Background to Post-War Australian Immigration
Australian Minister for Immigration Arthur Calwell
These two speeches are important because they tell us what the Australian government was thinking immediately after World War II. And looking back this was the change in thinking and policy which would help end the White Australia Policy in the 1970s. Calwell’s theme was that Australia had to ‘Populate or perish’.
Document 1: Speech August 1945 — Additional population
If Australians have learned one lesson from the Pacific War … it is surely that we cannot continue to hold our island continent for ourselves and our descendants unless we greatly increase our numbers. We are but 7 million people and we hold 3 million square miles of this earth’s surface. Our coastline extends for 12 thousand miles and our density of population is only 2.5 persons per square mile … While the world yearns for peace and abhors war, no one can guarantee that there will be no more war … Our first requirement is additional population. We need it for reasons of defence and for the fullest expansion of our economy.
Source for text above: Speech by Arthur Calwell, August 2, 1945
Inquiry questions
- Why did Minister Calwell and the Federal government believe Australia has a defence problem in 1945?
- What solution is proposed for the problem?
Document 2: Speech 1946, ‘the days of our isolation are over’
It is my hope that for every foreign migrant there will be ten people from the United Kingdom … Aliens are and will continue to be admitted only in such numbers and of such classes that they can be readily assimilated. Every precaution is taken to ensure that they are desirable types, and they must satisfy consular or passport officers and security service officers that they are people of good character before their passports are visaed for travel to Australia … the days of our isolation are over.
Source for text above: Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives, 22 November 1946, Vol. 189.
Inquiry questions
- Identify which foreign migrants were preferred by the Australian government?
- What other word is used in the speech for ‘migrant’?
Further source
Pamphlet — ‘Twenty Million Australians in Our Time!’, Arthur Calwell, Australian Federal Minister for Immigration, 8 Sep 1949 (Museum of Victoria). The following quote from this pamphlet illustrates some of his arguments:
‘there can be no argument against immigration at this point of Australian history. We must fill this country or we will lose it. But even if there were no urgent security reason for our immigration drive, there would be sound and cogent economic ones.’
Back to Sequence 1 — The Globalising World: Changing policies and Australian identity History Year 10
