VISITING BISHOP OF OPINION THAT NATIONS SHOULD BAN COLOUR BAR

Wanganui Chronicle, 18 May 1950, Page 4

VISITING BISHOP OF OPINION THAT NATIONS SHOULD BAN COLOUR BAR

CHRISTCHURCH, Last. Night (P.A.) —"Speaking for Australia only, we have in popular use a most unfortunate phrase which is not found in any Act of the Legislature. It. is what is commonly called the ‘White Australia policy,’” said the Archbishop of Brisbane. the Most Rev. R. C. Haise, addressing the Centennial Church Congress yesterday. "No one would deny any country the right to exclude from its shores immigrants who are likely to upset its way of life by their customs or excess of numbers. On economic grounds it is not difficult to justify considerable restrictions on the influx of cheap labour, but there remains a far deeper reason or prejudice which underlies the policy and is directed against the thought, of mixing the white’and coloured races. "It is now generally agreed that there is no scientific ground for this antipathy and that in Australia the gradual absorption of the aboriginal race into the white citizenship of Australia is the best, if not the ultimate solution of the problem. "In view of the growing resentment of tiie Asian and African peoples to anything resembling a colour bov. it seems highly desirable that there should be a quota of carefully-selected j citizens of Asian countries admitted leach year to permanent citizenship in I countries like Australia, and if that I is so it is the duty of the Church to I ray so. no matter how unftppular such j a suggestion may be. I "We must remember that God ha? 'made of one blood all nations and i peoples and tongues and it is, therefore. sub-Christian to exclude anyone from free and equal citizenship if the J only justification for such action is based entirely on colour.”