Link to article by Geoffrey Blainey discussing the recent rise of anti-semitism
Craig Turner, 18 January 2025
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I see an article on The Australian website that I expect will be in The
Weekend Australian edition for 19 January 2025.

It is by eminent Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/australia-wasnt-utopia-before-british-arrival-but-it-has-gone-close-since/news-story/af5894f6b67012d2bc4b328ab759b3c9

Some passages strike me as interesting context alongside matters I discussed
in, /Why was the Indigenous Voice Referendum lost?/ [1],

    "Australia is usually condemned for its White Australia Policy, in force
    even before 1901. The policy was sometimes expressed in extreme language
    that is now embarrassing. Perspective, however, is missing. Today, China
    and many Asian nations, as is their right, simply refuse to admit
    foreigners and grant them citizenship."

    "In 1856 South Australia and Victoria were the first places in the world
    to use the secret ballot on election day. When seven years later Abraham
    Lincoln, on the battlefield at Gettysburg, made his eloquent affirmation
    that democracy was "government of the people, by the people, for the
    people", he must have known a favourable version of government was already
    in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney. Slavery in the US was not abolished
    until two years after Lincoln's oration."

    "There is yet another surprise. Most Aboriginal women living in the main
    districts of what is now South Australia exercised the right to vote in
    1896. That was before any women, black or white, had that right in New
    York, Chicago or London."

    "The new Commonwealth of Australia, formed in 1901, soon led the world in
    granting certain political rights to women. Though New Zealand is rightly
    acclaimed as the first country to grant women the vote, Australia went a
    step further in the federal election of 1903. It became the first country
    to grant women the rights to vote and to stand for parliament."

    "Within certain circles [in Australia] a contempt for Jews probably far
    exceeds the peaks of Catholic-Protestant hostilities during any one decade
    in the period 1840 to 1970. The burning or bombing of churches - so far as
    I know - was not an episode in that rivalry."


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[1] http://songseed.org/post/20231014.aa.why.was.the.indigenous.voice.referendum.lost.html