Australia has been home for more than 30 years. My journey here from New Zealand has its genesis half a century ago in a jagged inner-Melbourne enclave of crumbling terrace houses, jammed with students and struggle-street immigrants.
Just out of my teens, I’d flown from Wellington to join a mate for a couple of weeks in Melbourne, where he had found work as a tram conductor and digs in a chaotic flat. On my first night out of New Zealand, I camped in a sleeping bag on his bedroom floor, rising early to the pull of the laughter and foreign voices coming from that North Fitzroy street.
Maltese children, dressed in threadbare national costumes danced on the footpaths to the music of their far-off land. Sun-weathered, work-weary parents munched on colourful pastries, enjoying their Sunday respite. It was a tableau that made my own sheltered and placid upbringing in the Hutt Valley seem as distant as their Mediterranean archipelago.
I vowed to one day return to live in Australia, pondering how it was that Australia’s mix of peoples detoured so markedly from my own land.
Much of the answer lies within the report of New Zealand’s 1946 parliamentary Dominion Population Committee, which urged New Zealand to select migrants deemed more likely to settle successfully – and that didn’t include southern Europeans.
“Quite apart from any question of allegiance to the King’s enemies, the emergence of racial islands in such a small country as New Zealand must inevitably lead to serious maladjustment. The southern European tends at times to be merely an itinerant settler in this country, and in many cases retains his roots in his country of origin,” that 1946 report stated to New Zealand’s Parliament.
One upshot was New Zealand’s dismally low intake of post-war refugees and displaced persons – 4500-5000 between 1949 and 1950. And earlier than that, although thousands applied for resettlement in New Zealand, only about 1100 escapees from Hitler, mostly Jews, were accepted. By contrast, Australia, with a population of only 7.4 million in 1945, took more than 180,000 of Europe’s war displaced – by far the largest number as a proportion of population when compared with other nations.
This was the first significant shift from the “White Australia” policy that had limited foreign migration since 1901.
After the war, Australia prioritised manual labour, and looked for people who were young, strong and single. As a result, however, the displaced became adept at disguising their skills and ages. Historian Sheila Fitzpatrick has written wonderfully about a refugee ship that sailed from Bremerhaven in northern Germany to Australia packed with in-demand builders, farm workers, waitresses and domestics, but docked miraculously stuffed with scientists, ballet dancers and university lecturers.
Australia is on the cusp of admitting its one millionth refugee since 1947. These arrivals created generations who have shaped the economic and cultural landscape. With an expected 20,000 places allocated in both the last and current financial years, the one million milestone is set to be reached in November.
New Zealand, by contrast, accepts only 1500 refugees a year. As Auckland University’s Professor Jay Marlowe has written, that’s 0.3 refugees per 1000 people, putting New Zealand 95th in the world. Australia, with an intake of 1.74 per 1000 people ranks 59th. Norway and Ireland, with similar populations to New Zealand, are placed 15th (11.29) and 69th (1.22) in the world respectively.
Not all Australian milestones need to be admired. But its record in accepting so many in need of a new country helped create that alluring Melbourne back street that first drew me long ago.
New Zealander Bernard Lagan is the Australian correspondent for the Times, London.
