White Australia Policy - Research Paper Example

WHITE AUSTRALIA POLICY White Australia Policy Name Course Tutor Date White Australia Policy The White Australia Policy is justifiably one of the most instrumental policies in the history of Australia; one whose formulation, debate and enactment was characterized by very intriguing, political, socio-economic, racial and international undertones. The urge with which the policy was pushed by white Australian citizenry, the urgency with which it was fronted by Australian political clout of the time and the repudiation with which the policy received from the Asian countries regarding its flagrant apparent discrimination along racial lines1 are the elements that make it outstanding to consider and study2. This policy holistically comprised different individual historical policies which barred non-white Australians from entering Australia from in the periods of 1901 when it was enacted to 1973 when it was dismantled. This paper discusses the creation of this policy and analyzes factors that led to its passage in 1901. Specifically, the paper will be set to answer the question whether economic and racial anxieties constituted the important factors that led to its formation. With this determination, the paper will then set to briefly comment on the authenticity of these factors and their validity as impetuses to this policy. The circumstances and factors surrounding the formulation and implementation of the White Australian Policy were intricate just as they were intertwined political, economical and social concerns that had been receiving attention and interest in preceding years in Australia and the Western world in general3. One of the greatest trigger to this legislation was the introduction of the Immigration Restriction Bill of 1901 which received acclamation by most White Australians. Their racial superiority over other races was an obsession that drove their acceptance and endorsement of this legislation which was predicated on the fact that they dreaded competing with immigrants for jobs, property, opportunities and institutional leadership opportunities in industries, corporations and society groups. This in other words, was a way of preserving their identity and safeguarding their jobs in a country that was becoming competitive with the immigration of Japanese, Chinese, and Africans4. The clearest and most outspoken factor that contributed to this legislation was politics and need for self-preservation. It was HB Higgins (a leading liberal at the time and an enforcer of this notion of White-Australian preservation through this bill that was thought by some to be racist5) who inferred from the experiences of the Americans when they were faced with their racial difficulties a few years back by saying, “We have only to look at the great difficulty which is being experienced in America in connexion with the greatest racial trouble ever known in the history of the world, in order to take warning and guard ourselves against similar complications”6. To add his own voice, Alfred Deakin who was the Attorney General at the time and later became the Prime Minister also referred to the importance the 1901 parliament had to give events of the American history when discussing this bill. He said: We should be false to the lessons taught us in the great republic of the west; we should be false to the never-to-be-forgotten teachings from the experience of the United States, of difficulties only partially conquered by the blood of their best and bravest; we should be absolutely blind to and unpardonably neglectful of our obligations, if we fail to lay those lessons to heart7. The supporters of this legislation used all means available to make their point clear to everyone; not even the Australian constitution was left uninvolved in the debate. Deakin drew the attention of the 1901 parliament to the significance of 51st Section of the Australian Constitution sub-sections 26-30, which talked about the way the constitution was equipped to deal with the problem mixture of races. In his first address to the parliament, Deakin hailed the drafters of the constitution to have envisaged the importance of preserving the Australian people and safeguarding their interests in the events that they were threatened by foreigners. He quoted these sections when he said: Our Constitution marks a distinct advance upon and difference from that of the United States, in that it contains within itself the amplest powers to deal with this difficulty in all its aspects. It is not merely a question of invasion from the exterior. It may be a question of difficulties within our borders, already created, or a question of possible contamination of another kind. I doubt if there can be found in the list of powers with which this Parliament, on behalf of the people, is endowed – powers of legislation – a cluster more important and more far reaching in their prospect than the provisions contained in sub-sections (26) to (30) of section 51, in which the bold outline of the authority of the people of Australia for their self-protection is laid down8. Australia achieved nationhood early 1901 but it was still a British colony, which meant that legislations were not to be passed unless they received royal assent from the governor-general who was the Queen’s representative in the British colonies around the world. With the knowledge that no legislation would be passed into law without the approval of the governor-general, Australian politicians at the forefront of The White Australian Policy led by Higgins and Deakin knew they had to convince the governor-general. From as early as 1855, the British government had made it clear that it would not be party to such discriminatory legislations like this one that was being fronted that attempted to restrict immigrants movement based merely on their race and colour9. This had been made clear by previous reservations that the governor-general had had on different divisive bills that had been barred from becoming law. For instance, The 1874 Amendment to the Goldfields Act (Qld) was barred by the Governor of Queensland because it sought to impose higher fees for getting gold license on Asians only10. In 1897, The Coloured Race Restriction Bills were barred by New South Wales Governor in Tasmania and Southern Australia for their intention of restricting access to resources and opportunities for people with colour. Even with the approval and subsequent passing into law of The 1897 Immigration Restriction Act (NSW), the British government had categorically directed that the immigration restrictions were only to be adhered to after one sat a written test in a European language rather than merely discriminating against them based on their race and colour11. With the understanding of the power the British government had on any legislation that would see light of day, Price suggests that Australian politicians that supported the bill strategized and in their strategy began with other bills such as The 1901 Pacific Island Labourers Act (Cth) which affected over 10 000 Pacific Islanders working on the sugarcane farms in Queensland and the Northern New South Wales12. The act required that non-native Australians had to leave the country and could no longer be allowed to work on the fields but instead their positions were to be taken by white Australians13. With the passage of this bill, the conservative Australian politicians had made a significant political gain and used this passage as a stepping-stone to convince the political clout around the governor-general to enact the White Australia Policy later that same year. According to Evans Raymond et al., the other factor other than political undertones of the day that led to the passing of this bill was economic competition. When gold was discovered in Australia in 1851, there was an influx of immigrants from all over the world who came to earn a living from these gold mines. The numbers of these immigrants twenty years later were threatening consisting mostly of Chinese men in excess of 40 000 and Cantonese women in excess of 9 000 who had started acquiring property around these goldfields. They add that with this realization, native Australians began rioting in protest of these invasions which with time grew to national levels with serious protests occurring in 1857 (The Buckland Riot) and between 1860 and 1861 (The Lambing Flat Riots). Realizing that this was becoming a major national issue, Governor Hotham appointed a Royal Commission on 16th November 1854 to look into the grievances and problems in the Victorian goldfields14. Another illustration of the centrality of the economic element as a contributor to the enactment of the White Australia Policy was the growth of the sugar industry in late 1870s in Queensland. With the booming of the industry, there were thousands of Kanakas (which was the name that was used to refer to the Pacific Islanders) were brought into Queensland to work on contractual basis which was called indentured working15. They were able to give cheap labour and would work under harsh conditions without protests as most of them were considered colonies and slaves16. By late 1880, the numbers of these foreign labourers were sky-high and they were considered to have taken jobs that belonged to the white Australians and this realization prompted trade unions to begin a series of riots and protests against this foreign labour. Their main antagonism was that these Chinese and Asian immigrants took jobs that belonged to white men, lowered conditions for working making it difficult for native Australians to work and refused unionization as a way of establishing themselves strong against their employers. Owing to this objection, the period between 1875 and 1888 saw all Australian colonies enact legislations that restricted further infiltration of non-resident immigrations and those that were already residing in Australia at the time, were denied basic rights of ownership of property while others were expelled altogether17. This threat to economic stability of the White Australians was the top agenda at the 1885 Inter-Colonial Premier’s Conference, which endorsed the agreement to extend restrictions that were imposed on all non-native Australian immigrants based on their race. This as Cole explains, did not go down well with the governor-general of New South Wales and was barred from becoming law but in its stead, The 1897 Natal Act was passed and it restricted ‘undesirable persons’ rather than all persons based on their racial and ethnic origin18. So as not to appear as to have flagrantly disallowed these legislations, Joseph Chamberlain who was the Colonial Secretary in London in 1897 is on record to have said: We quite sympathize with the determination...of these colonies...that there should not be an influx of people alien in civilization, alien in religion, alien in customs, whose influx, moreover, would seriously interfere with the legitimate rights of the existing labouring population.19 Racial anxiety is the other factor that played a crucial role in the events leading to the passing of the White Australia Policy. This was prime at the Australian Federation Convention where the premier of Western Australia, John Forrest captured the issue of racial anxiety in a most amicable way probably more than anyone else at the convention. He said: It is of no use to shut our eyes to the fact that there is a great feeling all over Australia against the introduction of coloured persons. It goes without saying that we do not like to talk about it, but it is so20. This racial anxiety was quickly forged to be included into a political movement that became the basis of present and future leaders to seek political office. The Labour Party buoyed by the support of the Australian Workers’ Union and the Protectionist Party both of which supported the preservation of the native Australian people and the restriction of non-white Australian immigration was transformed into a formidable political front. Actually, Stanley Bruce, during his 1925 campaign for his Premier post in the Australian Federal election said: It is necessary that we should determine what the ideals towards which every Australian would desire to strive. I think those ideals might well be stated as being to secure our national safety, and to ensure the maintenance of our White Australia Policy to continue as an integral portion of the British Empire. We intend to keep this country white and not allow its peoples to be faced with the problems that at present are practically insoluble in many parts of the world21. At the beginning of 1901, the recently formed Federal Parliament passed The Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 which set precedence for the enactment of The White Australia Policy. When the restrictions law set restrictions for immigration and for the ostensible removal of immigrants that were considered prohibited, it was easier to slip in the concepts that were carried in White Australia Policy which sought to give preference to white Australians over their non-white Australian counterparts in all areas of resource and wealth creation; from job opportunities to investment opportunities; from accessibility to facilities to social amenities. During its enactment, extensive reference was made to other legislations that had been enacted in different parts of the world which in the minds of these proponents gave Australia a moral ground to set out to preserve its character and identity nationhood. The Prime Minister Edmund Barton at the height of the enactment of this legislation said that the doctrine of the equality of man was never intended to apply to the equality of the Englishman and the Chinaman"22. Actually Alfred Deakin (the chief architect of the policy) summed its support in one of the most authentic way that has not been captured before when said: It is not the bad qualities, but the good qualities of these alien races that make them so dangerous to us. It is their inexhaustible energy, their power of applying themselves to new tasks, their endurance and low standard of living that make them such competitors.23 There was clear-cut racial tension among the non-whites living in Australia at the time and Deakin captured what contributed to this tension in the above quote. For instance, Billy Blue was a black emancipist in the early 19th century who had become widely known and celebrated. So acclaimed was he that even businesses, hotels and streets were named after him such as Blues Point, Blue Point Road, The Billy Blue Design School among others but when the policy was instituted, not even him escaped the agony and humiliation of the discrimination that the policy slammed on non-white Australians. In reference to Billy, a disguised advice was contained in the Punch Magazine warning all non-residents and said “Right, my boy, your worthy of your sire. In the old days I stopped the convicts in the bay. And now you must bar out the yellow plague with your arm”24. This is just an example of how this policy strained racial relationships and co-existence. To answer the research question as to whether economic and racial anxiety were among the most centrally important factors in the formation of the policy, the proceeding discussion has clearly elucidated this it satisfactorily. It is clear that there were four main factors that led to the enactment and subsequent passing of the White Australia Policy in 1901. These were political undertones, economic struggle and competition, racial anxiety and need for self-preservation of the white Australian people in their country. With the threat from the immigrants who were first sucked into Australia and the Queensland with the discovery of the goldfields in 1851, there was a rush for jobs and property. Since the white Australians were proud because of their feeling of racial superiority, they were not as hard working as non-Australian immigrants and therefore they were considered expensive by private developers in these goldfields and sugar farms and therefore the owners of these fields and farms preferred working with the Kanakas who would require less pay and work harder. With time the white Australians who had been employed soon lost their jobs to these immigrants, which was the beginning of the antagonism as they considered themselves to have been robbed of their job opportunities. In addition to this factor, racial anxiety was also central in the formulation and passing of this policy. Mistrust and prejudices against non-white Australians was a development that made them to be considered obstructive to the development of the nations and opportunists who had left their countries to come and struggle for wealth that was not theirs. Self-preservation soon became a huge driving force for native Australians who wanted to ensure that the infiltration of immigrants from Asia were not determining the way things were being run in the country. These economic and racial anxieties were therefore justifiably very central and important to the formation of the 1901 White Australian Policy as they are the two factors that sought to place the white Australians at a vintage point with full access to national resources and privileges as opposed to immigrants. The surfacing of national political bickering that was steered towards the concepts carried in this Policy was just an indication of how these two factors had shaped national issues as far as to reach into political fronts. Once in the hands of politics; the legislatures, the laws could be enacted and passed through the parliament as was required by the constitution25. This therefore means that the enactment of The 1901 White Australia Policy was to a justifiably large extend shaped and affected by economic as well as racial anxieties which later fortified into political bickering that finally brought the policy to its last stage; fruition. Bibliography Cole, Daniel. “The Crimson Thread of Kinship: Ethnic Ideas in Australia, 1870-1914”. Historical Studies, 14: 56, 1971. Corris, Passage. Port and Plantation: A History of Solomon Islands Labour Migration 1870- 1914. Melbourne, UNSW Press, 1973. Docker, John, & Gerhard, Fischer. Race, Colour and Identity in Australia and New Zealand. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2000. Evans, Raymond et al. Exclusion, Exploitation and Extermination: Race Relations in Colonial Queensland. Sydney: Australia and New Zealand Book Company, 1975. Markus, Andrew. Australian Race Relations 1788-1993. Sydney: UNSW Press, 1994, 54-84. Moore, Clive. Kanaka. Sydney: Port Moresby, 1985. Price, Charles. The Great White Walls are Built: Restrictive Immigration to North America and Australasia 1836-1888. Melbourne: Canberra, 1974. Schaffer, Kay. Manne's Generation: White Nation Responses to the Stolen Generation Report Australian Humanities. Retrieved from . Shirley, Fitzgerald. Red Tape, Gold Scissors: The Story of Sydney's Chinese. Sydney: State Library of NSW Press, 1996, 67-88. Read More