Reflections on ending the "White Australia" policy

Politicians and press

NARRATOR

It was the Labor Government of Gough Whitlam, elected in 1972, which finalised the abolition of White Australia and went one step further.

Non-white Australians working in various jobs

It publicised around the world Australia's new non-discriminatory policy.

AL GRASSBY, IMMIGRATION MINISTER 1972-1974

In 1973, when the last vestiges of the White Australia Policy were swept away, of course that brought a reaction. They were upset. They couldn't believe it. It took them a while to digest the fact that Australia, for the first time in 200 years, had wiped its face clean of racism as far as the statute books were concerned.

PAUL KEATING, PRIME MINISTER 1991-1996

I think White Australia was a far greater inhibition to us than it ever was to anyone that had to deal with it from outside. And the interesting thing is that we came close to being marginalised, the way South Africa was marginalised with apartheid. We got out of it just in the nick of time.

Images of white Australians playing poker at a club, while a cabaret performance goes on

MUSIC

# The other man's grass is always greener # The sun shines brighter on the other side… #

NARRATOR

By the '70s, the policy was dead, but Australia was still predominantly white. Events in Asia would soon change this.

MUSIC

# I'm so thankful # For what I have. #

Images of Vietnamese refugees

NARRATOR

The communist triumph in Vietnam in 1975 soon saw boatloads of Vietnamese refugees sailing south.

REPORTER

If it was up to you now, which country would you head for?

MAN, ON BOAT

I think all the person in the boat now want to go to Australia.

MALCOLM FRASER, PRIME MINISTER 1975-1983

Well, the dominant feeling was that we had to give these people a home — especially people who had been associated with either the Australian embassy or the Australian armed forces in Vietnam. Our presence there had encouraged them to fight, so I think we had a commitment, an obligation, to such people, and we fulfilled that obligation.

Images of Vietnamese people

NARRATOR

It was a crisis for the South-East Asian region. Refugee resettlement agreements were negotiated, and the Fraser Government took large numbers of Indochinese.

Images of refugees and Qantas planes

NARRATOR

This became the most substantial entry of Asians into Australia since the Chinese in the 19th century. Nearly 200,000 Indochinese settled here, refugees and their reunited families, in the 20 years after 1975.

IAN MCPHEE, MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION AND ETHNIC AFFAIRS 1979-82

We had to establish a rational program for processing people, and per capita we took more than the United States. There was a total bipartisanship because there was no doubt in the minds of any of the parliamentarians I had dealings with about the importance of this policy for Australia, and it was quite a genuine bipartisan one.

Images of non-white Australians

NARRATOR

From this time, at least a third of the annual immigration intake has been Asian. The refugee crisis signalled the birth of a new multiracial Australia.

KIM BEAZLEY, LEADER, AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY

We have only been multiracial in a process which started in the 1960s and was cemented in the 1980s. We changed our definition then of what it was to be an Australian. Up to that point of time, the starting point of the definition of 'Australian' had been the word 'white'.

MALCOLM FRASER, PRIME MINISTER 1975-1983

It might have been the most important thing that my government accomplished… because whatever anyone might have said since, the fact that we then accepted a multicultural Australia and accepted that, you know, people didn't have to forget their land of origin or forget their affection for it to be a good Australian, was enormously important in building a cohesive society.