White Australia policy, formally Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, in Australian history, fundamental legislation of the new Commonwealth of Australia that effectively stopped all non-European immigration into the country and that contributed to the development of a racially insulated white society.
End of the White Australia policy. Harold Holt. The Holt government effectively dismantled the White Australia policy.
The March 1966 announcement was the watershed in abolishing the 'White Australia' policy, and non-European migration began to increase.
The White Australia Policy was introduced in 1901, and was formerly known as the Immigration Restriction Act. The policy was designed to minimise the migration of all non-whites, predominantly non-European. However the Indigenous locals, who were considered a 'dying race', were also targeted.
Because fewer British migrants came to Australia than expected, Calwell slowly began to change the White Australia policy to allow other groups of people, made homeless by the Second World War, to come to Australia.
The policy was openly racist, and was designed to support the ideal of Australia as a 'purely' white nation, untroubled by the threats non-white populations were thought to pose to the country's social, political and moral standards.
About the White Australia policy
The Immigration Restriction Act was one of the first Commonwealth laws passed after Federation. It was based on the existing laws of the colonies. The aim of the law was to limit non-white (particularly Asian) immigration to Australia, to help keep Australia 'British'.
The Immigration Restriction Bill, which enacted the white Australia policy, was initiated in the House of Representatives by Prime Minister Edmund Barton on 5 June 1901, nine sitting days after the Duke of York had opened the Australian Parliament on 9 May 1901.
In the 1860s, Victoria became the first state to pass laws authorising Aboriginal children to be removed from their parents. Similar policies were later adopted by other states and territories – and by the federal government when it was established in the 1900s.
In Australia, between 1910 and the 1970s*, governments, churches and welfare bodies forcibly removed many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families. These children became known as the Stolen Generations.
In some quarters, people of non-British (and especially non-European) heritage were regarded as being inferior, greedy or unable to fit in with dominant Australian society. Many Australians wanted their country to remain a paradise for white, working men and their homemaking wives.
A white person is defined as a person who has European ancestry. In Australia, about 90.2 percent of the nation's population is white. The following is a breakdown of some of the major ethnic groups that fall under this category: To unlock this lesson you must be a Study.com Member.
From 1788 to 1868 Britain transported more than 160,000 convicts from its overcrowded prisons to the Australian colonies, forming the basis of the first migration from Europe to Australia.
28 February – The federal voting age is lowered from 21 to 18. The state of New South Wales had already enacted such a change in 1970. 19 July – Lois D'Arcy was the first independent civil marriage celebrant ever appointed – by Attorney-General Lionel Murphy. 31 December – AC/DC perform their first major gig in Sydney.
However, for others, it led to prospects that were unavailable back home. Dr Jim Hammerton, who interviewed several British emigrants for his book Ten Pound Poms: Australia's Invisible Migrants, says: "To get on a boat for six weeks and go to an unknown continent was a huge thing.
22 September – Ansett-ANA Flight 149 crashes near Winton, Queensland, killing all 24 people on board. 26 November – The Liberal government of Harold Holt scores a massive victory in the 1966 federal election, and is returned to power with the largest majority in the federal parliament's 65-year history.
It is true that there has been, historically, a small number of claims that there were people in Australia before Australian Aborigines, but these claims have all been refuted and are no longer widely debated. The overwhelming weight of evidence supports the idea that Aboriginal people were the first Australians.
Aboriginal people are known to have occupied mainland Australia for at least 65,000 years. It is widely accepted that this predates the modern human settlement of Europe and the Americas.
The Bringing Them Home report (produced by the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families in 1987), says that "at least 100,000" children were removed from their parents.
The first European Australians came from United Kingdom and Ireland. The First white child born in New South Wales was Rebecca Small (22 September 1789 – 30 January 1883), was born in Port Jackson, the eldest daughter of John Small a boatswain in the First Fleet which arrived at Botany Bay in January 1788.
Among other things, it has been used in reference to Australia's natural resources, weather, history, its early dependency of the British system, distance from problems elsewhere in the world, and other sorts of supposed prosperity.
The changes to policy were a product of three main factors: the campaign waged by progressive thinking politicians, business people, academics, university students, religious figures and some trade unions for immigration reform; diplomatic protests by newly-independent countries in the region against the policy, and ...
Initial invasion and colonisation (1788 to 1890) The arrival of Lieutenant James Cook, and then Arthur Phillip in 1788, marked the beginning of 'white settlement'. From 1788, Australia was treated by the British as a colony of settlement, not of conquest.
Further, researchers at Monash University showed that many Australians feel that asylum-seekers arriving on boats are violating their sovereignty; that is, 'these asylum-seekers are choosing us rather than we are choosing them'. In 2008, Rudd's government repealed the legislation on the basis that it was inhumane.
Published in the Sydney based The Bulletin Magazine on August 21, 1886, “The Mongolian Octopus – His Grip on Australia” cartoon was pointedly used as a form of propaganda against Mongolian & Chinese immigration. The cartoon illustrates an octopus with a human head and eight outstretched arms.