When big-time Commie Vladimir Petrov was sent to Australia in 1954, chances are he didn’t know he’d be staying here for ever. Petrov and his wife Evdokia were in Canberra when “Smokin’” Joe Stalin carked it, sparking a volatile leadership struggle in Moscow. Instead of heading home to a probable Soviet bullet in his Soviet skull, Pretov decided to defect to Australia and spend the rest of his days sipping warm lager and nibbling on cakes named for unpopular opera personalities from the 1920s.

 

The ex-Commie and his wife were renamed “Sven” and “Maria” (close enough to Russian, right?) and buried deeply in the outer suburbs of Sydney, with a press embargo on ever reporting their whereabouts (whoops). And just what piece of diplomatic bargaining did we use to convince such a high-ranking Soviet official to defect to us? Easy: lots and lots of prostitutes (I’m not kidding). That’s some good negotiation.

Egon Kisch went through a lot. As a Jew in Nazi Germany, he faced as much persecution as… well, a Jew in Nazi Germany. After speaking out against the regime, Kisch was imprisoned in a concentration camp for political prisoners, but – against all odds – in 1934 managed to escape across the seas to a bountiful paradise in the south… called Australia. Understandably, Australia immediately said “NO” and tried to send him back to the Nazis. Kisch, you see, was a Commie and (probably even worse) a Czech.

 

So we hit him with the migrant English test, in which immigrants were asked to recite texts in a variety of ludicrous European languages. Unluckily for Australia, Kisch spoke most European languages fluently, though (happily) we eventually tripped him up on reciting the Lord’s Prayer in Scottish Gaelic. All was set to handball him back to Hitler, when a legal breakthrough in the High Court allowed Kisch to stay in Sydney. You should have seen Menzies’ face, ooo.

It takes some cojones to steal money from every bank in New South Wales – but Jack “Big Fella” Lang did just that, as Premier of NSW in 1932. Like most of the world at that time, Australia was deeply in the throes of Depression (aka: “the period where no one felt like working”), with massive civil unrest and much of the population on welfare. In response, Lang decided that money needed to stay within Australia (possibly to buy more of those hoola-hoops on sticks that were all the rage), and halted the repayment of interest to overseas bondholders.

 

This alone caused a lot of hubbub, but things really went south when Lang withdrew all of NSW’s money from government banks and stashed the cash in a heavily fortified Trades Hall. The Opposition were furious, and civil unrest nearly blew out into civil war on the streets of Sydney. Eventually the NSW Governor stepped in, stripping the Big Fella of his position and installing a new Premier. Nevertheless, Lang went to his grave defending his actions and declaring in third person that “Lang was right”. Well that makes one supporter, at least.

John Howard was as much of a fan of refugees as California is of gay marriage (apparently). Which is to say, he did everything in his power as Prime Minister (1996-2007) to keep those dirty rapscallions out. In 2001, a boat full of ‘em wrecked in international waters near Christmas Island, and Howard deployed his best men (well… Phillip Ruddock, anyway) to keep ‘em off Aussie soil. We managed to stop ‘em before they were able to scurry onto Christmas Island, but unluckily no other country wanted ‘em either.

 

It took some crafty weaselling, but Howard was able to sketch up a plan that retroactively excluded Christmas Island from Australia’s migration zone, allowing the refugees to land without fear of them seeking political asylum here. So, phew. What’s more, Howard used photographs from the incident to claim that the stinkin’ refugee varmints had thrown their own children off their boat when it began to sink, the horrible creatures. It later emerged, however, that that was just a dirty lie. Strangely enough, the Australian public chose to punish Howard by re-electing him twice.

Most of the time, Australia is free to forget that we’re actually part of the British Empire, and that our head of state is actually the Queen. In 1975, however, the Dismissal of Gough Whitlam rudely reminded of our peasant status. It’s a long story, but basically the Federal Parliament in Canberra reached a deadlock, with neither Liberal nor ruling party Labor willing to bend.

 

Now, the Constitution says that in such a situation the Governor General (as the Queen’s man in New Holland) has the power to sack the Prime Minister, dissolve Parliament, and call an election. But that hadn’t actually occurred since 1834, so no one – least of all PM Whitlam – took that threat at all seriously. After all, Australia is its own sovereign nation, right? Governor-General John “Wayne” Kerr apparently didn’t think so, enacting the archaic Constitutional law and giving Gough the boot so hard he didn’t stand up again until 1977. And so with that act, we Australians were all reminded that we are nothing but dirt-smeared knaves, scrabbling for rotted vegetables outside the monarch’s castle walls. Freshen yer pot, guv’na?