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As a post WW2 immigrant to Australia, I find your comment insulting. Out of a population of 24 million, of which 30% are now either migrants or the descendants of European, Asian and people from all over the planet, your contention we are bound to retain a sort of prisoner mentality stinks of bigotry and ignorance;

Between 1788 and 1868, about 162,000 convicts were transported from Britain and Ireland to various penal colonies in Australia.[1]

The British Government began transporting convicts overseas to American colonies in the early 17th century. When transporting convicts ended with the start of the American Revolution, an alternative site was needed to relieve further overcrowding of British prisons and hulks. Earlier in 1770, James Cook charted and claimed possession of the east coast of Australia for Britain. Seeking to pre-empt the French colonial empire from expanding into the region, Britain chose Australia as the site of a penal colony, and in 1787, the First Fleet of eleven convict ships set sail for Botany Bay, arriving on 20 January 1788 to found Sydney, New South Wales, the first European settlement on the continent. Other penal colonies were later established in Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) in 1803 and Queensland in 1824, while Western Australia, founded in 1829 as a free colony, received convicts from 1850. South Australia and Victoria, established in 1836 and 1850 respectively, remained free colonies. Penal transportation to Australia peaked in the 1830s and dropped off significantly the following decade as protests against the convict system intensified throughout the colonies. In 1868, almost two decades after transportation to the eastern colonies had ceased, the last convict ship arrived in Western Australia.

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That finger gesture would seem apt under the circumstances.