Migrants,refugees, and Australian society - Essay Example

Migrants, Refugees, and Australian Society: "What were the effects of Arthur Calwell's background, temperament, ideals and ambitions upon the evolution "It is better to be defeated on principle than to be defeated on lies1," " Two Wyongs do not make a White1, " " Populate or Perish1" and many other such popular but controversial quotes are attributed to the one and only Arthur Calwell, the politician who had the honour of being the longest serving member in the House of Representatives in Australia; serving as an MP for 32 years. Active and energetic in the Australian Labor Party, he was elected President of the Victorian Labor Party in 1931.He is considered as a social revolutionary, who has contributed invaluably to Australian Nationalism2. Arthur Calwell was the chief architect of Australia's post-war immigration scheme, at a time when Europe was teeming with refugees who desired a better life far from their war-torn homelands. Calwell was appointed as the first Minister for Immigration in the Australian government in 1945, during Ben Chifley's term as Prime Minister. More effectively than others could have done in the 1940s, he was able to expand Australia's traditional immigration base beyond the British Isles to include eastern and southern Europe, and to promote aggressive recruitment as the means of preserving a 'White Australia'. Calwell and Sir Tasman Heyes1, his personal choice to head the new department, formed an outstandingly creative partnership. In a way, whatever Australia is today: an affluent, developed country with a zillion opportunities for locals and immigrants: can be contributed to the far-sightedness of Arthur Calwell. A sneak peak into the background and ideals of Arthur Calwell will help the reader understand more about his style of functioning and perpetually courting controversies. Calwell, Arthur Augustus (1896-1973), the eldest of seven children, was born on 28 August 1896 in West Melbourne. Both his parents had a Victorian upbringing, which explains his stiff, conservative thinking in the political field. His father was a police constable who later rose to the rank of superintendent. Arthur's paternal grandfather Davis Calwell was an American, whose Ulster Protestant father had served in the Pennsylvania General Assembly. Davis came to Victoria in 1853 and married a diminutive Welshwoman Elizabeth Lewis who became, in Arthur's phrase, "the matriarch of the tribe". Thus there was politics and authority running in his blood. In Calwell's own words "I grew up in crowded inner area, with its cottages built on fourteen-feet frontages and even less, and with evidence of human misery visible to all". He suffered a near fatal attack of diphtheria when he was barely six years old and later attributed the high-pitched huskiness of his mature voice to the same. He was a bright student, but lack of funds for a college education made him take up a job at a very early age. After matriculation at Christian Brothers' College, Calwell started his career with the Victorian Public Service on 28 March 1913 as a clerk in the Department of Agriculture1. He moved to the Treasury in 1923. At the very young age of 19, he became secretary of the Melbourne branch of the Australian Labor Party, marking his first step in the world of Australian politics. When the British Empire went to war in August 1914, Calwell, a second lieutenant in the senior cadets, applied for a commission in the Australian Imperial Force. Rejected because of his age, in 1915-21 he served as a lieutenant in the Militia. By 1916 he was a critic of the war and an ardent advocate of a 'No' vote in the conscription referendum which split the Labor Party that year. His activities as secretary of the Young Ireland Society after the 1916 Easter Rising brought him under the surveillance of security authorities. Honorary secretary (from 1917) of the State Service Clerical Association, he was foundation president (1925) of the restructured Australian Public Service Association (Victorian branch). Between 1926 and 1949 he held a range of elective positions in the State branch of the A.L.P.: he was a member of its central executive, its president (1930-31) and a Victorian delegate to the party's federal executive (from 1930). Calwell's great authority in the Victorian party enabled him to persuade the parliamentary leader, the veteran Thomas Tunnecliffe, to join the leader of the Country Party Sir Albert Dunstan in bringing down the conservative government of Sir Stanley Argyle in March 1935. Through an arrangement unique in Australian politics, Dunstan formed a Country Party government with Labor support. Among important legislation which Labor secured in return, Calwell took a keen personal interest in the reform of the Melbourne City Council, on which he served as an alderman (1939) and councillor (until 1945). On 29 August 1932 in St Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne, he married Elizabeth Marren, social editor of the Catholic weekly newspaper, the Tribune, and an Irishwoman of sharp wit and strong will. In 1933 they launched the Irish Review as the official organ of the Victorian Irish Association. Hindered as a player by his poor eyesight, Calwell presided over the North Melbourne Football Club in 1928-34. When J. B. Chifley became prime minister in July 1945 he appointed Calwell Australia's first minister for immigration. He was ideally suited for the post and had lobbied eagerly for it. No minister in Chifley's cabinet was so well placed to overcome labour's traditional resistance to large-scale immigration. Calwell shared and boldly articulated the prejudices both of the labour movement and the wider Australian community. More effectively than others could have done in the 1940s, he was able to expand Australia's traditional immigration base beyond the British Isles to include eastern and southern Europe, and to promote aggressive recruitment as the means of preserving a 'White Australia'. Calwell and (Sir) Tasman Heyes, his personal choice to head the new department, formed an outstandingly creative partnership. War-devastated Europe and war-exhausted Britain provided an abundant source of potential immigrants, but their selection and transportation presented intractable problems. Calwell toured Britain and Europe in 1947 to inspect Australian migration offices, visit refugee camps, speed up selection procedures and organize shipping. He enlisted the co-operation of leaders of the Australian Jewish community to arrange passages for survivors of the Holocaust. Of the ships chartered for Jewish refugees, he later frankly stated: 'We had to insist that half the accommodation in these wretched vessels must be sold to non-Jewish people. It would have created a great wave of anti-Semitism and would have been electorally disastrous for the Labor Party had we not made this decision'. Basing his programme firmly on the concept of assimilation, Calwell coined the term 'New Australian' for immigrants, particularly 'displaced persons' from the Baltic states and Eastern Europe. Britain, however, remained the source of about 50 per cent of intending settlers, whose numbers rose from some 30 000 in 1947 to approximately 170 000 in 1949. While he achieved broad support for his policy, crucially from the unions, Calwell's handling of individual cases occasioned recurrent controversy, invariably involving his strict interpretation of the White Australia policy. In the war years The advance of the Japanese in early 1942 and Australia's inability to defend itself made it clear to the Curtin Government that something would have to be done in the post war years to increase the nation's population. 'Total War' and conscription put a huge strain on our economy and further emphasized the need to 'populate or perish'. Before the war concluded, the Department of Information, headed by Arthur Calwell, began to develop a plan to populate Australia. Policies which included encouragement of natural growth were pursued by the government and in fact the birth rate had risen significantly during the war. However, natural increase was never likely to bring the sort of growth that was felt necessary to secure the country against the possibility of invasion. Large scale immigration seemed to be the best answer. By late 1944 the Australian government had begun negotiations with Britain for assisted migration programs in the post war years. All political parties in Australia supported the White Australia Policy and looked only to Britain and north western European countries for migrants in the belief that people from these countries would more easily accept the Australian way of life. This was the government's vision at the end of the war. John Curtin did not live to see the plan put in place and he may well have been surprised by the eventual large scale migration program after the war. The post-war years The first migrants to arrive in Western Australia after the war came on the 'Asturias' in September 1947. Britons nominated by industry and individuals, including child migrants and Polish Allied ex-servicemen were the first to arrive. In February 1948 they were joined by displaced persons from Europe. Most non-British migrants, however, arrived from 1952, the main source countries being Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and the former Yugoslavia. The Commonwealth Department of Immigration, under the leadership of Arthur Calwell, handled all aspects of migrant selection, financial arrangements associated with bringing them to Australia, reception on arrival, temporary accommodation and placement in employment. There were four types of accommodation in both urban and country areas: transit camps, reception and training centres, holding centres and workers hostels. The post war migration program was to prove to be a very important factor in the social development of Australia but for many migrants the camps were a tough introduction to their new life. In his 1978 biography of Calwell, Colm Kiernam wrote: "Was Calwell a racist All Australians who upheld the White Australia policy were racist in the sense that they upheld a policy which discriminated against coloured migrants... Calwell never denied the discriminatory reality of the laws: 'It is true that a measure of discrimination on racial grounds is exercised in the administration of our immigration policy.' But he did not consider himself to be superior to any Asian."11 Kiernan is correct to observe that until the 1950s virtually all Australians supported the White Australian policy, that Calwell's views were entirely within the political mainstream at that time, and Calwell believed himself to be free of personal prejudice against people of other races. But these observations must be set against Calwell's comments in his 1972 memoirs, Be Just and Fear Not, in which he made it clear that he maintained his view that non-European people should not be allowed to settle in Australia. He wrote: "I am proud of my white skin, just as a Chinese is proud of his yellow skin, a Japanese of his brown skin, and the Indians of their various hues from black to coffee-coloured. Anybody who is not proud of his race is not a man at all. And any man who tries to stigmatize the Australian community as racist because they want to preserve this country for the white race is doing our nation great harm... I reject, in conscience, the idea that Australia should or ever can become a multi-racial society and survive." Calwell had a soft corner for the indigenious Australians. This should be kept in mind while discussing his attitude to immigration and racism. In his memoirs he wrote. "If any people are homeless in Australia today, it is the Aboriginals, They are the only non-European descended people to whom we owe any debt. Some day, I hope, we will do justice to them." 1 "No matter where the pressure comes from, the Australian people will continue to resist all attempts to destroy our White society. I reject in conscience, the idea that Australia should or can ever be a multi-racial society and survive."22 Alec Saunders1, has in his article "Fundamentals Of Old Labour Nationalism" analysed the after-effects of the large scale immigration encouraged by Calwell. "The regular racial attacks upon white Australians (particularly women - "skippies") by these unassimilables (who are often Australian-born) is a confirmation of the validity of what Arthur Calwell prophesised regarding the outcomes of the permissive, liberal, multicultural society. The existence of an overt Moslem fundamentalist fifth column (as evidenced by young militant spokesmen who place their Islamic faith above their Australian citizenship) is multiculturalism's 'chickens coming home to roost'. These cultural parasites who constantly whinge and demand tolerance/acquiescence to their pecadillos in the form of so-called 'cultural senstivity' from the host majority culture, have never been willing to tolerate/acquiesce to our value system. Where are the formal apologies on the part of the Moslem community to the relatives of white Australians and other westerners who died in Bali, or who suffered at the hands of their renegade criminals and rapists"1 To conclude, I would like to assert that as in any other field in life or politics, moderation is the key to success. So, let Australia encourage the immigration of Asians, Europeans and other nationals, only so long as it is beneficial to the nation's interests at large. Mass immigration might only lead to disruption of the country's economic and social fabric. Bibliography ARTHUR CALWELL's autobiography, Be Just and Fear Not, Rigby Ltd., Sydney, 1972. Arthur Calwell papers (National Library of Australia). More on the resources Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 13, Melbourne University Press, 1993, pp 341-345. Calwell, Be Just and Fear Not, 117 Colm Kiernan, Calwell, 132. R. Murray, The Split (Melb, 1970); P. Weller (ed), Caucus Minutes 1901-1949 (Melb, 1975); G. Freudenberg, A Certain Grandeur (Melb, 1977); L. Ross, John Curtin (Melb, 1977); C. Kiernan, Calwell (Melb, 1978); E. Kunz, Displaced Persons (Syd, 1988); Graham Freudenberg, 'Calwell, Arthur Augustus (1896 - 1973)', http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A130385b.htm . Read More