Australia is generally described as an egalitarian and democratic country right now, but was it like this before and

how was it different? All citizens of Australia have rights and are protected and restricted by laws for many reasons. Everyone has the right to be treated and respected fairly whether you are rich, poor, Asian, white or simply cant speak English; and this all comes under the whole treat others the way you want to be treated. Australia is trying to get the message through everyone that how its a egalitarian country and that we are all treated no matter what race, sex or culture we are or believe in, but maybe all this is to make up for what happened during the turn of the 20th century. Before 1901 before federation of Australia Aboriginals had the right to vote except for colonies in WA and QLD, but after that there were debates about whether they could vote in Commonwealth elections due to previous state rights. Eventually they passed a law to restrict the Aboriginals from voting. By doing this is basically removing the Aboriginals rights and what is the reason for this as they are no different from us. And not to mention there is the stolen generation that occurred between 1909 and 1969 but continued in some places until 1970. In 1901, there was an Act by the Parliament of Australia called the Immigration Restriction Act, which was made to limit immigration to Australia and allow specific people to migrate here. The Immigration Restriction Act most importantly introduced the dictation test, which required the person to write a fifty word passage dictated to them in any European language. This prevented a lot of nonEuropean people from entering Australia.

Around the 1890's, women were considered weaker and couldnt do work as fast as men, and therefore was considered inferior; this lead to a lower pay and poor working conditions. Women were expected to stay home to cook, clean and look after the children and husband. Single women were forced to work in manual labour and did not learn as much as men even doing the same job. In conclusion, Australia was overall not an egalitarian society during the turn of the 20th Century. Aboriginals and women had low respect and were treated poorly compared to English/Australians, men and rich people. There were also discrimination to Aboriginals, poor people and women and they generally didn't have much respect or attention.

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