Captain Gh3y said:
This analysis is spot on imo, australia is (or at least 95% of its people are) a laughing stock among western countries
No it's not. I'm on a few forums of predominantly European and British make-up and they tend to idealise Australia. Typically hold fairly romantic notions of it. Although I'm often asked why we give "abos" (their words) more rights than normal citizens. TBH, Europeans might preach about tolerance and political correctness, but it's actually fairly interesting how surprisingly judgemental and imperialistic they are at times; like it's all an act to make them feel superior.
Moreover, Australia is one of the most multicultural places in the world. Certainly, in today's climate of unfounded levels of political correctness, Australian is one of the most 'racist' of OECD countries, but it's extremely important to differentiate between superficial racism and heartfelt hatred/dislike (Apartheid Africa) or xenophobia (Japan). Australian racism tends to take two forms: 1) harmless ignorance 2) superficial stereotyping.
1) Tends to dominate in country Australia, but to say it is oppressive or threatening is ludicrous, and the only people I hear claiming as such are those who take 2) seriously; Australians have a wry sense of humour - if they nickname you Darkie (or Whitie for bemusement's sake), or make jokes about you having slanty eyes, they generally don't think it through too carefully, and it's generally a way of trying to interact with somebody where they don't perceive they have any common ground. What they
don't tend to do, is actively try to fit you into the mold of a generic racial stereotype to justify negative treatment of you. Indeed I've found that they're far more likely to be judged on how hard they work, and how fairly they treat people. Australians, especially country Australians, respect fairness and a good sense of humour. If, however, you take offence at their jokes (unless really over the line, or unless you're nice about it and ask in a laidback way), or call them racists or something, you're probably going to cop it about twice as bad - and rightly so; you need to grow a sense of humour if you want to get by in Australia.
I mean while you have fools ranting about how racist Australia is, we have one of the highest levels of civil contentment in the world, a legal system which vehemently opposes
genuine racism, a general inability to trace our heritage to any one country, one of the most diverse ranges of ethnic groups in the world, a tertiary student cohort with over 20% of students from overseas, and a workforce with over 25% of its employees born overseas.
It's like when people make up shit like "Australia's education system is shocking, Europe/America/China/Some Country is way ahead of us.". No. Australia's education quality in maths, english and science is generally in the top 25% of all OECD countries (above America) and overall Australia is ranked 8th in the OECD for education quality. Moreover our education
level is the highest of all of them, where about 70% of people finished year 12, 60% of people have a degree, diploma or certificate, and 35% of people have a degree.