White Australia policy

The term White Australian policy comprises various historical policies that effectively barred people of non-European descent from immigrating to Australia. There was never any specific policy titled such, but the term was invented later to describe a collection of policies that were designed to exclude people from Asia (particularly China) and the Pacific Islands (particularly Melanesia). The policy was progressively dismantled between 1949 and 1973.

Competition in the goldfields between British and Chinese miners, and labour union opposition to the importation of Pacific Islanders into the sugar plantations of Queensland, reinforced the demand to eliminate or minimize low wage immigration from Asia and the Pacific Islands. From the 1850s, there were restrictions on family members joining Chinese miners already in Australia. The colonial authorities levied a special tax on Chinese immigrants that other immigrants were exempted from. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, there was also a push by the labour unions to stop work done by Chinese immigrants in the furniture and market garden industries. Australian furniture had to be labelled "Made with Chinese Labour".

Soon after Australia became a federation, it passed the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901. The passage of this bill is considered the commencement of the White Australia Policy as Australian government policy. Subsequent acts further strengthened the policy up to the start of the Second World War. These policies effectively allowed for British migrants to be preferred over all others through the first four decades of the 20th century. During the Second World War, Prime Minister John Curtin reinforced the policy, saying "This country shall remain forever the home of the descendants of those people who came here in peace in order to establish in the South Seas an outpost of the British race."

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