Advance Australia Fair

It used to be that when the Aussies sang “Advance Australia Fair” they meant it literally: fair-skinned Australians, that is. But in the relatively brief period since the Second World War the country has become something of an antipodal melting pot, to the point where Australia today has a third as many Maltese as live in Malta, Melbourne is the largest Greek city after Athens, and pasta has a good shot at replacing the foul vegemite as the national dish. The problem—or so many Australians see it— is that, over the last decade or so, instead of names like Lorenzo and Theodoracopulos, new immigrants have names like Kwok, Chan, and Ngo.

The feeling among some elements here is that this non-European wave of immigration threatens the (undefined) “Australian way of life.” Yet the current ruckus dates from last year, Australia’s bicentenary, when, in answer to a question, the leader of the opposition, the Liberal John Howard, stated that “it would be in our immediate-term interests and supportive of social cohesion if it [Asian immigration] were slowed down a little.” After that, his National Party coalition partners went even further in their calls to curb the Asian intake; several of Mr. Howard’s Liberal colleagues crossed the floor to vote against him. Although it fortunately did nothing to change Australia’s immigration policy, the affair was not without its costs: according to the government, the anxiety the controversy aroused among would-be immigrants could cost the country as much as $304.5 million in lost business investment.

WM

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William McGurn

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It used to be that when the Aussies sang “Advance Australia Fair” they meant it literally: fair-skinned Australians, that is. But in the relatively brief period since the Second World War the country has become something of an antipodal melting pot, to the point where Australia today has a third as many Maltese as live in Malta, Melbourne is the largest Greek city after Athens, and pasta has a good shot at replacing the foul vegemite as the national dish. The problem—or so many Australians see it— is that, over the last decade or so, instead of names like Lorenzo and Theodoracopulos, new immigrants have names like Kwok, Chan, and Ngo.

The feeling among some elements here is that this non-European wave of immigration threatens the (undefined) “Australian way of life.” Yet the current ruckus dates from last year, Australia’s bicentenary, when, in answer to a question, the leader of the opposition, the Liberal John Howard, stated that “it would be in our immediate-term interests and supportive of social cohesion if it [Asian immigration] were slowed down a little.” After that, his National Party coalition partners went even further in their calls to curb the Asian intake; several of Mr. Howard’s Liberal colleagues crossed the floor to vote against him. Although it fortunately did nothing to change Australia’s immigration policy, the affair was not without its costs: according to the government, the anxiety the controversy aroused among would-be immigrants could cost the country as much as $304.5 million in lost business investment.