‘Not on Your Life’: Cabinet and Liberalisation of the White Australia Policy, 1964–67

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe liberalisation of the White Australia policy in the mid-1960s was a seminal event in Australian history. It marked the beginning of the end for the racial conception of society which had defined the federation since the late-nineteenth century. Cabinet’s discussions of the proposed changes during these years demonstrate that most Australian political leaders were not only fundamentally opposed to reform but also unconvinced by arguments emphasising the policy’s administrative inconsistencies, lack of humanitarianism and racially discriminatory features. Nor were they entirely swayed by arguments of diplomatic expediency, which had been advanced by senior Immigration and External Affairs officials since the 1950s. The decline of British race patriotism in the early 1960s weakened the ideological foundations of White Australia and allowed policy-makers to reconsider its foreign policy implications, especially in terms of Australia’s relations with Asia. Although cautious, the reforms of the mid-1960s represented an important break with the policy’s fundamental principles and provided the groundwork for further liberalisation and the formal abolition of White Australia in the 1970s.