The recent surge in support for Pauline Hanson's One Nation party, buoyed by ties to mining magnate Gina Rinehart and sympathetic coverage from some mainstream outlets, has revived a dangerous historical fiction: the White Australia policy. In a podcast with British far-right figure Tommy Robinson, Hanson traced her anti-immigration stance to 1973, when Prime Minister Gough Whitlam supposedly ended the policy and ushered in 'different migrants.' She has since denied advocating for a full return, instead calling for bans on immigration from 'radical Muslim' countries and mass deportations of visa overstayers.
But Hanson's narrative is not just wrong—it is a nostalgic fantasy that obscures Australia's real history and fuels a divisive politics. The White Australia policy was never a single law but a set of federation-era acts, including the 1901 Immigration Restriction Act with its infamous dictation test. It emerged from fears of maintaining British settler dominance amid the rise of Asian powers. Yet, as historian Henry Reynolds notes, the idea of a White Australia was always a myth. First Nations peoples continued to occupy vast territories, and non-British migration persisted. Thousands of South Sea Islanders were deported under the Pacific Island Laborers Act, while Italian and other southern European migrants arrived from the 1920s, initially seen as racially inferior but gradually 'whitened' into the settler community.
The gradual end of a policy
Hanson credits Whitlam with ending the policy, but the reality is more nuanced. The Menzies government removed the dictation test in 1958, and the Holt government allowed limited non-European skilled migrants in 1966. Whitlam's immigration minister, Al Grassby, declared the policy 'buried' in 1973, yet these changes did not immediately transform Australia's demographics. As historian Gwenda Tavan explains, the shift was a long process. In 1987, 92% of Australians were still of European descent, and 75% came from the United Kingdom. The significant increases in migration from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East only occurred from the 1990s onward, driven by economic needs and global shifts, not solely by the end of White Australia.
One Nation and other critics often claim recent migrants refuse to 'assimilate,' but this misreads history. Waves of migration have changed Australia, not the other way around. The concept of multiculturalism, as historian Alexandra Dellios points out, emerged from the unwillingness of ethnic groups to abandon their identities. Both Whitlam and later Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser embraced it because British race patriotism could no longer offer an inclusive national narrative.
The deeper question is whether the White Australia policy truly ended. Anthropologist Ghassan Hage argues it was always a 'white nation fantasy'—an aspiration rather than a legal reality. He notes that both racists and multiculturalists shared the conviction that they were masters of national space, deciding who belonged. Formal multiculturalism, in Hage's view, was not an abandonment of white dominance but its re-articulation. The anxieties that birthed White Australia over a century ago still fester on the far right, driving movements to 'take back control' across the Anglo world.
Australians have legitimate grievances with political elites, but Hanson's nostalgic history offers no solutions. It is a dangerous distraction that ignores the country's complex, multicultural reality. As Australia navigates its role in the Indo-Pacific, including deepening ties with partners like India on security and Fiji on defense, such backward-looking politics only weaken its standing. The lesson from history is clear: the White Australia policy was a myth, and lamenting its end is both wrong and perilous.
