Commonwealth protesters on the Gold Coast have successfully exposed Australia’s racist double standards.

Vision of protesters blocking the Queen of England’s relay baton was all it took to expose Australia’s racist double standards. In less than 24 hours these protesters accomplished exactly what they set out to achieve.

The protesters wanted to highlight that all is not as it seems in Australia. Defining issues such as sovereignty have never been officially settled since 1788. On top of that, there are a huge range of grievances such as Black deaths in custody, theft and exploitation of land and water resources, child removals, incarceration rates and the corruption of Aboriginal funding towards, health housing and education.

Right wing commentator, Andrew Bolt, not only criticised the protesters but also had a big problem with what he claimed was over representation of Indigenous people in the opening ceremony. Bolt claimed that the ceremony did not reflect other races (aka his race) enough. Unfortunately we did some fact checking and we found that other races have only been present on this land for less than 0.03 percent of the time we have been here. Therefore foreign races were actually the ones who were over represented last night.

According to your everyday white Australian, Australia is a free and democratic country. One of those democratic rights is the right to protest, but when vision of a peaceful protest hit social media yesterday, some of those everyday Australian’s exploded with racist hate (which is not a democratic right). These same double standards used by everyday Australian’s also exist with people like Andrew Bolt and politicians in Australia.

These double standards allow serious issues such as those outlined above to be continually ignored and pushed aside. Thankfully, Australia’s social media isn’t confined to Australia and these double standards are now being witnessed around the world.

Double standards means two sets of rules. Doesn’t that sound a lot like apartheid? When you look at all of the Indigenous issues mentioned at protests, you will soon see that Australia does practice apartheid. There may not be an official policy, but if you look in the right places you will definitely see the signs. It was only after international pressure that Apartheid began to crumble in South Africa. We look forward to similar international pressure in the future thanks to the work of protesters.