Refugees

We read that 100,000 displaced persons will arrive in Australia in the next eighteen months. Is there no way that the people of Australia can have some control over these sweeping invitations to displaced persons. Surely there is no room in Australia for hordes of foreigners …’ reads a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald. Does it sound familiar? However, the date is 18 November 1948, a time when aggrieved readers were bombarding the papers, protesting against the influx of postwar refugees.

The year 2001 marks the centenary of the Federation of Australia and the fiftieth anniversary of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. There are important linkages between these milestones. Australian Federation was driven, among other factors, by the desire to gain sovereign control over immigration. Despite the demise of the White Australia Policy and Australia’s early support for the Refugee Convention, Australia’s present-day treatment of refugees and asylum-seekers shows us to be a nation that is still defined in negative terms, through the exclusion of others.