Looking for Australia by John Hirst

Author:John Hirst [John Hirst]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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Parkes had declared that the nation in effect already existed, for did not ‘the crimson thread of kinship’ run through them all? He was referring to the British blood of the colonists, and Britishness was and remained a key part of the Australian identity. All the government schemes to recruit migrants to Australia brought out Britons. That changed after Australia faced the threat of invasion in World War II. In 1945 the Labor government of Ben Chifley planned a massive migration program in order to boost population and so make Australia better able to defend itself.

The government contained the first federal minister of immigration, Arthur Calwell, who was an admirer of the United States and its success in integrating migrants from all over Europe. He was ready to look to Europe for migrants, though he promised that nine out of ten migrants would still be British. Calwell was himself a fierce defender of the White Australia policy and knowing that the bulk of the Australian people shared his views he wanted the Europeans to be as little ‘woggy’ as possible. The light-skinned Scandinavians featured largely in the government’s plans but sadly their governments were not interested in promoting migration. 140 All the government’s planning came unstuck because of the shortage of shipping. The only ships available were those being used by the United Nations to ship persons displaced by war to the new world. Calwell, in Europe, decided to take these displaced people. He cabled home to Chifley for permission and received it. The cabinet was not consulted for the very good reason that it would have opposed this move. Already there was opposition to the departure from an exclusively British migration.

Calwell had the great disappointment of never being prime minister, but he had more influence on the course of Australian history than most men who have held that office. He was not alone in wanting a large migration scheme but it was he who at a crucial moment took the great risk of launching it as overwhelmingly a European scheme, ditching his nine-out-of-ten Britons promise. He came home and organised the first large-scale government advertising and public-relations campaign to ensure that Australians accepted what he had done.

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