Unless they have taken a university course in history in recent decades, most Australians would be surprised to learn they inhabit one of the world's most shamefully racist countries. The academic consensus today is that the White Australia Policy - a series of restrictions on non-white immigrants dating from the gold rushes of the 1850s and culminating in the Commonwealth's Immigration Restriction Bill of 1901 - made this country the moral equivalent of South Africa under apartheid. Some historians even label Australia at Federation one of the "herrenvolk democracies" -- a direct comparison with the "master race" nationalism of Nazi Germany.
Moreover, the White Australia Policy purportedly lives on today. The near-unanimous opinion of an academic history conference in December 2001 was that John Howard's border protection measures tapped into deeply-embedded sentiments of "blood and race" to ensure his election victory that year. "One hundred years after the passage of the Immigration Restriction Act," quipped conference speaker Sean Brawley, "earlier reports of the demise of the White Australia Policy were premature."
Other prominent historians who support this interpretation include Henry Reynolds who claims the 1901 Bill represented "the messianic pursuit of racial purity". Andrew Markus, Richard Broome, Richard White and others allege the dominant racial concept in nineteenth century Australia was Social Darwinism, the most brutal of all the theories about race that emerged at the time.
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