The League sent a Yiddish poet and essayist Melech Ravitch to the Northern Territory in the 1930s to investigate the region and to collect data on topography and climate.
The League investigated the proposal, hoping to buy an area of 28,000 square kilometres (11,000 sq mi) of agricultural land for 75,000 Jews fleeing Europe.
[4] By early 1940, he won the support of churches,[5] leading newspapers, many prominent political and public figures (including Western Australian Premier John Willcock) and a number of Jewish leaders,[3] but he also encountered opposition.
[3] On 15 July 1944 the scheme was vetoed by the Australian government and Labor Prime Minister John Curtin (with bipartisan support[3]) informed Steinberg that the Australian government would not "depart from the long-established policy in regard to alien settlement in Australia" and could not "entertain the proposal for a group settlement of the exclusive type contemplated by the Freeland League".
But Menzies replied that the idea ran contrary to his government's policy of assimilation aimed at achieving "the ideal of one Australian family of peoples, devoid of foreign communities.