about australia in the 1900
- When the colonies federated in 1901, control of immigration changed. Instead of each colony managing its own system, the Commonwealth now over taken. Assisted passages were offered to encourage migration with piority still being given to the British and Irish. Despite somewhat large numbers of Chinese residents in Australia, the first legislation passed by the new parliament was the Immigration Restriction Act. Often referred to as the ‘White Australia policy’ this effectively banned Asian migration for the next fifty years. That same year the Federal Parliament passed the Pacific Islands Labourers Act to forbid their employment as contract labourers and to deport those already here.
- In 1914, with the outbreak of the First World War, migration almost increased. Furthermore, some migrants from countries previously thought acceptable were now reclassified as ‘enemy aliens’. Those born in Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Bulgaria and Turkey faced captivity or general restrictions on their daily lives. Altogether about 7,000 people were held in camps in New South Wales at Berrima, Trial Bay and Liverpool. After the war, the 1901 Immigration Act was extended to ban people from these countries for five years. The ban on Turkish people was not lifted until 1930.
- With the 1918 peace came a recovery of assisted migration schemes. The British Government offered ex-servicemen free passage to one of the territories or colonies and 17,000 people arrived in Australia between 1919 and 1922. Church and community organisations such as the YMCA and the Salvation Army sponsored migrants. Small numbers also arrived independently. As the United States sought to limit migration of Southern Europeans, increasing numbers of young men from Greece and Italy paid their own way to Australia. By the 1930s, Jewish settlers began arriving in greater numbers, many of them refugees from Hitler’s Europe. However the 1929 stockmarket crash and the Great Depression put an end to the sponsored migrates and it was not until Australia had again fought a war that it was resumed.
- Just as in the First World War, with the outbreak of the Second World War previously acceptable migrants — Germans, Italians, Japanese and Hungarians – were reclassified ‘enemy aliens’ and interned or kept under close police surveillance. No difference was made on the basis of political understandings. Therefore, a large group of Jewish refugees that arrived on theDunera in September 1940 were held first at Hay in New South Wales, and later at Tatura in Victoria.
- From the 1950s, Australia began to reduce its ‘White Australia’ policy. In 1956 non-European residents were allowed to apply for citizenship. Two years later the Dictation Test was stopped as a further means elimination . By the 1960s mixed race migration was becoming easier and in 1967 Australia entered into its first migration agreement with a non-European country, in this case Turkey
- Then in 1972 Australians elected their first Labor government since 1948. As Minister for Immigration, Al Grassby completely changed the official policy. The quota system, based on country of origin and protection of cultural similarity, was replaced by ‘structured selection’. Migrants were to be chosen according to personal and social attributes and occupational group rather than the country of origin. In 1973, declaring Australia a ‘multicultural’ society, Al Grassby announced that every artifact of past ethnic or racial discrimination had been eliminated. The Australian Citizenship Act of that year declared that all migrants were to be accorded equal treatment.
- In 1975 the first of what would become known as ‘boat people’ arrived in Darwin. More than 25 000 arrived in the next thirty years, originally from East Timor and then from Vietnam, China and, most recently, the Middle East. All are subject to compulsory custody while their claims of refugee status are measured. Although Australia has been criticised by the United Nations and Amnesty International for the injustice of interring all illegal migrants, particularly children, it continues to this day.
- In 1988 the Fitzgerald Inquiry led to further changes in migration with a move away from ‘family reunion’ towards an emphasis on skilled and business categories. The assisted passage scheme had ended in 1981 and only refugees are given any level of support on their arrival in Australia. In 1996, for the first time in Australia’s migration history, the number of British migrants arriving fell to second place behind New Zealand. Renewed prosperity in Europe has also meant that, where once Italians and Greeks made up the majority of non-British new arrivals, today, after New Zealand, it is people from China, South Africa and India. Conflicts overseas have also meant that Australia is now taking refugees from countries previously unrepresented. In 2006 the fastest growing refugee group is from Sudan followed by Afghanistan and Iraq.