Racism in Oceania

Australia
Prior to the establishment of the Commonwealth of Australia with a national federal government in 1901, the territory of Australia was a constellation of thriving colonies. The first colony of New South Wales was settled about Sydney Cove from 1788 by convicts and soldiers sent from Britain. They were a cosmopolitan group. Several other British colonies were settled around the Australian continent over the course of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These major settlements became the capital cities of the Australian States at Federation.
In March 2008 the Royal Life Saving Society Australia claimed that a group of indigenous Australian trainee lifesavers, consisting mainly of women and children had been evicted from the Haven Back Packer Resort because of the colour of their skin. The Northern Territory's Anti-Discrimination Commissioner claimed that this was not an isolated incident: "We've had quite a few of these complaints … There's a few people in the (hospitality) industry that just don't get it," Mr Fitzgerald said. "They seem to have a view that because people are Aboriginal they are going to behave inappropriately (so) they can treat them unlawfully." Management of the resort at first stated that the resort catered for international backpackers and the trainee lifesavers did not fall into that category Subsequently a former employee of the resort claimed that exclusion of indigenous Australians was a well understood though unwritten policy of the resort management.
The overall level of immigration has grown substantially during the last decade. Net overseas migration increased from 30,000 in 1993 to 118,000 in 2003-04. During 2004-05, a total of 123,424 people immigrated to Australia. Of them, 17,736 were from Africa, 54,804 from Asia, 21,131 from Oceania, 18,220 from the United Kingdom, 1,506 from South America, and 2,369 from Eastern Europe. 131,000 people migrated to Australia in 2005-06 and migration target for 2006-07 was 144,000..
During May 2009 there are various attacks on group of indian students, which are described as racial by the victims
Fiji
Relationships between ethnic Fijians and Indo-Fijians have often been strained, and the tension between the two communities has dominated politics in the islands for the past generation. The level of tension varies between different regions of the country.
New Zealand
From the eighteenth century, New Zealand's indigenous Maori people were often regarded as superior to other 'native' races, which usually meant that they were more eager and capable of adopting European ways of life. For this and other reasons Maori were treated less badly than many other indigenous races in white-majority countries. The Treaty of Waitangi gave Maori the rights of British citizens and, although the Treaty was frequently broken, Maori have usually been considered the legal equals of whites. However there have still been numerous problems of discrimination and disadvantage. Tribal rights to land were often not recognised, allowing individuals to be cheated or manipulated out of land which belonged to many other people. Maori men were the first group of New Zealanders to achieve universal adult suffrage, but had their own electorates which were usually several times larger than the general electorates, meaning that Maori votes counted for less than those of Pakeha (whites). The four Maori MPs were often marginalised in parliament, but the value of dedicated Maori representation should not be underestimated.
Efforts were made by Christian missionaries and later educators and civil servants to replace the Maori language, culture and ways of life with those of England. As a result the language and Maori arts went into major decline before being revived somewhat in the twentieth century. Overt discrimination against Maori was publicly frowned upon but was legal until the 1970s and widely condoned in private.
Although New Zealand did not have an official policy along the lines of the White Australia Policy, it did impose a poll tax on Chinese immigrants during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The poll tax was effectively lifted in the 1930s following the invasion of China by Japan, and was finally repealed in 1944. An official apology to the Chinese community of New Zealand was made by Prime Minister Helen Clark in 2004.
After World War II, immigration policy remained largely pro-British Isles until the mid-1980s, although war refugees, non-Anglo-Celtic migrants, and foreign students studying under the Colombo Plan were allowed into the country in varying numbers. In the 1960s and 70s, large numbers of British immigrants and their proliferation in the trade union movement gave rise to popular Anglophobia in the media and on the streets. This was typified by talkback radio host Tim Bickerstaff's promotion of his "punch a Pom a day" campaign.
In the 1975 election campaign, opposition leader Robert Muldoon ran a scare campaign directed against Pacific Islands migrant workers, which was followed by a series of dawn raids on suspected overstayers. In response, a Pacific Islands group known as the Polynesian Panthers came to prominence. Indigenous land issues came to a head in the late 1970s with Maori protesters occupying the Raglan Golf Course and Bastion Point, with land claims on both being settled by the following decade.
In 1986, country-of-origin rules were abolished, leading to major inflows of immigration for the first time in years, in particular large groups of skilled and business migrants. However, anti-immigration rhetoric directed mainly towards Asians from the populist Maori politician Winston Peters has since forced immigration rules to be tightened. A showed 70% of New Zealanders think that Asians face significant discrimination. Many non-Polynesian ethnic minorities perceive official policy to be indifferent towards them in the context of the Maori-Pakeha bi-culturalism issue.

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