What you wrote, though, is that you "have an ingrained hatred of 'political' 'folk' 'music'," not of Australian political folk music in particular. Why should Australian folk music be mainly an Anglo-Irish invention, anyhow? What of music made by aboriginal artists?
Besides, why can't folk music travel across boundaries? In fact, it has & will.
***** "Americans Through Their Labor": Paul Robeson's Vision of Cultural and Economic Democracy
by Dr. Mark D. Naison Chair, Department of African American Studies Fordham University, New York, NY
...And where did African-Americans fit in Robeson's pantheon of laboring peoples, this musical celebration of those whose labor built America and the modern world economy? They were at the center, the core; they were the people whose experience would ultimately be the test of whether America would reach its potential as a democratic country. Wherever he sang, Robeson placed the songs of the Negro people in the most prominent position, using them as the base of his entire concert repertoire. "When I sang my American folk melodies in Budapest, Prague, Tilfis, Moscow, Oslo, the Hebrides or on the Spanish front," Robeson told an interviewer,"the people understood and wept and rejoiced with the spirit of the songs. I found that where forces have been the same, whether people weave, build, pick cotton or dig in the mines, they understand each other in the common language of work, suffering and protest....When I sing, 'Let my people go,' I can feel sympathetic vibrations from my audience, whatever its nationality. It is no longer just a Negro song it is a symbol of those seeking freedom from the dungeon of fascism." Robeson also insisted that his audiences recognize the centrality of African-American labor, paid and unpaid, to the building of American civilization. "The great primary wealth of this land," Robeson told an audience of Canadian miners assembled at the Peace Arch in Vancouver, "came from the blood and suffering of my forefathers....I'm telling you now that a good portion of that American earth belongs to me."...
<http://www.pipeline.com/~rgibson/paulrobeson.htm> *****
Yoshie
P.S. I'm Japanese by nationality, but I like Hazel Dickens. I gave a couple of her CDs to my dad (who has to this day never traveled outside Japan), and he likes her too.