A campaign targeting Peter Drew’s well-known “Aussie” posters has taken another turn, with activists in Brisbane covering images of early non-white Australians with labels such as “Indian”, “Chinese” and “not”, turning a dispute over street art into a much clearer argument about race and national identity.
Video published on Saturday shows activists using a ladder to alter Drew’s posters at South Bank. One of the works depicts Bella Singh, an Indian migrant who lived in Cairns more than a century ago. The activists paste the word “Indian” over the word “Aussie”, arguing that an archival document describing Singh’s nationality as Indian proves Drew’s representation is historically dishonest.
The photograph supplied with the campaign shows the document they rely upon. It is a Certificate Exempting from Dictation Test issued under the Immigration Act. “Nationality” is recorded as Indian.
But the document does not settle the argument in the way the activists suggest. It reveals something rather different about the Australia in which Singh lived.
Certificates Exempting from the Dictation Test were issued to people resident in Australia who needed protection from the machinery of the White Australia policy when travelling overseas and returning. The National Archives says the certificates allowed Australian residents to return after overseas travel and also covered some temporary non-European visitors. The dictation test itself was one of the main mechanisms used to enforce the Immigration Restriction Act 1901.
Bella Singh had migrated from Punjab to Cairns in the late 1800s. His presence in Australia predates Federation. The archival record used by the activists is therefore evidence that Indians were living here during the period the White Australia policy was designed to restrict them.
That is precisely the history Drew’s posters are asking Australians to reconsider.
His series takes photographs drawn from government archives and places the word “AUSSIE” beneath them. The best-known work depicts Monga Khan, an Indian cameleer and hawker. Drew has described the project as an attempt to expand Australian identity by recovering histories that were largely left outside the traditional national story.
The Brisbane intervention reverses that proposition. Where Drew writes “Aussie”, the activists write “Indian”. Where his work argues that ancestry and Australian belonging can coexist, theirs treats the two labels as competing claims.
That distinction matters.
Calling Bella Singh Indian is historically unremarkable. He was Indian. But the proposition being advanced through the alteration is that being Indian somehow disqualifies the description “Aussie”. It relies on an either-or understanding of identity that Australia itself abandoned long ago
Calling Bella Singh Indian is historically unremarkable. He was Indian. But the proposition being advanced through the alteration is that being Indian somehow disqualifies the description “Aussie”. It relies on an either-or understanding of identity that Australia itself abandoned long ago.
A person can be Indian and Australian. Chinese and Australian. Greek and Australian. Anglo-Australian. The hyphen, whether spoken or written, does not invalidate either side.
The argument becomes more troubling when placed alongside the political movement developing around these interventions.
The Brisbane stunt follows the Melbourne campaign involving Hugo Lennon, known online as Auspill, and another activist, Sir Doug, who appropriated Drew’s format for posters depicting the Bondi terrorist, Lindt Cafe terrorist Man Haron Monis and other provocative figures. Lennon argued that the exercise was designed to push Drew’s multicultural conception of “Aussie” to what he called its “logical limits”.
Now the argument has been stripped back even further. The Brisbane alterations do not need terrorists or criminals. Bella Singh himself is apparently enough.
The message becomes difficult to misunderstand: Indian, therefore not Aussie.
It closely resembles a proposition openly articulated within Australia’s white nationalist movement. During reporting into the 2025 March for Australia demonstrations, one organiser associated with white nationalist politics was recorded explaining the underlying idea simply: “Australian” meant white. ABC News Verify also found that the March for Australia website had previously included “remigration”, a white nationalist concept advocating the removal of people of non-European ancestry, before the reference disappeared.
That does not mean everybody concerned about migration is a white nationalist. Australia has legitimate arguments to have about population growth, housing, infrastructure, temporary migration and social cohesion. Thousands who attended anti-immigration demonstrations have denied racial motivations, and it would be wrong to collapse all immigration scepticism into extremism.
But it is equally mistaken to pretend there is no organised attempt to move a racial definition of Australian identity into those debates.
Neo-Nazis appeared prominently at March for Australia events in 2025, including National Socialist Network figures who addressed crowds. ABC News Verify found links between some organisers and white nationalist ideas, while mainstream political leaders across the country condemned racist elements attached to the demonstrations.
Even Pauline Hanson, whose political career has been built largely around opposition to multiculturalism and high immigration, publicly distanced herself from a neo-Nazi supporter who appeared at one of her events in Melbourne in June. She said such people were “with the wrong party”.
That distinction is important because white nationalism should not be casually described as mainstream Australian politics.
It remains electorally marginal. But its ability to insert language, imagery and ideas into wider political arguments has become harder to dismiss as something confined to anonymous internet forums.
There is a deliberate communications strategy at work. The language is humour, trolling and memes. The medium is Instagram, short video and street art. The argument is rarely presented initially as a racial doctrine. Instead, a question is posed: if everybody can be Australian, does Australian mean anything?
It sounds philosophical.
Then someone takes a photograph of an Indian man who lived in Queensland before Federation and pastes “INDIAN” across the word “AUSSIE”.
Suddenly the destination of the argument becomes much clearer.
The historical irony is hard to overlook.
“Indian” written on Bella Singh’s certificate tells us where he came from and how the Commonwealth classified him. It does not tell us whether the man who built a life in Cairns belonged to Australia
The document held up as evidence against Drew records Bella Singh inside the bureaucracy of the White Australia era. Parliament’s own historical material describes that policy as one which promoted a homogeneous white British culture as the foundation of Australian national identity. The dictation test avoided explicitly writing race into the legislation while allowing officials to exclude non-European migrants in practice.
Singh’s certificate exists because Australian governments were making racial distinctions between people who lived here.
More than a century later, his photograph is again being used to argue about whether someone of his background can properly carry the Australian label.
There is room to challenge Peter Drew. Art invites disagreement. His use of the word “Aussie” is itself an argument rather than a historical classification, and people are entitled to reject his interpretation of Australian identity.
But there is a difference between debating Drew’s proposition and pretending that the archival material disproves it.
“Indian” written on Bella Singh’s certificate tells us where he came from and how the Commonwealth classified him. It does not tell us whether the man who built a life in Cairns belonged to Australia.
That is the question Drew deliberately leaves with the viewer.
The activists who pasted over his poster have supplied their answer.
The rest of Australia now has to decide whether it shares it.
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