I’m reading this 2012 book:
* The chapter “From Olive to Yellow” recounts the change in Australian immigration from British to south European to Asian.
George Megalogenis writes:
My favorite opinion poll is the one that would have stopped my mother migrating to Australia if the government of the day had obeyed its findings. Taken in March 1951, the Australian Gallup Poll asked voters ‘whether or not Australia should get immigrants’ from seven listed nations. Each candidate for our acceptance was European, a mix of Allies and enemies from the Second World War. The Netherlands (78.4%), Sweden (74.7) and France (57.8) recorded strong Yes votes. Of this group, only the Dutch would come to Australia in large enough numbers to be welcomed with the putdown of ‘clog wogs.’ Less popular were people from Greece (only 41.5%), Yugoslavia (32.6) and Italy (26.6). Germany (53.9)…
It is the absence of a settled Australian culture that makes this country so much easier to migrate to than the United States or UK…
The most revered prime ministers on both sides of politics believed in White Australia.
* Fraser had taken the side of the South Vietnamese refugees before the boats started coming to Australia….
In opposition, Fraser called for [Gough] Whitlam to accept as many as 50,000 Vietnamese refugees.
In 1977, an Age poll asked people to choose between six regional sources for new immigrants. The British topped the survey, next were people from Northern and Western Europe. As for the rest, don’t bother applying.
In The Lucky Country, Donald Horne observed that the Australian-born children of Southern Europeans seemed to take longer to fit in.
* Former Labor Prime Minister says about former conservative Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser: “He has always been impeccable on the question of race.” (Pg. 145)
* The [conservative] Coalition supported the South Vietnamese because Australia had fought with them in that wretched war.
* Fraser: “The Australian people received Vietnamese refugees with enormous generosity. They accepted that there was a moral obligation and there were special circumstances because we’d been fighting with them.”
* By 1996, Australia’s Vietnamese-born population numbered 167,000 (.9%).
