Lesson 1 - Hardships of migrants 1

The targets for the numbers of people migrating to Australia that had been set by the government were unable to be met by just British migration. In response, the government established assisted migration schemes with a number of European countries during the 1950s and 60s. This meant that the Australian government covered some of the cost for migrants to travel to Australia. The schemes started in 1945 and ran up until 1982. In addition, in response to the Hungarian Revolution 1956, and the brutal Soviet response, the Australian Government offered asylum to 14,000 Hungarian refugees. By 1961, approximately 9% of the population were of non-British origin, comprising predominantly Italians, Germans, Dutch, Greeks and Poles.

The ‘White Australia policy’ began to be dismantled in 1958 with the introduction of The Migration Act 1958. This Act replaced the Immigration Restriction Act, which meant the abolition of the controversial dictation test., which had underpinned the White Australia policy.

New legislation was passed in 1966 with The Migration Act (1966) that established “legal equality between British, European and non-European migrants to Australia.” (PM Malcom Turnbull speech to parliament in 2016). This was a significant change to the race-based policies that had been in place since 1901. After the implementation of this policy, non-European migration numbers gradually increased from around 750 arriving in 1966 to almost 2,700 arriving in 1971. The next wave of refugees to arrive in Australia were 6,000 Czechs fleeing the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968.