A White Assimilation Policy

The Australian government preference was for children from six to twelve years of age.

Theoretically, we would take the children young and train them to become farmers, tradesmen or domestics. Two special considerations were that they would be white, and they could be ‘Australianised’ before merging with the community at large. 

Under the ‘Post-war Mass Migration Scheme’, representatives of the Australian government and a number of religious and charitable organisations made regular recruitment drives in the UK, but by 1955 the well was dry. In truth, large numbers of children simply weren't available for import, and at this stage Britain no longer had a surplus stock – the children would be needed at home where they could, in a few years, assist with post-war recovery.

A further complication was that in the years immediately after the war, the British themselves were beginning to realise institutionalisation was as bad as the Canadians had believed – this change in attitude culminated in the passage of the UK Children Act of 1948. The act highlighted the many needs of children, focusing on the need to foster children or arrange for their adoption rather than institutionalise them. This way they would have some chance of a normal life.

Despite the UK requiring minimum care standards for these kids, there were early hints in official correspondence that the British government would turn a blind eye to whatever happened out here.

Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist, Salvation Army and Anglican church groups were amongst the busiest operators, but there were also several secular organisations involved. At some point, Dr Barnardo’s homes were unhappy with the way things were going and distanced itself from the scheme.

The stories of many of these children are horror stories – already traumatised by family separations and/or war experiences, they were sent halfway across the world. Some were given new identities, separated from siblings, told that their living parents were dead or disinterested in their fate, or conned into agreeing to a ‘better life’ – as if a child of 7 would have enough insight to make such a decision for himself.

Stuck in extremely isolated areas, some children were used as unpaid labour for building everything from office blocks to accommodation, and farming sheds. Amongst the most notorious of the institutions the children were sent to was Bindanoon, in Western Australia. It had such a tough reputation that some Western Australian courts used it as a reform school.

The British had hoped to send undernourished, underdeveloped or even mentally feeble kids to Australia under this scheme. Unsurprisingly, some Australian organisations complained to the government of the ‘poor quality’ of children they were receiving. Operations were subsidised by the British Government, the Australian Commonwealth government and state governments. The children were also used by some institutions as an excuse for fundraising, so there was little financial incentive to seek foster or adoptive families for the children.

Despite protests in Parliament and from the states, the Australian Minister for Immigration insisted that all migrant children would live in institutions, and would not be fostered or adopted out. He insisted he become the legal guardian of all of these children in care.

Their story was not widely known until The Leaving of Liverpool, a film based on the scheme, was released in 1992.

While the Irish and Canadian governments had already conducted inquiries which acknowledged their governments’ roles in facilitating these abuses, the subsequent British inquiry was – like the inquiry into atomic tests at Maralinga – designed to absolve the government of any responsibility and shift the blame.

A state government inquiry in Western Australia acknowledged that approximately 3,000 Aboriginal children had been stolen, and almost the same number of British children imported to that state.

The Role of the Irish Catholic Church in this business should not be a surprise in light of what we now know about the Catholic care system in Ireland. Yet there is strong evidence the Church was one of the greatest abusers of the child migrant scheme - many of the children were sent to Catholic institutions, and there was a strong desire on the part of many Irish nuns during this scheme to ensure the Australian population would always contain a good proportion of Catholics.

The British Immigrant Children Scheme

One peculiarly Australian version of these schemes was the ‘Post-war Mass Migration Scheme’ first proposed by the Australian Government in 1941, just before the United States entered World War II.

At the onset of World War II Australia had a population of only 7 million people, but we had dutifully sent the greatest part of our army to help ‘the mother country’, our soldiers being stationed in Europe, Africa and Malaysia/Singapore.

Once it was clear Singapore would fall to the Japanese, we found ourselves under threat of invasion, without the troops or infrastructure to defend ourselves. This prompted the Government to consider our future, deciding that we must ‘Populate (Australia) or Perish’. 
Because the White Australia Policy had been a spectacular success, 99% of Australians were white, and we wanted to keep it that way.

It was assumed that following the enormous displacements of WWII there would be an infinite pool of ‘war babies’ available in Europe for the taking. Arthur Calwell, Minister for Immigration from 1945 felt we could take 17,000 children in the first year, building up to a rate of 50,000 per year.

British Children in Exile

From the 17^th to 20^th Centuries, the British have, under a succession of schemes, rounded up hundreds of thousands of ‘abandoned’ children and sent them to colonies to provide labour. These colonies include Virginia (USA), India, South Africa, Rhodesia, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Several schemes operated from the 1920s until the late 1960s, though only a small number of these supposedly abandoned children went to New Zealand. Canada put a halt to these programs in 1933 on the grounds that institutionalisation led to abuses and psychological damage to the children. Some children were exported to Australia in the late 1930s but this program was interrupted by World War II.

British Family Values

I must confess that when politicians, lobbyists or community leaders talk about Australia’s "sound family values", I always feel a little surge of cynicism.

For millennia in the west, a family has been a unit which, above all else, defined a person's social and economic rights, inheritance and responsibilities based on provable blood lines. The notion of a [nuclear] family unit consisting of two or three generations with a strong emotional bond is a relatively recent construct.

White Australia was built, initially, on British values, and the popular idea in Queen Victoria’s Britain was that "children should be seen and not heard". Where possible, children were hidden away in nurseries, ignored by all except nannies and tutors, and only trotted out for display on appropriate occasions.

The middle classes, who could only afford to imitate the upper classes, were often similarly cold, distant, and demanding of disciplined behaviour. The era of ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’ would be a long time passing.

Prior to this, during the dawn of the industrial revolution, children had been little more than factory fodder. Children as young as 9 were transported as convicts; the youngest on the first fleet being a John Hudson aged 13.

While there were some small numbers of Asians and non-Anglo European settlers in Australia from the mid 19th Century on, it was really only with Post-World War II immigration from non-Anglo Europe that Australians finally came to accept, more than once was the case, that it is okay to take children with them to restaurants or when visiting friends; we are now generally more tolerant, for example, of the screaming and tantrums which are part of a two-year-old's job description.

It is now socially acceptable to "enjoy" children more, but that seems a recent phenomenon. In truth, children have not always been viewed by everybody in this country as an essential component of a family unit but, rather, as things or as potential people with as yet unformed feelings or personalities.

The Federation Movement

In some respects the word 'movement' seems an exaggeration. There were hints of an emerging Australian identity, but this was largely an expression of how the Australian colonials differed from other Britons, rather than a conviction that Australians were something other than Britons.

Each of the colonies had grown in relative isolation and the proposed Federation would be more a marriage of convenience than a mutual admiration society.

The functions of the new federal government, it was planned, would be severely limited because it was only required to solve a handful of existing problems - and even then, the states were not fully agreed on how those problems should be tackled:

• Make sure the Germans don't invade Australia
• Make sure non-white labour doesn't stop other workers receiving a living wage
• Remove the tariffs that complicated trade between the states.

In every other respect it was, theoretically, business as usual for the States. 
The states continued following and developing different policies relating to the welfare of Aboriginals. 


It's unlikely Aboriginals might have suffered less over the next 80 years if the federal government had been given the power to do anything differently, but Aboriginals were disadvantaged in so far as state responsibility stopped at each relevant border. In some cases, two states would refuse to do anything because they insisted a group of Aboriginals was the other state's problem.

A combination of events in Australian history were disastrous for the Indigenous population as the settlements spread;

• There were only tiny settlements to begin with;
• The settlements were so isolated from each other that communication with New South Wales or Britain was practically impossible;
• Most of the country was a land of 'anything goes' - Native Forces under the charge of White Leaders went into some - though not all - areas with the express intent of murdering as many natives as possible - with or without an excuse. 
  Few settlers not at the frontier were aware of these semi-secret operations. It was widely believed that any 'retaliatory' killing of renegade Aboriginals was justified. In other areas, the absence of any practical police force to help people follow the law, settlers became a law unto themselves.
• Most settlers were huddled around the first settlements or the capitals later established. As the cattle kings made their push thousands of kilometres into the interior, they moved further and further from the influence of the law.

The order in which each state was settled

A few comments and illustrations might help readers get a sense of the distance between communities, the size of the settlements, and the communication problems.

Australia is slightly smaller in area than the lower 48 states of the U.S.A. [i.e. mainland America without Alaska and Hawaii]

Although the two countries are similar in size, there is an ENORMOUS population difference. Here's a comparison 220 years after Australia was settled:

To put it another way, the population of Australia today is about 10% bigger than the population of New York State:

Australia was more or less cut off from the rest of the world until the Overland Telegraph was completed in 1872.

Approximate Route of Overland Telegraph 1872

The first railway trip across the Nullarbor - from East to West along the southern edge of the continent – was not until 1917: Camels were used to carry supplies ahead of each stretch of rail as the line was built. 

Drover

If anyone wanted to travel between the eastern states and Western Australia, the standard form of transport was ship.

This part of the highway was not fully sealed until 1976

The first car trip across the Nullarbor was reportedly made in 1912, and it was 1941 before there was a graded (unsealed road) between the West and the rest of Australia. The last section of dirt road was finally sealed in 1976; a full 75 years after federation.

Tassie. Queensland. The West

Tassie

In 1803, a settlement was established at Port Arthur in Van Dieman’s land; initially with 150 convicts.

In 1823 the Colonial Office allowed New South Wales to establish a 'parliament' but this was still under control of the Governor, who could allow or disallow any proposed laws.

In 1825 Van Dieman's land gained independence from New South Wales, and in 1856 it was renamed Tasmania.

Queensland

Convicts were first sent to Queensland in 1824.

Queensland remained part of New South Wales until 1859.

The shaded area on the map remained part of New South Wales for some time, and one of the reasons for the ill-fated Burke and Wills expedition was to chart this area so Victoria could claim it. The Queensland border was extended to take up this area in 1862.

The West

The area we now know as Western Australia was first settled in 1827, and governed by New South Wales until 1890.

Victoria

The Port Phillip district was settled by whitefellas from Tasmania. In 1851, it became independent from New South Wales and was renamed Victoria, in honour of the Queen.

South Australia

South Australia was not governed by New South Wales directly, beginning its life as a ‘Crown Province” then, in 1842, becoming a separate ‘Crown Colony’.

The Territory

The area we know today as the Northern Territory was

• originally part of New South Wales
• administered by South Australia from 1863
• under federal government control from 1912

Federation

Until Federation in 1901, the states still had only limited independence, each with a governor chosen by Britain to represent the Crown.