Acid Monkey wrote on May 22
nd, 2008 at 3:26pm:
Actually, your statement is true within context but is misleading and incomplete.
It actually was Barton who introduced the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 where he was quoted to say at its implementation "The doctrine of the equality of man was never intended to apply to the equality of the Englishman and the Chinaman." Early drafts of the act explicitly banned "non-Europeans" until pressure from Britain forced Barton to remove the wording for fear of offending the British colony of India and Japanese allies. The "dictation test" was introduced instead.
Relaxation of the Act:
1947 - Non-Europeans are allowed to settle in Australia for business reasons. Labor PM Ben Chifley.
1950 - Colombo Plan. Liberal PM Robert Menzies.
1957 - Non-Europeans who have been in the country for 15 years or more can become citizens. Liberal PM Robert Menzies.
1958 - Revised Migration Act 1958 removed the dictation test. Liberal PM Robert Menzies.
1959 - Australian citizens allowed to sponsor Asian spouses for citizenship. Liberal PM Robert Menzies.
1964 - Conditions of entry for non-Europeans relaxed. Liberal PM Robert Menzies.
1975 - Racial Discrimiination Act 1975 made the racial criteria for immigration illegal. Labor PM Gough Whitlam.
1978 - Revised Migration Act 1978 removes all criteria relating to the country of origin of any applicants. Liberal PM Malcolm Fraser.
Your cited reasons of having only the Liberal Party playing the part in the death of The White Australia Policy is misleading. You cited only the "50s and 60s" and then jumped to Fraser in 1978 (bypassing the most significant and the ACTUAL death of the policy in 1975).
"all conservative party PMs" is really only 1 PM - Menzies.
I wasn't aware that Robert Menzies, Harold Holt, John McEwen, John Gorton and William McMahon were actually all 1 PM - Robert Menzies. Uncannily versatile that dude.
And you confirmed what I already said that Barton introduced the legislation but you missed out the truth about the Liebor Party people who pressed for amendments to exclude 'coloured' people.
Your report, which according to freediver is 'unbiased', is laden with bias.
The dude who wanted to exclude the darkies and the orientals was a full on Liebor dude, name of Chris Watson who became the first Liebor Party PM in 1904.
Quote:Watson and White AustraliaThe first principle of the Australian character, as far as Watson was concerned, was that
Australians should all look like each other. The idea of a White Australia underpinned Australian identity and was crucial to the survival of the nation, as
Watson explained to the Australian Parliament during the debate on the Barton Government’s Immigration Restriction bill in 1901. Watson claimed that Australians lay exposed to a real threat of ‘racial contamination’
unless the Commonwealth government legislated to introduce uniform, national restrictions against non-European immigrants. This disease of illegitimate difference would insidiously creep in and infect white Australians, imported by that most obnoxious of alien categories, ‘the heathen chinee’,
as he belittled Chinese immigrants to Australia.
Watson cursorily acknowledged that his concerns about immigration to Australia by Asians, Africans and indeed by Pacific Islanders were ‘tinged with considerations of an industrial nature’, Labor’s traditional objection to cheap foreign labour being imported to undercut Australian wage rates and conditions. However industrial issues were far from the real concern animating Watson’s fears. The essential question, Watson asserted, was
Quote:…whether we would desire that our sisters or our brothers should be married into any of these races to which we object. If these people are not such … as we can expect to give us an infusion of blood that will tend to the raising of our standard of life, and to the improvement of the race, we should be foolish in the extreme if we did not exhaust every means of preventing them from coming to this land, which we have made our own. The racial aspect of the question, in my opinion, is the larger and more important one; but the industrial aspect also has to be considered.
I expect freediver will thank me for correcting your bias Acid.