I served for 8 years in the Australian Regular Army - I don't think the Australian Army is systemically racist at all.

In my experience it's quite the opposite - all soldiers are equal, all are expected to put in and all are targets for well-intentioned abuse when it's called for!

I never saw fair dinkum racism in the way soldiers were treated by bosses - but I did see heaps of highly effective and often hilarious sledging on whatever issue was best suited to the purpose of taking the piss of the miscreant.

Judged on the character of the abuse dished out in my training, the army is  "fat-ist", "bags-of-shit-tied-around-the-middle-ist", "slug-ist" etc etc etc.

All the abuse, yelling and theatre was designed to build cohesive teams of men who worked well together and didn't let the side - and each other -  down.  And your race, culture, family background, country of birth - none of that mattered at all.

I'd be amazed if the British Army was much different.

Now a couple of UK diggers are suing the British Army because "The Army is systemically racist". Their proof, among other things includes a photo of the pair of them upon which other blokes had written "F*ck Off".

I don't think you have to be black to cop that in the army buttercups!

Here's The Times in London today:

The British Army is “systemically racist” and failed to act when a spate of racial abuse was reported, a tribunal was told yesterday (Lucy Fisher writes).

Two black paratroopers are suing the service after claiming that they suffered targeted mistreatment from colleagues, including racist slurs such as “n***er”.

Private Hani Gue and Lance Corporal Nkululeko Zulu said that a picture of them was defaced by personnel with swastikas, Hitler moustaches and the caption “f*** off”.

It was said that a member of the 3rd Battalion, Parachute Regiment (3 Para) posted photos of paratroops posing with Tommy Robinson, founder of the English Defence League, on their Facebook page.