Australia also a ‘nation of immigrants’

Press, 24 February 1977, Page 16

Australia also a ‘nation of immigrants’

The first of two articles about Australia’s population and immigration by STUART McMILLAN of “The Press.”

The number of people who may be heard speaking Greek or Italian on buses is one of the most obvious signs of the size of Australias immigration. About one in five of Australia’s 14.600,000 people was bom outside the country. Other signs abound. At week - ends, Mediterranean families, the women in long black dresses and their hair tied back or in a bun, stand out from those of AngloSaxon origin at public barbecues. They usually have a lot of children.

Italian restaurants and pizza bars are thick on the ground in Melbourne, in the suburbs as well as close to the centre of the city. Some are astonishingly cheap; a family can eat out as cheaply as at home.

Some 420,000 people who were either born in Italy or had one or both parents born in Italy live in Melbourne. During the Italian earthquakes last year, Melbourne newspapers brought out special editions on the disaster and listed the names of those killed and injured. “11 Globo,” a Melbourne newspaper published in Italian, has a daily circulation of 40,000. Melbourne is also the world’s third largest centre of Greek population, the largest being Athens. Apart from these observable marks on Australian society of immigration, the presence of many people from Northern Europe became evident in a foreign policy move by Mr Gough Whitlam, then Prime Mini-

One notices the signs when shopping. Many food stores have Greek names; the proprietors and staff are Greeks. Greek immigrants own whole chains of food stores.

The signs are also to be found in the diversity of restaurants, which is most noticeable in Sydney. (Some Australians thinks that the whole post-war immigration programme has been an outstanding success because of the culinary delights to which they have been introduced.)

ster. He wanted to clarify Australian attitudes to the Baltic States. He sought to acknowledge Soviet authority over them, but met a determined opposition from the Estonians, Latvians. and Lithuanians in Australia. Overall, the main observable influences of the immigrants on Australia have been in fashion, food and architecture, but there are other subtle differences which help to make Australian society different from New Zealand’s.

One finds something of this among immigrants themselves. It was brought home to me vividly when 1 heard a Jewish Hungarian refer, quite unconsciously, to “Anglo-Saxon Australia.” To him, that was only part of Australia. He took a different perspective from the one many people take.

To the four who are Australian-born out of every five in the population, the impact of the immigrants has been to make them more aware — some would say more tolerant — of cultural diversity. It has also brought an awareness of the outside world and of the nature of Australian society itself.

This last facet was apparent in a series of articles which appeared in the “Bulletin” last year. Called “The Australian Family.” the series discussed 12 immigrant groups: the Irish, the Germans, the Greeks, the Jews, the Americans, the Italians, the Dutch, the Hungarians, the French, the Yugoslavs, the Spanish, and the Chinese. There was a fine irony in the “Bulletin” discussing the Chinese because, for many years, the motto attributed to that magazine was “Australia for the White Man and China for the Chows.” (A census conducted in 1976 will reveal the numbers for ethnic minorities in due time. The figure for Australian population used in this article is a provisional one supplied after the census; the other figures have been taken from the “Bulletin” articles, which took figures from the 1971 census and the immigration programme since that year.)

The largest number of arrivals recently was in the 1970-1971 year, when 170,000 came.

The motives for the vast immigration programme have

been mixed. One strand of thinking, still present today, is that the country must

“populate or perish.” Immigration was the way to fill the vast land area to stop others coming to do so. There has also been an economic ' motivation to develop the country’ by having more people in it. More people have also meant a greater domestic market, which gives the business community more confidence. The Prime Minister (Mr Malcolm Fraser) rates this aspect highly.

There is also the barely discernible feeling that Australia is a middle Power in world affairs and that it needs a bigger population to support this role.

The Minister of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs (Mr Mike Mackellar) drew attention to another side of immigration when he said last year; “I have no doubt that if the community decides that we should not seek to increase our population—and this means basically by adding increments to it by migration—we run the risk of becoming increasingly inwardlooking and of becoming a stagnant society.”

The heady days of the heaviest immigration are over. In fact, there was a net migration loss from Australia of 8000 in 1975. One of the reasons has been that the country was not able to cope with the numbers of houses required for the arrivals. Another has been that there is less public enthusiasm because of the greater consciousness of such issues as conservation, the problems of economic growth, and the entertaining of such notions as zero population growth.

But the main influence has undoubtedly been the economy of the country. Between 350,000 and 400,000 Australians are now out of work. A few attempts were made to prove that immigration and the number of unemployed were not related, but these attempts were not completely convincing. Apart from the drop in migration, Australians are having fewer babies. It is because of the drop in births, and the falling immigration rate, that the Government has prepared a Green Paper on population and immigration policy, which will be tabled in Parliament next month.