Hacker Cinema
Australia in Colour
2019 · TV series · documentary · 50 min episodes · 2 seasons
Told through a unique collection of iconic archival footage brought to life in stunning colour for the very first time, Australia in Colour tells the story of how Australia came to be what it is today. Narrated by Hugo Weaving, the series is a reflection on our nation’s character, its attitudes, its politics and its struggle to value its Indigenous and multicultural past. Australia in Colour gives us a chance to look at Australia’s history from a fresh perspective. This four-part series curates classic historical footage, as well as home movies and never-before-seen archival material to chart how Australia has developed as a nation. From the oldest surviving footage captured in Australia – in 1896 in Sydney’s Prince Alfred Park – to the beginning of colour television in the mid-1970s, each sequence has been lovingly restored and colourised with historical accuracy. The effect is remarkable, bringing to light history that is both shared and deeply personal.
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In the early 20th century, “multiculturalism” meant northern, southern and eastern white Europeans living together. In the documentary Australia in Colour, vintage TV advertisements portray immigrant ships containing northern and eastern white europeans as being “good for Australia” — a point of controversy at the time. Tellingly, what modern Australians would consider actually multicultural, e.g. integrating with E.Asians or Australian Aboriginals, was utterly unthinkable.
Yet in Australia and the United States today, the zeitgeist is that we’ve “always been multicultural”. This is clearly only superficially true: multiculturalism was only recently redefined to mean the integration of non-white europeans into predominantly white european societies. In the documentary, they explain following World War II, it was feared that Australia would grow weaker than its Asian competitors oweing to Australia’s low population, which many in government thought made them susceptible to capture by aggressor nations. This, AFAICT, was the real impetus for the Australian government becoming increasingly accepting of Asian immigrants.
And more recently, during the pandemic, the Australian housing sector has been calling for more immigration. Apparently, immigration powers much of the Australian housing sector [1]:
> A fall in migrants during the pandemic is causing a sharp drop in housing demand, with the sector urging the government to create a migration plan and extend HomeBuilder incentives.
Modern multiculturalism seems to be primarily based on economic and militaristic concerns, and is in no way based on a desire for social cohesion. See also: One Billion Americans [2]. Some say the US should strive to increase its population size to one billion for more or less the exact same reasons modern day multiculturalism came about. These people were never concerned with social cohesion: they’re entirely concerned with militaristic and economic might.
[1]: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/lack-of-incoming-migrants-during-coronavirus-is-wounding-australia-s-housing-sector
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Billion_Americans