[Editor: This article, attacking the White Australia Policy, was published in the Workers Star (Perth, WA), 25 March 1949.]
‘White Australia’ policy must go
The High Court decision that Immigration Minister Calwell cannot deport Mrs. O’Keefe and her children back to Indonesia is a set-back to the Nazi-like racial theories of the Federal Labor Government.
But the White Australia policy still remains.
A strong campaign is needed by the Labor Movement to force the Labor Party to abandon this dangerous, fascist-like policy, which has provoked fierce indignation throughout Asia and the South-west Pacific.
Answer to “Myths”
To do that those who value Australia’s security will have to destroy some of the most prevalent “myths” such as:
“Scrapping of ‘White Australia’ would expose Australia to a flood of Asian migrants who would work for starvation wages and undermine our living standards.”
In fact the end of the “White Australia” policy would allow for a proper control of immigration and the safeguarding of living standards.
Worst threat to our living standards via immigration has come through the importation of thousands of British migrants by the Bruce-Page Government after the first world war. It had nothing to do with the color of their skins. The same applies to the Fascist Balts now being imported in thousands.
“Admission of a small quota of Asian immigrants yearly would defile the purity of White Australia.”
This is the same sort of myth that Hitler and Rosenberg put forward about the “purity” of the “Aryan Nordics” which would be “defiled” by marriages with Jews or other “lesser breeds.”
Biologists, anthropologists and all other educated or knowledgeable people ridicule all such theories.
“The colored people are in some way inferior mentally and morally to whites.”
This is an absolute lie. The Chinese people had an advanced civilisation thousands of years before European civilisation was heard of.
Colored people have been forced to live in brutalised subjection to the white imperialists for generations.
Liberating themselves from these conditions, their achievements in war and peace equal those of the whites.
Can work together
“White and colored people can’t live amicably together.”
The Soviet Union is a proof that this is another lie. Where no capitalist interests exist to profit by stirring up racial strife, people of different nationalities and color can work in close co-operation and harmony.
“The Asian people want to come and live here in great numbers.”
The overwhelming majority of Asians are as attached to their own countries as Australians are to Australia and would not dream of emigrating unless forced to do so by the threat of starvation.
As the Asian workers and peasants, led by their Communist Parties, take over the land from their feudal land-owning class and start to run their own countries for their own benefit, they will want to leave home still less than they do now.
Communist advances in Asia, so far from increasing the “Asian menace” to Australia will do away with that menace for all time.
Like all other Communists, Asian Communists oppose the aggressive policies advocated by their own bourgeoisie. They stand for friendly co-operation with the Australian and all other peoples.
However, this policy of friendship for Australia will be much harder for Asians to accept if Australia becomes an imperialist base for the suppression of Asian democracy and if its Government follows a deliberate policy of insulting neighbouring peoples because of their color.
Source:
Workers Star (Perth, WA), 25 March 1949, p. 3
Editor’s notes:
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
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
[Editor: Changed “to abondon this” to “to abandon this”.]
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