Sharing racist ideas on 'Dingo Twitter'
Australia, the home of the suspected New Zealand mosque mass murderer, has long fostered a strain of race-based, anti-immigrant extremism.
Settled as a white British outpost in Asia, originally as a convict prison, its government adopted what became known as the White Australia Policy to restrict non-European immigration soon after the founding of the nation in 1901. It was not until nearly 75 years later that laws were passed to ban race playing a part in immigration policy - but from the 1990s immigration again became one of the nation's most contentious issues.
John Howard, elected in 1996 and eventually the nation's second-longest-serving prime minister, demonized asylum seekers to win one election in 2001. Ahead of a hard-fought campaign, Howard whipped up fear when a Norwegian cargo boat, Tampa, rescued hundreds of asylum seekers from a sinking Indonesian fishing boat.
