MR CALWELL’S REPLY

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25735, 22 February 1949, Page 5

MR CALWELL’S REPLY

OPPONENTS OF WHITE AUSTRALIA POLICY “ SENTIMENTALISTS AND EXTREMISTS ” MELBOURNE, February 21. “The only people who want to water down the White Australia policy are graziers, extremists -of the Right and Left, and silly sentimentalists,” said, the Minister of Immigration (Mr A.' A. Calwell) in a broadcast address. “They want to return to the good old days of kanaka labour—days that are best forgotten. “The fact is that the only Asiatics who are interested in our immigration policy are political agitators. The ordinary Asiatic does not want to come here, and if he did he would not have any desire to mingle his blood with ours.

"We are eager to meet our obligation to help the people of Asia to raise their own living standards, but we would not be helping Asiatic nations if we took 20,000, 30,000, or even 40,000 people from their teeming millions. “Before long Australia would become a Eurasian nation, with its coloured people no better off than in their native lands, and its whites reduced to poverty, except for a ruthless few.”