What was the White Australia Policy?

The White Australia Policy was the set of laws and administrative practices that restricted non-European immigration to Australia from 1901 to 1973. It operated through the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 (which used a dictation test in any European language to exclude unwanted migrants) and related legislation, and was supported by both major political parties for most of its history.

The Policy emerged from nineteenth-century colonial anti-Chinese and anti-Pacific Islander sentiment that had produced restrictive legislation in each colony from the 1850s onwards. The 1888 Intercolonial Conference set the framework for coordinated restrictions. After federation, the new Commonwealth government's first Acts included the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 and the Pacific Island Labourers Act 1901 (which deported about 7,500 Pacific Islander workers from the Queensland sugar industry between 1906 and 1908). The Naturalisation Act 1903 made it almost impossible for non-Europeans to become naturalised Australians.

The dictation test was the Policy's main mechanism. Immigration officers could require any prospective migrant to write down 50 words in any European language (chosen by the officer). The test was used selectively: Europeans were typically allowed through without being tested, while non-Europeans were given the test in a language they did not know and failed. The most notorious use was the case of Egon Kisch, a Czech anti-fascist journalist who arrived in Australia in 1934 and was tested in Scots Gaelic to exclude him from a left-wing speaking tour. Kisch won his case in the High Court but the practice continued.

The Policy began to ease after the Second World War. The Chifley Labor government's 1947 to 1949 reforms admitted Japanese war brides of Australian servicemen. The Holt Coalition government's 1966 reforms ended specific restrictions on non-European professional and skilled migrants. The Whitlam Labor government's 1973 reforms completed the dismantling, introducing a strictly non-racial migration framework based on skills, family, and humanitarian need. Multicultural Australia, with about 30 per cent of Australians born overseas and more than 270 ancestries represented, is the product of the policy's complete reversal. The history of the White Australia Policy is now taught in schools, examined by academic historians, and remembered as one of the country's most consequential and morally troubling policy frameworks.