The ''War-time Refugees Removal Act 1949'' was a piece of Australian legislation that formed part of the

White Australia policy The White Australia policy is a term encapsulating a set of historical policies that aimed to forbid people of non-European ethnic origin, especially Asians (primarily Chinese) and Pacific Islanders, from immigrating to Australia, starting i ...

. It was introduced by the Chifley government in July 1949, in order to give the federal government the explicit authority to deport non-white foreigners who had arrived in Australia during World War II.''War-time Refugees Removal Act 1949''
Federal Register of Legislation. The act was created in response to '' O'Keefe v Calwell'' (1948), a High Court decision that found in favour of an Indonesian woman, Annie O'Keefe, who had been issued a deportation order under the '' Aliens Deportation Act 1948''. The Minister for Immigration,

Arthur Calwell Arthur Augustus Calwell (28 August 1896 – 8 July 1973) was an Australian politician who served as the leader of the Labor Party from 1960 to 1967. He led the party to three federal elections. Calwell grew up in Melbourne and attended St J ...

, was a strong supporter of the White Australia policy, and claimed that the High Court's decision would lead to a "mongrel Australia". The government wished to expel the 800 or so foreign non-whites who had entered Australia during World War II, and formulated a new act to eliminate the loopholes that the High Court case had uncovered. The new act, which came into force in July 1949, "empowered the minister to force any person to depart the country who had been allowed to enter as a result of the war and had not since left". Calwell made extensive use of his new powers up until the December 1949 federal election, where the

Labor Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the la ...

government was defeated. Harold Holt, the immigration minister in the incoming

Menzies government Menzies is a Scottish surname, with Gaelic forms being Méinnearach and Méinn, and other variant forms being Menigees, Mennes, Mengzes, Menzeys, Mengies, and Minges. Derivation and history The name and its Gaelic form are probably derived f ...

, opposed the White Australia policy and declined to make use of the act's provisions, accepting the refugees as a "wartime legacy".Nicholls, p. 13. His successors did the same, and the act was eventually formally repealed by the ''Statute Law Revision Act 1973''.

References

{{reflist 1949 in Australian law History of immigration to Australia Australian migration law Immigration legislation Repealed Acts of the Parliament of Australia White Australia policy

See also

References