Editing History of Australia (section)

===Post-war immigration===
{{Main|Post-war immigration to Australia|History of immigration to Australia}}
[[File:Dutch Migrant 1954 MariaScholte=50000thToAustraliaPostWW2.jpg|thumb|Postwar migrants arriving in Australia in 1954]]
[[File:Railway Square, ca. 1945.jpg|thumb|right|After World War II and by the 1950s, Australia had a population of 10 million, and the most populous urban centre was its oldest city, [[Sydney]]. It has retained its status as Australia's largest city ever since.]]

Following World War II, the [[Ben Chifley|Chifley]] Labor government instigated a massive programme of European immigration. In 1945, Minister for Immigration, [[Arthur Calwell]] wrote "If the experience of the Pacific War has taught us one thing, it surely is that seven million Australians cannot hold three million square miles of this earth's surface indefinitely."<ref>House of Representatives Hansard, 2 August 1945, pp. 4911–15. Arthur Calwell – White Paper on Immigration. [http://john.curtin.edu.au/1940s/populate/index.html john.curtin.edu.au] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110306041307/http://john.curtin.edu.au/1940s/populate/index.html |date=6 March 2011 }}</ref> All political parties shared the view that the country must "populate or perish". Calwell stated a preference for ten British immigrants for each one from other countries; however, the numbers of British migrants fell short of what was expected, despite government assistance.<ref>Michal Dugan and Josef Swarc (1984) ''There Goes the Neighbourhood! Australia's Migrant Experience''. p. 138 Macmillan, South Melbourne. {{ISBN|0-333-35712-4}}</ref>

Migration brought large numbers of southern and central Europeans to Australia for the first time. A 1958 government leaflet assured readers that unskilled non-British migrants were needed for "labour on rugged projects ... work which is not generally acceptable to Australians or British workers".<ref>cited in Michael Dugan and Josef Swarc (1984) p. 139</ref> The Australian economy stood in sharp contrast to war-ravaged Europe, and newly arrived migrants found employment in a booming manufacturing industry and government assisted programmes such as the [[Snowy Mountains Scheme]]. This [[hydroelectricity]] and [[irrigation in Australia|irrigation]] complex in south-east Australia consisted of sixteen major dams and seven power stations constructed between 1949 and 1974. It remains the largest engineering project undertaken in Australia. Necessitating the employment of 100,000 people from [[Post-war immigration to Australia|more than 30 countries]], to many it denoted the birth of multicultural Australia.<ref name="The Snowy Mountains Scheme">{{cite web|url=http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/articles/snowyscheme/|title=The Snowy Mountains Scheme|publisher=Cultureandrecreation.gov.au|date=20 March 2008|access-date=14 July 2011|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070830103344/http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/articles/snowyscheme/|archive-date=30 August 2007}}</ref>
Some 4.2&nbsp;million immigrants arrived between 1945 and 1985, about 40 per cent of whom came from Britain and Ireland.<ref>Jan Bassett (1986) pp. 138–39</ref> The 1957 novel ''[[They're a Weird Mob]]'' was a popular account of an Italian migrating to Australia, although written by Australian-born author [[John O'Grady (writer)|John O'Grady]]. The Australian population reached 10 million in 1959–with Sydney its most populous city.

In May 1958, the [[Robert Menzies|Menzies]] Government passed the [[Migration Act 1958]] which replaced the Immigration Restriction Act's arbitrarily applied dictation test with an entry permit system, that reflected economic and skills criteria.<ref>Jan Bassett (1986) p. 273</ref><ref>Frank Crowley (1973) p. 358</ref> Further changes in the 1960s effectively ended the [[White Australia Policy]]. It legally ended in 1973.