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The White Australia Policy is a popular term which refers to the policies once held by all governments and all mainstream political parties in Australia based on excluding non-white people from immigrating to the Australian continent, centred around the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901. Variations of the policies were operative from the late 1880s until the 1950s, with certain elements of the policy surviving until the 1970s. Although the expression "White Australia Policy" was never in official use, it was common in political and public debate throughout the period.

Prior to the Second World War, Australia's position as a nation with a predominantly European population was maintained. Under the unofficial title of the White Australia Policy, various policies were in place to ensure this situation continued: immigration laws were administered strictly to ensure that non-Europeans were not admitted, citizenship requirements were very exacting and well-guarded, and governments of all hues were committed to a White Australia.

The Australian colonists' reaction to the Chinese took precedents, not from the contact experience with Aboriginal people or non-white indentured labour, but from anti-transportation movements. The anti-Chinese movements were initiated under the pretext of restricting economic competition, following the opposition to further transportation of convicts in the 1830s and 1840s. (Of the convicts transported from the United Kingdom to New South Wales and Tasmania between 1812 and 1852, over two hundred have been identified as being of African descent. There were also others transported from the West Indies, Mauritius and Khoikhoi from the Cape of Good Hope).

Origins of the Policy

The origin of the policy can be traced back to the 1850s when large numbers of Chinese immigrated to Australia during the gold rushes. Many of the Anglo-Australian population resented Chinese who were undercutting white labour prices, and also disliked some Chinese cultural practices. There were several race riots. In response, the newly self-governing colonies introduced restrictions on Chinese immigration. By 1888, Chinese were excluded from all the Australian colonies, although those Chinese who were already in Australia were not deported. Prime Minister Edmund Barton stated that "The doctrine of the equality of man was never intended to apply to the equality of the Englishman and the Chinaman."

Another source of the policy was opposition to labourers from Melanesia (known pejoratively as "Kanakas") in the sugar-cane fields of Queensland. A justification for the importation of Kanakas to Queensland was the theory, commonly held by medical specialists, that European men were physiologically unsuited to work in the tropics. Many of the Kanakas were indentured labour who were brought into Australia for a fixed period on low wages. It is probable that the availability of a low cost and relatively docile work force was a significant reason for the importation of the Kanakas. There is also evidence that some of the Kanakas had been forcibly removed from their homes in a practice known as "blackbirding." The desire to stamp out this human trafficking, and to prevent the importation of further non-European labour, was one of the principal motives of the Federation movement of the 1890s. Around 7,000 Islanders were subsequently deported. Afterward the government and the trade union made sure that only white labourers were allowed to work in the field.

The main rationale of the policy was to keep Australia racially "pure". "I am prepared to do all that is necessary to ensure that Australia shall be free for all time from the contamination and the degrading influence of inferior races." (Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, 12th Sept 1901 p.4845) The trade unions and their political party, the Labor Party, were the driving forces for White Australia. Chris Watson, the leader of the Labor Party stated that "The objection I have to the mixing of these coloured people with the white people of Australia - although I admit it is to a large extent tinged with considerations of an industrial nature - lies...in the possibility and probability of racial contamination." It was widely believed that racial purity was essential for social and political stability. "The unity of Australia is nothing, if that does not imply a united race. A united race not only means that its members can intermix, intermarry and associate without degradation on either side, but implies one inspired by the same ideas..." (Alfred Deakin, Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, 12 September 1901, p.4807). See Stolen Generation for other events related to the notion of racial purity in Australia.

The fears about Chinese immigration were expressed in terms of the Yellow peril, and arguably were most intense in Australia. In 1901 the Australian continent had a population of 3.7 million, and was a short distance from Asia. There was a belief that Chinese immigrants might "swamp" European Australia. The unions feared that uncontrolled immigration might force wages down. This was not an unfounded belief - many employers openly stated that they wished to do just that.

This sentiment is expressed in a 1906 poem written by Henry Lawson, one of the best known Australian poets. In "To Be Amused"

You ask me to be gay and glad While lurid clouds of danger loom, And vain and bad and gambling mad, Australia races to her doom. You bid me sing the light and fair, The dance, the glance on pleasure's wings - While you have wives who will not bear, And beer to drown the fear of things.

A war with reason you would wage To be amused for your short span, Until your children's heritage Is claimed for China by Japan. The football match, the cricket score, The "scraps", the tote, the mad'ning Cup – You drunken fools that evermore "To-morrow morning" sober up!

.......

Store guns and ammunition first, Build forts and warlike factories, Sink bores and tanks where drought is worst, Give over time to industries. The outpost of the white man's race, Where next his flag shall be unfurled, Make clean the place! Make strong the place! Call white men in from all the world!

The Policy in practice

In 1901, the new Federal Parliament, as its first piece of legislation, passed the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 to "place certain restrictions on immigration and... for the removal... of prohibited immigrants". The act drew on similar legislation in South Africa. Early drafts of the Act explicitly banned non-Europeans from migrating to Australia. But objections from the British government, which feared that such a measure would offend British subjects in India and Britain's allies in Japan, caused the Barton government to remove this wording. Instead, a "dictation test" was introduced as a device for excluding unwanted immigrants. Immigration officials were given the power to exclude any person who failed to pass a 50-word dictation test in any European language.

Australia was not the only British Dominion to have such immigration policies. At this time many people believed that there were deep and innate differences between races, and that their own race was superior to all other races. Such views were sometimes accompanied by such policies such as Jim Crow Laws. South Africa, Canada, and New Zealand also had racially restrictive immigration policies in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Similar restrictions also existed in the United States of America. In 1905 legislation was introduced to the United Kingdom, principally affecting Jews. (see also Komagata Maru, and the Red Summer of 1919). Australian soldiers were involved in the assaults on the Black British community in Cardiff, Wales in 1919.

The Policy and the Paris Peace Conference

At the 1919 Paris Peace Conference following World War I, Japan attended the conference with the explicit intention of having a racial equality clause included in the League of Nations Charter. Japanese policy reflected their desire to remove or to ease the immigration restriction against Chinese and Japanese in America which Japan regarded as a humiliation and affront to its prestige. Emperor Showa (Hirohito) was later to suggest that this was one of the reasons for the Greater East Asian War (Pacific Theatre of World War II).

Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes vehemently opposed the proposition. Hughes recognised that such a clause would be a threat to White Australia and made it clear to Lloyd George that he would leave the conference if the clause was adopted. When the proposal failed Hughes reported in the Australian parliament, "The White Australia is yours. 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." Australia was one of few countries which had race as a dominant political ideology at the time. Arthur Calwell, who retired as Labor leader in 1967, was the last major Australian politician to publicly express adherence to the White Australia policy. During World War II Australia requested the US to send only white troops to protect it against Japanese invasion. The US refused and non-white units had to be admitted. This marked the beginning of the end of the White Australia policy, though it retained almost unanimous public and political support until the late 1940s. After World War II opinion began to shift. The deportation of Malays, Indonesians and Filipinos who had arrived during the war as refugees aroused protests. Some of the refugees were allowed to stay, and some Japanese women who had married Australian servicemen were also admitted. The revelation of the crimes of the Holocaust in Europe, the struggle for independence in India and more recently the South African struggle against Apartheid have had the effect of making white separatism less acceptable as a political ideology.

Abolition of the Policy

Under the 1950 Colombo Plan, students from Asian countries were admitted to study at Australian universities. This helped break down racial attitudes. This trend continued when in 1957 non-whites with 15 years' residence in Australia were allowed to become citizens. The Migration Act of 1958 abolished the dictation test and introduced a simpler system for entry.

After a review of the non-European policy in March 1966, Immigration Minister Hubert Opperman announced applications for migration would be accepted from well-qualified people on the basis of their suitability as settlers, their ability to integrate readily and their possession of qualifications positively useful to Australia.

At the same time, the Holt Liberal government decided a number of 'temporary resident' non-Europeans, who were not required to leave Australia, could become permanent residents and citizens after five years (the same as for Europeans).

The effective end of the White Australia policy is usually dated to 1973, when the Whitlam Labor government implemented a series of amendments preventing the enforcement of racial aspects of the immigration law. These amendments legislated that all migrants, of whatever origin, be eligible to obtain citizenship after three years of permanent residence and ratified all international agreements relating to immigration and race. The 1975 Racial Discrimination Act made the use of racial criteria for any official purpose illegal.

It was not until the Fraser 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. Currently, a large number of Australia's immigrants are from countries such as China and India, though the United Kingdom and New Zealand respectively remain the two largest single sources of immigrants.

Legacy

Today many Australians maintain a European backround. Some 85% of Australians are of European ancestry, the most frequently stated ancestries being English: 33.9%, Irish: 10.2%, Italian: 4.3%, German: 4.0%, Scottish: 2.9%, and Greek: 2.0%.

Some 12% are Asian (which include Turkish, Arab, Persian, Indian Sub-continental, South East Asian and East Asian), 3% are Aboriginal and other.

The demographics are predicted to change towards a more dusky Australia with the influx of large scale immigration from the Third World under the Howard Government. The Australian Bureau of Statistics is predicting that by 2100 there may well be very few 'White' Australians left due to falling birth-rates among the native White Australians and a population explosion among the newly arrived immigrants (see graphs).

In Australian Society, Southern Europeans may not be regarded as 'White' by many people (see definition of Wog), restricting the meaning to people of Anglo-Saxon, Nordic, Celtic and Germanic origins whilst South and West Asians are often not perceived as being Asian, restricting the meaning to peoples from the Far East.

Today support for racial restriction in migration is openly expressed by a small number of political groups such as One Nation. In the 1980s and 1990s their primary focus was on people from East and South East Asian background. Many people view the success of One Nation to be symptoms of the White Australia policy reasserting itself. In recent year, the focus of this sentiment has shifted to people of Arab or Islamic origin or culture. It has been argued that the 2005 Sydney race riots are a result of the policy of multiculturalism. Conversely, it has also been argued that the riots took place due to a lack of multiculturalism.

However, much more profound effect of White Australian Policy can be seen in the discussion of Australian identity within the general public. The view that the White Australian Policy was not racist is still openly expressed by both sides of the political spectrum. The argument is largely based on the argument that the principal force driving policies of racial exclusion in Australia was not a belief that non-Europeans were inferior, but fear of their economic competition and fear of the continent being swamped was well justified. Indeed during the height of the policy, many Australian politicians, just like their South African counterparts, deflected the criticism of the policy along this line. This argument is countered by pointing out that Australians had no concerns with being "swamped" by poor white labourers and that state policy in fact encouraged it as a means to populate the continent. Moreover, Prime Minister Edmond Barton stated, "I do not think that the doctrine of the equality of man was really ever intended to include racial equality. There is no racial equality. There is that basic inequality. These races are, in comparison with white races… Unequal and inferior." (Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, 26 September 1901, p.5233)

Like other British Dominions, Australia was established as a white colony, replacing the native population in the process. Moreover, Australia is neighboured to non European countries. During the 1980s and 1990s, there were a number of views that were widely promoted by the government and media. These are Australian republicanism, Reconciliation with Aborigines, Multiculturalism, and Asia (or Asia Pacific which Australia is arguably a part of). Some conservatives in Australa ridiculed this by pointing out that Australia is a Western country based on a European heritage. The present government under John Howard's conservative Liberal party is often seen as the backlash to these movements. More importantly, these attempts were widely ridiculed in South East Asian countries, where it was pointed out that no Asian countries consider Asia as a valid cultural or political category. Moreover, much promotion of multi-culturalism during the period focus on cosmetic aspects of culture such as ethnic cuisine or music. This was widely contrasted with virtual absence of "Asian" or non-whites in higher levels of the political or economic hierarchy, not to mention the virtual absence of non whites in Australian media, particularly in soap operas, bar token non-white characters in SBS productions. Moreover, the debate over the difference between integration and assimilation was largely glossed over.

In overseas, and in Australia, any policies or events which have the slightest racial implication are often seen in the light of history. This is reflected in the media coverage of Pauline Hanson, Pacific Solution, trial of Schapelle Corby in Indonesia and recent race riot in Sydney. Moreover, former opposition Labor party leader Mark Latham, in his book The Latham Diaries, has referred to the ANZUS alliance as a legacy of the White Australia policy insinuating that the military alliance between Australia, New Zealand, and the United States has race as one of its founding principles.

See also

• South Sea Islanders
• Sinophobia
• Sydney Lebanese-Australian gang rapes
• 2005 Sydney race riots

References

• John Bailey (2001). The White Divers of Broome. Sydney, MacMillan. ISBN 0-7329-1078-1.
• Wulf D. Hund (2006): White Australia oder der Krieg der Historiker. In: Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik, 3.
• Laksiri Jayasuriya, David Walker, Jan Gothard (Eds.) (2003): Legacies of White Australia. Crawley, University of Western Australia Press.
• James Jupp and Maria Kabala (1993). The Politics of Australian Immigration. Australian Government Publishing Service.
• Myra Willard (1923). History of the White Australia Policy to 1920. Melbourne University Press. (old but still very useful)
• Ian Duffield (1993). Skilled Workers or Marginalised Poor? The African Population of the United Kingdom, 1812-1852. Immigrants And Minorities Vol. 12, No. 3; Frank Cass.
• Australian Bureau of Statistics ( http://www.abs.gov.au/ )

External links

• "Immigration Restriction Act 1901". National Archives of Australia: Documenting a Democracy. Retrieved February 14. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help) (scan of the Act and information)

• Australian immigration
• Discrimination
• Politics and race