AHC: Dystopian Australia

So I don't think it would be too controversial, on this board, to say that there is all kinds of dystopian potential in my home country of the U.S. -- as explored in CSA victories, 1930's fascist TLs, AWOLAWOT, Rumsefeldia, etc -- in large measure because of the noxious legacy of white supremacism (slavery, Indian genocide, etc). It also recently occurred to me that another country has an at least somewhat comparable tradition of screwing over people of color, and this got me wondering -- are there any good scenarios or TLs where things get fucked up in the Land Down Under (absent things like nuclear war or other similar calamities)?

Those who know Australian politics, what do you think? With no PoDs before 1920, how bad (authoritarian, etc) can this country get?
 
When put in terms of white supremacy and genocide it all looks the same but in reality the history of Australia to 1920 is vastly different to the US so we don't have the seeds of the late 20th century problems sown by then. Our Aborigines were largely killed off by virgin field epidemics and one-sided frontier wars, wether it was genocide is an essentially contest concept as there is only vague suggestion that plagues were spread deliberately and massacres weren't usually conducted for sport but to revenge loss of stock and killing of settlers. Our 'slaves' were convicts mostly from the British Isles who often did well after their sentences and whose descendants could hide the 'stain' of a convict past. So by1920 we're a pretty homogenous country, the Aborigines ended armed resistance in 1926 and started peaceful resistance in 1927 when at an absolute low in numbers so that's not really a problem. The Immigration restriction act ensured we had no obvious racial problems and anything else is simply partisan politics which isn't enough to get too wound up over.
 
Perhaps one way to produce a dystopia in Australia would be through environmental fuckups caused by idiotic projects like the Bradfield scheme to divert Queensland rivers inland, or the Spencer Canal to flood Lake Eyre to create an inland sea.

These ill thought out projects are bound to have a raft of negative impacts in following decades and make Australia economically worse off.
 

Zachariah

Banned
When put in terms of white supremacy and genocide it all looks the same but in reality the history of Australia to 1920 is vastly different to the US so we don't have the seeds of the late 20th century problems sown by then. Our Aborigines were largely killed off by virgin field epidemics and one-sided frontier wars, wether it was genocide is an essentially contest concept as there is only vague suggestion that plagues were spread deliberately and massacres weren't usually conducted for sport but to revenge loss of stock and killing of settlers. Our 'slaves' were convicts mostly from the British Isles who often did well after their sentences and whose descendants could hide the 'stain' of a convict past. So by1920 we're a pretty homogenous country, the Aborigines ended armed resistance in 1926 and started peaceful resistance in 1927 when at an absolute low in numbers so that's not really a problem. The Immigration restriction act ensured we had no obvious racial problems and anything else is simply partisan politics which isn't enough to get too wound up over.

Well, for starters, how about having a larger Australia- with the Australians electing to hold onto Papua New Guinea (or just New Guinea, in the event that the Australians, who occupied the entirety of New Guinea during WW2, reached an agreement with the Dutch to gain sovereignty over the entire island)? IOTL, the Territory of Papua and New Guinea was exempted from the Immigration restriction act; or, more accurately, immigrants from this Australian territory were barred from entering Australia in the same manner as all other non-white foreigners. The natives of Papua appealed to the United Nations for oversight and independence, and negotiations resulted in the nation becoming independent from Australia through peaceful negotiation.

On 9 September 1975, the Parliament of Australia passed the Papua New Guinea Independence Act 1975, which set 16 September 1975 as the date of independence and terminated all remaining sovereign and legislative powers of Australia over the territory. Bougainville was to become part of an independent Papua New Guinea- however, on 11 September 1975, in a failed bid for self-determination, Bougainville declared the Republic of the North Solomons, and rose up in armed revolt. The republic failed to achieve any international recognition, and a settlement was reached in August 1976; Bougainville was then absorbed politically into Papua New Guinea with increased self-governance powers.

So then, how would this have played out if you'd had a more militant, well-armed separatist (or Indonesian unionist) insurgency movement, not just for Bougainville, but for the entirety of New Guinea instead- either coming into being as a result of the Australian parliament refusing to pass this act, or having emerged instead of the peaceful secessionist movement of OTL (driving the Australians to take increasingly authoritarian action to 'stamp out the insurgents')? An insurgency with similar levels of popular support to that of the BRA on Bougainville Island IOTL (1% of the island's total population) seems extremely plausible- this would still give this group a greater strength in numbers than FARC at the peak of its power, twice the strength of the contemporary 1970's IRA, and a comparable strength to that of Al Qaeda today.

So what if they'd sought to oust the Australians through resorting to terrorism? That'd give you far more room and scope to generate those racial problems, and to bring about an effective semi-apartheid regime. At the very least, an Australian New Guinea could have easily become a dystopia, in the same way that a British Ireland or an American Liberia could have. And in each of these scenarios, the increased militancy, authoritarianism and sectarianism in politics and government caused by holding onto these territories by force would have almost certainly made those nations more dystopian as well.
 
Maybe an earlier PoD? Chandler's Kelly Country had a revolution on the 1880s, followed by Australian independence. This led to something of a police state later, IIRR.
Also he wrote a short story with a Celtic Australia still fighting in Vietnam well into the '80s.
 
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