-exist\/","title":{"rendered":"True Blue Australia: For Whom Does It Really Exist?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
DON’T MISS ANYTHING! ONE CLICK TO GET NEW MATILDA DELIVERED DIRECT TO YOUR INBOX, FREE!<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Australia is not for its people but for its plutocrats: for the billionaires, for the coal barons, for the media oligarchs, and for the corrupt politicians who represent them. It doesn\u2019t have to be this way, writes Liam McLoughlin.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n At first,\nthe answer is simple. Straya\u2019s for strayans, and who still says whom anyway? But\nperhaps it\u2019s a question worth a little more thinking music\u2026 Let\u2019s begin with an\nelimination round. For whom does Australia exist? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not for the 500\nnations of Aboriginal people living on \u201cnobody\u2019s land<\/a>\u201d as the First Fleet arrived at\nBotany Bay. Not for a 70,000-plus-year-old culture that fought a colonial\nonslaught which decimated a population\nof about 750,000, with only tens of thousands remaining by the early 1900s<\/a>. Not for those killed in the\nTasmanian genocide or slaughtered in 500\nmassacres around the country.<\/a> Not for the imperial subjects marched into slave labour or\nforced into reserves, missions and abusive homes for their \u201cprotection\u201d. Not\nfor those\ndeprived entry<\/a> to\nswimming pools, footy ovals, town halls, pubs and hotels for much of the 20th<\/sup>\ncentury. Not for the 6,000\nAboriginal Diggers<\/a>\ndenied land grants, pensions and gratuities, or prevented access to RSL clubs\nand their own children, nor for those discounted until 1967.<\/p>\n\n\n\n