White Australian Immigration Analysis

In much of the western world, and particularly in Europe, there is a widespread perception that multiculturalism has ‘failed’ and that governments who once embraced a multicultural approach to diversity are turning away, adopting a strong emphasis on civic integration. As of today however, at least a third of Australian citizens now have ancestors other than British or Irish and Australia has absorbed immigrants from over 240 countries and places around the globe. Our multicultural society is a product of the successive waves of mass immigration following the Second World War. Australia once was an Anglo-Saxon preserve that attempted to exclude people of colour through restricting immigration to people of British or Western Europe background.

According to Alfred Deaken, who actively campaigned for a “White Australia” in 1901, “We are guarding the last part of the world where higher races can live and increase freely for the higher civilisation.” The belief that these ‘degenerate’ populations would overtake and destroy the Anglo-Australian hegemony formed a large part of this exclusion. Similarly, refugees and ‘unauthorised’ immigrants represent an integral part of the contemporary immigration concerns. In a remarkable parallel with historical Australian thought, many potential immigrants have embodied a similar ‘risk’ to Australian racialized thought and have been portrayed as ‘deviant’ or ‘regressive’ (Goldberg 2002). What this demonstrates is that the exclusion of certain persons based on race forms a large part of Australia’s history and more damagingly is evident in contemporary government policy and

In accepts that all humans should be treated as equals and that different cultures can co-exist if they accept liberal values” (JUPP 1996: 40). the rise of multiculturalism in Australia was due to the operations and lobbying of an entire movement and network of people (many now part of the "Multicultural Industry") who pushed for the adoption of multiculturalism as official government policy. James Jupp has admitted that "There is, then, no doubt that a small, mainly politically-involved minority ushered in multiculturalism as public policy". Zubrzycki claimed that "the major breakthrough" came in 1972 when Jean Martin (who largely wrote the 1977 report) gave her Meredith Memorial Lecture on the subject, followed by Grassby 's "much publicised address" on multiculturalism in 1973. Indeed, "Australia 's public debate about 'multiculturalism ' really developed during 1973 with the then Minister of Immigration, Al