White Australia policy

During World War II, Prime Minister John Curtin reinforced the policy, saying "This country shall remain forever the home of the descendants of those people who came here in peace in order to establish in the South Seas an outpost of the British race.

[8] Prior to 2011, the United Kingdom was the largest source country for immigration to Australia but, since then, China and India have provided the highest number of permanent migrants.

Over the next 20 years, 40,000 Chinese men but very few women, nearly all from the province of Guangdong (then known as Canton) but divided by language and dialect nevertheless, immigrated to the goldfields seeking prosperity.

Shortages of labour led to high wages for a prosperous skilled working class, whose unions demanded and got an eight-hour day and other benefits unheard of in Europe.

[citation needed] The growth of the sugar industry in Queensland in the 1870s led to searching for labourers prepared to work in a tropical environment.

[16] Asian immigrants already residing in the Australian colonies were not expelled and retained the same rights as their Anglo and southern compatriots, although they faced significant discrimination.

The colonial secretary in Britain had, however, made it clear that a race-based immigration policy would run "contrary to the general conceptions of equality which have ever been the guiding principle of British rule throughout the Empire".

But there is obligation...not (to) unnecessarily offend the educated classes of those nations"[29] Norman Cameron, a Free Trade Party member from Tasmania, expressed a rare note of dissension: [N]o race on... this earth has been treated in a more shameful manner than have the Chinese....

[32] Further discriminatory legislation was the Postal and Telegraph Services Act 1901 (1 Edward VII 12 1901), which required any ship carrying mail to and from Australia to only have a white crew.

[37] At the 1919 Paris Peace Conference following the First World War, Japan sought to include a racial equality clause in the Covenant of the League of Nations.

You may do with it what you please, but at any rate, the soldiers have achieved the victory and my colleagues and I have brought that great principle back to you from the conference, as safe as it was on the day when it was first adopted.

[42] At the start of the war, Prime Minister John Curtin (ALP) reinforced the message of the White Australia Policy by saying: "This country shall remain forever the home of the descendants of those people who came here in peace in order to establish in the South Seas an outpost of the British race.

A Japanese invasion fleet headed for the Australian Territory of New Guinea was only halted by the intervention of the United States Navy in the Battle of the Coral Sea.

[45] Aboriginal Australians, Torres Strait Islanders, Papua New Guineans and Timorese served in the frontline of the defence of Australia, bringing Australia's racially discriminatory immigration and political rights policies into focus and wartime service gave many Indigenous Australians confidence in demanding their rights upon return to civilian life.

Hostility to this idea was one reason Australia never signed a treaty with China as it was feared the Chinese government would request the abolition of the White Australian policy as an ally.

A spokesman for the Labor Party demanded that it be continued, stating:[47] The policy of White Australia is now, perhaps, the most outstanding political characteristic of this country, and it has been accepted not only by those closely associated with it, but also by those who watched and studied "this interesting experiment" from afar.

Only those who favor the exploitation of a servile coloured race for greed of gain, and a few professional economists and benighted theologians, are now heard in serious criticism of a White Australia; but ... they are encouraged by the ill-timed and inappropriate pronouncements of what are, after all, irresponsible officials.Following the trauma of the Second World War, Australia's vulnerability during the Pacific War and its relatively small population compared to other nations led to policies summarised by the slogan, "populate or perish."

During the war, many non-white refugees, Chinese but also including Malays, Indonesians and Filipinos, arrived in Australia, but Calwell controversially sought to have them all deported.

Menzies: "I don't want to see reproduced in Australia the kind of problem they have in South Africa or in America or increasingly in Great Britain.

[60] In January 1971, Prime Minister John Gorton stated that his government aimed to establish a multi-racial society in Australia and committed to abolishing racial discrimination.

Attempts in 1959 and 1961 failed, with Labor leader Arthur Calwell stating, "It would ruin the Party if we altered the immigration policy ... it was only cranks, long hairs, academics and do-gooders who wanted the change.

At the same time, Holt's government decided to allow foreign non-whites to become permanent residents and citizens after five years (the same as for Europeans), and also removed discriminatory provisions in family reunification policies.

This is reflected by Calwell's comments in his 1972 memoirs, Be Just and Fear Not, in which he made it clear that he maintained his view that non-European people should not be allowed to settle in Australia.

And any man who tries to stigmatise the Australian community as racist because they want to preserve this country for the white race is doing our nation great harm...

It was not until the Fraser Liberal government's review of immigration law in 1978 that all selection of prospective migrants based on country of origin was entirely removed from official policy.

[83] Historian Geoffrey Blainey achieved mainstream recognition for the anti-multiculturalist cause when he wrote that multiculturalism threatened to transform Australia into a "cluster of tribes".

"[citation needed] According to Blainey, such a policy, with its "emphasis on what is different and on the rights of the new minority rather than the old majority," was unnecessarily creating division and threatened national cohesion.

[86] Ihde wrote that the White Australia policy remains a difficult subject within the Australian popular memory of the past as it was the fear of the so-called "Yellow Peril" in the form of Asian immigration and the possibility of Asian nations such as China and Japan posing a military threat to Australia that played a major role in the formation of the Australian federation in 1901.

Some examples of issues and events where this connection has been made include: reconciliation with Indigenous Australians; mandatory detention and the "Pacific Solution"; the 2005 Cronulla riots, and the 2009 attacks on Indians in Australia.

[citation needed] In 2007, the Howard government proposed an Australian Citizenship Test intended "to get that balance between diversity and integration correct in future, particularly as we now draw people from so many different countries and so many different cultures".