[Editor: This article, regarding Arthur Calwell, the O’Keefe case, and the White Australia Policy, was published in The Argus (Melbourne, Vic.), 29 January 1949.]
Indonesian woman and 8 children must go, says Mr Calwell
Exemptions have been granted to Mrs O’Keefe, but she has been advised recently that no further extension will be given.
No order had been issued, however, compelling her to “quit Australia by midnight on February 28.”
Mr Calwell, who has rejected a personal plea by Dr Mannix, Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, that Mrs O’Keefe and her family be allowed to stay in Australia, said:
“Mrs O’Keefe is one of the hard core of wartime refugees who refused to leave Australia.
“Along with thousands of other refugees from the East Indies and some islands of the Pacific she was given sanctuary in Australia on the understanding that she would be repatriated at the expense of the Dutch Government.
“All wartime evacuees who came to Australia at that time accepted these conditions gladly, and most of them went back home willingly when the war ended.”
“Well treated”
She had been well treated in Australia, Mr Calwell said, and could have been required to leave at any time since the war’s end. She had, however, no intention of leaving.
She had married Mr O’Keefe in spite of a warning that the marriage would confer no right to remain permanently in Australia.
About 500 Chinese wartime evacuees and a few Indonesians were still in Australia, Mr Calwell said.
It is understood that no appeal will be lodged against the deportation of Mrs O’Keefe, the wife of an Australian, and her eight children.
Before her marriage Mrs O’Keefe was the widow of an Indonesian war hero, S. Jacob, who was killed in an aeroplane crash in 1944.
Mrs O’Keefe and her family are now making preparations for their return to the islands.
“Hinges on children”
“The whole affair hinges upon the children,” Mr O’Keefe said. “They should be allowed to stay in Australia until their education is complete, but Mr Calwell will not permit it.”
It was never the family’s intention to stay in Australia for ever, he added, but only until the children were fit to return to their native land as ambassadors for this country.
The deportation would not affect the elder children much, because they had not forgotten the language, Mr O’Keefe said, but the younger ones were “dinkum Aussies.”
When he had married Mrs O’Keefe, he said, he thought that under the Immigration Act she would become a British subject and be allowed to stay.
The Immigration Act provisions had never been defined, he added, apparently because there had never been any need for it.
Three boys and three girls, aged between five and 13 years, attend St Joseph’s School, Chelsea, and often top their classes in examinations.
Peter, aged five, has definite ideas about not leaving Bonbeach. “I don’t want to leave the seaside,” he said emphatically.
Source:
The Argus (Melbourne, Vic.), 29 January 1949, p. 3
Editor’s notes:
The paragraph beginning “The whole affair hinges” was all in bold in the original article, but has been rendered here as standard text.
Annie O’Keefe = Annie Maas O’Keefe (1908-1974); born Annie Maas Dumais in the Netherlands East Indies (modern-day Indonesia), she married Samuel Jacob; as Annie Jacob, she (along with her husband and children) was part of the approximately 15,000 refugees who came to Australia during the Second World War (1939-1945); whilst in Australia, her husband died; her landlord, John (Jack) O’Keefe, offered to marry her so that she could stay in Australia, but in 1949 (after the end of the war) the Department of Immigration issued a deportation order for her and her children; an appeal was made to the High Court, which ruled in her favour, thereby setting a legal precedent for other refugees; the case was regarded as damaging to the White Australia Policy
See: 1) Kim Tao, “The case of Mrs O’Keefe: A watershed for white Australia”, Australian National Maritime Museum, 22 Jan 2019
2) Sean Brawley, “Mrs O’Keefe and the battle for White Australia”, Making Multicultural Australia [from Memento, no. 33, Winter 2007, pp. 6-8, National Archives of Australia]
3) Sean Brawley, “Finding home in white Australia: the O’Keefe deportation case of 1949” (abstract), Macquarie University
4) “Annie Maas O’Keefe”, National Archives of Australia
5) “O’Keefe v Calwell”, Wikipedia
Bonbeach = a south-eastern suburb of Melbourne (Victoria)
See: “Bonbeach, Victoria”, Wikipedia
Calwell = Arthur Calwell (1896-1973), politician, Minister for Immigration (1945-1949), and leader of the Australian Labor Party (1960-1967); he was born in West Melbourne in 1896, and died in East Melbourne in 1973
See: 1) Graham Freudenberg, “Calwell, Arthur Augustus (1896–1973)”, Australian Dictionary of Biography
2) “Arthur Calwell”, Wikipedia
East Indies = [see: Netherlands East Indies]
Immigration Act = the Immigration Restriction Act, an Australian law passed in 1901, a key intention of which was to stop non-white immigration into Australia
See: “Immigration Restriction Act 1901”, Wikipedia
Mannix = Daniel Mannix (1864-1963), a Catholic clergyman, and Archbishop of Melbourne (1917-1963); he was born in Charleville (County Cork, Ireland) in 1864, was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1890, was sent by the Church to Australia in 1913, where he served as a Bishop, becoming Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne in 1917, and died in Melbourne (Victoria) in 1963
See: 1) James Griffin, “Daniel Mannix (1864–1963)”, Australian Dictionary of Biography
2) “Daniel Mannix, Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne”, National Archives of Australia
3)“Daniel Mannix”, Wikipedia
Netherlands East Indies = (also known as the Dutch East Indies) a Dutch colony, essentially comprising the islands which later became Indonesia (which declared independence in 1945)
See: “Dutch East Indies”, Wikipedia
[Editor: Changed “at taht time” to “at that time”, “Thre boys” to “Three boys”, “often tpo their” to “often top their”.]
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