Last Wednesday I heard on Australia’s Radio National that the population of Australia has reached 24 million. Strange, when I was a kid in primary school, the population was 8 million. Australia’s population has tripled in my lifetime.
A great deal of this increase came about, not through births, but through migration. I remember the influx of European migrants after WWII, made palatable to this insular nation by the fear engendered during the war by the threat of a Japanese invasion. “Populate or perish!” we were told. “All those yellow races to the north want our beautiful country, and we must fill it up ASAP!” This extensive immigration program was only possible because the displaced people coming to Australia as migrants after the war were white. NO way would Australia have accepted coloured migrants in 1947. The foremost intellectual paper of the day The Bulletin ran “Australia for the White Man” on its masthead, just under its title.
When the government decided to end the White Australia Policy in 1973 and take in migrants who were ugh, shriek, not white, it had a problem on its hands. The country had been racist ever since its inception in 1788, and this racist attitude became law with the British Colonial Office’s declaration of terra nullius in 1835. This meant that anyone on what was now government property without government permission (viz. The Aborigines) could be treated as trespassers; it also quashed any treaties already signed with Aboriginal tribes. (This state of affairs continued until parliament passed the Aboriginal Land Rights Act in 1976, which made it possible for dispossessed Aboriginal tribes to begin to claim back at least some of their land.)
The declaration of terra nullius cleared the way for European settlers to take over the land, in the process eradicating a great number of the original inhabitants (occasionally via hunts, massacres and poisoned flour). The results of this are clear to see in the table below.
Table 1.1 Ethnic Composition of the Australian People (per cent)
| Ethnic Origin | 1787 | 1846 | 1861 | 1891 | 1947 | 1988 |
| [Source: Charles Price, Ethnic Groups in Australia, Policy Option Paper prepared for the office of Multicultural Affairs, 1989, p 2]. | ||||||
| Aboriginal | 100.0 | 41.5 | 13.3 | 3.4 | 0.8 | 1.0 |
However, Aborigines were not the exclusive recipients of race hatred from Anglo-Celtic Australians. When Chinese diggers came to Australia in the 1860s, attracted by the Gold Rushes, they were treated with the same mistrust.
[Newspaper cartoon of 1886]
When the government announced an end to the White Australia Policy in 1973, it had to mount a new campaign. They called this multiculturalism. Australia is a part of the wider world, they now cried, we can’t be an island any longer.
Although Donald Horne had removed “Australia for the White Man” from The Bulletin’s masthead on becoming editor-in-chief in 1961, most of the inhabitants of Australia were still racist, and the entrenched views of more than two hundred years have proven difficult to eradicate. In 2005, the Cronulla Race Riots demonstrated this to the world.
Still, the government perseveres, but there are setbacks. As recently as September 2015, elite Aboriginal footballer and Australian of the Year 2014, Adam Goodes, decided to retire, following consistent booing from racist spectators after he’d had a girl who called him an “ape” ejected from the stadium. This booing was not a one-off thing, but continued over months, game after game.
Although Goodes in a press conference attributed his retirement to his “35-year-old knees”, and “a number of factors”, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the continued booing had had a great deal to do with it. (For a good rundown on the controversy, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Goodes#Controversy)
So now we are officially 24 million, with people of European descent comprising about 88% of the population, 74% of this being of Anglo-Celtic origin. But have we put the White Australia Policy behind us? With the Goodes incident mere months in the past and new Muslim controversies looming, I doubt it. The mistrust of more than two centuries is not so easily eradicated, despite the government’s perseverance. I am reminded of that fine last line of The Great Gatsby by E Scott Fitzgerald:
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
“Advance, Australia Fair” still has more than one meaning for some.
Danielle de Valera 
It’s interesting how much American and Austrailian history parallel each other. We weren’t founded the same way, but we did have white slaves, as well as black. Two shameful histories that conservatives are determined to keep repeating in one way or another. I read a fascinating novel, Fortunate Son, based on a true story, the enslavement of a young Irishman in the colonies. That history is almost invisible here. And the actual history is documented in White Cargo. Fascinating stuff.
Thanks for the comment, Catana; I notice the Australians are giving the post a wide berth. Was the book you read Australian? If so, it might have been Albert Facey’s A Fortunate Life. The history of that book’s interesting: Facey wrote it by hand, intending to pay Fremantle Arts Press to publish it. When they saw what it contained, they offered Facey a contract and published it themselves. It was later made into a film called (I think) A Fortunate Life.
Fortunate Son had nothing to do with Australia. It’s by David Marlett, and chronicles, in fiction, the life of James Annesley, who was actually sold into slavery and transported to America. It’s extemely interesting, and well-written.
Why are Australians still having so much trouble acknowledging their history? I shouldn’t even ask that, really. It isn’t any better here.
Thanks for clearing that up abput fortunate son. Re your last question, I don’t know. I only know there’s a tremendous gap between how things really are and how political correctness would like them to be.
But have we put the White Australia Policy behind us? de Valera (of South Golden Beach)
The more things change the more they stay the same. Anon (probably)
Those who don’t know their history are condemned to repeat it. Lord Acton (I think)
I have written this history so that the horrors of the present can provide insight into future events… because events that happened in the past, human nature being what it is, will at some time, and in much the same way, be repeated. Thucydides (guaranteed)
To engage with that story [of how we became who we are today] will be to re-member the future… to re-imagine it, to re-commit to it… to hope that as the consensus about what it means to be Australian changes, it does so in a way that re-members how we changed from White Australia to the land of the fair go and the better opportunity. Smith (Phantom of the Cenotaph)
Date: Sat, 20 Feb 2016 22:46:57 +0000 To: paulvincentsmith@hotmail.com
Thanks for the comment, Paul. I’m sure things will change for the better eventually; they have already – to some degree. But I’m sure you’ll agree there’s quite a way to go yet.