‘White Australia’ has always been a myth. Hanson lamenting its end is wrong – and dangerous

Pauline Hanson, leader of One Nation, recently claimed that Gough Whitlam 'opened the floodgates' of migration by ending the White Australia Policy in nineteen seventy-three. But The Conversation Australia reports that historians argue this fundamentally misrepresents the record. The White Australia Policy wasn't a single law, but rather a framework rooted in fears about British settler dominance and rising Asian power. More critically, a 'white Australia' was always a myth: non-British migrants, including Italians and Southern Europeans, continuously filled labor gaps throughout the twentieth century, even as official policy claimed otherwise. Whitlam did formally end the policy in nineteen seventy-three, but this was part of a much longer process—earlier governments had already loosened restrictions, and significant migration from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East didn't accelerate until the nineteen nineties, three decades later. Historians warn that Hanson's nostalgic, false reading of this history appeals to dangerous anxieties about national identity that continue to animate far-right movements worldwide.

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