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People need also to remember that differnet cultures have very different sensitivities. Aussies may just see this sort of thing differently.
I have a client who is a businessman in South Africa. He is not an Afrikaaner, and was active in anti-apartheid politics back before majority rule was established in the early 1990s. When I was out there meeting with him, we went to dinner, and over dessert he said to me in that accent, "We have a very happy country here now. We need to fix the poverty, but the people here are wonderful, friendly happy people. Do you know why you have racial problems in the US but we don't have them here? It's because of the people here. The blacks in the US are from the central part of the continent and gold coast. Those are awful people, sullen and hostile. The people around here are wonderful people."
I was listening to this and saying to myself "WTF??????" I couldn't think of any nice response (e.g. slavery? Jim Crow?) so, as my mother always instructed me, I just didn't say anything. But I have to tell you, here was a pretty decent guy, actively anti-racist, but had a totally, totally different view of things simply because he was in a different culture from mine.
This is a long-winded way of saying that context is important even in this sort of thing.
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