History Assignment
By Daniel Mulherin and Jacob Roset
Good Morning Ms Morris and classmates. We are here to inform you of the racist Immigration Restriction Act and White Australia Policy and how they upheld British character and loyalty to the crown. The Immigration Restriction Act and the White Australia Policy were both progressively introduced over the period of 11 years, 1850 – 1901. Even though the Immigration Restriction Act and White Australia Policy were extremely racist towards any non-Europeans trying to live or enter Australia, both laws did allow a British character and loyalty to the crown to be upheld in Australian society. The hypothesis used to research and present why the Immigration Restriction Act and White Australia Policy upheld British character in Australia was, “The Immigration Restriction Act and the White Australia Policy that resulted from Federation in 1901 were based not on a negative policy of racism, but rather on the positive desire for social and economic stability and the need to preserve Australia’s British character and promote racial and national unity.”
The Immigration Restriction Act and White Australia Policy let people of European background be superior to non-Europeans who tried to live or enter Australia. The Immigration Restriction Act put in the dictation test, which was given to any non-European within the first year of their arrival where they had to write a 50-word passage in English. The dictation test did although work effectively at keeping English to be strictly the only language spoken in Australia as between 1902 and 1909 only 59 people passed the test and were allowed access into Australia out of the 1,359 people who were given the test. The Immigration Restriction Act also disallowed any who were insane, had a criminal record, were prostitutes, who had a contract do hard physical labour or work, anybody who was loathsome and anybody who was dangerous or had an infectious or contagious disease. The White Australia Policy on the other hand was unofficially introduced in 1890 when the Australian colonies of Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, New South Wales, South Australia and Tasmania all implemented their own ‘foreigner laws’ which disadvantaged those from non-European countries to be able to have a say in the future of Australia as their right to vote was not given.
The Immigration Restriction Act and White Australia Policy were put into place to allow a British government to be elected and for Australians to keep loyal to the crown. The British despised any who were non-Europeans as their customs went against all that modern Europeans were good at and had practiced and controlled over hundreds of years. Many Europeans hated that Asians would work for less for a longer period of time and so they supported Edmund Barton when he promised such laws that would allow Europeans to reclaim their jobs. The 4 groups of foreigners affected by the Immigration Restriction Act and White Australia Policy but of whom were overthrowing European customs were the Afghans, who provided inland Australia with transport, the Japanese, who pearled and mined for gold, the Chinese, who sold materials and mined and finally the South Sea Islanders, who worked on the sugar cane, of whom many insolent Europeans
