ABSTRACT
If Australia today officially takes pride in its ethnic plurality and is committed to a multicultural policy that recognises the social, cultural and economic benefits of diversity, this was not always so. Until the immediate post-war period Australia’s record was discriminatory when it was not openly racist. Only the irreversible changes in immigration patterns from the 1950s onward made Australia aware that it should alter its approach, and led it to adopt first more inclusive, then multiculturalist policies. Since 1945, over six million people have migrated to Australia as new settlers, and the population has risen from about 7 million at the end of World War II to just under 20 million in 2003. Today, nearly a quarter of Australia’s population was born overseas, and a total of 43 per cent were either born overseas or have at least one parent born overseas. Since 1999, New Zealand has replaced the United Kingdom as the largest source birthplace of migrants. The number of settlers arriving in Australia between July 2001 and June 2002 totalled 88,900. They came from over 150 different countries. Most were born in New Zealand (17.6 per cent), the United Kingdom (9.8 per cent), China (7.5 per cent), South Africa (6.4 per cent), India (5.7 per cent) and Indonesia (4.7 per cent). Until 1971, Australian Indigenous people (Aborigines and Torres Straight Islanders) were not included in national census counts. 410,000 (i.e. 2.2 per cent of the total population) identified as such in the 2001 census.1
