Editing White Australia policy (section)

==Immigration policies before federation==
{{Further|Immigration history of Australia}}

===Gold rush era===
[[File:SLNSW FL3324035.jpg|thumb|Camp Hill (Lambing Flat) at time of the riots, 1860–61. Now the town of [[Young, New South Wales]]]]
The discovery of [[gold rush|gold]] in Australia in 1851 led to an influx of immigrants from all around the world. The colony of Victoria had a population of only 77,000 in 1851 and [[New South Wales]] just 200,000, but the huge influx of settlers spurred by the [[Australian gold rushes]] transformed the Australian colonies economically, politically and demographically. Over the next 20 years, 40,000 Chinese men but very few women, nearly all from the province of Guangdong (then known as Canton) but divided by language and dialect nevertheless, immigrated to the goldfields seeking prosperity.<ref name="Markey">{{cite web
|url=http://www.highbeam.com/library/docfree.asp?DOCID=1G1:18167215&ctrlInfo=Round20%3AMode20c%3ADocG%3AResult&ao=
|archive-url=https://wayback.archive-it.org/all/20171019161339/https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-18167215.html
|archive-date=19 October 2017
|last =Markey
|first =Raymond
|date=1 January 1996
|title=Race and organized labor in Australia, 1850–1901
|publisher = The Historian
|access-date =14 June 2006
}}</ref>

Gold brought great wealth but also new social tensions. Multi-ethnic migrants came to Victoria and New South Wales in large numbers for the first time. Competition on the goldfields, particularly resentment among [[light skin|white]] miners towards the successes of Chinese miners, led to tensions between groups and eventually a series of significant racist protests and riots, including the [[Buckland riot]] in 1857 and the [[Lambing Flat riots]] between 1860 and 1861. [[Charles Hotham|Governor Hotham]], on 16 November 1854, appointed a [[Royal Commission]] on Victorian goldfields problems and grievances. This led to restrictions being placed on Chinese immigration and residency taxes levied from Chinese residents in [[Victoria (Australia)|Victoria]] from 1855. New South Wales following suit with poll taxes and tonnage restrictions only in 1861. These restrictions remained in force only until 1867.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Lockwood|first=R.|date=1964|title=British Imperial Influences in the Foundation of the White Australia Policy|journal=Labour History|issue=7|pages=23–33|doi=10.2307/27507761|jstor=27507761 |issn=0023-6942}}</ref>{{Failed verification|date=December 2022}}

=== Support from the Australian Labour Movement ===

[[File:Melbourne eight hour day march-c1900.jpg|thumb|right|300px|[[Eight-hour day]] march {{Circa|1900}}, outside Parliament House in Spring Street, [[Melbourne]]]]

[[Melbourne Trades Hall]] was opened in 1859 with [[Labour council|trades and labour council]]s and [[trades hall]]s opening in all cities and most regional towns in the following forty years. During the 1880s, [[trade unions]] developed among [[Sheep shearer|shearer]]s, [[miner]]s, and [[stevedore]]s (wharf workers), but soon spread to cover almost all [[blue-collar]] jobs. Shortages of labour led to high wages for a prosperous skilled working class, whose unions demanded and got an [[eight-hour day]] and other benefits unheard of in Europe.{{citation needed|date=June 2022}}

Australia gained a reputation as "the working man's paradise". Some employers hired Chinese labourers, who were cheaper and more hard working. This produced a reaction which led eventually to all the colonies restricting Chinese immigration by 1888 and subsequently other Asian immigration. This was the genesis of the White Australia Policy. The "Australian compact", based around centralised industrial arbitration, a degree of government assistance particularly for primary industries, and White Australia, was to continue for many years before gradually dissolving in the second half of the 20th century.{{citation needed|date=June 2022}}

[[File:Kanakas early 1870s.png|thumb|left|300px|[[Kanakas]] workers in a sugarcane plantation, {{Circa|1870}}]]

The growth of the sugar industry in Queensland in the 1870s led to searching for labourers prepared to work in a tropical environment. During this time, thousands of "[[Kanakas]]" (Pacific Islanders) were brought into Australia as [[indentured workers]].<ref name="Griffiths">{{cite web
|url=http://www.philgriffiths.id.au/writings/articles/Shadow%20of%20mill.rtf
|last=Griffiths
|first=Phil
|date=4 July 2002
|title=Towards White Australia: The shadow of Mill and the spectre of slavery in the 1880s debates on Chinese immigration
|format=RTF
|publisher=11th Biennial National Conference of the Australian Historical Association
|access-date=14 June 2006
|archive-date=14 February 2015
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150214224516/http://www.philgriffiths.id.au/writings/articles/Shadow%20of%20mill.rtf
|url-status=live
}}</ref> This and related practices of bringing in non-white labour to be cheaply employed was commonly termed "[[blackbirding]]" and refers to the recruitment of people, often through trickery and kidnappings, to work on plantations, particularly the [[Sugar plantation|sugar cane plantations]] of Queensland (Australia) and [[Fiji]].<ref name="Willoughby">{{cite web|url=http://www.museum.vic.gov.au/federation/pdfs/multiw.pdf |last=Willoughby |first=Emma |title=Our Federation Journey 1901–2001|publisher=Museum Victoria |access-date=14 June 2006 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060625205722/http://www.museum.vic.gov.au/federation/pdfs/multiw.pdf |archive-date=25 June 2006 }}</ref> In the 1870s and 1880s, the [[Australian labour movement|trade union]] movement began a series of protests against foreign labour. Their arguments were that Asians and Chinese took jobs away from white men, worked for "substandard" wages, lowered working conditions, were harder workers and refused unionisation.<ref name="Markey" />

Objections to these arguments came largely from wealthy land owners in rural areas.<ref name="Markey"/> It was argued that without Asiatics to work in the tropical areas of the [[Northern Territory]] and Queensland, the area would have to be abandoned.<ref name="Griffiths" /> Despite these objections to restricting immigration, between 1875 and 1888 all Australian colonies enacted legislation which excluded all further Chinese immigration.<ref name="Griffiths" /> Asian immigrants already residing in the Australian colonies were not expelled and retained the same rights as their Anglo and southern compatriots, although they faced significant discrimination.

Agreements were made to further increase these restrictions in 1895 following an inter-colonial premiers' conference where all colonies agreed to extend entry restrictions to all [[Non-white|non-white races]]. However, in attempting to enact this legislation, the governors of New South Wales, South Australia and [[Tasmania]] reserved the bills, due to a treaty with [[Empire of Japan|Japan]], and they did not become law. Instead, the Natal Act of 1897 was introduced, restricting "undesirable persons" who could not fill in a set form rather than by naming any specific race.<ref name="Markey" />

The British government in London was not pleased with legislation that discriminated against certain subjects of its empire, but decided not to disallow the laws that were passed. Colonial Secretary [[Joseph Chamberlain]] explained in 1897:<blockquote>We quite sympathize with the determination...of these colonies...that there should not be an influx of people alien in civilisation, alien in religion, alien in customs, whose influx, moreover, would seriously interfere with the legitimate rights of the existing labouring population.<ref>Speech to Colonial Conference of 1897, quoted in J. Holland Rose et al., eds. ''The Cambridge History of the British Empire: Volume VII: Part I: Australia'' (1933) p 411; [https://books.google.com/books?id=B9oDAAAAYAAJ&dq=chamberlain+%22alien+in+civilisation%22&pg=PA759 full text] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230928073052/https://books.google.com/books?id=B9oDAAAAYAAJ&dq=chamberlain+%22alien+in+civilisation%22&pg=PA759 |date=28 September 2023 }}</ref></blockquote>