The White Australia Policy

SOME years ago a traveled Frenchman published his views on conditions in Australia under the title "Socialisme sans Doctrines." Until recently the same description might have been applied to the attitude of the Australian people toward the immigration of colored races. It was the expression of a definite conviction but it was "without theories." The "White Australia Policy" was proclaimed and accepted by all political parties. No suggestion of a doubt about its wisdom or of the possibility of modifying it could safely be uttered by a political leader. But no reasoned analysis of the policy had been formulated nor had any attempt been made to trace its development through Australian history. An exception to this rule could indeed be found in the correspondence of Australian and British Ministers. It has been a fortunate circumstance in the relations of Australia and Great Britain that in the early days of the Commonwealth and even before the Colonies were federated Ministers have been found capable of taking a philosophic and detached view of the policy of exclusion and of expounding it in defense of restrictive legislation. But it was not thought necessary to formulate a detached explanation of the policy in public discussions. The White Australia Policy has not for many years been a subject of party conflict and has been accepted as an article in the national creed which it would be treachery to question.

The statutory restrictions on immigration into Australia are contained in an Act entitled "The Immigration Act 1901--20," which embodies a number of acts of the Federal Parliament, the earliest of which was passed in the first year after the Commonwealth was established. The method adopted is to enumerate a number of classes of persons who are styled prohibited immigrants. The list is a long one and includes persons suffering from any physical or moral blemish whose presence would, it is thought, be dangerous to the physical well being of the Australian people, to their standard of morality or to the stability of their institutions. The first class, however, is not described by reference to any characteristic of the would-be immigrant. It includes "any person who fails to pass the dictation test, that is to say who, when an officer dictates to him not less than fifty words in a prescribed language, fails to write them out in that language." The section is perfectly general in its terms. It does not particularize the class of immigrants to whom the test is to be administered nor does it specify the language to be used. It gives the officer or the authority which instructs him a complete discretion and places all races and all languages on an equal footing.

The object of the section has never been disguised. It is to give the Australian Government a means of preventing the arrival of immigrants from the closely populated Asiatic countries and thereby to continue a policy which prior to federation had been adopted by the separate colonies. The language of the section is worth attention, because it shows the desire of Parliament, while carrying out the national purpose, to avoid giving offense to the people of any of the countries affected. No nationality is particularized and no distinction is drawn between European and other languages. The history of the section is also important, for this circuitous method was adopted in deference to the wish of the British Government that Australia should avoid giving offense to any of its colored people, and in its subsequent amendments consideration was given to the wounded dignity of Japan. In practice, the Act gives the Australian Government a latitude which it would not have enjoyed had a more direct method of exclusion been adopted. It has the power to agree with other governments that their subjects shall not be submitted to the test, and it can make agreements with the countries not excepted that the test shall be put to certain classes only of their respective subjects. It is on these lines that the Immigration Act is administered today. The dictation test may be put to any immigrant whom the Government may wish to exclude but who does not come within the classes particularly described. Certain classes of travelers, such as merchants, students and tourists from Asiatic countries, may be and are exempted from its provisions by virtue of arrangements which are not treaties but "gentlemen's agreements" with their respective Governments. Every Asiatic laborer is excluded or would be if the nature of the test were not so widely known that few seek to enter Australia except by some ingenious device, which usually takes the form of an attempt to prove an Australian birthplace revisted after a long sojourn in the land of his fathers.

Within the past four or five years the theory of exclusion has begun to be discussed and analyzed. A well documented history of the subject has been published under the auspices of the University of Melbourne. Physiologists have studied the effect on white people of life in the tropics, with a view to ascertaining whether the northern districts of Australia can be settled by any but Asiatics. Attempts have also been made to assess the economic value of these districts with a view to forming a scientific estimate of the loss, if any, to production caused by the exclusion of colored labor. The political and economic basis of the policy has also been set out in a number of magazine articles, among which an article which appeared in the Round Table for March, 1921, is conspicuous for the breadth and thoroughness of its treatment and the manifest conviction with which the policy is defended. More recently still Professor Gregory has published his "Menace of Color," which under a catchpenny title contains a mass of information on the results of mingling white and colored races. Professor Gregory has surveyed the whole world, but his opinions on Australia are particularly valuable because he has himself explored part of the continent and has gained the greater part of his information at first hand.

Many reasons have coöperated to bring about this examination of conscience. One of minor though real importance is that the Australian universities have become better equipped for the study of problems of economic development and of external relations. But the main reason is that Australians have realized the change which has taken place in their relations to the rest of the world and in particular to the other members of the British Commonwealth. Today it would not be (if it ever would have been) sufficient to ask the British nation to take a policy upon trust and to join unquestioningly in defending the people responsible for it. A nation burdened with debt and with taxes incurred in an exhaustive struggle may still be ready to maintain its obligations whether of interest or sentiment but could not be expected to do so without knowing that the claims upon it were founded not on selfishness but on justice and on an ideal in which all democracies are interested. A policy, participation in which may add to the annual expenditure on defense, must be explained with sufficient clearness to a democracy which is deeply and primarily concerned with the alleviation of poverty at home. Again, the new status of the Dominions, ill defined as it is, carries with it the obligation that the convictions and claims of one member of the partnership shall be justified to the others. More especially is this true of a policy which through injudicious defense or careless administration may be interpreted as placing the peoples of Australia and India in opposition. The possibility of misconstruction has been disclosed on many occasions. The spokesmen of British India at Imperial Conferences have acknowledged the right of each member of the Commonwealth to its own immigration policy while claiming equal treatment for their fellow-countrymen after admission. But the right has not been acknowledged so readily by other Indian leaders, and in the agitation which followed the settlement of the Kenya dispute two years ago Australia was denounced as an equal in guilt with other supposed contemnors of the Indian people.

The need for a clearer understanding of immigration problems has also been emphasized in the larger arena of international affairs. At Versailles the Japanese delegates maintained that to draw a distinction between the rights of the citizens of different nations to enter and settle such countries as they willed was a breach of the equality implied in membership of the League of Nations, and their arguments appear to have been accepted by a majority among the members of the League of Nations Commission. The same subject was discussed before the mandates were issued for the former German possessions in the South Pacific, and it was urged that all nations should enjoy equal rights of immigration into the territories. The mandates were then issued in a form satisfactory to Australia, but subject to the reservation of their right by the Japanese delegates to bring the subject up again. It was raised or was thought to be raised again at Geneva by the amendment to the Protocol proposed by the Japanese representatives. Probably the hostility to the protocol which was expressed in Australia was to a large extent attributable to a misunderstanding of the obligations already undertaken by members of the League, but it was undoubtedly an expression of apprehension of the danger of submitting the White Australia Policy to the judgment of an International Court of which the members would not be supposed to understand or sympathize with the reasons on which it was based. The investigation which has taken place under these conditions, though incomplete, has proved wholly beneficial. It has already answered certain widely held objections to the policy. It has shown in the first place that the intention to prevent the settlement of Australia by other than the white races was formed in the early days of the colonies and has been maintained ever since, that it has not been directed against any one country, and that it has not been inspired solely by the fear of economic competition. It has shown, again, that the charge of keeping a rich and profitable territory out of occupation and thereby curtailing the food supplies of the world is exaggerated, and it has at least furnished good reason for believing that the White Australia Policy so far from being provocative of war is a safeguard of peace.

Before 1900 Australia was a geographical and social rather than a political entity. It was divided into colonies, five of them endowed with complete rights of self-government under the British Crown and each independent of the other. These divisions had not been framed according to any rule, neither with a view to delimiting areas equal in size or resources nor to placing under the one government colonists who were living under similar conditions of climate or soil. Under these conditions it would not have been surprising if there had been considerable differences in the attitude of the different colonies towards Asiatic immigration and in the manner in which their several policies were carried out. Such differences did appear from time to time. The colony of Western Australia, the last to attain self-government, admitted Asiatic immigrants when the other colonies refused them. South Australia for a time attempted to differentiate between the northern or tropical districts and the remainder of the colony, and to admit Chinese coolie labor to the north while excluding it from the south. Queensland for a time employed on its sugar plantations laborers imported under indenture from the South Sea Islands and continued to do so until the establishment of the Commonwealth; and the same colony refused to join with the others in excluding Japanese immigrants, preferring to carry out a policy of limited restrictions under the provision of a commercial treaty made between Great Britain and Japan. In almost every instance internal differences of policy arose through a temporary scarcity of labor or from a belief that under certain climatic conditions continuous physical labor by white people was impossible. But, on the whole, differences of policy were remarkably few. From the earliest days of settlement there is evidence of a sense of the danger of allowing any considerable number of people to enter Australia differing in traditions and in their standard of living from the British inhabitants to such an extent as to be difficult or impossible of assimilation.

The sources of immigration varied from time to time. But whether the influx was apprehended from India, from China or from Japan, Australian governments, in some instances after a period of hesitation, have decided that it would be preferable to sacrifice rapidity of development in order to keep the population of the continent socially and politically homogeneous. There have been differences of method in dealing with the problem. One of the powerful inducements to the colonies to federate was their desire to attain uniformity in dealing with a common danger and to speak with one voice in expressing their views either to Great Britain or to Asiatic governments. Prior to 1896 legislation was directed almost exclusively against Chinese immigrants, the Chinese having from time to time, since the days of the gold discoveries in the fifties, threatened to invade the southern colonies in large numbers. At successive conferences legislation by the separate colonies against all Asiatic immigrants had been considered. In 1896 bills were passed in three of the states under the title of "Colored Races, Restriction and Regulation" Bills, which for the first time applied to British subjects as well as to aliens. It was then that the attention of Australian Ministers was most directly called to the importance of the form of a type of legislation which was to apply to sensitive and highly civilized peoples. Mr. Chamberlain, then Secretary of State for the Colonies, while expressing his sympathy with the "determination of the white inhabitants of these colonies who are in close proximity to millions and hundreds of millions of Asiatics that there should not be an influx of people alien in civilization, alien in religion, alien in customs, whose influx moreover would most seriously interfere with the legitimate rights of the existing labor population" urged them strongly not to put a slight on the feelings of the people of India which "is absolutely unnecessary for your purpose and would be calculated to promote ill feeling, discontent and irritation." In order to avoid these disputes, he urged them to follow the example of the colony of Natal and adopt the dictation test already described, with which the Japanese Government had expressed itself satisfied. The advice was followed by the three colonies already mentioned, who adopted a dictation test designed to keep out Asiatic immigration but referring to no people or race by name. It would have been followed no doubt by the other colonies, for there was at the time a widely spread anticipation that the defeat of China would be followed by increased immigration from the East. But at that time federation was on the eve of accomplishment. It was realized that control of external affairs and the maintenance of Australian interests in the Pacific would be a duty of the Commonwealth, and it was generally thought that the whole subject had best be left to the Commonwealth Parliament.

How the Commonwealth Parliament dealt with the subject has already been indicated. In the first Parliament elected in 1900 there was no controversy as to whether or no exclusion was justified, though there was considerable difference of opinion as to the form which legislation should take. The dictation test was adopted because the Government of the day itself appreciated the need for considering the feelings of other peoples and acknowledged the obligations of Australia to Great Britain, which in its turn sought to protect the feelings of British subjects in India and of Britain's allies in Japan. That object has been kept in mind ever since. Whatever indiscretions may have been committed by Ministers, officials or newspapers, there can be no complaint of the attitude of the Australian Parliament as expressed in its legislation.

The charge has been made against the Australian democracy that its motive for the exclusion of colored races was fear of competition. It has been said that the quality in the Chinese which provoked legislation against them was their thrift and their capacity for continuous work. Support can be found for that charge in the nature of the struggle against the Chinese when for a time they were used to break a seamen's strike, when their admission was urged as a means of obtaining agricultural laborers, and even in the attitude of Australian Labor Governments towards British immigrants. But it rests on a failure to appreciate the basis of Australia democracy, a failure which in part is shared by that democracy itself. Allied to the individual ambition for higher wages and a comfortable existence is the national ideal of a high standard of living for all, of an equal participation in the natural wealth and a genuine equality of citizenship not only as voters or as litigants but socially. Just as the White Australia Policy has been expressed in Acts of Parliament so this ideal of a high national standard of living can be traced in the establishment of systems of industrial arbitration, in the enactment of a minimum wage and in the decisions of the Courts appointed to adjudicate on industrial disputes. Whether so much industrial legislation will prove ultimately to have been for the good of the Australian people or whether it has not already sapped their powers of initiative and individuality are questions worth considering, but not in this article. The point here is that there is abundant proof affirmatively of the intention to maintain a high standard of living, and negatively not to allow a repetition of the contrasts of poverty and wealth to be found in Great Britain. Just as the American people in their early days decided to be free of European entanglements, so the Australian people have decided not to transport slum areas or the impoverished masses of the Old World. The Asiatic will tolerate surroundings which the Australian will not; therefore he must not be allowed to come in and depress the general average. The Japanese in his own country accepts the wage and tolerates the conditions of another era, therefore he is not thought capable of assimilation into the Australian industrial system. It may be said that the power of Australian trade unions is now so firmly established that they could successfully resist a lowering of the wage standard. That may be so, and it may be true that a low standard is not desired by employers, but it has to be remembered that the population of Australia is small and that the influence of any unassimilated aliens would be greater than in a largely populated country.

The political argument runs on parallel lines. Can any Asiatic people take part in the working of an advanced democracy? The Indian experiment affords no answer and will afford none, for even if it succeeds it will be the government of the many by the few. What little is known of the systems of China or Japan does not suggest that members of the coolie class are fitted for their place in a constitution under which all citizens have equal rights not only in law but in fact. Yet Asiatic immigrants must be given the franchise or remain an inferior class politically and socially, and if the exiles of an assertive and forceful nation are kept in a position of inferiority there will be a constant provocation to their fellow countrymen to protest if not to intervene in their behalf. A people jealous of its dignity or of a newly acquired status seems to regard the treatment of its emigrants by other countries as the decisive test of the attitude of those countries toward it. The Australian people may risk incurring the hostility of powers to whose nationals they refuse unrestricted admission, but the danger would be far greater if those nationals were admitted and treated as a class apart. There are tests which are thought to mark an unfathomable difference between Eastern people and people of European descent. Political equality is one. That each individual shall be an end in himself, that everyone shall count for one and no one for more than one, are axioms which are at the root of Western political institutions and are entirely inconsistent with the creed of China, Japan or India, different from each other as those creeds may be. Another test is the status of women. In the West the right of women to be treated as individuals and not merely as ministers to the needs or pleasures of men is regarded as one of the indicia of civilization. The West has "rounded Seraglio Point." In the East the position of women may be less clearly defined than it was, but it is on a totally different plane from that which women have gained in countries inhabited by white races.

It is futile to discuss whether the Eastern or Western type of civilization is superior or to question the claim of the East to a long and proud tradition. Pride of race, the belief that Australia must be kept as an out-post of the White Races and that Australians hold it as their trustees do not necessarily involve the idea of superiority. The two civilizations are evidently different, so different that it will be impossible for a white democracy to admit an influx from the East without danger to its institutions and to the standard which it has painfully established. A modern philosopher has told us that "Civilization is not even skin deep. It does not go deeper than the clothes." Yet the clash of civilizations may tend either to destroy the more restrained of the two or to provoke that which may bring about a return of both to barbarism. The same comment applies to the fear of intermarriage. It does not rest on a prejudice against any one people but on a belief that the offspring of two individuals of widely different ethnic origin will reproduce the faults of both. The generalization is wholly unscientific for it is founded on observation of one stratum only and is opposed to the conclusions of recent investigators. But it has given a great deal of support to the White Australia Policy particularly because the number of women among Asiatic immigrants is necessarily small.

What have been the economic results of this policy? Has it hindered the development of Australia? Will it keep out of production any portion of the continent which could be developed if colored labor were admitted? It is impossible to generalize for a whole continent or for a whole people. It will not be argued now that colored labor is needed for the eastern or southern states. Their primary products are wool, wheat and butter. Little labor is required for sheep except at shearing, an operation carried out by highly skilled experts who follow the climate from one state to another. The areas used for wheat and dairy farming have greatly increased during the present century, but the demand for labor has not increased in proportion. Improvements in machinery have driven men from the land to the towns and there they have found occupations because the prosperity of the country has provided a market for their products. It is highly desirable that some of the estates in New South Wales and elsewhere be cut up into smaller holdings in order that room may be found for men fit and anxious to become farmers. But there is no suggestion that white men cannot live in health and comfort and there is no demand for cheap labor for the farmer. Much has been said of the concentration of Australians in their cities, particularly in one or two capital cities. Whether this is or is not an evil, whether it is not the result of a healthy economic tendency, cannot be decided offhand. It is certainly not the result of the inability of white men and women to live and work on the land.

A more difficult problem arises, however, in connection with those portions of Australia which lie within the tropics. Can they be settled by white people, and if settlement is physically possible will it ever take place? If the answer to either of these questions is in the negative, does the exclusion of colored labor seriously diminish the supply of raw products that Australia might give to the world? Before this question is discussed, it is necessary to deal with the possibility or the desirability of limiting an area in the north within which colored laborers should be confined and beyond which they shall not be allowed to advance. The attempt to confine Chinese labor within the northern area, the tropical area now administered with disastrous results by the Federal Government, was once made by the colony of South Australia and abandoned. It might conceivably be made again, for the physical difficulties of an illicit journey from north to south would be very serious. But any such experiment is open to the objection that if colored labor were admitted to a limited area pressure would at once be brought to bear upon the governments concerned to have that area extended by diplomatic action. Unquestionably Chinese immigrants would be welcome as domestic servants; but there is no reason to believe that domestic service would attract them in large numbers.

The capacity of white people to live healthy lives in the northern districts of Australia seems now to be acknowledged. On the coast during the wet season, which covers four or five of the summer months, the atmosphere is laden with moisture, the wet bulb reading being very nearly equal to that of the dry bulb. But even there healthy families are born and an examination of 500 children in Townsville, the port of northern Queensland, has disclosed no sign of physical deterioration. On the whole the children of the north of the second and third generation are said to be almost equal to those of the south, and they are generally larger in build than the children of Europe. From the interior, where owing to distance from the sea the atmosphere is drier, came some of the finest recruits who went to the war.: The north of Australia has one great advantage in that it is not afflicted by the diseases which are known in India and other tropical countries. There is no native population saturated with disease, and for this reason settlers, and children particularly, lead a far freer life than in other countries with approximately the same climate. The most serious difficulty at present lies in the failure of the residents to adopt their mode of living to tropical conditions. They eat meat and drink black tea like the Australians of the south, and, as appears from a photograph in Professor Gregory's book, men wear hard hats and cloth suits on their days of leisure. No reasonable attempt has been made to adopt the style of housing to the climate as has been done in Java, with the result that the women are mentally and physically worse off than the men. It may be that a suitable type of building has not been developed in the north, because the residents have never contemplated remaining there permanently. It has indeed taken the closely settled populations of the south more than a century even to begin to develop an architecture suitable to its climate and surroundings. If the Englishman and his descendants cling to their northern habits in a district which they regard as a permanent home, it is not surprising that they are slow to adapt themselves to a region in which they see themselves as only temporary sojourners. One proof, however, of the adaptability of white men has been given. When the question was debated, as it was several times during the last century, whether indentured colored labor on the cane fields should be forbidden, it was said that if the Kanakas were to go the sugar industry would die. They did go, and the area under cane crop is now larger than ever. In 1905 when the last Kanakas were deported the acreage was 134,000, and in 1923 it was 201,000. Ten years ago a Commission to inquire into the condition of the sugar industry on its visit to the coastal districts of Queensland was met by farmers with families of healthy children in disproof of the current belief that settlement could not flourish in the tropics. But it must be admitted that physiologists and geographers who know these regions remain unsatisfied. They doubt whether even if improvements are made in buildings and modes of living, life in the tropics without servants will ever be tolerable to white women. In their opinion it may not cause any physical deterioration, but it may produce physical discomfort and mental irritation to an extent that will render permanent settlement impossible on any large scale.

Whether the north of Australia is capable of great economic development is another subject on which it is impossible to dogmatize. It is certain that as yet means of communication either with the south of Australia or the outside world are inadequate. To ascertain the most effective remedy the Commonwealth Government has during this year obtained a report on the northern harbors from an engineer of high standing, and has foreshadowed a program of railway development to complete the connection of the Northern Territory with the south. It is also proposed to constitute a new state or territory formed from the northern portions of Queensland and Western Australia, to be placed under the control of a Commission. The project would have the advantage of placing under one control tropical and sparsely populated regions which cannot be adequately represented in the national Parliament. It seems eminently desirable, but it cannot be carried out without the consent of the states affected and may therefore be abandoned. It is not to be expected, however, that a change in the machinery of government or even a great improvement in means of communication will attract a dense population. A large portion of the interior of Australia is arid and lacks the mountains and rivers which have made irrigation successful in the United States. The Professor of Geography in the University of Sydney says that the area of the Australian desert is second only to that of the Sahara, desert being defined as a region of ten-inch rainfall or less, where agriculture is impossible and only a sparse pastoral population is possible. Of this type of country there is in Australia over one million square miles, of which 140,000 is in the Northern Territory and about a half in Western Australia. Between the center of Australia and the north coast there are districts well suitable to cattle raising, but sheep apparently do not flourish beyond the twentieth parallel. The cattle do well on a rainfall of from fifteen to thirty inches, and in pre-war days when the industry was prosperous fortunes were made from them. But a cattle station is often as large as a European kingdom; the hands needed are very few. Water is obtained in many parts from artesian bores, but the cost of sinking the bores is sometimes more than the country is worth. The agricultural possibilities of the north at one time seem to have been much over-estimated. It was thought that any tropical country with a heavy annual rainfall must be fertile and that because the neighboring island of Java is generally prosperous the Northern Territory also must be capable of intense development. But these analogies have proved to be misleading. In Java the rain falls at the right time and the soil is of high quality. In the Northern Territory, where on the coast the average is sixty-five inches a year, the rainfall is concentrated into three or at the most five of the summer months and tends to destroy the soil rather than to fertilize it. Close inspection has now led to the conclusion that on the coast only alluvial pockets along the rivers and creeks have agricultural value, and that elsewhere the soil is too poor. It is not labor that is wanted to make a land of plenty, but better soil than can be formed from the sandstone ridges of the Northern Territory, more favorable winds, and a rain that falls in winter instead of at a time when evaporation is at its worst. Agriculture can be carried on of course, and cotton has been grown of an excellent quality. There would no doubt be some further production if colored labor were admitted, but the limit of production must quickly be reached and there is no inducement to an agriculturist, white or colored, to settle in the Territory if he could make a living in the south. High wages are and must be paid in all occupations, but so far they have not attracted a high class of labor. Good workmen can always make good wages in the temperate portions of Australia and while the prices of wool and of wheat are high the best fields for investment are there. The prospects of mining are at best uncertain. There are rumors from time to time of the discovery of great mineral wealth in the north, and the amount of alluvial gold mining was at one time considerable, but reef mining has been unsuccessful, and the rumors of new discoveries have not been substantiated.

The application of the White Australia Policy to the island of New Guinea must naturally depend on different considerations. A portion of the island has been governed as a territory of the Commonwealth since 1906, a portion is held under the mandatory provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, and a third portion is administered by the Dutch Government with its headquarters at Batavia. The white population is and must always be very small; the black population is in a primitive condition just emerging from the Stone Age and possessing no form of organized government. There is no possibility of the establishment of representative institutions, with a franchise to be enjoyed by all the inhabitants. Nevertheless, the reason for forbidding the importation of colored labor to the two portions administered by Australia are equally strong to those which apply to the mainland. The policy of the administration has been to protect the natives from exploitation and from degeneration. It is inspired by motives of self-interest as well as of duty. In the Australian territory it has succeeded and its success is now acknowledged after years of criticism and misrepresentation. Today the supply of labor is adequate to the needs of the plantations and the natives are encouraged to grow copra and rubber themselves. But it is felt that if labor, either free or indentured, had been introduced, the natives would have been destroyed. They would have gone down before greater strength and efficiency; they would have been left with no substitute for their traditional occupations and the Australian administration would have failed in the object which it has publicly and consistently set before itself. The lesson learned in Papua has now been applied in the portion of New Guinea held under Mandate. The right to do so was not secured without difficulty and would not have been conceded by Japan but for the generous and skilful diplomacy of the British representatives on the Council of the League of Nations. But it is in accordance with the terms of the Covenant and it should work no hardship if it is administered on the lines of the system of "gentlemen's agreements" already in force in Australia.

A complete examination of the White Australia Policy would, it will be seen, involve a discussion of the whole recent history of Australia, both internal and external, and of its system of government. That would necessarily involve some criticism of the administration of the Commonwealth and the individual states, of their lack of interest in foreign affairs, of their failure to maintain a satisfactory scheme of immigration, and of their haphazard schemes of development. It is hoped, however, that enough has been said to show that the policy is not based on purely selfish reasons, that it is not based on a belief in the superiority of one people to another, that it is not directed against any one nation, but that it is an inextricable part of the social and political ideals of the Australian people.