Migration Act 1966

In 1966 the Liberal government of Harold Holt introduced the Migration Act 1966 to the Australian Parliament. The act, which equalised requirements for British, European and non-European migrants, was a watershed event in the history of Australian immigration, effectively ending the longstanding White Australia policy and beginning the country's transition into a multicultural state. Although neither the first nor the last major act to dismantle immigration policies widely criticised as racist, the Migration Act 1966 stands as the most significant correction.

Background

Since its inception as a set of British colonies in 1788, Australia favoured arrivals from Great Britain over other nations. However, true immigration restrictions did not begin until the mid-nineteenth century following the discovery of gold. Between the first gold strike in 1851 and 1871, hundreds of thousands of aspiring prospectors flooded into Australia, including many Chinese. Some 40,000 to 45,000 Chinese immigrants arrived during this time, transforming the region both economically and socially. Tensions between white and Chinese miners flared, borne of whites' disdain for Chinese social practices as well as competition for and resentment over gold. This led to riots and attacks on Chinese camps throughout the late 1850s and early 1860s.

In 1854, the lieutenant-governor of Victoria, Charles Hotham, appointed a royal commission to study the causes of unrest in the goldfields. In response, Victoria enacted a quota and £10 landing tax on Chinese migrants under the Chinese Immigration Act 1855, and imposed residency taxes. The landing tax was repealed two years later as Chinese migrants had simply circumvented the law by crossing over from South Australian ports. New South Wales enacted the Chinese Immigration Restriction and Regulation Act 1861 after the ten-month Lambing Flat riot. It not only imposed a quota along with landing and residency taxes on Chinese migrants, but also prevented their naturalisation. Queensland and Western Australia passed similar legislation in the 1870s and 1880s.

Five of the six colonial governments further restricted Chinese immigration in 1888, when, in an attempt to suppress wages, industrialists tried to import cheaper labour from abroad, sparking outraged amongst the increasingly powerful labour unions. Arguing that Asian workers lowered wages, safety standards and refused unionisation, the unions forced through more restrictions on non-white migrants entering the colonies in the 1890s. Broadly, these race-based immigration laws came to be known as the White Australia policy.

Following Federation in 1901, the Commonwealth of Australia immediately took on the issue of immigration with the passage of the Immigration Restriction Act andthe Pacific Island Labourers Act that same year. (The Immigration Restriction Act 1901 was popularly referred to as the White Australia policy thereafter.) Together, these laws were bolstered by nativist and white supremacist arguments in Parliament. Concerned that Great Britain would object to racial restrictions affecting its colonial subjects, the Parliament of Australia instead imposed written dictation tests on all prospective migrants to exclude non-Europeans. And under the Pacific Island Labourers Act 1901, Parliament could deport any Pacific Islander contract labourer beginning in 1906.

The White Australia policy remained in effect well into the twentieth century. Following World War II, the Labor government of Ben Chifley, and particularly Minister for Immigration Arthur Calwell, argued that for its size Australia simply had too few people to maintain and protect its national boundaries. Calwell first made efforts to deport many of the non-white refugees who had come to Australia during the war, many of whom had married Australians, but protests meant many were allowed to stay. This opening of immigration policy, along with a general rise in tolerance, led to easing of immigration restrictions throughout the 1950s and 1960s, most significantly with the 1958 abolition of English-language tests. During that period about half of the immigrants admitted to Australia were Jews or southern or eastern European; the remainder were generally western and northern Europeans.

The Event

In 1960 the University of Melbourne published a pamphlet titled Immigration: Control or Colour Bar?, which called for an end to the White Australia policy. Riding a leftward wave in Australian politics, the ruling Liberal Party elected Harold Holt as the nation's prime minister in January 1966. Among its very first acts, the Holt government quickly introduced the Migration Act 1966, which established that settlement in Australia would be determined not by race or nationality but by skill and factors such as suitability and ease of integration. This merit-based immigration system found broad support in Parliament, becoming law on 6 May 1966 and taking immediate effect.

Impact

Some continued to voice their support for the White Australia policy, however. It did not officially end until Gough Whitlam's Labor government passed a series of amendments in 1973, banning race-based immigration restrictions. These changes were later strengthened by the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 and a 1978 immigration policy review. By 1983, more than 100,000 Asians, Pacific Islanders and Africans had migrated to Australia. Some 80,000 South-East Asian refugees fled conflict in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos between 1975 and 1985, arriving in Australia.

After the White Australia policy was ended, the nation saw a marked increase in non-European immigration and began a noticeable transformation into a multicultural state. Although Australians of European ancestry still made up most of the Australian population by the mid-2010s, Australians of non-European descent remained a fast-growing minority. According to the 2016 census, more than one-quarter of the total population was born overseas and nearly half were either migrants themselves or children of a migrant. By 2016, 40 per cent of migrants were born in Asia, the majority from China or India, as compared to 34 per cent from Europe.

The end of the White Australia policy was not without backlash, however. Almost immediately a vocal nativist movement sprang up in Australian politics, and immigration remains a sensitive and hotly debated topic.

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