Australia's Asianisation
How and why Australia's immigration policy was radically altered
The following is part 1 of an essay written by AAFI and Australia First Party co-founder Denis McCormack, presented by Graeme Campbell as leader of the fledging Australia First Party to the Federal Parliament in 1996.
Read Part 1 HERE
In August 1980 a conference, titled 'Future Directions', was held at La Trobe University, Melbourne. A book of the proceedings was later produced. The conference was sponsored by many of Australia's largest companies (mining, oil, brewing, retailing, building, transport, media) and, of course, the churches. Many who were then little known rising stars of state and federal politics, academia, big media, government bureaucracy, union leadership, aboriginal and ethnic activists attended: e.g. Gareth Evans (Foreign Minister), Joan Kimer (recent Premier of Victoria), Bob Brown (now Tasmanian Greens parliamentarian), Julian Disney, Ranald McDonald et al.
The following extract from the Melboume Age 18/8/1980 gives many pointers to policy now in place.
MOVE CLOSER TO ASIA OR FACE ISOLATION
Australia faces growing isolation if it does not move closer to South-East Asia, the conference "Austrasia" group said, it said such a future would not be comfortable and envisaged a new multinational regional grouping.
The task of the group was to investigate the impact of closer integration - economic, social, and cultural - between Australia and the countries of South-East Asia .... The assumption behind changing Australia into Austrasia was that, by 1990 10% of the Australian population would be Asian in origin. There is a further assumption that a multicultural Asianised Australian society with a growing diversified economy which takes account of regional needs is preferred despite the stresses which will accompany its emergence.
... the groups initial reaction to the, 'difficult area of defence' was to abandon the ANZUS pact and forge new defence ties within the region... they dealt with five main areas, trade and investment, cultural and social, migration, knowledge base and 'adaptive mechanisms'. Trade and investment: trade links with Asian nations were increasing but, as mutually beneficial economic links brought more understanding, it was important that two way trade and investment be accelerated. Restrictions on the flow of capital should be freed allowing more Asian investment in Austrasia and more Austrasian investment in Asia. Cultural and Social Changes: this area presented possibilities of great enrichment, but also stress of individuals because of challenges to values, the group advocates a 'soft' approach in this area. Among the actions which should be taken are the promotion of exchange tourism; the acceleration of Asian languages teaching in schools from primary level; the establishment of an Austrasia Council to encourage cultural exchanges ... Migration: to encourage the development with minimal stress in Austrasia, the initial emphasis in settling Asian immigrants should be wedded to decentralisation... it recommends encouragement of voluntary Asianisation on a regional basis using local opinion polls and similar consultative mechanisms to achieve community agreement before new settlers are introduced. 'Existing community refugee resettlement schemes provide a model. These should be underpinned by financial support to facilitate the adaptation process.' The group further recommends that special entry conditions for Asian immigrants should apply. They would include dual citizenship and family reunion. Adaptive Strategies: if the suggestions in the other areas including trade and cultural exchange were, 'sensitively and courageously' implemented, these themselves would be positive forces for change to the new Austrasian direction.
Other actions which should be taken specifically to ease change and conflict were the encouragement of individual family hosting schemes and the development of multicultural resource centres."
The Abolition of the White Australia Policy: The Immigration Reform Movement Revisited, Edited by Nancy Viviani. Australia-Asia Papers No. 65, Grifith University, Queensland, Australia, Jume 1992 [product of a sympostum held with the intention of getting the inside story from the founders of the Immigration Reform Group who are still alive and very influential in their various reincarnations]:
"This paper seeks to place the work of the Immigration Reform Movement in a wider context - and their relevance for contemporary debates on Asian migration." piv.
"... remember Sir Keith Hancock's view that White Australia was the indispensable condition of every other Australian policy." p.1
'Another social change of relevance was the impact of the post-war immigration program. [it hasn't stopped.] In parts, the program was instituted to protect White Australia [populate or perish was the slogan], but as H.C. Coombes notes, it in fact 'paved the way for the abandonment of the racist White Australia Policy' ... north-western European sources quickly exhausted ... Australia was forced to accept southern and eastern European immigrants [then middle Easterners, etc.]. ... It is hard to believe that the White Australia policy would have been challenged successfully but for this major development during the early post-war period." p.2
"… expressed their concerns about the policy in a post-war world which would supposedly be based on the tenets of racial equality as expounded in the Atlantic Charter." p.5.
"The 'modification by stealth' aspect of the LCP [Liberal Country Party coalition] government's strategy between 1958 (or thereabouts) and 1966 deserves closer scrutiny ... it entailed bowing before the winds of change to some extent (but not too much), and achieving a kind of 'inoculation effect' of letting several thousands of Asians into Australia, but without getting into a head-on fight ..." p.31
"That in turn helped to pave the way for the changes in political attitudes and bureaucratic thinking which made it possible for Hubert Opperman, the then Minister for Immigration, with Prime Minister Holt's support, to introduce major reforms in March 1966, soon after the retirement of Sir Robert Menzies. (I have been told that Opperman had proposed the changes to Menzies some time before, not long after an Immigration Reform Group-Victorian Association for Immigration Reform delegation had lobbied him on the matter, but had been rebuffed with words more or less to the effect that I know such changes have to come sooner or later, but not in my time ...')." p.22
[Regarding the formation of the Immigration Reform Group in the late 1950s] "I suppose I had in mind something like the (early) Fabian Society role in Britain as an opinion-forming think tank." p.26
"The abolitionists proposed a minimalist start to Asian migration and a gradualist program. They knew that a century of entrenched anti-Asian sentiment (revived in the 1950s by the Chinese communist threat) would not change quickly, that a small beginning would be acceptable and that experience should be a guide to future liberalization. By this stance, they cut the ground from beneath the image of 'floods of Asians' so effectively used by their opponents."
".. it's also worth noting three other things about these people: first, they were idealists but a more pragmatic, realist bunch you'd travel far to find. This, I think, was one secret of their success. They did not present their case as a great struggle between good and evil, but as part of Australia changing to meet the post-war challenges of being located in Asia, as part of a necessary change in social values also being undertaken elsewhere (Canada and the United States, but not in South Africa, for example), as a need to retrieve and recreate Australia's damaged image in the world from being that of an irremediably racist country. Second, they were internationalists..." p.34
"It is the acting on these ideas that sets this group apart, and makes them a prime example of intellectuals helping to change policy and, in this case, history." p.35.
"The most profound effect of the abolition for 'recreating Australia' internally was, I suppose, the bifurcation of identity: the intertwining of whiteness and Australianess in our nationalism was rent asunder, as they say, - in about a decade as Asian migration reached close to half of our total migrant intake by the end of the 1980s. In this age of nationalism and ethnicity, this, along with the assertion of migrant rights, has turned us to this occasionally passionate, but more often desultory, search for a 'new identity'. It is ironic, but unsurprising, that just in this period of the assumed triumph of internationalist and cosmopolitan ideas, the ideas of closer communities of nations and ethnic groups should be simultaneously contesting the high moral ground. I suspect it was rather like that for our abolitionists a couple of decades ago."
"But the abolition of White Australia also has some powerful direct and indirect effects, through Asian migration, in recreating Australia. It has partly redefined what we mean by rich and poor, how we look at ethnic rights and equality of opportunity, what we mean by multiculturalism and how our economy operates. It has important implications for the hold on power structures of the old white male elites. We are only now beginning to see our way through this actual recreation of Australia."
"But the abolition had a more profound impact externally. The White Australia Policy had been the core of all our foreign relations - the alliances, the trade patterns, our defence and the defining of 'we' as Western European in the international system. From Billy Hughes at Versailles to Vietnam and the UN, it underpinned it all. Without the White Australia Policy, new thinking about all our motives for dealing with region and the world was needed. Much of the struggle in our foreign policy since 1973 had been about that.
Thus we are in the process of being recreated by others." p.38
"How much was the abolition to do with the 'spirit of the age"? It happened in the middle 1960s, after all, though its origins were much earlier. What did it have to do with that 1960s political ferment of ideas regarding race, ethnicity, Aborigines, peace movements, Vietnam and feminism? Or is it really the product of earlier intellectual streams - left liberalism, conscience radicalism?"
"How much of the abolition had to do with shifts in norms in the international arena? Canada and the United States removed their restrictions about the same time, so we need to ask about the influence of international instruments (Declarations of Human Rights, instruments against racism, decolonisation, etc.) and their use in diplomatic pressure on restrictive states." p.41
The Intellectuals and Socialism, F.A. Hayek, University of Chicago Law Review, 1949.
"The character of the process by which the views of the intellectuals influence the politics of tomorrow is therefore of much more than academic interest ...What to the contemporary observer appears as the battle of conflicting interests had indeed often been decided long before in a clash of ideas confined to narrow circles."
I could expand greatly on the preceding, however, my conclusions are:
1. The intended changes to Australia and its people were brought about through skilful networking, manipulation, and infiltration of elite power structures over decades, with great patience and subtlety, going well over the head of John Citizen, his wife, their kids, and majority opinion. John and his family rarely blame the migrants - they know the politicians, businessmen, and journalists are the real problem.
2. Their intellectual opponents of the day did not take them seriously enough - the complacent majority phenomenon prevailed. The few public intellectuals who today are occasionally writing and speaking out have so far displayed neither the cohesion, courage, nor charisma to politicise the issue in the manner required, although the means are at their disposal. Graeme Campbell, Federal Member for Kalgoorlie, is the only Parliamentarian representing the majority point of view. He cannot do what is required on his own.
3. Given the massive changes under way as a result of such thorough indoctrination of propaganda throughout the education system for decades now, it is doubtful that any meaningful brake remains to be applied to achieve a sustained and significant slow-down, let alone reversal of current trends (unless the tooth fairy delivers on 2 above).
4. Of Australia's 18 million population today, over one million are of Asian background. With the Asian component of the immigration program running at over 50 percent, and the higher fertility/birthrates of Asian migrants, it is hard to see the traditional public opinion against Asianisation, and all it entails, remaining at majority level in opposition to the status quo; it must erode over time. The demographics dictate that Australia's population will be 27% Asian in 25 years, and it won't stop at that. Phil Ruthven, a big business futurologist happily forecasts that Australia will be two-thirds Asian by late next century. He hopes for an Australian population of 180 million by that time. Mr Ruthven is often invited to repeat his message at Government Immigration conferences.
5. Tri-partisanship whereby the media support political bi-partisanship against majority opinion is a very tough nut to crack.
6. On the current trend of policy, the future management of the continent is going to change hands with the inevitable demographic swamping now under way and predicted to continue. It will no longer be Australia, it will be something else. Australasia is an old term that is acquiring a whole new meaning. This is the reason the pro-Asianisation lobby is now well and truly out of the closet, as evidenced by the opening two paragraphs of Living with Dragons: Australia Confronts its Asian Destiny. This volume of 12 essays from specialist insiders is edited by Greg Sheridan, Foreign Editor and leading pro-Asianisation spin-doctor for the only national newspaper in Australia (Rupert Murdoch's The Australian). It was published in April 1995 by Allen and Unwin in association with Mobil Oil Australia. By Mr. Sheridan's own admission (Weekend Australian, August 19, 1995) in an article explaining his 1979 conversion experience to all things Asian (through reading a book, The year of living Dangerously, about political turmoil in mid 1960s Indonesia) he "had no particular South East Asian connections and as a grade D journalist, no professional mandate or opportunity to go there. I did instead two things. I read Koch's other books and I realised that while I couldn't for the moment go to South East Asia, South East Asia had come to Australia. In 1979, Malcolm Fraser [Prime Minister, Leader of the Liberal Party] had made the momentous decision to accept large numbers of Vietnamese boat people. This decision changed Australia forever." Given his uptake on this, hence Sheridan's record rapid rise from D Grade joumalist to A Grade spin-doctor which he has been for some years now at The Australian. Sheridan dedicates the book to his wife, Jasbir, and their three sons, Ajaypal, Lakhvinder, and Jagdave.
"A revolution is sweeping across Australia. The nation is changing fundamentally and irreversibly. The old order is gone, a new order is taking shape with astonishing speed and force. An old mental universe has died, a new universe has come into being. A comprehensive set of attitudes and aspirations and material circumstances has been left behind. A new pattern is emerging. Unlike most revolutions, this one is bloodless, but is no less profound and consequential, shattering to some, liberating to most; the one thing that can be said for certain is that nothing is unaffected the old order can never be restored."
"This revolution is occurring within the Australian psyche and also within Australia's material circumstances. That is why it is so comprehensive a revolution - it is a transformation of the spirit and the body. I speak of the Asianisation of Australian life." p.3
"Paul Kelly [Sheridan's simpatico pro-Asianisation editor-in-chief at The Australian], in his seminal book on the 1980s, The End of Certainty, described the pattern of decisions, policies and institutions which emerged in the first years of Federation and which became known as the Australian Settlement. The Australian Settlement, he said, had five fundamental pillars. They were: white Australia, industry protection, wage arbitration, state paternalism and imperial benevolence (with the United States later replacing Britain as the relevant imperial power). The politics of the 1980s, he argued, was a politics of creative destruction, in which all five pillars were torn down. At the end of 1994 it is easy to see that Kelly's essential thesis was right. White Australia has given way to perhaps the most authentic racially non-discriminatory immigration policy in the world. Tariffs were torn down and by the turn of the century Australia will have virtually no significant industry protection." [Or industry!]
"Kelly's thesis was thus right, but incomplete in two critical respects. It failed to recognise how all of the crucial policy changes of the 1980s led directly to the Asianisation of almost every sphere of Australian life. Similarly, it failed to recognise just how totally the relationship with Asia has defined Australia from its earliest days, so that the embrace of Asia which accelerated so greatly in the 1980s was not just something new for Australia, but the total reversal of the means of national self-identification throughout our history. This is the stuff of revolution." p. 4-5
"... in education, as in so many other areas, internationalisation for Australia has meant Asianisation." p.16
"In Australian foreign policy, Asia is now nearly totally dominant." p.17
"I have often run into views among writers and artists and others in China that are similar to those expressed in the following passage. The passage comes from a forthcoming book by the Brisbane-based Chinese writer Sang Ye, The Year the Dragon Came, a collection of oral histories of Chinese people newly arrived in Australia:
'My landlord is an old man who's seen a lot of the world. He thinks of Asia as a filthy place, contaminated both spiritually and materially. I agree. He also thinks Africa's a mess and Europe is too old, and he's right there too. But I don't agree with him when he says Australia's the best. That's bullshit. In the eyes of the Chinese, you're a second or third-rate country. It's just that you've opened your doors a bit wider than the rest and we've all crowded in. The first-rate countries are America, then France and West Germany: in the second tier are Northern Europe and Japan and only then Canada and Australia. Canada's a bit better than Australia because it's closer to America. To put it more bluntly, Australia's become a refuge for drifters, a dumping ground for the world's garbage.' p.154
"It is to cast our minds forward - say, 50 years - to a time when we are totally cheek by jowl with our Asian neighbours, when every facet of Australian life, from entertainment to industrial relations to political party platforms, will be affected by Asian societies and cultures, because we will be part of an Asian political confederation in fact, even if not by way of a European model of a Treaty of Maastricht." p.164
"I am a constant champion when I am in Asia for Australia and for the great success of Asian immigration and the many other things which make this a lovely, honey-coloured society." p.171
Australians have never been given the message so plainly, clearly, and matter-of-factly, before in a mainstream paper-back edition.
Will it create any backlash? I doubt it! Australian intellectuals and academics who work in the system on immigration problems have been so thoroughly intimidated and subdued over time that many won't even admit the word "Asianisation" to their vocabulary for fear of attracting flak - understandable, but pathetic.
On October 17, 1995, I had a chat with Rupert Murdoch face-to-face at the Los Angeles airport. I told him what I thought of the totally corrosive, corrupting and all-pervasive pro-Asianisation line pushed daily in his down-under flagship The Australian, and that Kelly and Sheridan were the cheer squad leaders. After speaking about Peter Brimelow's Alien Nation, he told me that Brimelow and he were acquainted and he knew the book. I then asked him point-blank if he agreed with and was happy about the obvious long-term demographic implications regarding racial, ethnic and cultural swamping that must occur if Labor/Liberal bi-partisanship policies on immigration, multiculturalism and Asianisation are not changed. Mr Murdoch's response: "No, I think it's gone too far, and we risk balkanisation of Australian society in the future...". He undertook to read and listen to the materials I gave him. Wouldn't it be good to be able to make a difference! In his case, the mega power of one, but will other factors intervene? And what will they be?
Denis McCormack, spokesman, political researcher
Australians Against Further Immigration
November 1995