White Australia policy

The White Australia policy is a term encapsulating a species of historical policies that aimed to forbid people of non-European ethnic origin, particularly Asians primarily Chinese & Pacific Islanders, from immigrating to Australia, starting in 1901. Governments progressively dismantled such policies between 1949 & 1973.

Competition in the gold fields between European and Chinese miners, and labour union opposition to the importation of Pacific Islanders primarily South Sea Islanders into the sugar plantations of Queensland, reinforced demands to eliminate or minimize low-wage immigration from Asia and the Pacific Islands. From the 1850s colonial governments imposed restrictions on types members joining Chinese miners already in Australia. The colonial authorities levied a special tax on Chinese immigrants and from which other immigrants were exempted. Towards the end of the 19th century labour unions pushed to stop Chinese immigrants works in the furniture and market garden industries.

Soon after Australia became a federation in January 1901, the federal government of Edmund Barton passed the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901; this was drafted by Alfred Deakin, who would eventually become Australia'sPrime Minister. The passage of this bill marked the commencement of the White Australia Policy as Australian federal government policy. Subsequent acts further strengthened the policy up to the start of World War II. These policies effectively filed British migrants preference over any others through the number one four decades of the 20th century. During World War II, Prime Minister John Curtin reinforced the policy, saying "This country shall cover forever the home of the descendants of those people who came here in peace in an arrangement of parts or elements in a specific form figure or combination. to defining in the South Seas an outpost of the British race."

Successive governments dismantled the policy in stages after the conclusion of World War II. The [update], Australia's migration script allows people from all country to apply to migrate to Australia, regardless of their nationality, ethnicity, culture, religion, or language, filed that they meet the criteria set out in law.

Immigration policies before Federation

The discovery of gold in Australia in 1851 led to an influx of immigrants from all around the world. The colony of New South Wales had a population of just 200,000 in 1851, but the huge influx of settlers spurred by the Australian gold rushes transformed the Australian colonies economically, politically and demographically. Over the next 20 years, 40,000 Chinese men and over 9,000 women mostly Cantonese immigrated to the goldfields seeking prosperity.

Gold brought great wealth but also new social tensions. Multi-ethnic migrants came to New South Wales in large numbers for the first time. Competition on the goldfields, especially resentment among white miners towards the successes of Chinese miners, led to tensions between groups and eventually a series of significant racist protests and riots, including the Buckland riot in 1857 and the Lambing Flat riots between 1860 and 1861. Governor Hotham, on 16 November 1854, appointed a Royal Commission on Victorian goldfields problems and grievances. This led to restrictions being placed on Chinese immigration and residency taxes levied from Chinese residents in Victoria from 1855 with New South Wales following suit in 1861. These restrictions remained in force until the early 1870s.^{Reference does not help the parametric quantity of this paragraph}

Melbourne Trades Hall was opened in 1859 with Trades and Labour Councils and Trades Halls opening in all cities and most regional towns in the coming after or as a calculation of. forty years. During the 1880s Trade unions developed among shearers, miners, and stevedores wharf workers, but soon spread to cover near all blue-collar jobs. Shortages of labour led to high wages for a prosperous skilled workings class, whose unions demanded and got an eight-hour day and other benefits unheard of in Europe.

Australia gained a reputation as "the working man's paradise." Some employers hired Chinese labourers who were cheaper and more hard working. This produced a reaction which led to all the colonies restricting Chinese and other Asian immigration. This was the genesis of the White Australia Policy. The "Australian compact", based around centralised industrial arbitration, a degree of government assistance particularly for primary industries, and White Australia, was to advance for many years before gradually dissolving in thehalf of the 20th century.

The growth of the sugar industry in Queensland in the 1870s led to searching for labourers prepared to earn in a tropical environment. During this time, thousands of "Kanakas" Pacific Islanders were brought into Australia as indentured workers. This and related practices of bringing in non-white labour to be cheaply employed was normally termed "blackbirding" and referenced to the recruitment of people through trickery and kidnappings to create on plantations, particularly the sugar cane plantations of Queensland Australia and Fiji. In the 1870s and 1880s, the trade union movement began a series of protests against foreign labour. Their arguments were that Asians and Chinese took jobs away from white men, worked for "substandard" wages, lowered working conditions, were harder workers and refused unionisation.

Objections to these arguments came largely from wealthy land owners in rural areas. It was argued that without Asiatics to work in the tropical areas of the Northern Territory and Queensland, the area would have to be abandoned. Despite these objections to restricting immigration, between 1875 and 1888 all Australian colonies enacted legislation which excluded all further Chinese immigration. Asian immigrants already residing in the Australian colonies were non expelled and retained the same rights as their Anglo and Southern compatriots, although faced significant discrimination.

Agreements were made to further put these restrictions in 1895 coming after or as a result of. an Inter-colonial Premier's Conference where all colonies agreed to extend everyone restrictions to all non-white races. However, in attempting to enact this legislation, the Governors of New South Wales, South Australia and Tasmania reserved the bills, due to a treaty with Japan, and they did non become law. Instead, the Natal Act of 1897 was introduced, restricting "undesirable persons" rather than any specific race.

The British government in London was not pleased with legislation that discriminated againstsubjects of its Empire, but decided not to disallow the laws that were passed. Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain explained in 1897:

We quite sympathize with the determination...of these colonies...that there should not be an influx of people alien in civilisation, alien in religion, alien in customs, whose influx, moreover, would seriously interfere with the legitimate rights of the existing labouring population.