Post-war immigration to Australia

Mr Arthur Calwell with the Kalnins family - the 50,000th New Australian - August 1949

In 1954, 50,000 Dutch migrants arrived; Maria Scholte is to the right of the picture

Post-war immigration to Australia deals with migration to Australia since the end of World War II. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, Ben Chifley, Prime Minister of Australia (1945–1949), established the federal Department of Immigration to administer a large-scale immigration program. Chifley commissioned a report on the subject which found that Australia was in urgent need of a larger population for the purposes of defence and development and it recommended a 1% annual increase in population through increased immigration.^[1]

The first Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell, promoted mass immigration with the slogan "populate or perish".^[2] Calwell coined the term "New Australians" in an effort to supplant such terms as pommy (Englishman) and wog.

The 1% target remained a part of government policy until the Whitlam Government (1972–1975), when immigration numbers were substantially cut back, only to be restored by the Fraser Government (1975–1982).^[1]

Some 4.2 million immigrants arrived between 1945 and 1985, about 40 per cent of whom came from Britain and Ireland.^[3] By 2007, some 6.5 million people have migrated to Australia since 1945.^[4] This total comprises 3.35 million males and 3.15 million females. This represents a significant proportion of the overall population increase experienced by Australia in that time, having gone from 7 million in 1945 to the present total of over 23 million.^[4] 182,159 people were sponsored by the International Refugee Organisation (IRO) from the end of World War II up to the end of 1954 to resettle in Australia from Europe—more than the number of convicts transported to Australia in the first 80 years after European settlement.^[5]

"Populate or perish" policy

The Chifley years

Australian Government poster displayed between 1949 and 1951 in reception rooms and dining halls at various migrant reception centres in Australia. (Image courtesy of the NAA).

Following the attacks on Darwin and the associated fear of Imperial Japanese invasion in World War II, the Chifley Government commissioned a report on the subject which found that Australia was in urgent need of a larger population for the purposes of defence and development and it recommended a 1% annual increase in population through increased immigration.^[1] In 1945, the government established the federal Department of Immigration to administer the new immigration program. The first Minister for Immigration was Arthur Calwell. An Assisted Passage Migration Scheme was also established in 1945 to encourage Britons to migrate to Australia. The government's objective was summarised in the slogan "populate or perish". Calwell stated in 1947, to critics of mass immigration from non-British Europe: "We have 25 years at most to populate this country before the yellow races are down on us."

The post-war immigration program of the Chifley Government gave them preference to migrants from Great Britain, and initially an ambitious target was set of nine British out of ten immigrants.^[1] However, it was soon apparent that even with assisted passage the government target would be impossible to achieve given that Britain's shipping capacity was quite diminished from pre-war levels. As a consequence, Calwell looked further afield to maintain overall immigration numbers, and this meant relying on the IRO refugees from Eastern Europe, with the USA providing the necessary shipping.^[1] Many Eastern Europeans were refugees from the Red Army and thus mostly anti-Communist and so politically acceptable.^[6]

End to the White Australia policy

In 1972, Whitlam Government (1972-1975) adopted a completely non-discriminatory immigration policy, effectively putting an end to the White Australia policy. However, the change occurred in the context of a substantial reduction in the overall migrant intake. During the Fraser Government (1975-1982) there was a final end to the White Australia policy but there was an increasing intake of Vietnamese refugees in the aftermath of the end of the Vietnam War, and Australia experienced the largest intake of Asian immigrants since the arrival of the Chinese gold miners during the gold rush of the 1850s and 60s. In 1983, the level of British immigration was below the level of Asian immigration for the first time in Australian history.^[1]

International agreements

Financial assistance was an important element of the post war immigration program and as such there were a number of agreements in place between the Australian government and various governments and international organisations.^[12]

• United Kingdom - free or assisted passages.^[12] Immigrants under this scheme became known as Ten Pound Poms.
• assisted passages for ex-servicemen of the British Empire and the United States.^[12] This scheme later covered ex-servicemen or resistance fighters from the Netherlands, Norway, France, Belgium and Denmark.^[12]
• an agreement with the International Refugee Organization (IRO) to settle at least 12,000 displaced people a year from camps in Europe.^[12] Australia accepted a disproportionate share of refugees sponsored by IRO in the late 1940s and early 1950s.^[13]
• formal migration agreements, often involving the grant of assisted passage, with the United Kingdom, Malta, the Netherlands, Italy, West Germany, Turkey and Yugoslavia.^[12]
• there were also informal migration agreements with a number of other countries including Austria, Greece, Spain, and Belgium.^[12]

Timeline

Settler arrivals by top 10 countries of birth

Migrant reception and training centres

Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre, 1954

On arrival in Australia, many migrants went to migrant reception and training centres where they learned some English while they looked for a job. The Department of Immigration was responsible for the camps and kept records on camp administration and residents.^[24] The migrant reception and training centres were also known as Commonwealth Immigration Camps, migrant hostels, immigration dependants' holding centres, migrant accommodation, or migrant workers' hostels.^[25][26]

Australia's first migrant reception centre opened at Bonegilla, Victoria near Wodonga in December 1947. When the camp closed in 1971, some 300,000 migrants had spent time there.^[14]

By 1951, the government had established three migrant reception centres for non-English speaking displaced persons from Europe, and twenty holding centres, principally to house non-working dependants, when the pressure of arrival numbers on the reception centres was too great to keep families together.^[14] The purpose of reception and training centres was to:

provide for general medical examination and x-ray of migrants, issue of necessary clothing, payment of social service benefits, interview to determine employment potential, instruction in English and the Australian way of life generally.^[14]

The centres were located throughout Australia (dates are those of post office opening and closing^[27]).

Breakdown of arrivals by decade

• Immigrants who arrived in Australia (by decade of arrival) as a percentage of the total population, subdivided geographically by statistical local area, as of the 2011 census
• 
  1941-1950
• 
  1951-1960
• 
  1961-1970
• 
  1971-1980
• 
  1981-1990
• 
  1991-2000

Since 1950 Australia has experienced average arrivals of around one million per decade, with the totals in the earlier decades being slightly above the totals in the more recent decades. Current statistics suggest that one million will be reached again in the current decade.^[4] The breakdown by decade is as follows:

• 1.6 million between October 1945 and 30 June 1960;
• about 1.3 million in the 1960s;
• about 960.000 in the 1970s;
• about 1.1 million in the 1980s; and
• over 900,000 in the 1990s.^[4]

The highest number of arrivals in any one year since World War II was 185,099 in 1969-70 and the lowest was 52,752 in 1975-76.^[4]

Demography as at 2006 for non-English speaking ethnic groups

In the 2006 census, birthplace was enumerated as was date of arrival in Australia for those not born in Australia. For the major immigrant groups enlarged by the arrival of immigrants to Australia after World War II, they are still major demographic groups in Australia:

Not all of those enumerated would have arrived as post-war migrants, specific statistics as at 2006 are not available.

See also

• Immigration history of Australia
• Demographics of Australia

References

External links

• Chinese Museum Chinese Immigration to Australia
• NSW Migration Heritage Centre
• fifthfleet.net - list of ships which brought Displaced Persons to Australia between 1947 and 1951. Accessed 19 October 2010
• Ten Pound Pom Social Museum