Politics

“Australians First”: People Think Bill Shorten’s New Ad Full Of White People Is Kinda Racist

Bill Shorten, mate. Why?

by Osman Faruqi  8 May 2017
Bill Shorten

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Bill. Bill, Bill, Bill… Bill. Really? Things were going ok, man. The government is down in the polls. They’re still internally divided and incoherent. Things were going ok. You didn’t have to do this. Why oh why did you do this?

Last night Channel Nine debuted a new ad for the Labor Party during the evening news. The ad features Bill Shorten using the phrase “Australians first” a bunch of times and is pretty clearly an attempt to channel some good old fashioned nationalist sentiment.

You can watch the ad at the end of this clip:

Just to really ram the point home, here’s Bill Shorten standing next to a giant “EMPLOY AUSTRALIANS FIRST” graphic:

shorten aus first

And here he is with a group of average Australians who just happen to be incredibly, incredibly white:

shorten white people

It does seem like a pretty obvious attempt at racist dog-whistling and of course the internet was keen to point that out:

The ad comes off the back of a new “Australians first” jobs policy announced by Shorten last week. Labor is proposing to increase the cost of migrant worker visas to encourage local employers to hire Australian residents before looking for people overseas.

But the ad has taken things further and some people are calling for Shorten to resign.

Of course Bill Shorten isn’t the only politician parroting the “Australians first” line. Malcolm Turnbull has adopted the same kind of rhetoric in his crackdown on migrant worker visas. The opportunity was there for Shorten to do better and call out that kind of lazy, coded language. But instead of showing leadership, he’s ended up just mimicking the Coalition.

On top of the ad’s racially awkward undertones, it’s also pretty dumb politics. Lots of the marginal seats across Australia’s suburbs are incredibly diverse. Running ads that are so obviously about creating an ‘us and them’ divide, where ‘us’ is white people seems like a very stupid way to build broad support.