ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the development of the Australian Humanitarian Program in the post-World War II period up to the 1970s and early 1980s, including the motivations and limitations of the policy, to show how humanitarianism was used for both national and international imperatives but has always had an important rhetorical role to justify Australia's imperative of flexibility and control over entry of migrants. This history has important lessons for other jurisdictions on the danger of reifying humanitarian responses as a panacea for forced migration.
