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2 - The British Inheritance
- from Part I
- James Jupp
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The complex but controlled society of today, created after World War II, followed in a historic tradition of bureaucratic nation-building (S. Macintyre 2015). This began with the convict settlement of New South Wales from 1788 to the 1840s and then built on a system of state-assisted British and Irish immigration, which lasted from the 1830s until the 1970s. Other Europeans were not excluded before 1901, but were not encouraged, except for Protestant northern Europeans from Germany and Scandinavia (Koivukangas and Westin 1999; Tampke and Doxford 1990). From 1901 until the early 1970s no one was allowed to settle permanently who was not of white European origin, with some very limited exceptions, including some already there (Tavan 2005). Although other states around the Pacific had similar or related policies, none pursued them as rigorously as the new colonies of Australia (Lake and Reynolds 2008).
Such imported labour as had been, or continued to be, introduced included Muslim camel drivers from the north-west of the British Indian empire (the ‘Afghans’) (Bouma 1994; Cigler 1986). Pacific Islanders were recruited for the sugar cane plantations of Queensland and northern New South Wales, but were returned to their islands in 1906 (Corris 1973; Wawn 1893). By 1945 only 1 per cent of the population were not of white, European origin, together with less than 2 per cent from the Indigenous Aboriginal people who had lived in Australia for countless thousands of years. Both of these populations were declining in numbers by federation in 1901. Public policy was designed to maintain this decline (Markus 1979; Palfreeman 1967; Price 1974).
There is a contrast between Australia's early development of parliamentary democracy (Hirst 1988), its later ratifying of international conventions protecting human rights and the right to seek asylum, and its reluctance to extend such rights to minorities – ranging from the early convicts to the current asylum seekers. Unlike similar democracies, Australia does not have a bill of rights, either in its constitution or its legislation. In current debates and public analyses Australian culture is often credited with a basis in British liberal tradition and common law and/ or the Judeo-Christian ethic and eighteenth-century Enlightenment (Gascoigne 2002; Broadie 2003; Herman 2003). These analyses are essentially social myths that treat the development of the past 250 years in favourable and even flattering terms.
18 - ‘Stop the Boats’
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- James Jupp
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Attempts to discourage the growing refugee flow escalated under Howard, Rudd, Gillard and Abbott. This unleashed a rush of misinformation from the more conservative media. The effective humanitarian argument was used by both major parties that stopping the boats would also stop the deaths at sea, which were the fault of the criminals who provided unseaworthy vessels. Shipwrecks of Suspected Illegal Entry Vessels (SIEVs) were publicized and this moral argument influenced Labor politicians especially. Others raised the counter point that locking up refugees for years in remote islands with no knowledge of their fates and long delays at processing, might not only be cruel, but also fatal, contrary to the UN Convention and liable to create rioting.
One ignoble lie was officially spread in October 2001. A broken-down refugee boat, officially called SIEV 4, with 223 people on board, was stopped by an Australian navy warship and then sent on its way. A man was reported as holding a life-jacketed child overboard. Through an exchange of official messages this became inflated to the untrue statement that refugees were throwing their children overboard. This myth eventually reached the prime minister's Department and prompted John Howard to state publicly that ‘I do not want people like this in Australia’. This was not unreasonable, if he accepted the rumour as true. However, a subsequent inquiry showed that it was not (Weller 2002). Media coverage was extensive and produced a strong reaction against asylum seekers, which the government did nothing to modify. The whole incident occurred against the background of an impending general election, which Howard won.
This myth and others like it survived and were widely used in defending the offshore internment policy. Liberal politicians persuaded their Labor counterparts that ‘saving lives’ was their priority, which was another noble lie. Of the 52,000 boat arrivals during the relaxed Labor rules of 2007, 98 per cent had arrived safely. Tragically, 2 per cent drowned because of unseaworthy boats, but this was not catastrophic enough to form the centrepiece of years of propaganda attacks on liberalization. If the Border Protection fleet could turn boats around (as it does) it could also return them to safety. In fact, under military-style secrecy, the ‘noble lie’ that mandatory detention had stopped the boats and saved lives became quite untrue.
5 - Indigenous Australia and the South Pacific
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- James Jupp
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The arrival in New South Wales and Tasmania of thousands of convicts – almost all of them men – accompanied by armed soldiers, presented many problems for the Indigenous peoples (Broome 1994). One was the spread of a variety of diseases prevalent among the European poor but hitherto quite unknown to the Indigenous. Smallpox was widespread, and venereal disease and pneumonia became so very quickly (J. Campbell 2002). The same diseases also struck Islanders further away as missionaries, traders and labour recruiters began to settle from the 1840s. The huge gender discrepancy of the convict settlers added to the problem. Indigenous men did not welcome the arrival of numerous rivals and many conflicts were traceable to fights over women. Many of the male settlers were former convicts, sealers and whalers and other unattached wanderers. Some set up relationships with Indigenous people, while others attacked, raped and killed them.
Official restraint was inoperable in parts of Tasmania for years and led to a rapid decline in the already small Indigenous population. A similar male preponderance existed elsewhere. Social and legal controls were limited, especially in Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, not occupied until later. Attempts to ‘settle’ the Aborigines were made, but were ineffective until small towns and official camps were established in remote locations, to which some Aborigines attached themselves and their families, despite the hostility of the migrant newcomers.
The British governors adopted the principle of terra nullius or nobody's land, which allowed them to develop agriculture and settlements regardless of prior Indigenous usage (Maddock 1983). This was legally enforced by the principle that all land was vested in the Crown, which could hold it, lease it or sell it. The meaning of the Latin term became hotly debated during the ‘history wars’ of the 1990s (S. Macintyre and Clark 2003; Windschuttle 2004). The meaning was clear at least as early as the 1830s. Uncultivated land belonged to nobody, a principle also being applied in Britain to village commons and highland pastures. Unfamiliar with domestic animals other42 than dogs, the local Indigenous saw cattle and sheep as welcome sources of food. Their punishments echoed those by British landlords, who had enclosed commons for their own profitable use (Griffin 2014). These prohibited hunting their animals, birds and fish under the Game Laws, a frequent cause of transportation.
Immigrant Nation Seeks Cohesion
- Australia from 1788
- James Jupp
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Australia is a unique society, created from immigration planned by the state and, for almost a century, organised and recruited through the governments of the British Empire. In the formative days it depended on convict labour from England and Ireland, whereas the United States depended on slave labour from Africa. In subsequent years most Australians were British subjects whereas this ceased to be so for Americans upon their independence. However in recent years this British character has progressively been abandoned with the admission of a wide from other societies. This has created a multicultural society, although one in which the English language remains dominant and British "values' remain praised at least by the conservative side of politics Australia is remote from Britain despite many transport links and investments. Its neighbours are Asians or Pacific Islanders, with only New Zealand as a much smaller British neighbour many miles away.This leads to contradictory situations such as the increasing Asian intake of immigrants and of Asian and especially Chinese business and investment. Although Immigration still remains government controlled as throughout the past but it no longer favours British settlers as it once did. Apart from local neighbours arriving for temporary or permanent residence it also faces the fact that British naval and military force is no longer relevant in the region. The closest protective Ally has become the United States, but the growing powers include China, India and the small but threatening Communist republic of North Korea, armed with nuclear rockets aimed on Australian potential targets for the first time since the end of the war with Japan in 1945. From a relatively safe and stable society, Australia faces new dilemmas. However, even in the past' emphasis on building a compatible society was not achieved without many tensions and problems.
8 - Communists and Their Allies
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- James Jupp
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From the end of the war in 1945, communists and industrial militants were once again the main government targets (Horner 2014; Cain 2008; McKnight 1994; Ball and Horner 1998; Blaxland 2015; Blaxland and Crawley 2016; 2016). This continued for over forty years, until the collapse of the Soviet system in 1991 finally shattered the international and local cohesion of the communist parties. The unfamiliar objectives of Islamism required a complete reorientation of ASIO's often basic skills and practices (Blaxland 2015). However the ‘five hands’ (or ‘eyes’)’ collaboration among ASIO, the CIA, MI6 and the New Zealand and Canadian Security Intelligence Services, gave Australia access to a wealth of contacts and information (Richelson and Ball 1985; Ball and Horner 1998). One great asset, if highly secret, was ownership of the ‘Venona’ decoded Russian messages which, among many other items, revealed details of a Soviet spy circle within the Australian Department of External Affairs (West 1999; Haynes and Klehr 1999). US influence, from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), ensured a major obsession with communism, which was not always justified in the Australian context. The FBI leadership of J. Edgar Hoover sustained this dedicated hostility for almost fifty years into the 1970s (Weiner 2012).
Unlike Australia and New Zealand, Canada, Britain and the United States have extensive experience of terrorism, as well as wide-ranging networks of informants. Australia's pre-war dependence on British intelligence was diminished by the discovery in 1963 that a leading officer of MI6 (the Secret Intelligence Service), Kim Philby, had been a Soviet agent for many years (B. Macintyre 2014). He eventually retired to Moscow, where he received a medal from the Soviet government and lived out the rest of his life. Like Philby, the most effective spies were not publicly revealed communists.
Dissident political movements in democracies are normally distinguished as being either Right or Left. In Australia this implies a relative closeness either to the Liberals and conservatives or to the Labor and socialist political positions. Many activists have moved between Left and Right loyalties. A few have even moved back again. Nor can anti-Semitism be taken as a benchmark for ‘rightism’. Radical Labor leaders like Jack Lang were also anti-Semitic. Some Labor politicians were xenophobic towards all foreigners, which reflected the views of many of their supporters.
Contents
- James Jupp
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14 - The Post-War Promise Ends
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- James Jupp
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Australia has been recruiting and accommodating new settlers for 230 years (Borrie 1994). Policy was more logical and coordinated after Federation in 1901, when immigration became the full responsibility of the Commonwealth government. Before that preference was given to British settlement through free entry and subsidized passages, varying from colony to colony, but advised and organized from London. After that, policy became increasingly uniform and bureaucratized in the hands of colonial and state governments until 1920 and then by the Commonwealth and the Immigration Department, founded in 1945. At all stages, from convicts to the present, there was state involvement to a more active degree than in many other countries. The great exception was the gold rush of the mid-nineteenth century. But even there the state intervened in the form of armed troops at Eureka. After the Commonwealth took over in 1901 the White Australia policy dominated selection for 70 years. After that selection was still based on preferences determined by the Commonwealth, with special favour for British and New Zealand applicants with skills, as it was for the previous century.
Finally, in 2015 a bureaucratic epoch ended. The amalgamation of Immigration and Customs into Border Protection meant that for the first time in 70 years (excepting the brief Whitlam break) there was no Commonwealth department expressly committed to all aspects of immigration, multiculturalism, citizenship and settlement. Controlling and discouraging asylum seekers had become the central priority (Pickering 2005). A backlog of unvisaed asylum seekers were interned in Manus and Nauru with no prospect of settling in Australia, according to ministers from both major parties. The Migration Act, amended late in 2014, refined the criteria for granting asylum and left the definition of a refugee in the hands of departmental officials and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). The UN Convention was reduced to a nullity as far as Australia was concerned. Boats were turned back before they reached the extended Australian sea borders (Corlett 2005). The amalgamation of Immigration and Border Protection and an armed and militarized Australian Border Force was not welcomed by many public servants. Some moved away from the new ministry, whose functions were control rather than settlement (Mackenzie-Murray 2015). One immediate result was a strike wave by public servants, causing serious delays at airports and mainly aimed at pay and conditions.
11 - Crime, Corruption and Terrorism
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- James Jupp
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As with its predecessors, after 1949 ASIO was primarily concerned with communism and espionage. Yet Australian society was changing rapidly, developing different crimes and criminals and extending their links internationally. Corruption had always existed but paled into insignificance with the rise of a drug culture that knew no international boundaries or restrictions. Some emerging criminals were connected to the developing multicultural populations, while others had roots in pre-existing Australian crime families and youth gangs. None were a major concern of ASIO unless they overlapped with security issues or espionage. One issue Australia had committed to in 1945 was detection and punishment of war criminals. Most suspects in Australia were from communist-controlled countries in Eastern Europe. Some had local political influence and protection in churches and parties.
Ethnic politics often involved disagreement on homeland issues, for example between Croats and Serbs, Russians and Ukrainians and Greeks and Macedonians. These were of only limited interest to the security services, apart from communist influences. Occasionally, they led to violence or even arson. The closing report of the Special Investigations Unit on war criminals complained that its work could not be completed. The report listed a large number of cases that had been drawn to its attention but rejected. These mostly concerned former enemy subjects from Croatia, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Hungary, Serbia, Romania and Slovenia, all then under communist control. Australia, like other Western states, was reluctant to accept representations from any of them. Most suspects died peacefully in their beds as aged relics of horrors that most Australians wanted to forget, but a minority never could (Commonwealth of Australia 1993). As we saw in the last chapter, only one person was returned, Serbian general Dragan Vasiljkovic – remanded to Croatia in 2016 after years of delay. Nobody had ever been returned for war crimes in World War II. A concern with ‘migrant crime’ was widespread in the 1950s with the arrival of non-British immigrants in large numbers, especially those from Southern and Eastern Europe. This became an ASIO concern where communists were involved. Immigrant frustration at unemployment led to a threat to move the army up to Bonegilla migrant camp near Albury in 1952. Again in 1961, Italians and Yugoslavs held a riotous meeting about their isolation from the labour market in their remote location away from the large cities (Sluga 1988).
3 - White Australia and the Golden Age
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- James Jupp
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The second half of the nineteenth century corresponds with the most expansive period of the British Empire under Queen Victoria. Its successes in Australia lay largely with the new colony of Victoria. This relied neither on convicts nor on assisted immigrants for most of this period, being peopled by many thousands seeking gold from 1851 (Hill 2010). The Victorian population increased sevenfold between 1851 and 1860. (Blainey 1969, 2008). Over half-a-million made it the largest of all the Australian colonies by 1860, a position it retained until 1895. Thousands were living in tents in the early years, but Melbourne, Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo and many other towns were well built and even impressive cities by the time the depression of the 1890s struck (Serle 1963; Bate 1979). Goldfields around central Victoria provided much of the wealth and were worked mainly by recent immigrants, not all of them British.
The ‘golden age’ began inauspiciously, with the 1854 rebellion at the Eureka stockade in Ballarat. (FitzSimons 2012; Molony 1984). Although it was put down by the military, as it would have been in England, its long-term effect was the extension of the franchise to males and the election of miners’ leaders to the Victorian parliament. Eureka underlined how fragile was social cohesion in a society that was rapidly growing and mobile. Wisely, the colonial administration saw that creating a popular parliament and broadening the distribution of land was likely to absorb social resentments. Rather than repression, the New South Wales government implemented changes already planned before the uprising, as did the new colony of Victoria.
The nineteenth century was characterized by much excitement about increased population. London prided itself on being the largest city in the world, at the head of the largest empire in world history. New South Wales drew ahead of Tasmania quite rapidly, was passed by Victoria between 1854 and 1895, with Queensland and South Australia catching up fast from 1870 and West Australia lagging well behind until 1900. By then New South Wales and Sydney had regained the prime position from which they started and that they have never again lost. In the four fastest-moving colonies the motive force was gold, while South Australia and Tasmania had population surges from mining baser metals. Sheep and wheat remained the staple products of agriculture.
9 - The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation
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- James Jupp
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The establishment and expansion of security and intelligence agencies in Australia owed a great deal to the fear of communism and its influence in the trade union and labour movements (Horner 2014; Blaxland 2015; Toohey and Pinwill 1989; Hocking 1993). Previous threatening movements, such as Irish nationalism, were mainly dealt with by old-fashioned police forces using old-fashioned invigilation techniques and a special branch. Each colonial or state police force acted on its own, with limited rights of interstate extradition validated by a judge. With varying degrees of corruption or criminal influence from place to place and time to time, the chance of controlling professional criminals was limited, let alone the search for agents of a foreign power. Prior to World War II most foreign countries were only represented in Australia by consuls. The two major fascist powers, Italy and Germany, sought consciously to recruit support from their diasporas (Cresciani 1980; Gumpl and Kleinig 2007). Now there are over a hundred fully staffed embassies in Canberra. Some represent countries that are at war with each other, either formally or in effect, and who may be spying on each other.
The failed attempt to outlaw the Communist Party began the founding of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the main organization concerned with communist activities (Horner 2014). The abortive Victorian Royal Commission on the party reached few significant conclusions. Although the Communist Party was quite small in 1950 it had a complex web of organizations and influences well beyond that of most state police forces. None of its members attempted terrorist violence. Its support for the Soviet Union and its satellite states led to a consistent loss of support after 1945. Communists were among those passing information on to the Soviet Union, but they were not alone (McKnight 1994). ASIO was founded because of American concern that the Commonwealth was infiltrated by Soviet agents and sympathizers. This led to direct pressure from the United States for a remedy (Horner 2014; Cain 1983, 2008). A major American concern was with the communication systems in the South Pacific, based on Western Australia and the Northern Territory. US influence was persistent. However, the security problems faced by Australia were relatively modest. Protection of US communications was undoubtedly important.
22 - Cohesion and Humanity
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- James Jupp
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Official attempts to find satisfactory titles and descriptions for the post-war settlement of a multicultural immigrant population have gone through many stages from ‘New Australians’ to ‘Culturally and Linguistically Diverse’. Descriptions of desirable outcomes have gone from ‘assimilation’ to ‘cohesion’. All these formulations have been developed within a bureaucracy corresponding to political imperatives, rather than emerging from the ethnic or religious communities, expert opinion or the general public. None have much of a basis in community demands or in serious academic inquiry. As in the United States a century ago, many of the majority population have resented ‘hyphenated’ terms (even ‘Anglo-Australians’) but many of the newcomers have been happy to use them. Indigenous Australians (also a bureaucratic term) have preferred North American terminologies like First Nations, stressing prior occupation during many centuries. What has been lacking is in-depth analysis of public opinion about a multicultural society and the attitudes of the several million Australians whose ancestors were not derived from the British Isles. This lack has partly been due to the limited interest in such issues by the Commonwealth bureaucracy and its monopoly of official definitions and funding. The growth of a controversial Muslim population has revealed the importance of knowing whether this threatens ‘cohesion’, even when cohesion has not been effectively defined. Undue reliance on opinion polling has tended to blur the complexity of Australian society and its responses.
The Monash University and Scanlon Foundation research programme, ‘Mapping Social Cohesion’, tackles cohesion through opinion polls and focus groups (Markus 2013). The ongoing surveys suggest a high degree of satisfaction with immigration and multiculturalism. There is very little alternative study in Australia that might modify or endorse these regular findings. A Scanlon-Monash Index (SMI) of Social Cohesion explains and develops this. It brings into question the excited media treatment of relevant issues. It distinguishes the opinions of respondents by their ethnicity, which is normal in North America but very rare in Australia. It has been produced in a period when ethnic relations and immigration were apparently tense in response to the Islamic revival and the corresponding organization of racist and militant opposition.
Over the past 15 years there has been little to justify the high excitement of organizations like Pauline Hanson's One Nation or the recent and more militant Australian Liberty Alliance.
Part II
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15 - Refugees and War
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Much that concerns Australia is determined by the politics of the Asia– Pacific region. Control over migration, the economy and the composition of the society have been increasingly dictated by external influences and threats. Migration policy does not develop in peace. On the contrary, there have been more wars and revolutions than ever before and larger numbers fleeing from them and from persecution. As demand has grown, the Australian response has contracted. Permanent settlement has been modified by temporary visas for employment, education and family reunion. Racism no longer dictates policy, as it did for a century. But virtually all asylum seekers recently interned or returned have been from non-European societies.
Rather than individual persecution, international and civil wars became the major cause of seeking refuge, despite the official concentration on personal cases (Marrus 1985). This has escalated with the breakup of the French, British, Dutch, Belgian and Portuguese empires in Africa and Asia after 1945. The greatest numbers of those seeking refuge have often been created by persecution on an ethnic minority basis, rather than by international warfare, religious or ideological pressure. Little of this had directly affected Australia before the late 1930s, the rise of Nazi Germany and the persecution of the Jews from 1933. Today persecution is the dominant issue.
There are now more refugees in the world than ever before. They have a special status under the United Nations as deserving care and attention. That status is governed by the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees; the Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees of 1967; and Resolution 2198 (xxi) adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. The Protocol covered the whole of the world and was ratified by Australia in 1967, despite the continuing operation of White Australia in its dying days. It was not ratified by most newly independent countries until recently nor, for different reasons, by the United States or the Soviet Union (Loescher 1993).
Previous mass movements caused by wars, revolutions and persecution had not normally received official refugee status before 1920. Nor were mass emigration movements in the nineteenth century, like the Jews from the Russian Empire or the Irish from the United Kingdom, been officially regarded as creating refugees. Recent civil wars and revolutions, however, do come within the responsibilities of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
23 - From Nation-Building to Border Protection
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Years of crisis followed the attack in 2001 on the Twin Towers in New York and major terrorist activity in London, Bali, Paris, Moscow, Iraq and Syria. The powers of ASIO and Border Protection were steadily increased to detect and prevent any terrorist activity in Australia. Political instability in the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Sri Lanka all affected areas with which many Australians were familiar, either as immigrants or tourists. The Bali tourist deaths of 2002 were the largest loss of Australian life through terrorism in 15 years. Nothing comparable has struck Australia itself. The Australian dilemma is living securely and comfortably among dangerous regional neighbours about whom they know little. Australian terror attacks have been very rare and committed by individuals, usually young, locally born and mentally deranged. Three were shot.
Australian troops were engaged in Afghanistan, a country that has never been conquered. Yugoslav immigrants watched the breakup of their Titoist state and the resulting chaos and ethnic cleansing. Arab and Egyptian Christians were conscious of the likely impact of the ‘Arab Spring’, unlike Western observers. However, the majority of Australians only slowly came to grips with the long-term prospects these disparate events might have on their secure, comfortable and prosperous lives. There was more concern, but limited progress, in Indigenous advance and wellbeing, which few knew much about.
A limited media, based mainly in the ABC, SBS and even the Australian, kept those informed who wanted to be. However, there was plenty of information, public and secret, for the élite who studied population and immigration policy as well as defence, security and foreign trade. Public servants, military officers, public intellectuals, business executives and even a few politicians were very interested in the rise of China, the nuclear aims of North Korea and Iran, the movement of manufacturing industry to Asia (causing local unemployment), and the need to protect the Australian economy from international crises. One of the benefits of multiculturalism was the growing number of educated and expert immigrants from Asia who understood these issues and had relevant overseas connections. These skilled international settlers were not usually consulted by locally born Australians, of whom few are familiar with Asian languages or cultures. Schools and universities moved rather slowly towards the changing world. Arabic, the fourth language of Australia, was hardly taught at all and most of those studying Chinese were Chinese.
10 - Refugees before the UN Convention and Enemy Aliens
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All wars, however modest their impact, produce flight from the battlefields by civilians. All revolutions, however well intentioned, also produce flight from internal struggles and frequently involve suppression of dissent. The medieval tendency to massacre inhabitants of resisting cities gradually died out in Europe. It continued into modern times in the Ottoman empire and by warring Arabic forces, despite Islamic injunctions against it. This made it imperative that citizens who could escape would move away from battlegrounds and besieged cities and seek a new life elsewhere. Many regions were so devastated by warfare that movement away became unavoidable. The mass movement from Syria through Europe in 2015 was an unexpected recent example, of which Australia had no previous experience.
Such refugee experiences did not directly affect Australia. Effective military control was established over the whole continent by the 1840s, and the Indigenous resistance was soon conquered or driven away from the settled districts. Nor were immigrants from the British Isles fleeing from military conquest. The whole United Kingdom was effectively pacified before 1788, except in marginal areas of Ireland. Those emigrating were predominantly British subjects, with access to countries closer than Australia, such as Canada or the United States, which raised no barriers against them. Australia could draw on these fugitives from rural poverty by organized migration based on funds provided from the new colonies. Unlike migration to the United States, non-British were ineligible for these inducements and assistance. Nor were many British fleeing from political or religious persecution. This kind of flight was largely absent by 1780 and confined to Jacobites moving to France, or a few radicals moving to the United States.
Thus, the concept of the refugee, which had first been developed in response to the French Revolution of 1789, had no legal status in British law or financial status in British immigration policy. Refugees were, by definition, escaping from warfare, political and religious persecution in foreign, mainly European, states that had recently experienced all of these. The nearest approximation was among the Irish, fleeing from starvation during the potato famine of the 1840s or from the restrictions on their ownership of land and their practice of Catholicism. The great majority preferred the United States. As British subjects they were entitled to apply for support and funds within the United Kingdom migration schemes to Australia and other British colonies.
Chronology
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Part I
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1 - Prisons in the Pacific, 1788-1850
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Summary
Modern Australia was founded in 1788 as a prison in the Pacific, far enough away from Britain for its inmates to be unable to escape (although a few did). Its long-term planners in London had rejected previous disastrous sites in Africa but were anxious to secure Britain's existing interests against the French in the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific (Christopher 2010; Atkinson 1997). This required a reserve of British settlers and defenders and a well-developed military base. The first-generation convicts were not normally locked away, as there were no custom-built prisons for them. Massive constructions such as Fremantle Gaol or Port Arthur came later. Prison stations outside Sydney, such as Port Macquarie, Moreton Bay, Macquarie Harbour, Norfolk Island and the Newcastle coalmines, were more stringent and feared than the relatively liberal arrangements in Cumberland County defended by historian John Hirst in Convict Society and Its Enemies (Hirst 1983, 1988). A much longer and quite different account of the system is that of Robert Hughes in The Fatal Shore (Hughes 1987). A statistical analysis by Stephen Nicholas and Peter Shergold (Nicholas 1988) argues that convicts to New South Wales were relatively skilled and literate and were a useful workforce. Van Diemen's Land (later Tasmania) was more rigorous than New South Wales and continued its convict system longer. Convicts were normally put to constructive work relevant to building a permanent society as part of the expanding British Empire. This followed a tradition of convict and indentured labour in other British colonies, but it did not use slavery as in the Caribbean or North America. Convicts and Aborigines were nominally British subjects, governed by British law. Australian origins lay in coercion but not formal conquest.
When necessary, convict discipline was maintained by floggings, transfer to stricter locations or chain gangs working on the roads and public works. Guarding and policing were often provided by other convicts. The British military saw their role as defence and preventing rebellion and (for its officers) making money. Convict numbers reached a peak of 27,831 in New South Wales in 1836, and 46.4 per cent of the recorded population in 1828. In Van Diemen's Land numbers peaked at 28,459 in 1848 and 47.1 per cent in 1819.
Convicts transported to Australia between 1788 and 1868 totalled 160,000 (Robson 1965).
16 - The United Nations and Refugees
- from Part II
- James Jupp
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- Book:
- Immigrant Nation Seeks Cohesion
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 21 June 2018
- Print publication:
- 10 April 2018, pp 139-150
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- Chapter
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Summary
When the war in Europe ended in 1945, and the United Nations was founded at San Francisco, it was faced with three major problems: the fate of the Jewish population that had survived mass extermination (Bartrop 1994; Blakeney 1985); the presence in Central Europe of several million displaced persons, forcibly removed or voluntarily escaping from the Nazi concentration and labour camp systems; and the need to de-Nazify or put on trial those responsible for this massive chaos. These issues were complicated by the occupation of the most devastated areas by the Soviet Red Army. By a miracle of organization these problems were roughly solved within four years, with Australia playing a major role through the influence of its foreign minister, Herbert Evatt, and its Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell (Calwell 1972). Calwell and his officials took an active part in recruiting 181,000 displaced persons to Australia through the International Refugee Organization (Martin 1989). The unavoidable origins of current refugee policy were established in this major crisis in the hope that peace would prevail. It did not, but current refugees are from a different world.
Jews were not included in this scheme, but had separate arrangements negotiated with Calwell and based initially on family reunion (Benjamin 1998; Neumann 2015). These were met with fierce criticism from Australia's incredibly biased print media. The public identification of refugees with Jews, while inaccurate, forced modifications, like the registration as Jews of intending passengers and a quota of 25 per cent maximum for Jewish passengers.
Germans were barred from Australia altogether, as they had been in 1918. Austrians and Volksdeutsche were not. No non-Europeans were allowed. Subsequent research shows that many collaborators with the Nazis, including war criminals, used the International Organization for Migration (IOM) system to slip through to Australia, Canada and the United States (Aarons 2001). Escape routes to Latin America had already been organized before the war ended (Aarons 1989; Cesarani 2001; Neumann 2015).
Refugee labour was essential in the rebuilding process and in Australian industrialization. Citizenship was taken up by the great majority selected. This provided security. Communist states did not recognize changes of nationality and often called for the repatriation of their subjects. The displaced persons were to become citizens, not guest workers or temporary residents. This objective was largely achieved and laid the foundations for official multiculturalism.
Introduction
- James Jupp
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- Book:
- Immigrant Nation Seeks Cohesion
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 21 June 2018
- Print publication:
- 10 April 2018, pp xiii-xvi
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Summary
Australia is a nation of 25 million people, living in relative affluence in a mainly ‘European’ society, thousands of miles from Europe. Its area is the same as the continental United States. Hardly anyone lives in most of Australia because of desert conditions. Only a minority can trace their own local origins as far back as two hundred years. Its allegiance is nominally to Queen Elizabeth (the Queen of the United Kingdom and the Queen of Australia). Its political system is a federation with parliamentary democracy. At least a million Australians enjoy dual citizenship from somewhere else. Its closest neighbours are New Zealand, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Malaysia, Singapore and Timor, to which few Australians travel more than once or twice. Its favourite overseas holiday resort is Bali. Long-distance friends are often in London or Los Angeles. All of this makes Australia distinctive.
Australia has a wide range of interesting writing about itself. Some of this repeats old stories from the past, like the Gallipoli landing, Ned Kelly and Captain Cook raising the British flag. Unlike other countries its history contains no local set battles, no military invasions, no great inventions, very few great leaders, no dictators, no revolutions and not much out of the ordinary except its unique flora and fauna. As the Chinese allegedly say, ‘Happy is the country with no heroes’. Struggles against distance and climate mark the early days, but science and technology are conquering much of this. The economy is classified as fourteenth in the world. Its population is spread over an area as large as the continental United States, but mainly located in a dozen cities.
The world is changing fast in Australia's neighbourhood. In this book I have tried to examine problems in sustaining a comfortable, stable democracy by using often rigorous means, retaining the friendship of its neighbours while often misunderstanding their peoples, leaders, beliefs and religions. These problems go back to the British imperial inheritance, relationships with the Indigenous peoples and with the neighbouring Asians, insensitivity about immigration and refugee policies, White Australia and beyond, reliance on Britain or the United States, and fear of Islam and China. Some of these issues go as far back as Cook's mission from Georgian England and right up to current instability and worrying changes in the United States and Asia.