Doesn’t this make the point that these practices were not condoned by the authorities - hence the Royal Commission?
As for indentured labor/servitude it was common in British Empire from the time of abolition onwards. Many races were involved including Irish. As a mate of mine says, who has impeccable English working class credentials: nothing the English did in the colonies was not also done first to their own people!
Yeah so it was ugly. Life was tough 100+ years ago. No welfare, hard manual labour, high infant mortality, safety practices unheard of but if you had no gainful employment you died of starvation.
Denialism of what precisely? I just don’t swallow everything I read in the mainstream media.
It seems to be a bit of a special argument.
- Slavery didnt exist in Australia.
- yes it did
- but the Brits outlawed it
- yes they did but it continued to occur
- maybe but it was outside of jurisdiction. In the wild west
- the same wild west that had a government. And that government set up a royal commission that identified that slavery was occurring. It was clearly significantly a problem to have a royal commission. It took the WA government over 30 years since their formation to act on the illegal and well established slavery practices.
So the result of the discussion is that yes there was slavery in Australia. It was outlawed and that was eventually policed.
The government/society response was far slower than other communities.
No doubt that local politics, the state capabilities/resources and racism contributed to the delay.
Good discussion!