From Calwell Onward:
Barry York listens to recordings on Australia’s post-war immigration history
A good oral history interview can reveal insights into aspects of life and issues that might otherwise be lost for posterity. This is particularly the case for interviews with individuals who have held positions of power, authority and influence in society: they might not always write autobiographies or maintain personal diaries. Oral history, properly done, can add to the existing print-based record, which usually takes the form of official sources. Former and current Members of Parliament who have held the Immigration portfolio have a very special place in the history of Australia. Since 1945, Australia has received more than six million migrants, including 600 000 refugees. The impact of these newcomers has been truly profound. The first Commonwealth Department of Immigration was established after World War II, in 1945. The department managed an immigration program that was more visionary, and on a grander scale, than anything that had preceded it. The first Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell, oversaw the intake of nearly 200 000 new arrivals between October 1945 and December 1949. His party, Labor, was defeated in a federal election that month but the official post-war commitment to large-scale, mass immigration continued until the mid-1970s. The 1970s saw fundamental changes in the world situation, creating impetus for peoples in other countries to leave their homelands. The defeat of US-supported forces in Vietnam in 1975 created a massive regional refugee crisis. The volume of immigration has subsequently fluctuated, averaging less than 100 000 per annum since 1980.
Only seven individuals who have held the Immigration portfolio have done so for more than four years: Immigration ministers, and any records they leave behind, usually cross the portfolios. Philip Ruddock, the longest-serving minister, is probably the best known, though Arthur Calwell looms large in the history books. The recently deceased Al Grassby, Immigration minister in the Whitlam Government, is also well known, even though he only held the portfolio for 18 months. There has only been one woman in the position: the current Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs, Amanda Vanstone, who was appointed in October 2003. In all, up to Amanda Vanstone, there have been 24 ministers responsible for immigration. In his stint, Harold Holt oversaw the largest gross intake of immigrants: more than 900 000 admitted between 1950 and 1956. His achievement is followed by that of Ruddock, who oversaw 742 000 between 1996 and 2003. Three other ministers dealt with more than 400 000 immigrants each: Alexander Downer (father of the present Minister for Foreign Affairs; from 1958 to 1963), with more than 630 000; Hubert Opperman (1964–1966), with 406 000; and Billy Snedden (1967–1969), with more than 450 000. Australia’s 23 former Immigration ministers, in chronological order, are: Arthur Calwell (1945–1949), Harold Holt (1950–1956), Athol Townley (1957), Alexander Downer (1958–1963), Hubert Opperman (1964–1966), Billy Snedden (1967–1969), Philip Lynch (1970), Alexander (Jim) Forbes (1971–1972), Al Grassby (1973), Clyde Cameron (1974), Jim McLelland (1975), Tony Street (November and December 1975), Michael MacKellar (1976–1979), Ian McPhee (1980–1981), John Hodges (1982), Stewart West (1983–1984), Chris Hurford (1985–1986), Mick Young (1987), Clyde Holding (1988), Robert Ray (1989), Gerry Hand (1990–1992), Nick Bolkus (1993–1995) and Philip Ruddock (1996–2003). The Library’s Oral History Program has recorded interviews with six men who held the portfolio: Arthur Calwell (1896–1973), Hubert Opperman (1904–96), Billy Snedden (1926–87), Alexander (Jim) Forbes (b.1923), Al Grassby (1926–2005) and Clyde Cameron (b.1913). Together they were responsible for the arrival and settlement of more than one-and-a-half million new Australians. (The collection also holds an interview with Clyde Holding (b.1931), recorded in 1988 by Peter Read for his biography of Charles Perkins, but it focuses on Holding’s time as Minister for Aboriginal Affairs (1983–87).)
Jim Forbes was recorded by Mel Pratt in 1978; and Al Grassby by Peter Biskup in 1984, and by Robert Linford the same year for the Commonwealth Parliament’s Oral History Project (POHP). (The POHP forms part of the National Library’s collection.) Clyde Cameron was first interviewed for the Library by Mel Pratt in 1971–72, and again in 1978 and 1988; Adam Ashforth recorded him for POHP in 1985. Cameron’s remarkable parliamentary career spanned 31 years (1949–80) and three portfolios. These interviews are subject to restrictions on access, imposed by the interviewees. The interviews with Calwell, Opperman and Snedden are open to the public. They are interviews of high quality, using the life-story approach, and provide valuable insights into Immigration policy. Calwell was interviewed for the Library in 1967, by Hazel de Berg, and in 1971, by Mel Pratt. His achievements are well documented, but how did he become interested in immigration in the first place? In response to a question from Mel Pratt, Calwell explained how he had been influenced by Prime Minister John Curtin, who once told him that ‘when the war ended Australia must have a new immigration [policy] and a department’. In the context of the Pacific War, Calwell said Curtin was ‘conscious about difficulties and dangers, and he was determined that, well, we would build our population for the purpose of defence’. At a more subjective level, Calwell attributed his personal interest in immigration to the fact that his paternal grandfather was an American. This had made him aware of American history. And Mel Pratt interviewed Hubert Opperman for the Library in 1975. This interview is a bit top-heavy with reminiscence about Opperman’s glory days as a cycling champion, but the section dealing with immigration discusses with frankness a number of issues. For example, Opperman explains how he was notified of his move from the Shipping and Transport portfolio to Immigration, and discusses the Nancy Prasad case, in which a Fijian woman was deported under the ‘White Australia Policy’. He refers to the campaign in her defence, led by the ‘extremist Perkins, Charles Perkins’, and he criticises Al Grassby, who was minister at the time of interview, for ‘the complete dislocation and the breakdown of the immigration plan’. But perhaps the most fascinating element relates to his barely repressed animosity for Zara Holt, the then prime minister’s wife. On tape, Opperman explains how Mrs Holt made representations to him on behalf of a domestic servant in Queensland who was about to face deportation. The servant was black, and Opperman could not agree to making an exception in his case. Mrs Holt persisted, in vain, and Opperman attributes his replacement in the portfolio by Snedden to ‘Zara’s adverse influence’. (Opperman was appointed High Commissioner to Malta.) Opperman was also recorded for POHP in 1983 and 1984, by Adam Ashforth. Bernadette Schedvin, another interviewer for POHP, recorded Billy Snedden between 1983 and 1987, and Catharine Santamaria interviewed him for the National Library in 1976 and 1985. Schedvin’s interview formed the basis of Snedden’s autobiography, Billy
Snedden: An Unlikely Liberal, published posthumously, with Schedvin as co-author, in 1990. The original recording is a model of good oral history: the interviewer is very well prepared with a broad plan, having undertaken substantial research into the interviewee’s background and career prior to the interview. The questioning does not merely reiterate what is on the public record in print-based sources, but attempts to go further, making the most of the dynamic interplay between informed-interviewer and cooperative-reflective subject. An example of ‘oral history insights’ from the Snedden interview relates to his time, from 1952 to 1954, spent as a ‘selection officer’ for the Department of Immigration, based in Rome, Sicily and London. Was this experience useful when he became minister 13 years later? Snedden gives the following answer: The impressions I then gained and the attitudes I then gained became terribly important when I became Minister for Immigration because all the things, all the attitudes that I had inculcated into me by the circumstances then, were translated into policy, and if it hadn’t happened our Immigration policy may have been very different, and different for the worse. It was a terribly valuable period, extremely valuable. I became very much affected by some of the stupidities of our policy.
The ‘stupidities’ included the rejection of otherwise suitable immigrants on the grounds of illiteracy, or because of physical or mental disability in a family. And they included the policy of assimilation, which Snedden rejected in preference for ‘integration’. In Snedden’s words: ‘That, of course, was a major change, and also it had the effect of allowing us to encourage the formation of national origin groups … we, during my time, gave them grants.’ By the end of Snedden’s period as minister, Australia was a very different society to that when Calwell had taken up the position in 1945. Immigration policy was no longer preoccupied with defence. As Snedden told Catherine Santamaria in her interview with him in 1976: ‘No, it was nothing to do with defence. It was just that, a country as endowed as ours just cries out for development. There must be a sense of dynamism … It would be a travesty of human endeavour to just leave the place undeveloped.’ And Immigration policy was much less concerned about race. Again, the Santamaria recording is instructive. We learn that the reform of the policy in regards to ‘non-Europeans’ was: all part of Harold’s [Holt’s] ‘looking to Asia’. Menzies couldn’t see Asia. In fact, he couldn’t see anything till you got to Europe, and he scanned that pretty scantily until he got to the United Kingdom. But Harold changed that and looked to Asia and part of that … involved the first major steps … to get rid of the ‘White Australia’ [policy].’ BARRY YORK is a researcher, writer and historian, currently with the Biographical Dictionary Unit in the Department of the Senate. His email address is: garocon@pcug.org.au |
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