HIST2227 Chap.5 The Australian Settlement
The Australian Settlement
Housing and the citizen
Week 6 asks how 1940s policymakers connected housing with citizenship and nationhood.
Rae Dufty-Jones shows the housing crisis framed as a problem of environment, blamed for falling births, ill health, political discontent and the drift to the cities.
Who could join the nation
Evan Smith and Andrekos Varnava trace the dismantling of White Australia and the elite backlash that invoked Notting Hill, Little Rock and Sharpeville.
Primary sources for the week
The outline also sets William Cooper’s political demands and Robert Menzies’ 1952 speech at Brisbane Town Hall, and asks whether listening to the speech complicates or complements Stuart Macintyre’s reading of those years as a golden age, and what listening reveals that a transcript does not, which is itself a lesson in reading sources.
Why the two readings belong together
Both readings tie domestic policy to ideas of race and population.
Planners worried about population distribution and the birth-rate, while opponents of immigration reform warned of imported racial conflict. Seen together, they show the postwar settlement deciding not only how Australians would live but who would count as Australian.
What this chapter covers
- 01
The 1940s housing shortage
- 02
Housing as a problem of environment
- 03
Decentralisation and country towns
- 04
Housing reimagined as a right
- 05
Stages in dismantling White Australia
- 06
Transnational whiteness and the elite backlash
- 07
Menzies, Cooper and the golden age question
Worked example · free
Linking housing policy to population fears
- 1Planners believed a poor home environment caused a falling birth-rate, so better housing was meant to support a growing population.
- 1Bad housing was also blamed for physical and moral decline and for political discontent, so the home was treated as the place where healthy, loyal citizens were made.
- 1Poor rural housing was blamed for the drift to the cities, so housing became a tool of decentralisation and the development of country towns.
Key terms
- Housing Crisis
- A shortage of affordable, adequate homes, estimated at about 300,000 dwellings in the 1940s.
- Decentralisation
- Policy to spread population away from the capitals, an objective of the first housing agreement.
- Dictation Test
- An immigration screening device of the White Australia system, removed after the 1957 decision to simplify the law.
- Colombo Plan
- A scheme that brought nearly 5,500 Asian students and trainees to Australia between 1951 and 1964.
- Postwar Reconstruction
- The planning of Australian society and economy after the Second World War, led by a department set up in 1942.
The Australian Settlement FAQ
Why does Dufty-Jones call the 1940s a turning point for housing?
Citing Freestone, she describes the 1940s as the highpoint of inclusionary housing policy. Housing stopped being seen as a product the market should provide and was reimagined as a right of every Australian that governments were prepared to defend, which she contrasts with the market-led debate of 2017.
Who resisted reform of the White Australia Policy?
Smith and Varnava show that much of the resistance came from political elites in the Liberal, Country, Democratic Labor and older Labor ranks, not only from populists. They used events abroad, such as riots in Notting Hill and the Little Rock crisis, as warnings against non-white migration.
When did the White Australia Policy end?
It ended in stages. Holt's reforms of 1966 gave non-European residents the same qualifying period for citizenship as Europeans, which is why some date its end to that year, but the authors stress that discrimination continued until the Whitlam government prohibited it in immigration control in 1975.
What was the Colombo Plan's place in immigration reform?
Smith and Varnava note that nearly 5,500 Asian students and trainees came to Australia under the Colombo Plan between 1951 and 1964. Growing ties with Asia through schemes like this helped shift attitudes, and Tavan links the 1957 decision to drop the dictation test partly to that relationship.
What was the Commonwealth State Housing Agreement?
It was the 1945 agreement through which the Commonwealth and the states built public housing after the war. Introducing it, the minister John Dedman said the main gap in housing policy had been good houses let at rents people could afford, and one objective was the development of country towns.
Assessment move
Sketch the fan of four fears from memory, then write one paragraph linking housing and immigration as two ways the postwar state decided who belonged. Then decide whether the postwar years deserve the label golden age, and for whom. Learn the stages of dismantling White Australia, from the 1957 decision to drop the dictation test to the 1975 ban on racial discrimination, so you can date the change precisely.
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