Australia's Immigration Policy

To explain the impacts of Australia's immigration policies over time on its population structures (e.g. ethnic composition, age and sex distribution, and occupational structure, etc.).

In 50,000BC, Aboriginal population is about 250,000 to 300,000 in Australia, which possibly came from Asia and New Guinea. Captain James Cook discovered Australia in 1770 and the first British fleet arrived in Australia in 1788 with about 1,000 men, women and children and 500 heads of livestock and poultry aboard arrived in Sydney Harbor. Before 1830s, convicts were the main source of migrants, but by the mid-1830s, more free settlers than convicts in Australia. In 1845, there were 16,800 convicts, but a year later, the number declined to 11,200.

In 1850s, the period of "Gold Rush" was occurred. There was discovery of goldfields in New South Wales and Victoria. It led the feverish migration of workers into the area of a dramatic discovery of commercial quantities of gold. The discovery of gold was a signification factor boosting the population of Victoria, and to some degree that of New South Wales, in eighteen-fifties. The combined population of the colonies grew from 405,400 in December 1850 to 1,145,600 ten years later. The total population of Australia was around 405,000, it exceed one million in 1858. Victoria became the biggest colony in 1860, which holding over half of Australia's population.

The new Commonweath in 1901 was to pass the infamous "White Australia Policy" which ensured that Australia's immigrants should be not only of European origin but predominantly Anglo-Celtic. It was a policy of excluding all not white people from the Australian continent, was the official policy of all government and all mainstream politic...

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...uropean Peopling of Australasia, ANU, Canberra.

HB2135.B67

Hugo, G. (2001) "A Century of Population Change in Australia." Yearbook of Australia. ABS: Canberra. ABS Australian Historical Population Statistics

Lecture Notes in Week 2, "Landmarks in the Population History of Australia." Dem 255 Topic in Demography, First Semester 2005

Lecture Notes in Week 3, "The History of Migrant to Australia." Dem 255 Topic in Demography, First Semester 2005

Web Site:

http://www.immi.gov.au, accessed date: 22 March 2005

http://www.abs.gov.au, accessed date: 22 March 2005

Video Presentations:

Destination Australia, (Part 1 and Part 2) Film Australia, July 1985

They'll be just like you: Australian immigration after the Second World War, ABC television program broadcast 21/7/94