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In 1950s, Australia initiated the Colombo Plan, opening avenues for the training of numerous Asian students and researchers in critical areas requiring urgent attention in their home countries. Many of these individuals returned home only to later migrate back to Australia or move on to other developed nations as recognized experts in their respective fields. Among them were several Indian students, some of whom became the subjects of numerous publicity articles in the press, detailing their experiences in Australia. This article explores a brief history of Australia’s involvement with the initial cohort of Indian students, some of whom later became skilled migrants, examining their stories and analysing the significant challenges they encountered. Due to the lack of major books, memoirs, and oral history records documenting these students’ experiences, this article relies on contemporary newspaper reports and interviews published in popular Australian newspapers.

Post-WWII histories about Japanese 'war brides', pearl shell divers, Chinese sailors and 'Colombo Plan' students frame these cohorts as early 'challengers' of the White Australia Policy. Because these histories are typically siloed from each other, bringing them together offers a fresh way to view how Japanese and Chinese residents shared a social space that linked Australia's societal change and domestic concerns to international developments. Juxtaposition of these cohorts also compels considerations of less familiar cohorts of Chinese and Japanese residents in post-WWII Australia and of how historians might best use their craft to draw 'extraordinary meaning' through studies of these supposedly 'ordinary lives'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'Asian Visits Fund' was the Australian Government's first Cold War people-to-people public diplomacy programme. Standing in the Fund's way was Australia's racially restrictive immigration programme. A central feature of the scheme, therefore, was to present a vision of a non-racial Australia through the new national ideology of Assimilation. The treatment of indigenous Australians was showcased as one way to highlight Assimilation and debunk broader claims of racism. Ultimately, however, the Asian Visits Fund was unable to alter the negative perception of Australia's immigration policy. It was the last major initiative aimed at selling the unsellable 'White Australia Policy'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the history of the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 of Australia, law to restrict immigration by having a single policy at the national level rather than separate colonial policies. Topics discussed include composition of the early federal government, restrictions on the grounds of race by using a dictation test and introduction and implementation of White Australia policies.

This essay is a review of the monograph 'Okinawans Reaching Australia' by John Lamb (Hesperian Press, 2019).

This paper explores concessions made by Australian concerning Japanese immigration during the era of the White Australia Policy in the early twentieth century. Australia’s Immigration Restriction Act was introduced in December 1901. As the major piece of legislation in the White Australia Policy, the act made it virtually impossible for non-Europeans to migrate to Australia. However, Japanese people enjoyed a special position among non-Europeans under the White Australia Policy thanks to Japan’s growing international status as a civilised power at the time, as well as its sustained diplomatic pressure on Australia. While the Commonwealth was determined to exclude Japanese permanent settlers, it sought ways to render the policy of exclusion less offensive to the Japanese. In the early 1900s, two minor modifications to the Immigration Restriction Act were implemented in order to relax the restrictions imposed on Japanese citizens. Moreover, in the application of Commonwealth immigration laws, Japanese people received far more lenient treatment than other non-Europeans and were afforded respect and extra courtesies by Australian officials. Nevertheless, these concessions Australia made to Japanese citizens were minor, and the Commonwealth government maintained its basic policy of excluding Japanese permanent settlers from Australia. This paper shows that, despite continued diplomatic efforts, Japan was fundamentally unable to change pre-war Australia’s basic policy regarding the exclusion of Japanese permanent settlers.

Between 1880 and 1941, many Japanese migrants arrived in north Queensland and became active participants in their communities. Despite arriving during an era where a White Australia was broadly envisioned, these migrants formed lasting connections within the unique geographical and cultural climate of north Queensland. Government records and newspapers archives reveal these individuals' positive contributions to the region through business, civic engagement, and social events. This article focuses on Japanese migrant families' economic, civic, and social contributions to north Queensland communities to highlight the longevity and depth of their connections within the history of northern Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article contains a historical overview of Australia's migration policy and analysis of the Chinese diaspora’s role in building an Australian multicultural society. The relevance of the study is determined by the increased importance of the human rights and racial discrimination problems in the developed countries’ policy discussion in connection with the strengthening of the world processes of integration. Those problems are not new in Australia, until the early 1970s the “White Australia Policy” restricted immigration from non-European countries, particularly those of Asian background, with the goal of creating an “Anglo-Celtic” Australian nation. Post-war mass migration, mostly from Europe, had a significant impact on the ethnic composition of the population. This situation put pressure on the government to recognize cultural diversity and in the early 1970s led to the creation of the concept of a multicultural society. The aim of the study is to follow the evolution of public opinion on migration and to assess the role of the Chinese diaspora in the formation of the Australian new immigration policy. In addition, the author also examines the problems of integration, racial discrimination and residual racism in the Australian multicultural society. In conclusion, the author pointed out that despite the existence of some challenges for migrants relating to the social integration people from all over the world now harmoniously coexist in Australian society. Today, the Chinese diaspora is the largest Asian diaspora in Australia and one of the factors affecting the political and economic processes in the country.

This paper is a biographical case study that explores the distinct experiences of three Australian-born Japanese (hereafter, Nikkei-Australians) who volunteered for Australian military service during World War II: Mario Takasuka, Joseph Suzuki and Winston Ide. It examines the social and political context in which these soldiers lived, concluding that they faced a disconnect between the way they were viewed by the government, their local communities and themselves. Notions of identity and nationalism are also explored in the context of World War II and the White Australia Policy, and are compared with the experiences of non-European soldiers in Australia and Nikkei soldiers abroad. The paper also highlights the ambiguous position of Nikkei-Australian soldiers with respect to military enlistment. At the time, legislation allowed for Nikkei-Australians to be variously classified as loyal citizens capable of enlistment, as not sufficiently ‘Australian’ for duty, or as enemy aliens, depending upon how it was applied in each case. Because there was no uniform approach within the government for applying these laws, the experiences of Nikkei-Australians vastly differed, as illustrated by the stories of the individuals profiled in this study. These stories are important as they add to the growing body of knowledge around non-white Australians who served in World War II, and remind us of how the pro-white, anti-Japanese atmosphere within Australia at the time affected those within the community who did not fit the mould of the White Australian ideal.

The article presents the Australia's relationship with Asia tracing from the Gold Rush and the White Australia policy to four wars fighting in Asia since World War II. Topics include thousands of refugees displacing by the Vietnam War and finding a new home in Australia; and historical artefacts displaying in the Shrine of Remembrance's Cold War Gallery space highlighting Australia's relationship with Asia.

This paper revisits the controversy generated by a series of publications in 2009 by prominent Australian journalist Andrew Bolt. The overall argument is that the controversy generated by the Bolt case contributed to a reimagining of a twenty‐first century version of the global colour line. Bolt's articles rested on a "racial grammar of whiteness" that enabled him simultaneously to assert and mask the hegemonic naturalness of whiteness. A racial grammar of whiteness mediates what people take to be the norm in representations and writings about the natures, roles and attributes of whites and non‐whites in social situations and the social relations appropriate to them. It enables such views to be presented as just so much common‐sense. Demonstrating this racial grammar at work is important because his articles appeared to echo an earlier era's narratives about race, power and privilege that were themselves informed by the global colour line, and which culminated in the now defunct White Australia Policy. The paper explores how those echoes were given substance within Bolt's articles and the subsequent court case about them, and how this contributed to a reimagining of the global colour line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic research on the White Australia Policy has spanned the history of Asian migration and policy-making initiatives in Australia. However, the role of popular transnational media images and stories of the past that inform the socio-cultural understanding of Australia–India cross-cultural relations has been under evaluated. In this paper, using unexplored archival material from popular newspaper reports and columns, I will examine the 'goodwill visits' of two Indian journalists, K. K. Lalkaka and Sir R. Srinivasa Sarma, to Australia in 1927 and 1947. By assessing the role of these two journalists, this paper will highlight transnational issues such as migration, ethnicity, race, class and trade between the two countries. Borrowing from Vineet Thakur's research highlighting the role of first diplomats in the pre-independence era India, this article will contribute to the field of history in Indian diplomatic studies and historiography of Australian–Indian cross-cultural relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores media representations of a group of Australians in the period of the Cold War, when a key mode of engagement with Asia was in the form of military regional occupations and interactions. The story that the article analyses centres on overseas military postings in the 1950s and 1960s, during the Malayan Emergency and the Borneo Intervention, emphasising how these internationalised events were experienced in interpersonal ways. As such, this article examines the media representations of Australian military families, particularly women, to provide a different reading of the international than is typically seen in the dominant military (and masculine) accounts of Australian involvement in Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the parallels and disconnections between leftist thought in Australia and India at a key moment in the interwar era, as the Comintern transitioned from its Second to its Third Period, eschewing the united front with nationalist and parliamentary parties. It does this by tracing the movements of the Australian communist Jack Ryan, who visited India in 1928 representing the Pan-Pacific Trade Union (PPTU), a Comintern organisation that sought to build solidarities between workers in the Asia Pacific region. Arriving in Bombay at a critical time when leftist organisation in India was on the rise, Ryan was trailed by government intelligence organisations that monitored his activities, letters and speeches. Although the formal purpose of his visit – to affiliate Indian Trade Unions with the PPTU – failed, Ryan's journey to India had a substantial political impact. Coinciding with the interventions of a number of other foreign communists in India, it escalated attempts to legislate against the movement of political dissidents in the empire, by launching the Meerut Conspiracy Case. Back in Sydney, Ryan's transnational movement gave him an international prominence that fired domestic communist jealousies, contributing to his expulsion from the Communist Party of Australia, in 1930. Finally, by highlighting the inability of Australian Trade Unions to form lasting solidarities across boundaries of race, Ryan's politics revealed a substantial faultline in Australian leftist thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protest movements are an aspect of history garnering closer attention in recent years, in particular those instigated by ethnic minorities or diasporic communities from the mid-1800s to early 1900s, when governments introduced discriminatory policies. This article will survey Chinese protest movements in this period in Australia and around the world with a focus on the Northern Territory (the ‘Territory’) as a case study of organised, sustained, and varied resistance. The Chinese in the Territory, led by wealthy merchants, were active protesters around the time of Federation and the formulation of discriminatory legislation, such as the 1901 Immigration Restriction Act. Remarkably, such protests were often made in English and were supported by some Europeans.