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The Birth of Multiculturalism in Australia: Transcript (Video)

The birth of multiculturalism in Australia began in 1973 when the Labor government abolished the discriminatory "White Australia" immigration policy and publicly declared Australia's new non-discriminatory policy. This marked the end of racism in Australian statute books. However, Australia was still predominantly white until the events of 1975, when the communist victory in Vietnam led to boatloads of Vietnamese refugees arriving in Australia seeking asylum. The Fraser government negotiated refugee resettlement agreements and took in large numbers of Indochinese refugees, nearly 200,000 by the 1980s, marking the most substantial entry of Asians into Australia since the 19th century and establishing Australia as a multi-racial country.

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81 views2 pages

The Birth of Multiculturalism in Australia: Transcript (Video)

The birth of multiculturalism in Australia began in 1973 when the Labor government abolished the discriminatory "White Australia" immigration policy and publicly declared Australia's new non-discriminatory policy. This marked the end of racism in Australian statute books. However, Australia was still predominantly white until the events of 1975, when the communist victory in Vietnam led to boatloads of Vietnamese refugees arriving in Australia seeking asylum. The Fraser government negotiated refugee resettlement agreements and took in large numbers of Indochinese refugees, nearly 200,000 by the 1980s, marking the most substantial entry of Asians into Australia since the 19th century and establishing Australia as a multi-racial country.

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Calvin Tống
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© © All Rights Reserved
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The birth of multiculturalism in Australia

Australias immigration policies changed significantly in 1973, when policies which favoured
white immigrants from Europe were abolished. It was the end of the White Australia policy, and
the beginning of multiculturalism in Australia.

Transcript (Video)

It was the Labor government of Gough Whitlam elected in 1972 which finalised the abolition of
White Australia and went one step further. It publicised around the world Australias new non-
discriminatory policy.

Al Grassby, Immigration Minister, 1972-1974: In 1973, when the last vestiges of the White
Australia policy were swept away, of course, that brought a reaction. They were upset. They
couldnt believe it. It took them a while to digest the fact that Australia for the first time in 200
years had wiped its face clean of racism as far as the statute books were concerned.

Paul Keating, Prime Minister, 1991-1996: I think White Australia was a far greater inhibition to us
than it ever was to anyone who had to deal with it from outside. And the interesting thing is that we
came close to be marginalised the way South Africa was marginalised with apartheid. We got out
of it just in a nick of time.

By the 70s, the policy was dead, but the Australia was still predominately white. The events in Asia
would soon change this.

The communist triumph in Vietnam in 1975 soon saw boatloads of Vietnamese refugees sailing
south.

Journalist: If it was up to you now, which country would you head for?

Asylum seeker on a boat: I think all the persons in the boat now want to go to Australia.

Malcolm Fraser, Prime Minister 1975-1983: Well the dominant feeling was that we had to give
these people a home, especially people who had been associated with either Australia embassy or
Australian armed forces in Vietnam. Our presence there had encouraged them to fight. So I think
we had a commitment, an obligation, to such people, and we fulfilled that obligation.

It was a crisis for the South-East Asian region. Refugee resettlement agreements were negotiated
and the Fraser government took large numbers of Indochinese. This became the most substantial
entry of Asians into Australia since the Chinese in the nineteenth century. Nearly 200,000
Indochinese settled here, refugees and their reunited families, in the 20 years after 1975.




Ian McPhee, Immigration Minister, 1975-1982: We had to establish a rational program for
processing people, and per capita we took more than the United States. There was a total bi-
partisanship because, there was no doubt in the minds of any of the Parliamentarians I had
dealings with about the importance of this policy for Australia, and it was quite a genuine
bipartisan one.

From this time, at least a third of annual immigration intake has been Asian. The refugee crisis
signalled a birth of a new multi-racial Australia.

Kim Beazley, Leader of Australian Labour Party, 1996-2001: We have only been multi-racial in a
process which started in the 1960s and was cemented in the 1980s. We changed our definition then
of what it was to be an Australian. Up to that point of time, the starting point of definition of
Australian had been the word white.

Malcolm Fraser, Prime Minister 1975-1983: It might have been the most important thing that my
government accomplished. Because whatever anyone might have said since, the fact that we then
accepted a multicultural Australia and accepted that people didnt have to forget their land of origin
or forget their affection for it to be a good Australian was enormously important in building a
cohesive society.

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