My History Lessons

Today my topic is about the history lessons at school. Today two of my teachers told me about immigration problems in Australia. The first issue was about an event called "children overboard". It starts with a particular prime minister called John something. Anyways, I believe John wanted to be re- elected (or elected in the first place. I don't have my notes, so I don't remember). Wait, yeah, he wanted to be re- elected. Anyways, refugees from the middle east wanted to come into Australia. The first bad case was a boat with 400 people on it, which I believe was sinking. A boat called the (I believe) Tampa came to the rescue and picked them up. But then the Australian government wouldn't let this boat into Australian waters. Eventually the captain decided to dock because the people were not doing very well (I guess getting sick and hungry) and he landed. The government passed this thing called something like Pacific Peace where all the families, women, and children would go to New Zealand and the lone men would go to facilities where they would kind of be incarcerated (not quite). Anyways, ships kept coming in and eventually the government sent out war ships to try to scare them off. It didn't really work, since the people on the boats knew they wouldn't shoot at them because how would that make the government look like? So, one day one of these refugee ships were trying to get to Australia and it started sinking. They called for help, but the Australian war ships would not come to their aid. The people started jumping off the boat and trying to save themselves, since they didn't want to go down with the ship. Now, remember our prime minister John? He wanted to win his election. But all the Australians wanted the other party, since they didn't like what he was doing with the refugees. He found out about this event and started saying to the media that the muslims were throwing their kids off the boat. He said that he did not want people who threw their children off boats in his country. The people agreed, and he ended up winning the election. But then suspicions started to arise. There were only pictures of kids floating in the water- no footage of kids being thrown off boats. So the party that lost the election went and investigated. It discovered that one person on the ship had threatened to throw off the kids- but they had ended up doing it because they didn't want the kids to die. The weird thing is, John was elected two more times- he finally went out of power in February 2007. Just a note- all the people who went into the water were rescued.
The next lesson was by another teacher- this time it was about the White Australia Policy. Basically, the citizens of Australia didn't want all the different immigrants (especially the chinese) to get to Australia, since they were more industrial and would live with less pay and so on. So the government came up with this racist solution: to give these immigrants (except the ones from Europe, note- they didn't have to do a thing) a written test. Now, most of these people were from countries where they didn't speak a kind of european language. Well, all the tests were in some european language, and they were very hard. A person would read out 50 words to you and you would have to write them all down. I heard a sample of how this test went. It was really fast, and I could barely understand anything. Something about snow and being destructive. They would only repeat it to you once- and you wouldn't even know the right language. So these immigrants were given a chance- a chance to fail. Even if they passed this test the government would give them another- until they failed. It was sad, really. My teacher showed me some posters: one saying that non- whites shouldn't be let into the country and the other saying that the people of england should come and live with us. I also found out that at the time the only reason the six states of Australia united was to make this policy a law. Don't worry, it was abolished in 1970, but still... I can't believe the racism.
Anyways, back to life. My soccer team won 2-1. I didn't do very well. Tomorrow I have my day off! Its because of ANZAC day. It is kind of the Australian memorial day, except it is for one battle in particular. I wasn't given much details, but I believe ANZAC stand for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps or something like that. It commemorates the battle I think for somewhere in Italy (Gallipolli?), where many Australian and New Zealanders were killed in battle. Sadly it was lost, and (Gallipolli?) had to be evacuated. All these facts may not be true, but that is what I know about them.
Anyways, it has been raining since Sunday. My dad said it wouldn't stop raining until Sunday. So. I have not been very busy with the saddle (maybe I'll work with it tomorrow, its too late now). So yup. I also saw an episode of Star Wars the Clone Wars today. Do you want to know what a commercial afterwards? A new season of star wars the clone wars, double episodes starting May 4th. May the fourth be with you. I cracked up. Also- LONGEST POST EVER! History is very long. Also, district cross country calls (it is on THURSDAY!) Anyways, M2A out.