Australia’s White-Only Immigration Era

In 1901, Australia adopted the White Australia policy, a set of laws designed to block immigration by people of non-European origin, especially Asians and Pacific Islanders. The policy used tools like the Immigration Restriction Act and dictation tests to keep the country overwhelmingly white while presenting the system as legal administration. By 1961, the policy had helped produce an Australia that was 99.4 percent white at its peak. The government began dismantling the system in the decades that followed and formally ended it in 1973.

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