ABSTRACT
The Consolidated Statistics show that between January 1959 and June 1970 a total of 1,990 Hong Kong-born people entered Australia as settlers. I Between July 1970 and June 1980, 7,980 entered Australia, and from July 1980 to June 1990, 36,200 Hong Kong-born settlers arrived. The flow of Hong Kong migrants to Australia has reflected the wider shifts in Australia's immigration policy as it affected non-Europeans in the post-exclusion era. Until the 1964-{)5 financial year, annual settlers from Hong Kong numbered less than one hundred each year. Between the first major relaxation of the White Australia policy in 1966, following the retirement of the conservative Sir Robert Menzies as Prime Minister, and its final abolition in 1973 by the incoming Whitlam Labor Government, immigration levels from Hong Kong hovered mainly around three hundred per year. The figure exceeded one thousand for the first time in 1976-77, and in 1990--91 it broke the ten thousand per annum mark.
