A White Australia?

Abstract

In popular contemporary parlance, 'white Australia' is often reduced to a slogan which condenses a complex set of legal and administrative processes, with aims that shifted in the course of the policy's long life. Janis Wilton and Richard Bosworth described Australian immigration policy since 1945 as, in one sense, 'no more than a gradual, reluctant and partial contraction in the Australian mind of those once almost limitless borders of "wongdom"'. Here, Wilton sketches out the greater complexity of the White Australia Policy in its operation and intent.