West B.A., Murphy F.T. A Brief History of Australia

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF AUSTRALIA

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work began right away. Although not completed until 1973 and with-

out Utzon, who had resigned in protest over government interference

in 1966, the Sydney Opera House can be seen as a vital component of

Australia’s postwar economic boom and social expansion.

Postwar prosperity also contributed to a tremendous increase in the

number of sporting events, feeding Australians’ traditional love of sports.

In 1956 Melbourne hosted the games of the XVI Olympiad. This was the

ﬁrst Olympics to be held outside Europe or North America, the ﬁrst to

be televised live, and even the ﬁrst in which all athletes joined to close

the event. From November 22 to December 8, 1956, 3,314 athletes from

72 countries participated in 145 summer events spanning 17 sporting

disciplines, including swimming, rowing, and track and ﬁeld. Competing

at home gave Australians a great advantage at these games, where they

participated in several team sports for the ﬁrst time, including soccer and

basketball, and earned more medals, 35, than an Australian team was

able to win again until 1996 (Australian Olympic Committee 3).

Although the Olympics graced Melbourne for just a short period

in the early summer of 1956, the infrastructure and attitude toward

sport the games symbolized and engendered remained. And, as had

been the case earlier in the 20th century, sport was an important arena

for deﬁning Australian identity. One discipline where Australians were

particularly strong in the postwar period was men’s tennis. The 1956

Wimbledon men’s singles ﬁnals from 1956 to 1958, in which one

Australian defeated another for the trophy, provide a good case study.

In 1956 New South Welshman Lew Hoad defeated his countryman Ken

Rosewall in front of a packed British center court audience; Hoad then

won the next year over his Australian rival Ashley Cooper, who then

defeated his fellow Aussie Neale Fraser in 1958. Altogether between

1946 and 1970 there were 10 all-Australian men’s singles ﬁnals at

Wimbledon and another 10 years in which one ﬁnalist was Australian.

In addition to Hoad, Fraser, and Cooper, the list of Australian ﬁnal-

ists during this period includes Geoff Brown, John Bromwich, Ken

McGregor, Frank Sedgman, Fred Stolle, Rod Laver, Marty Mulligan,

John Newcombe, Tony Roche, and Roy Emerson (AELTC, Men’s 2008).

While Australian women were not as proliﬁc as their male counter-

parts, among them Margaret Smith Court, Evonne Goolagong Cawley,

and Judy Tegart won the Wimbledon women’s singles trophy four

times in nine ﬁnals, including one all-Australian ﬁnal in 1971 in which

Goolagong defeated Court (AELTC, Ladies 2008).

In addition to tennis, Australians did very well in a number of other

individual sporting events in the period, especially swimming, cycling,

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and track and ﬁeld. In team sports the Australian men dominated the

cricket pitch during the postwar period, winning the Ashes trophy

seven times to England’s four between 1946 and 1974; the contest was

a draw four times. Australia’s international rugby squads in this period

were likewise successful over their English counterparts, winning three

test matches and losing two (Rugby Union Archives, personal commu-

nication 2009). Australia’s women were also at the top of international

competition in their most popular sport, netball, a modiﬁed version

of basketball that remains the country’s most popular team sport for

women (Taylor 2001).

It’s Time! Harold Holt

While Menzies’s conservative Liberal Party with its Country Party partner

ruled Australia for an unprecedented 23 years in the postwar period, in

January 1966 it was time for Menzies to step down to allow his deputy,

Harold Holt, time to consolidate support for the general election in

November of that year. The coalition won the election, despite Australians’

dismay with the escalating war in Vietnam, and Holt began to make the

prime minister’s ofﬁce his own. Even small changes were important at the

time because large numbers of Australians, both young people and those

who had arrived from Europe after 1949, had never known any head of

Lew Hoad and Ken Rosewall, two of Australia’s postwar tennis stars, making their

Wimbledon debut as 17-year-olds in 1952

(Pictures Collection, State Library of Victoria)

A BRIEF HISTORY OF AUSTRALIA

162

government besides Menzies. Holt, at 57 years old, was not a member of

the younger generation, but his interests in fashion and physical ﬁtness

and personable character meant that he was embraced by old and young

alike. He began holding weekly press conferences, which his predecessor

had avoided, and entered Parliament by the front door, rather than the

side to avoid the press (Australia’s Prime Ministers, Holt).

As well as these important symbolic acts, the short period of Holt’s

leadership produced many other signiﬁcant changes in Australia. As

part of the country’s continuing distancing from Britain, the Holt admin-

istration introduced a new decimal currency, the Australian dollar, to

replace the former British system, whereby pounds were divided into 20

shillings, which in turn were divided into 12 pence. The distancing from

Britain can also be seen in Holt’s overt and long overdue recognition that

his country was located in the Asia-Paciﬁc region rather than Europe or

the rest of the North Atlantic. While Menzies had not visited Asia during

his long rule, in just a year Holt made two extended trips there, ﬁrst to

Southeast Asia in early 1966 and then to East Asia a year later. In addi-

tion, numerous Asian leaders made their ﬁrst trips to Australia to meet

with Holt to discuss regional trade, security, and immigration issues.

As part of Holt’s embrace of Asia, 1966 also marks the start of the

abolition of the “white Australia policy.” There was still plenty of work

to be done throughout the 1970s and beyond, but in 1966 “Holt’s ﬁrst

prime ministerial statement announced the relaxation of restrictions

that had blocked the entry of non-European migrants for 65 years.

The Migration Act 1966 increased access to migrants other than those

from Europe, including refugees ﬂeeing Vietnam” (Australia’s Prime

Ministers, Holt). This set the stage for about 26,000 people from the

“Australasian neighbourhood,” as it was called by the Holt administra-

tion, to enter Australia by 1970 (Jakubowicz). Immigration from the

region expanded even more in 1975, when large numbers of Vietnamese

refugees arrived, and has continued ever since. By the early 1990s about

half the immigrants to Australia originated in an Asian country, and

today about 7 percent of the population is of Asian descent.

A fourth long overdue issue to be tackled by the Holt administra-

tion was recognition of Aboriginal people as citizens of Australia, a

country the vast majority of them had never left. While suffrage had

been extended to Aboriginal people in Victoria, New South Wales,

Tasmania, South Australia, and the Australian Capital Territory in

1949; in Western Australia and the Northern Territory in 1962; and in

Queensland in 1966, in most other respects Aboriginal people remained

outside public life in Australia until the referendum in 1967. They were

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denied access to most public spaces, including swimming pools, pubs,

and hotels, and in many areas continued to live under the administra-

tion of state-run protection boards. Aboriginal war veterans were not

even allowed to enter their local Returned and Services League halls,

except on ANZAC day (National Museum of Australia 2007–08).

The push for Aboriginal rights in Australia was not new by the

time of the 1967 referendum but had been slowly gaining momentum

throughout the 20th century. In the second decade of the century the

Association for the Protection of Native Races was formed in Sydney

and, although moribund for a number of years, gained prominence in

1928 when its members pushed for “a Royal Commission to look into

the Commonwealth taking control of Aboriginal dealings” (Dawkins

2004). Several similar organizations were established in the inter-

war years, all of which advocated an examination of the citizenship

problem by the Commonwealth government. Two sections of the

Australian Constitution had to be changed in order to provide equal

rights to Aboriginal people. The ﬁrst was Section 127, which stated,

“In reckoning the numbers of the people of the Commonwealth, or

of a State or other part of the Commonwealth, aboriginal natives shall

not be counted.” The second was Section 51 (xxvi), which stated, “The

Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws

for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with

respect to: The people of any race, other than the aboriginal race in any

State, for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws.”

The ﬁrst public mention of a referendum to change these sec-

tions of the Constitution was in 1957, when Jessie Mary Grey Street

advocated this course of action during her work with both the British

Anti-Slavery Society and the Australian Federation of Women Voters

(AFWV) and had her petition presented at Parliament. A year later the

Commonwealth government under Menzies established the Federal

Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders,

which likewise spent most of its political capital on pushing for a refer-

endum to change the Constitution.

A number of important Aboriginal people contributed to the refer-

endum process. Perhaps most important was Charles Perkins, whose

Freedom Rides throughout western New South Wales in 1965 moved

the plight of Australia’s Aboriginal people into the living rooms of the

country’s non-Indigenous majority. As a result, when Harold Holt became

prime minister and quickly signed the United Nations International

Accord for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the

majority of the country was ready to follow him. When the question of

A BRIEF HISTORY OF AUSTRALIA

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CharLes neLson perkins

harles Perkins was born in 1936 in the Northern Territory city

of Alice Springs. He resided with his mother at the Alice Springs

Telegraph Station Aboriginal Reserve until he was 10, when he was

taken to the St. Francis Home in Adelaide to complete his schooling.

At 16 he was provided a trade as a ﬁtter and turner but far preferred

life as a soccer player. After playing for various teams in Australia, he

wound up in the English professional league, training with Everton

and playing for an amateur team, Bishop Auckland. In 1959 he turned

down an opportunity to play for Manchester United and homesick-

ness sent him back to Australia.

Upon arriving home, Perkins moved to Sydney and became the

second Aboriginal person to complete a bachelor of arts degree in

Australia. In 1965 Perkins organized the ﬁrst Australian Freedom

Ride, taking students and the national media from Sydney to vari-

ous country towns throughout New South Wales, highlighting the

discrimination against Aboriginal people. In 1967 Perkins also worked

tirelessly to highlight the need for a yes vote on the referendum. From

this period until his death in 2000, Perkins held almost every possible

public position related to Indigenous affairs in Australia (papers of

Charles Perkins [1936–2000]).

When Perkins died an untimely death at age 64, his friend the jour-

nalist John Pilger wrote of him that “Charlie Perkins was, in many ways,

Australia’s Mandela. Indeed, had the Australian racial composition, been

reversed, as in South Africa, he would have surely fulﬁlled that role” (Pilger

2000; italic per original text). The Australian public mourned Perkins

at an elaborate state funeral, “in recognition of his dedicated work for

Indigenous Australians” (National Museum of Australia, 2007–08),

but there is no doubt that he would have preferred state recognition

for his cause in the form of an apology, a treaty, and reparations for

hundreds of years of land theft and abuse at the hands of whites and

their governments.

Sources: “Papers of Charles Perkins (1936–2000).” National Library of

Australia. Available online. URL: http://nla.gov.au/nla.ms-ms8047. Accessed

February 12, 2009; Pilger, John. “Charles Perkins: A Tribute.” Johnpilger.

com (October 19, 2000). Available online. URL: http://www.johnpilger.

com/page.asp?partid=166. Accessed February 12, 2009; National Museum

of Australia. “Charles Perkins” (2002–2008). Available online. URL: http://

indigenousrights.net.au/person.asp?pID=983. Accessed February 9 and 12,

2009.

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POPULATE OR PERISH

legal equality was posed in the May 27, 1967, referendum, it received

an overwhelming 90.7 percent approval vote. Overnight Aboriginal

people, whose ancestors had lived on the Australian continent for

some 60,000 years, became citizens of the country established on

their land in 1901. A federal organization, the Council for Aboriginal

Affairs, with Charles Perkins as a founding member, was established to

oversee Aboriginal policy at the Commonwealth level. Improvement to

individual people’s lives was not immediate, and many are still waiting

today to experience some form of social and economic equality, but one

of the legal barriers to equality had ﬁnally been breached.

Another important Aboriginal concern to emerge during this period

related to land rights. Even before their existence was recognized in

the Australian Constitution, many Aboriginal people and Torres Strait

Islanders had believed that it was time to redress the loss of their land

since colonization and settlement had begun in 1788. One of the ﬁrst

actions toward this end took place in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory,

in 1963. At the time that region was being explored by mining com-

panies, and bauxite, an important form of aluminum, was found in

abundance. In the face of this threat to their territory, the Yolngu people

composed a petition combining both traditional and modern forms of

communication, bark painting and legal text, and presented it to the

House of Representatives (AIATSIS and Pascoe 2008, 110). The Yolngu

Aboriginal land rights demonstration, Parliament House, July 30, 1972. Protesters demonstrate

in Canberra in conjunction with the establishment of the ﬁrst Aboriginal tent embassy.

(Ken

Middleton/nla.pic-vn2356023/National Library of Australia)

A BRIEF HISTORY OF AUSTRALIA

166

were unsuccessful, but their actions set the stage for numerous court

cases that did ﬁnally produce changes in the law in the 1980s.

Another important moment in the ﬁght for recognition of Aboriginal

land rights in this period was the establishment on January 26, 1972,

of an Aboriginal tent embassy on the front lawn of the old Parliament

House in Canberra. The protesters presented the government a ﬁve-

point plan leading to full recognition of their land rights and stated that

they would not give up their protest until they were successful. This was

a historic moment, for the largely Sydney-based Aboriginal protesters

were joined by thousands of non-Aboriginal supporters in their march

to Parliament. The embassy has been revived numerous times since

1972 and has been a continuous presence in the capital since 1992.

At the start of 2010 it remained on the grounds in Canberra because,

although various legal and political goals have been met, full recognition

of prior ownership of the land has yet to occur through the signing of a

treaty or other formal recognition.

Sadly for Australia’s Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations

alike, Harold Holt had less than two years in the prime minister’s ofﬁce

to continue the work he began in recognizing both Aboriginal rights and

Australia’s location in the Asia-Paciﬁc region. On December 17, 1967,

Holt went for a swim off the southern Victorian coast and disappeared.

He was a strong swimmer and

had frequently taken a dip in

the ocean to revive his mind

and energy, but on this day a

strong current and windy con-

ditions were too much for him.

His body was never found, and

as a result speculation in the

country was rampant. While

some contended that the Rus-

sians had kidnapped him, oth-

ers said it was the Chinese.

Still others maintained that he

had committed suicide over

the war in Vietnam or some

difﬁcult domestic issue. There

has never been any solid evi-

dence to support such theo-

ries; however, even today it is

not uncommon to hear Aus-

The irony of Prime Minister Harold Holt’s death

while swimming is evident not only in the num-

ber of times he was photographed in and around

water but also in a swim center in Melbourne

having been named after him.

(AAP)

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POPULATE OR PERISH

tralians debating the topic. In October 2008 the national broadcaster

ABC Television aired a miniseries, The Prime Minister Is Missing, which

explored the idea of suicide but seemed to conclude with the more

prosaic verdict that Holt, who had been suffering from shoulder pain,

overestimated his swimming ability in rough seas and was swept away

by a strong current.

Gough Whitlam

With the news that the prime minister had gone missing, Australians’

security concerns reemerged, setting the stage for a Liberal Party victory

in 1969, with John Gorton in the leadership position. As is often the case,

the Australian electorate was reluctant to usher in a new political era so

soon after their national loss, although the Liberal majority in the House

was diminished by 17 seats. By 1972 the majority of Australians had

embraced the Labor Party’s campaign slogan, “It’s time!” for a change in

leadership and governing ideology. Certainly after 23 years in power, the

Liberal coalition was seen to be running out of ideas, and the leadership

change from Gorton to William McMahon after the future prime minister

Malcolm Fraser’s defection from the cabinet did not help the situation.

The real impetus for change, however, was from the Labor Party itself.

In 1967 its long-serving leader Arthur Calwell, architect of the postwar

immigration policy, stepped down in favor of the younger, more dynamic

Gough Whitlam. Whitlam lost his ﬁrst election in 1969 but in gaining 17

seats for Labor set the stage for the party’s historic victory in 1972.

Whitlam spent his three years in ofﬁce bringing about numerous

changes to Australian society. Symbolically he continued the drift

away from Britain by replacing “God Save the Queen” as the country’s

national anthem with “Advance Australia Fair.” On the practical side

he introduced free tertiary education and a national health insurance

policy, ended the draft, and helped create numerous bureaucratic

and legal structures and organizations, including the Law Reform

Commission, the Social Welfare Commission, the Aboriginal Land

Rights Commission, the Women’s Affairs Ofﬁce, the Australian National

Parks and Wildlife Service, the Australian Heritage Commission, and

the Family Court. Australian consumers saw increased protection

under the Trade Practices Act 1974 and all people of non-European

background became equal under the law in the Racial Discrimination

Act 1975. As part of its commitment to dignity and social welfare, the

Whitlam government also accepted the terms of the Woodward Report,

which recommended turning over the Northern Territory’s Aboriginal

A BRIEF HISTORY OF AUSTRALIA

168

reserves and missions to their Indigenous owners. Internationally

Whitlam had this same determination to legislate for equality and fair-

ness. In 1974 his government oversaw the granting of independence to

Australia’s overseas colony on New Guinea.

While in retrospect many of the Whitlam era reforms can be seen to

have conferred great beneﬁts on the country, such as greater equality for

women, Aboriginal people, and those with working-class backgrounds;

longer life expectancies due to health care for all; and increased protec-

tion for the environment, families, and consumers, at the time he often

struggled because the Liberal-Country Party coalition controlled the

Senate. His government passed a record 507 bills during their period

in ofﬁce, but another 93 were rejected by the Senate, 15 more than had

been rejected in the previous 71 years (Molony 2005, 352). In the con-

text of this stymieing by the Senate, in May 1974 Whitlam called for

a double dissolution of Parliament, in which all members came up for

early election, to try to gain control of the intransigent Senate. While

his measure failed in the Senate and Labor even lost two seats in the

House, the election did give his government some ability to act. The

government continued its reform agenda for the next 17 months with

this diminished majority but in the context of high unemployment,

political scandal, and foreign interference lost ofﬁce on November 11,

1975, in what has been called “the most dramatic event in the history

of the Australian federation” (Farnsworth 2001).

Conclusion

The postwar period generated many changes in Australia: hundreds

of thousands of migrants from non-English-speaking countries, social

welfare, infrastructural development, and Aboriginal rights. By the mid-

1970s the long global economic boom that supported these changes had

ﬁnally ended, and Australians were feeling the effects of unemployment

and inﬂation for the ﬁrst time in a generation. Unfortunately for the

Labor Party, its election in 1972 coincided with this downturn. Having

been out of power for 23 years, party leaders had also been denied a

forum for experiencing national leadership and made them, perhaps,

overeager to pursue their agenda for change. As a result, the few short

years in the early 1970s when Labor controlled the Commonwealth

government were turbulent and ended abruptly in the most dramatic

political events in Australian history.

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ConstitutionaL Crisis

(1975–1983)

ation-building in Australia has always been a project of attempt-

ing to bridge deep-seated social divisions. In the early years,

settlers and emancipists often viewed each other across a vast social,

political, and economic chasm. While this distinction faded toward the

end of the 19th century, class divisions, racial divisions, and political

divisions between conservatives and reformers continued to disrupt the

factors that created a common national identity. In late 1975 another

vast division emerged to disturb national unity, that between people

who supported the governor-general’s actions in sacking the govern-

ment on November 11 and those who, following Whitlam’s advice,

“maintain[ed] their rage” about it.

Dismissal

Although the Whitlam government was reelected in the double dissolu-

tion election in 1974, the following months were not easy for Whitlam

or the Labor Party. Following the international trend, unemployment

ballooned from just 4.5 percent in December 1972, when Whitlam

ﬁrst took ofﬁce, to 14.4 percent in mid-1974 and 16.9 percent by the

middle of 1975 (Clark 1995, 318). Deep social and political divisions in

Australian society, which had been emerging since the late 1960s, also

moved to the fore in this period. Many Liberals and their traditional

supporters—generally social, political, and economic conservatives—

were outraged at changes in Australian society since Menzies’s retire-

ment in 1966. Even prior to Whitlam’s election they had “misgivings

about the moral effects of some of the goods transported to Australia

by the multinationals,” including rock and roll; American publica-

tions, television, and ﬁlms; and youth fashion (Clark 1995, 303).

During the Whitlam era, with government support of women’s and