Reports and Proceedings . SOCIALWELFARE RESEARCH CENTRE

Ethnicity, Class and Social Policy in Australia

by Andrew Jakubowicz, Michael Morrissey and Joanne Palser

[I THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES (I (I P 0 BOX 1 • KENSINGTON • NEW SOUTH WALES • 2033 • AUSTRALIA ~ For further enquiries about the work ofthe Centre, or about purchasing our publications, please contact the Publications Officer, SPRC, University of New South Wales, PO Box 1, Kensington, NSW, 2033, Australia. Telephone (02) 697 3857. Fax: (02) 313 8367.

ISSN 0159 9607 ISBN 85823 456 4

First printing May 1984 Reprinted May 1990 Reprinted September 1993

As with all issues in the Reports and Proceedings Series, the views expressed in this publication do not represent any official position on the part ofthe Centre. The Reports and Proceedings Series is produced to make available the research findings of individual authors, and to promote the development of ideas and discussions about major areas of concern in the field of social policy. -i-

CONTENTS

Preface 11 Chapter 1: Key Concepts .1 Migration and economic development 1 .2 Capitalism and social policy 3 .3 Roles of the state 5 .4 Social control and policy formulation 7 .5 "Culture" and ethnicity 10 .6 Ethnicity, class and social policy 17 Chapter 2: Class Relations and the Migration Program .1 The Homogeneous society: post-war reconstruction 20 .2 Migration and labour force discipline 23 .3 Assimilation as social policy 27 .4 Conflict and Order 31 Chapter 3: The Long Boom .1 Changing Class Relations 35 .2 Race and Class 39 .3 Social Change and Migrant Welfare 41 .4 The Politicisation of Migrant Welfare 48 Chapter 4: The Groundwork for Multiculturalism .1 Social Policy under Labor 56 ." .2 Strategies Inside and Outside the State - Ethnic Rights 60 .3 The Onset of Multiculturalism - Bureaucracy in Motion 64 .4 The Ethnic "New Class" and Social Policy 68 Chapter 5: Neo-Conservatism, Social Democracy and Multiculturalism .1 Neo-Conservatism and Social Policy 70 .2 The Hidden Reality of Galbally 79 .3 Corporatist Strategies 81 .4 Ideologies of Conservatism 89 .5 Social Democracy and Multiculturalism 93 Chapter 6: Conclusions and Proposals .1 Class Conflict and Ethnic Welfare 99 .2 Proposal 1: children's services 102 .3 Proposal 2: migrant women 102 .4 Proposal 3: the ethnic aged 103 .5 Proposal 4: unemployment and technological change 103 Appendix 1: Interviewees 105 References 107 -0-

PREFACE

The analysis of social policy and its relationship to the welfare of ethnic minorities in Australia has followed a convoluted and haphazard path. In part this reflects the systematic blindness in social policy to institutionalised discrimination against minorities. Yet more importantly it is a symptom of the problems that the concept of "ethnicity" can create for those who seek to understand and then change social programs in this country.

This report is designed to meet three related but restricted goals:

i. the identification and description of the process by which current social policies towards ethnic minorities have been developed;

ii. an analysis of the relationship between social policies affecting minority groups, and wider social and political processes in Australian society;

ill. the effect of these programs and policies on the welfare of ethnic minorities.

The Report has been a long while in gestation - and in its final version represents a summary of a mass of information cqlleeted since the project commenced in 1981. The emphasis is on the Federal sphere though reference is also made to recent initiatives in Victoria and New South Wales. The question of ethnic welfare is primarily a political issue which has very firm links into the broader socio-political dynamic of Australia as a class society. Most analysts of social policy do not share this perspective. Indeed one of the major dimensions in the struggle over equity for ethnic minorities is what has come to be called the "ethnicity­ class debate". There are those who would argue that the crucial problems for immigrants and Australian society are primarily those of cultural intolerance - and that the solutions to 'ethnic' disadvantage lie in strategies that will change people's attitudes to one another. There are others who identify "linguistic exclusion" as the main problem - to be overcome by better English language classes, interpreters, and bi-lingual service delivery personnel. Yet others suggest that the most effective solutions lie in the provision of 'ethnic specific' programs, operating within 'ethnic communities'. Most recently there have been proposals to 'mainstream' services to ethnic minorities. This Report analyses these and other models and extracts those elements that are most useful, while pointing out their derivation and limitations. This is a Report on social policy however, and does not analyse in detail the delivery of welfare services to ethnic minorities. -m-

A critical perspective on the range of issues is necessary to make sense of how social policy and research might develop. Emphasis must be placed on the day-to-day reality of peoples' lives, for so much of that experience has been distorted, corrupted and transfigured in political decision making. The central question that this Report returns to throughout its analysis is, why has 'ethnicity' become such an important designator of social differences in Australia? The ramifications of this question are of tremendous importance, particularly at a time when a social democratic government (the Australian Labor Party) in Canberra is facing a welfare edifice fashioned by the dominant social class and entwined within conservative social ideology. The language that is used to describe groups, to explain problems and to present policy initiatives is itself politicised and sectionally biased. It is thus important to present the logic of this language and its social implications as part of an analysis of social policy. Class analysis as applied to social policy is a comparatively new field - and has not been a feature of mainstream analyses. However, there is increasing awareness of the value of such an approach for asking questions which by their very nature are excluded from most accounts of policy development. The answers may be uncomfortable, for they necessarily lead to the next question - that of practice. Class analysis does not lend itself to 'easy' advice to government. It does not make a catalogue of social technology available to the state - or at least, not one that leaves unchallenged the role of that state in the perpetuating of the current system of class relations.

This Reportis the outcome of the work and involvement of many people. Well over eighty people - politicians, public servants, academics, community activists, welfare workers, researchers and journalists, - agreed to be interviewed. Some spent many hours with us discussing issues - some allowed us to return later in the research to test out the directions in which we were moving. The conclusions we have drawn and the interpretations we have made of their contributions are our own responsibility - we accept that many will disagree with our argument and perspectives.

The first draft of the Report and work-in-process conference papers were prepared by the principal project research workers - Andrew Jakubowicz, Joanne Palser and Michael Morrissey. The day to day management of the project and the bulk ofdocumentary research was carried out by Joanne Palser and Michael Morrissey. The principal researchers with the valuable assistance of Pat Jones undertook the fieldwork interviews during 1981 and 1982. Andrew Jakubowicz carried out the extensive editing of the first draft and updated the final.part of Chapter Five to produce the final Report during the period June 1983 to April 1984.Typing and wordprocessing was carried out with considerable forebearance -iv-

and humour by Pat Jones, Deb McCloskey, Carlene Robinson, Moira Bowman and James Hardey.

Ron Stewart as Acting Director for the Centre for Multicultural Studies at the University of Wollongong diligently proofread the first draft and provided editorial suggestions. Con­ stance Lever-Tracy provided a constructive and detailed critique of the first draft. Helen Meekosha provided valuable assistance in the preparation of the final Report, particularly on the relationship between migration, social policy and gender inequality. Many other friends and colleagues gave generously of their time in interviews and consultations. Ul­ timatelY, however, the views expressed in this Report are the sole responsibility of the three principal researchers.

Management of the project lay with the Centre for Multicultural Studies until May, 1983 and subsequently with the Department of Sociology at the University of Wollongong.

The project proposals which are outlined in the final Chapter of the Report reflect the experience of many of the fieldworkers with whom we have discussed the problems of action on 'ethnic' issues. The proposals also question traditional methods of social policy research. We argue for more activist and experimental pilot programs which do not freeze the ethnic working class into a position as passive objects of research.

Andrew Jakubowicz May 1984 CHAPTER ONE

KEY CONCEPTS

.1 Migration and Economic Development

The Australian post-war migration program has been an essential part of the development of Australian capitalism. It provided the labour power which created the surplus value on which depended the expansion of capital accumulation in Australia. The orientation of the ruling political parties, key industrialists and important sections of the trade union movement during the four decades since the large scale immigration program was imple­ mented, has been to support, encourage and in some cases demand immigration. The active role played by Federal governments in creating the conditions necessary for the massive recruitment of labour is one of the most significant features of the Australian state. These conditions have included not only those with economic implications, but also those which bear on the culture of Australian society, such as the apparent erosion of the domination of cultural life by Anglo-centric social institutions.

Australian capitalism has long depended on the importation of labour, and many of the most significant actions by the Australian working class have been concerned to restrict or constrain that labour inflow. The long-lived White Australia plank of the Australian Labor Party platform reflected not only the values of racial superiority created during an expansionist period of mercantile capitalism to rationalise imperialism, but also an awareness by labour that cultural minorities could and would be used by employers to reduce wages and degrade working conditions for the white working class.

The economic role of migrants in the Australian politico-economic system has therefore direct bearing on any analysis of state management of the migration process and the impact of settlement. Social policy is, after all, simply a broad catch-all phrase to encompass the management by the state of social relations within society.

Those critiques of mainstream social policy which have paid particular attention to the social effects of immigration include a consideration at some level of the role of immigrant labour in the workforce. Birrell and Birrell (1981] argue for instance that the migration program has had quite important negative effects on Australian society. These include: a reduction in the level of technology utilised in order to match the low skill levels of 2

'southern' migrants; a rise in infrastructure costs (hospitals, schools, roads, etc.), as a result of rapid population increase to the detriment of higher quality services; unplanned and uncontrolled urban sprawl and pollution, leading to a decaying quality of life, due to the tendency of immigrants to concentrate in urban areas; and a rather more conservative political culture and practice during the 1950s and 1960s than there might have been, had there been fewer East European immigrants.

Collins' general argument [1975] takes a different tack, though he also views the migration program as a source of reduced living standards for the Australian working class. The Birrells suggested that Australian capital adopted and maintained low levels of technological innovation because the bureaucracy (the Department of Immigration) sought to maintain its power and status by recruiting poorer and poorer quality (or at least less skilled and technologically-oriented immigrants) as higher skilled immigrants became more difficult to find. However, Collins has argued that capital sought workers who would more readily accept the line conditions and wage rates in the major blue collar manufacturing industries; so that over time 'low skill' and low paid jobs were filled by immigrant workers. Over time a pattern developed of a segmented labour market, in which non-English speaking workers with comparatively poor educational levels (or unrecognised qualifications) were systematically routed into particular types of jobs. A division emerged between a typically English-speaking, skilled strata in the workforce, and a typically non-English speaking 'de-skilled' (by loss of language) or unskilled stratum. This division reflects the nature of manufacturing industry during a particular period of line-production - where English was necessary for only certain kinds of tasks.

Labour market segmentation; particularly the apparent institutionalisation of 'migrant' jobs, was therefore argued as either the cause of low productivity and low rates of technological change [Birrell and Birrell 1981] or the result of capital seeking to create and utilise a lower cost labour force [Collins 1978, Lever-Tracy, 1981].

Piore [1979:90] points out that migrant workers play an extremely important role, particularly during the early period ofsettlement, and particularly for 'secondary' jobs. He characterises these jobs as being the most variable and insecure in the labour market, and often near the bottom of the job status hierarchy, [Piore 1979:42]. While they are not necessarily poorly paid, the base rate tends to be low, though the opportunity usually exists for overtime and penalty work. The combination of insecurity, long hours, and low status renders such jobs open to newcomers, who are themselves very attractive labourers. In Piore's terms, migrant workers are the 'most plastic', that is the most readily adaptable to the requirements of the labour market. In particular, they are geographically mobile [1979:90-1]. However, a con- 3 tinuing supply of such workers is necessary to sustain a 'plastic pool', as ov~r time migrant workers who remain in a job setting can develop commitments and responsibilities which render them ~ess flexible, [e.g. Lever-Tracy, 1983]. Finally Piore notes that im­ migrant workers are far more susceptible to manipulation and control, in the labour process. They are more desperate and vulnerable, and have fewer communal resources on which to depend. The role of immigrant workers in the Australian labour market is only one element in the overall debate on migration and economic development in Australia.

The wider debate continues without resolution, particularly as to the costs and benefits of migration in the long term. In 1982 the then Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs announced a major research project to explore this issue ,once again - a move planned to defuse rising criticism of the immigration program from the labour movement and the Federal opposition. It is unlikely however that research of the type then proposed will resolve the matters addressed by anaiysts such as Collins [1975, 1978] or Lever Tracy [1981 a,b,c]. They argue that immigrant labour has been absolutely crucial to the survival and development of capitalism in the post-war period. By iJ;nplication then they suggest that any analysis which fails to come to terms with the dynamics of capital accumulation and the w~ys in which crises (both economic and social) emerge, and are addressed by states in capitalist economies, will also systematically fail to comprehend the extent and ramifications of the migration process.

.2 Capitalism and Social Policy

Advanced capitalist societies are characterised by state structures which have become actively involved in the maintenance of the social, political and economic conditions necessary for the survival and expansion of capital accumulation. The set of structures, processes and programs established by government are created in broad outline by political relations between groups. The most important tensions in capitalist societies are those created by the basically antagonistic interests of capital and labour.

Social policies are state strategies designed to resolve conflict in the sphere of social relations and thus maintain the basic economic relations of the society, and the domination of those relations by the capitalist class - the bourgeoisie.

Major differences exist amongst social policy analysts over the nature of the state in Australian society. One mainstream approach tends to be rooted in Keynesian economic and social theory, which argues that the role of the welfare state should be to establish: 4

minimum standards below which no-one should be allowed to fall and stresses equity - the distribution of benefits - rather than efficiency... [lones 1983:2]

Following closely on the work of British theorist Richard Titmuss, Jones identified fiscal, labour market and social administration strategies for the achievement of social welfare goals [see Titmuss 1974]. Within this central area of discourse, it is recognised that struggle over values, over the ends of social policies and the meaning of concepts such as justice and equity, are at the heart of social policy debates. In response to what was perceived as an attack on the values of the welfare state, and therefore on the legitimacy of social policy initiatives by Government, Graycar has argued that social intervention by the state must be geared "to three things: the creation of a social and economic environment which is conducive to redistribution and which provides substantial investment in human capital, and public goods and services; an equitable income support system; a set of personal social services." [Graycar 1983: 3-4].

State intervention in this general view is seen then as a means of achieving humane social relations in a society dominated by the logic of the economic market place. The role of the state therefore is argued to be a defense of the weak, an arbiter in the free interaction of the many social exchanges which in toto are 'society'.

The values argued about and the strategies commended or denied, have been labelled [by Mishra 1981 :100, among others] as either basically 'residual' or 'institutional'. In simple terms, a residual approach to welfare s~eks to minimise the role of the state, to limit state intervention to the most deserving cases and to set benefits at levels which act as incentives to seek paid employment. The development of a residual welfare system tends to be ad hoc, sporadic and responsive to particular crises and pressures. Social control is maintained through coercion, and most services are delivered through 'voluntary' or 'charitable' agencies - a position characteristic of US welfare systems.

The 'institutional' approach involves a definition of the state as the guarantor of a certain quality of life for all society. Thus the state might seek to provide a universal system of health care, aged pensions, unemployment benefit, public housing, education. This approach is drawn from British and other European experiences, and is commonly known as the "Welfare State". This dichotomy implied by the bifurcation of the field is however, open to some question, particularly from a perspective which examines the role of the state in capitalist society. The two ideal-type models of welfare provision become rather more confused in practice. Mishra [1981: 115] suggests that the particular mix of 'values' 5 is determined by the relative strength of class forces. That is, the more extensive and disciplined is working class organisation, the more systematic and 'institutional' will be the structure of welfare provision. The crucial factors are the degree of unionisation of the workforce, and its organisational competence. In discussing social policy initiatives in Australia, during the period of most dramatic capitalist expansion (1947-1972) the level of workforce unionisation was comparatively high. However, intra-union segmentation on dimensions ofgender skill and ethnicity were exacerbated. This may therefore have been one of the crucial factors in determining the particular class pattern of 'ethnic' welfare service provision to emerge from the first generation of post-war immigration. The relationships between the ruling elites and the leadership of organised labour are also crucial, for the latter group provides the avenue through which the experience of workers qua workers is articulated.

In general social policy initiatives during the expansionary phase in advanced capitalist societies have sought to improve the basic quality of life, and cushion the most vulnerable groups from the pressures generated by the imperfect market system. These policies have at the same time sought to maintain or create social cohesion, a sense of national unity and common social purpose. They have been included amongst a range of strategies concerned with sustaining a political order in which the pre-existing ruling strata seek to continue their domination of economic and social life. While within the ruling class there are continuing conflicts over the most appropriate strategies, and fractions of the bourgeoisie in capitalist societies identify different strategic pathways to achieve their own sectional ends, the state apparatus is woven into a self-reinforcing project of sustaining the social order and the economic processes in which it is rooted. Social policy at anyone time is thus the outcome of particular fractional ideologies, processed through state bureaucracies which have their own interests - survival and expansion - and forged out of coalitions of groups within the bourgeoisie (and the bureaucratised leadership of the organised working class). Thus policy changes over time as these relationships and the relative power of the groups change. Policy is not then about 'value' conflict, but rather a response to the underlying crises and tensions of the capitalist accumulation process, and the social fall-out from this process. State intervention is necessarily directed towards that general problematic.

.3 Roles of the State

The state is a conglomerate of organisations, and practices which are inextricably located within a pOlitico-economic context. This context is made up of the interaction of individuals 6 and groups, given consistency through rules created, reinforced and modified as social intercourse. Social organisation transcends the individual, in that the way in which commodities are produced, exchanged and consumed, establishes the pattern of social relations. In capitalist societies therefore, all social relations are at their heart, class relations. The problem becomes to expose the articulation between class relations, and their concealment within other forms of social intercourse and group interaction. This is not to argue that other expressions of group identification are 'wrong' or misleading, but to suggest we need to explore those dimensions which deny, disguise or fragment the class relationships that exist. Individual interactions are not therefore wholly constrained or determined by class location, though the boundaries to their possible expression are fundamentally set by class relations [see also de Lepervanche 1984].

One of the most crucial roles of the state is the facilitation of the reproduction over time of social relations. These relations are those patterns ofbehaviour relevant to labour discipline, consumption of commodities, and to generational reproduction - the family. Thus values concerning work, the relationship of self-esteem and personal worth to paid labour, the role and position of women, the purchase of consumer goods, the socialisation of children, the intimacy and 'security' of family life - all are affected by the action of the state. Ifcapitalist accumulation is to continue, then value-sets which maintain 'positive' attitudes to work and the expanding demand for goods and services, are absolutely vital [see also Gough 1979:49; Lawson 1982:6lff].

An associated area of state action which is also reflected in social policy is that of control. Any capitalist society constantly faces the possibility of overt class conflict - accentuated during periods of economic crisis. While group unrest or violence may result, one of the central roles of the state is the prevention of a class schism. That is, the state actively seeks to maintain its legitimacy, and thereby the legitimacy of the total pOlitico-economic order. It has been argued by many social policy analysts that whatever else social welfare provision and other social programs may do within society, they must develop a cohesive social order.

The emergence of industrial capitalism brought with it many social crises - poverty, disease, revolutionary struggles, rural rebellions and urban riots. Some social theorists saw these latter manifestations as reflections or symptoms of a pathological social order which could be 'cured' through social provisions - for instance, Emile Durkheim, the French sociologist constructed a theory of social solidarity based on a notion of shared communal consciousness organised through broadly spread core-values. Indeed, Durkheim effectively defined a society by its shared values. Other early sociologists such as the German Max Weber, identified similar patterns of social anomie, isolation, and meaningless as the 7 outcome of the bureaucratisation of social relations in developed capitalist societies. The loss of 'community' was to become a theme of the social sciences, and its recreation was perceived to be one of the goals of social policy. [This is particularly significant as so much migrant welfare is delivered via ethnic 'communities'].

Removed from its romantic accoutrements, this goal sought to reinstitute a social order through the incorporation into the value system of the working class ofan acceptance of the inevitability of that social order. In times of social tension in particular, resistance to the imposition of ruling class ideology as 'social reality' grew amongst the working class and other marginalised and minority groups. The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci has described this process as a struggle over hegemony [Sassoon 1980], and has clarified the role of ideology in the maintenance of class domination.The 'value' conflicts referred to by writers such as Jones [1982] and Graycar [1983] are then effectively ideological struggles, with the social order of society as the stake. The tension between 'residual' and 'institutional' strategies are essentially conflicts about what particular allocation of benefit is appropriate within the existing social order, with a ritual obeisance to the problems of class analysis, and a hurried return to the mainstream. This has meant that the consensus concerns of social analysis have been with detailed empirical accounts of past experience, mainly at the political and bureaucratic levels, problems of measurement and a preoccupation with questions of efficiency in service delivery. Within this framework, as Jill Roe put it, the real question to emerge has been "how much inequality will be politically acceptable in a rich and predominantly bourgeois society.", [Roe 1976:324].

The emphasis on social control is rather important for an understanding ofsocial policy with regard to immigrants. Most current discussions are so cloaked with emotive phraseology as render almost indecipherable this central question. What is the role of social policy in maintaining class power, strengthening or reconstructing class alliances, and mystifying to the point of disappearance the class relations underlying and determining the migrant experience? The focus on the role ofideology in social control, and the relationship between ideology and class relations, provide the main tools for this Report.

.4 Social Control and Policy Formulation

The development of 'collective consumption', or the 'social wage', has been one of the outcomes of the struggle between capital and labour over the appropriation of the social surplus. 'Institutional' strategies have tended to rationalise state intervention on the grounds that the state has had to provide many services and commodities for which there is a social 8 need, but which it is unprofitable for capital to provide itself. The pressure on the state comes from capital, labour, and what is called in neo-conservative discourse 'the new class' (or the intelligentsia).

The incrementalist approach of 'residualism' has criticised the effect of this process, arguing in effect that the major beneficiaries have been that 'new class', and that both capital and labour have paid the cost of this expansion in state provision.

American writers such as Nathan Glazer, Irving Kristol and lames Q. Wilson reject the broad institutional conception of social policy as morally wrong, and inefficient in practice. They argue that the promises of personal and social improvement which are explicit and implicit in that conception, are dangerous in that they lead to higher expectations which cannot be satisfied, and that while 'social insurance and assistance to the needy can be regarded as legitimate functions of the public sphere', attempts to redistribute wealth are fraught with 'the gravest peril to a liberal political order'. [Elliott 1982:123]

Opposed orientations towards the maintenance of social order (and thereby the existing structure of class domination) are at the heart of this division. The institutional approach, usually current in at least some form in social democratic political ideology, in parties such as the Australian Labor Party, asserts the importance of an extensive state role to guarantee the survival, if not transformation, of the capitalist system through ensuring that all sectors of society feel they have a stake and a future in the system. The residual strategy perceives the utility of self-interest and in particular, traditional social values, in maintaining social order. In this view society is sustained through the values of the free market and 'pre-modern' status hierarchies in which reciprocal obligation replaces the social democratic notion of social rights [e.g. Marshall, 1965 on social rights, Friedman and Friedman, 1980 on the free market]. This neo-conservative view [Manne 1982 passim] stresses family, community, and ethnic group as the most appropriate locii of affiliation, loyalty and identity [Novak 1983b].

The post-war history of Australian social policy has been set within a very gradualist, reac­ tive, and piecemeal ideology of social reform and state intervention [Roe 1976: 313ff]. The conservative parties have been through two cycles of polity - a generation of complacency ending in 1972 with a markedly interventionist though not dramatically egalitarian Labor government, and eight years of tension between neo-conservative ideology and the growing reality of social as well as economic crisis.

Australian Labor Party strategies when in power tended to involve the establishment of committees of review and commissions of inquiry or policy, which did not in practice reach 9 far beyond piecemeal reform, though with a clear bias towards the more marginal and oppressed sectors of Australian society.

The strategies tended to resemble the scenario put forward by Lois Bryson:

First, identify a social problem. Second, study those affected by the problem and discover in what ways they are different from the rest of us as a consequence of deprivation and injustice. Third, define the differences as the cause of the social problem itself. Finally, of course, assign a government bureaucrat to invent a humanitarian action program to correct the differences. [Bryson 1977:200]

The social control implications of this approach lie in the specification of the social problem as being an attribute of the individual or group identified as being 'disadvantaged' (rarely 'oppressed' or 'exploited'). Not the least such approaches to social policy fail to provide explanations of the underlying dynamics that produce poverty or racism. Indeed the strategies developed thereby tend to utilise counselling as a response to poverty or community education as a solution to racial conflict.

Social control through social policy depends then on the denial of the class relations or inevitable crisis tendencies of capitalist societies, and the replacement of explanations of that order with either group or individual pathology models. The 'culture of poverty' had a long history, for instance, as an explanation of why poverty persisted in apparently affluent societies despite years of social programs designed to alleviate either familial or neighbourhood 'disadvantage'. [see Valentine 1972, Berthoud and Brown 1981, Bryson and Eastop, 1980]. This approach has become less appropriate in a period of high unemployment and job destruction, though a cultural variant for ethnic groups has gained currency in both the USA and the UK. The American social scientist Thomas Sowell, for example, argues that "cultural inheritance can be more important than biological inheritance" [1981:284], suggesting that particular 'cultures' are more likely to 'make it in America' [Novak 1983a] than others - Jews rather than Blacks, for Sowell, mercantile Mediterranean cultures rather than American Hispanic for Novak [1983b].

It is appropriate therefore at this point to determine how the concepts of ethnicity and culture are tied to deeper theories of society and social relations. 10

.5 'Culture' and 'Ethnicity'

Concepts developed in the social sciences with quite specific genealogies and derived from competing theoretical frameworks face problems when they are incorporated into everyday discourse. The problems reach mammoth proportions when social scientists become in­ volved in the creation of social policy (and in developing critiques of these policies).

The most common approach is to define culture as the values, mores and beliefs ofa society, into which people are socialised. These internalised values then become the guiding rules for individual behaviour and expectations, and group relations. Although the rules are constantly evolving and being subtly changed and amended, a society can be defined by its shared values or culture. In this model, the individual is a rather passive 'carrier', and the tension between classes which reflects the dynamic of advanced capitalist societies, is missing.

Class analysis provides a rather more useful understanding of 'culture', which liberates the term from its connotations of a static whole, and reasserts the importance of subjective action by the individual. The individual is understood as an active participant in social struggle, not the captured victim of a monolithic past - culture is not 'baggage'! This approach utilises concepts of struggle rather than consensus, domination and resistance rather than cohesion and harmony. Thus we can talk of group cultures, of class cultures or national cultures only if we recognise the particular dynamic within which these categories must be located. For instance the concept of working class culture makes sense only in antagonism to bourgeois culture, though each may share many values with the other. The process of class formation is a cultural process as well as, or indeed, as part of the economic process, and we can only approach class relations through their cultural forms. It is important to grasp that classes do not appear as discrete entities, determining all consciousness and behaviour:

.. , but rather as cultural processes or forms of experience shaped by the interaction between the structure of class relations and cultural traditions. [Hogan 1978:261]

Another commentator has written that

... class is not a category - a 'thing' - but is rather 'something that happened' and can be shown to have happened in the collective biography ... of differc;:nt social groups. [Holton: 1981] 11

Culture is a process over time, emerging in institutionalised forms which are subject to challenge and change.

'Ethnic' groups have also been defined by their culture - or by distinctive cultural traits or attributes. Any discussion of ethnicity must take account of the intellectual and political values which underlie the debate. As one recent Australian commentator has noted of this issue, while referring to the work of sociologist Jean Martin, on ethnic minorities:

The most important area of argument may be described albeit crudely, as that between the followers of Marx and those of Weber. [Encel, 1981: 13]

He might well have added a third master, Emile Durkheim, for Durkheim's frustrated search for a 'conscience collective' to be created through the modern state, appears to strongly flavour contemporary social policy.

Encel also contended that

. .. there is amply evidence that class ties do not, in fact, exhaust social allegiances for a large part of the population [1981: 15].

Social consciousness is not necessarily, and may only rarely be, class oriented. Economic relations can be experienced and intepreted in many forms. All social experience must be negotiated through some cultural matrix or other. This does not however require that classes act consciously as 'wholes' but rather accepts that intra-class fragmentation exists [qua Collins 1978], and that most people do not experience social relations, particularly those outside the workplace, in class terms.

Some social theories regard 'ethnicity' as a cultural process associated primarily with group values, beliefs, mores and acceptable behaviour. An 'ethnic group' is thus a 'natural' social formation which derives from shared core values [Smolicz 1981], essentially a primary group within which the individual feels secure and accepted. The group may be created around a set of shared religious beliefs which are central to individual identity, may be transmitted through language, or contained in symbolic or even mythological practices which reinforce the bonding of the group. The most important component of such a view is that ethnicity transcends economic divisions, and implicitly contains a social order which all participants internalise as legitimate. That is, the continuation of the group is perceived as the primary goal of participation in the group: indeed, as group membership is ascrib~d by the group to individuals, individuals have little if any 'choice' about their own ethnicity. [Though see Patterson 1975 for the conditions necessary to switch subjective ethnicities.] 12

An extreme version of this view has been developed by Jessel, who posits what may almost be an ethnic 'gene'. He proposed that

... the ethnic process is or must be a product of evolutionary development, equally capable of genetic transmission ... (and) is the combined effect of the primordial ethnic stimulus and the corresponding ethnic setting in the changing environment ... Within the individual of the specific group, this social process is initiated embryonically as an ethnic stimulus when, probably by enzymatic action, the group-forming and language acquisition capacities are adapted to combine with the appropriate environmental influences in order to ensure the ethnic organisation of human society. [JesseI1977:18-19]

Such an approach implies that the core values may only be apprehended by the observer through socialisation within a particular ethnicity. Furthermore, as this is a difficult if not impossible procedure, the 'ethnic community' becomes the theoretical means ofinterpreting inter-group relations, while the core values are perceived as inviolate or mystified. Individual behaviour is conceived of as patterned divergence from a cultural norm, while all other relationships are dominated by those framed by the ethnic group - above gender or class in potency and explanatory power. This type of argument has also been recently advanced by Zubrzycki, who has stated that in his development of multiculturalism the Durkheimian concept of shared collective solidarity has played a pivotal role [Zubrzycki, 1982].

Thus van den Berghe, a sociologist who is influential in Australian sociology, has argued that racial and ethnic antipathies are 'natural', in the sense that inter-group conflictual sentiments are extremely powerful because they are embedded within the gene pool of particular communities. As intra-group altruism developed, thus maximising chances for individual survival, so inter-group competition was accelerated. Those gene pools which survived were thus those with the strongest in-group identification and cohesion. The boundaries between groups became over time in fact 'ethnic' boundaries, and the primordjality of these divisions is perceptible in their continuation, despite their 'irrationality', to the present day, [van den Berghe, 1978]. Social policy with regard to these primordial sentiments has thus to be concentrated at reducing the likelihood of inevitable inter-group conflict. The most effective strategy is argued to be that which ensures economic divisions do not solidify along an ethnic dimension.

Australian discussions of ethnicity owe far more, however, to the work of American theorists such as Gordon [1964] and Glazer and Moynihan [1975a]. In particular the 'rediscovery of ethnicity' has been largely the work of the latter authors. While eschewing any biological or metaphysical explanations, they point to the fact of ethnicity as it has appeared since 1945. They argue, against both modernisation theorists and Marxian 13 ideologists and social scientists, that the universalist prognosis of the immediate post­ war years in which irrational bondings were to dissipate in the face of technological rationalisational has not occurred. Rather, national liberation struggles of the past four decades appear to be on the increase. Their interest in the rise of ethnicity as a phenomenon was triggered by

· .. the emergence of a new social category as significant for the understand­ ing of the present day world as that of social class itself. .. As against class­ based forms of social identification and conflict which of course continue to exist - we have been surprised by the persistence and salience of ethnic-based forms of social identification and conflict. [Glazer and Moynihan 1975b:3-7]

In developing their argument they draw on analyses which conceive of the ethnic group as a collectivity of people with a shared and common set of values or 'culture', which may cover forms of identification based on social realities as different as shared religion, language or national origin. This concern with value conflict is drawn directly from Dahrendorf's [1969] discussion of the bases of inequality, itself an approach strongly influenced by Weber's concept of status groups.

Ethnicity may be part of a more general resurgence of 'ascriptive status hierarchies' within an increasingly irrational social system. Their most important insight however is their belief that as

· .. the State becomes a crucial and direct arbiter of economic well-being · .. the strategic efficacy of ethnicity as a basis for asserting claims against government has its counterpart in the seeming ease whereby government employs ethnic categories as a basis for distributing its rewards. [Glazer and Moynihan 1975a:8-10]

This view is complemented by the demonstration that while conflict between ethnic groups is not a recent phenomenon, neither is it primoridal [Smith, 1981]. Rather, Smith distinguishes between 'ethnic groups' and 'ethnic categories', suggesting that a category becomes a group only through the creation ofgroup culture by intellectuals who act in a reflexive role, playing back to the 'category' a 'theorised' explanation of reality in terms of those shared cultural elements. They explain social experience to the group by the use of 'ethnic' markers. The major proponents of ethnic group life then become the intelligentsia who seek to create a perception of themselves as the legitimate expressions of the ethnic group. Marginalised intellectuals and intelligentsia whose ethnicity (religion, colour, language, values, etc.) has been ignored, repressed or denied, contest those definitions of access and democratic rights. [Martin 1978]. They demonstrate the historically structured exclusion of the minority of which they are a part, and threaten to test the legitimacy of the social system by questioning 14 its commitment to its publicly espoused values. The state, as the responsible authority, seeks to maintain social order and recognises that the claims are valid by providing various programs to 'equalise access' for the minority intelligentsia. The legitimacy and stability of the social order is thus maintained, and the minorities become quiescent - or at least their incorporated intellectuals are less volatile. In time this stratum perceives its own interest to lie in the maintenance of the social order which it had previously challenged, but which now secures its status.

Although this general approach provides a dynamic and sympathetic account of the develop­ ment of the 'ethnic group' model for social policy, and has been utilised to good effect by Martin [1978, 1981], it is a flawed and limited analysis.

The limitations can best be illustrated by Encel who, presumably, would place himself (in his own terms) as a 'follower' [1981:13] of Weber rather than of Marx. Encel proposes that ethnicity is valid as an analytical as well as a purely descriptive concept, and that it could refer to any group apart from the family or groups generated directly by relations of production.

These include groups defined by them:

i. inherited ethnic status;

ii. distinctive religions;

iii. nationality;

iv. cultural distinctiveness;

v. disadvantage/'separateness' [1981: 16].

It is perhaps sufficient to dwell on this list to see why we argue that ethnicity, as an analytical concept should simply be discarded. In this moreover we are apparently as much 'followers' of Weber as of Marx since the former in a detailed assessment of these ideas, strongly rejected the notion of primordially defined groups and stated that:

All in all, the notion of 'ethnically' determined social action subsumes phenomena that a vigorous sociological analysis ... would have to distin­ guish carefully ... It is certain that in this process the collective term 'ethnic' would be abandoned, for it is unsuitable for a really rigorous analysis. [Weber, 1978:394-5]

The problem with the notion of an 'ethnic culture' is not only the undynamic and frozen model it presents, but also the implication that such a 'thing' can be said to exist. This 15 reification of culture is a complex process but it has certain quite important consequences, not the least being the process whereby the 'bits' are chosen for local consumption.

As Gillian Bottomley has noted in her assessment of the use of 'ethnic culture' as an approach to the comprehension of the experience of immigrant minorities in Australia:

. .. not only is it true that there is no Greek culture or Italian culture, but an enormous range of ideas and practices of regional diversity ... but these ideas and practices are constantly re-negotiated. Cultures cannot exist independently of the structures that generate them and are generated by them. They are historically formed within specific social, economic and political systems. [Bottomley 1981a:I-2]

This re-negotiation occurs in Australia as well as in Europe. An important example of exactly this process is that provided by Loula Rodopoulous [1977] in her discussion of the controversy surrounding the presentation of 'Greek culture' by a social worker in Melbourne to a hospital audience in 1976. The presenter, David Cox, is reported to have indicated that "Greeks could gain honour by cheating in a business deal" and "believed mental illness was possession by the devil" [1977:6]. The Greeks present claimed the presentation was 'crude, rude and wrong' (1977:7]. One Greek community activist responded by locating the beliefs about illness both historically, geographically and in class terms, within the mythology of that section of the Greek 'category' which came from isolated areas with poor educational facilities, and with no medical services.

However it is important not to underestimate the influence of Weber's ideas as they have been widely utilised in Australian social science to interpret inter-ethnic relations, and state­ minority group relations. Ron Wild in his dicussion of race and ethnicity in Australia has claimed that:

Racial groups are, at the core, status communities. What is peculiar to both is the belief in their own specific honour ... ethnicity (is) a largely subjective process of status identification ... racial and ethnic groups are formed to the extent that actors use racial and ethnic identities to categorise themselves and others for purposes of interaction. [Wild 1978:129]

In the recent discussion of ethnicity and class referred to above Encel [1981] summarises these various propositions and re-asserts the validity of Weber's multi-faceted analysis of the bases of social action. The claim is made once more (and Wild uses a similar perspective in his discussion of the Trevasani in Australia [1981]) that Weber's account of communal processes and in particular, the concept of 'closure' is the most useful approach for understanding relations involving ethnic minorities in Australia. Birrell and Birrell 16

[1981] accept a Weberian model in toto arguing that ethnicity is a status hierarchy concept which has been manipulated by the bureaucracy of the Immigration Department, to support a population expansion policy geared primarily to the extension of Departmental power and influence [1981:222].

However, it is our contention that the boundaries of Weberian theory provide a finally unconvincing and limited approach to questions of ethnicity and class in Australia, let alone in understanding social policy.

In summary, the reasons for this are:

1. 'Ethnicity' cannot be a valid analytic concept, even though people sometimes use it to interpret their relations with others. It is an over-inclusive concept, in the sense that as used, any group association outside the family and not contingent on the relations of production, is an ethnicity, [Weber 1978], [EnceI1981:13]. Bonacich [1980], de Lepervanche [1980, 1984] and Eipper [1983] amongst others have demonstrated the typological absurdities that result from this approach. The dynamics of group formation around com­ mon national origins, religion, and historic experiences cannot be reduced to a primordiality of sentiment, contained only by its definitional exclusion of class and family relations. In that sense, to use ethnic conflict as an explanatory and analytical tool, is a nonsense.

2. The process of closure described/proposed by Weberian ethnicity theorists as an explanation ofpower relations between social groups, is circular in that it assumes the dominance of one group without offering an explanation of the material basis of this dominance. To the extent that power relationships exist between groups that define themselves or are effectively defined by others as ethnic, these relationships are necessarily class relationships.

3. 'Ethnicity' in itself has no power to 'coerce' behaviour, as it has no material 'essence'. Rather 'ethnicity' may encompass a set of symbolisations through which power relationships arising from material conditions are experienced. The cultural attributes stressed by ethnicity theorists may be sufficient to differentiate between social groups, but cannot explain relations between them. It should be noted that this is not a statement equivalent to the vulgar Marxist notion that 'ethnicity is just false consciousness'. Symbolic 17

interaction between groups is real however much it distorts the material base of relations.

Class relations have several important aspects relevant to migrant social welfare. In particular the ability ofthe more powerful group to 'define' the character ofthe subordinate, to define what is its ethnicity and what are its characteristics, provides one of the most crucial entry points to understanding Australian social policy.

Relations between ethnic groups are always problematic in capitalist societies as the un­ derlying class relations 'pull' in a multitude of directions - within the culturally divided proletariat, and between them and the culturally or nationally distinctive petite bourgeoisie, and bourgeoisie. In a polyethnic advanced capitalist society where a significant sector of the- proletariat is drawn from culturally distinctive groups, whose own prior experience is of pre- or early-capitalist social relations, many of the societal tensions which appear to be 'ethnic' will reflect underlying cleavages in relations of production. For example, racist resistance by the majority working class to new arrivals of different cultural origins may provide a rationale for the intra-commtmal exploitation by an immigrant petite bourgeoisie. Bonacich points out that the concept of ethnic group is itself based on unquestioned as­ sumptions as to the internal homogeneity of an 'ethnicity'. "In the process of concentrating on inter 'group' hostility, little attention is paid to intra-ethnic conflict let alone cross-ethnic alliances" [Bonacich 1980:11]. Furthermore, "ethnic movements are not only essentially political rather than primordial, but ... they have material roots in the system and relations of production" [1980:12].

Ethnicity is a socially created phenomenon, and while there are "social phenomenon which call upon primordial sentiments and bonds based on common ancestry ... these sentiments and bonds are not just naturally there (t)hey must be constructed and activated", [Bonacich 1980:11]. Culturally excluded or oppressed groups, particularly those who have few of the scarce skills necessary to the processes of production and capital accumulation in capitalist societies, are less ableto resist the processes of worker exploitation.

•6 Ethnicity, Class and Social Policy

The dominant paratligm in social policy analysis, emerging out of the work of analysts such as Jean Martin during the mid-1970s, [Mamn 1978, 1981] has been closely tied to policy advice to government. The paradigm notes that a generation of assimilationist rhetoric gave way in the mid-1960s to a recognition of cultural rights of minorities - 'integration' - which 18 in turn was superseded in the late 1970s and early 1980s by a cultural interpenetration of social groups - multiculturalism.

This contemporary mainstream view concludes that the increased social awareness of the needs of ethnic minorities and immigrants and the recognition of these needs in social policy has been the result of changes in values in Australian society. The struggle has been identified as one over social status, and as ethnic minorities have organised within the political sphere they have been able to lay claim to a specific share of social resources. Yet there is indeed little if any evidence to suggest that the welfare of 'migrants' en­ masse was improving as a result of government initiatives. While issues affecting migrant welfare were increasingly part of the political and social agenda, the welfare [even within the institutionalist criteria advanced by Titmuss, 1974 or lones, 1982] of working class immigrants, as for the working class more generally, was actually in decline [see below, Chapter 5].

Indeed the welfare of working class immigrants and ethnic minorities has not necessarily been a very high priority in the development of social policy ostensibly addressed to their needs. Maintenance of the power of the bourgeoisie through new class alliances and extensions into the ethnic petite bourgeoisie, the extension of the state apparatus to 'mop­ up' potentially troublesome members of the ethnic intelligentsia, and legitimation of the pOlitico-economic system, have all had higher priority. One of the problems facing social policy analysts is the lack of hard evidence on the welfare effects of the particular strategies ­ e.g. grant-in-aid funding of ethnic community agencies - which have been institutionalised. This is a particular problem in any assessment of contemporary policies, as mainstream state documents tend to systematically exclude useful and rigorous data on these type of issues, [e.g. Australian Institute for Multicultural Affairs, 1982a and the comment on this in Cass 1983a:44-46]. A recent 280 page Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs sponsored study on youth employment concluded for instance with a recommendation that someone should recognise "the urgent need for research into unemployment and its effects" [Young et.a!. 1983:261]. Another report sponsored by the Department, but from a more critical viewpoint concluded that despite reams of government reports and policy proposals, research findings substantiated the view that

structural inequalities within the wider community directly influence the migrant situation in a way that calls for deeper measures and deeper under­ standing ... many of the services are not reaching two major groups of new arrivals, the Turkish and Lebanese people ... [Mackie 1982:14-15]. 19

These deeper measures needed to reflect on the role of welfare particularly in respect of the working class and women, and to recognise the contradiction between "a potential role of assistance within welfare and a potential effect of social control through welfare" [Mackie 1982:12].

We turn now to a critical review of how that awareness of the ethnic dimension in social policy has emerged in Australia, the manner of its fashioning, the forces and interests involved, and an assessment of the effects of ethnic social policy in a capitalist society. ***** 20

CHAPTER TWO

CLASS RELATIONS AND THE MIGRATION PROGRAM

.1 The Homogeneous Society: Post-War Reconstruction

The post-war migration program was from the outset framed by a set of assumptions about the impact on Australian society of the immigrants. It was assumed that they would readily assimilate. Assimilationism became the ideological mechanism for managing their settlement. These were assumptions with very direct and important consequences. The epoch was characterized by bureaucratic processes of exclusion and denial of migrant needs, and a resistance to any social program which might have enhanced the active participation of non-English speaking migrants in the policy making process, [for detailed chronology see Cass, 1983b: 151-2,281].

Many arguments were put forward in favour of the establishment of a large scale migration program as part of the process of post-war reconstruction. The alliance of manufacturing capital and the Labor government during the war had found in immigration a potential solution to the problem of labour supply. The Labor government perceived dangers of runaway inflation from wage rises, and looked for mechanisms to reduce labour militancy. To have missed the connection between the tight labour market of the post-war years and wage pressures, or to have overlooked the further connection with the pool of labour available in Europe would have been virtually impossible at the time and indeed these connections were overlooked by neither government nor employers. The focus for the application of employer pressure was the Department of Labour and National Service, from which the broad totals were passed to the new Department of Immigration.

A further labour constraint was that of mobility. Not only was a public works program one of the key elements in Labor's strategy, necessitating the availability of workers in areas often far from existing population concentrations but a large proportion of the wartime­ swollen manufacturing capacity was also relatively remote. The mobility factor was crucial from immediately after the end of hostilities. Thus:

from 1945-46 the Secondary Industries Commission was orgamsmg the selling back to private industry those industries that the government had controlled during the war. People were only interested in buying factories if they could obtain a labour supply. The location of many hostels was determined by the demands of the manufacturers. 21

[Crisp, Interview]

Specific cases are not hard to find. At the public works level the Snowy Mountain Scheme is too obvious a case to dwell on; in the private sector we find the South Coast steel industry, which had in pre-war years relied for labour on the unemployed of Sydney [Connell and Irving, 1980:279] building barracks for migrant labour, as was also happening in the Newcastle area, where Baltic migrants complained of conditions 'worse than in Germany'. As early as 1948 a push to extend the net of the program was coming from Queensland sugar growers who asked that 2,500 Italian cane cutters should be imported 'if British or other European workers of high physical standard were unavailable' [Sydney Morning Herald, 15 January 1948].

Further demands on a domestically unavailable labour force arose from the technological standard of Australian industry. Contrary to the Birrells' suggestion [Birrell and Birrell 1981] that Australian industry 'adapted' to a workforce with a low level of technological sophistication, with relatively high labour-capital ratios due to the availability of a largely unskilled labour force, it appears to be more the case that this pattern had already been established by the war's end. The adaptation was partly due to the previous colonial status of Australia and a consequent commitment to labour-intensive processing industries, and partly due to the fact that most wartime development had been of import-replacement in­ dustries behind the virtually limitless protection of wartime scarcity and cost-plus financing. Whilst Australia was to remain a high-protection economy, the market conditions of war­ time could not persist. Once again, the pressure was for relatively cheap, mobile workers to fit into the spots that already existed, or that would be created as women left the workforce, or were forced out. H.C. Coombs said of the environment in which manufacturing capital operated, that:

I don't think it was a conscious choice to go for labour intensive methods because capital was short ... (The industrialists) probably planned to use the sort of technology with which they were familiar at that point of which they were aware. Certainly they were interested in technological change taking place overseas, but it wasn't easy to access to. They chose a comparatively low level of technology, probably more labour intensive than existed overseas, not as a response to capital shortage but as a continuation of what they knew. They knew a fair proportion of immigrants were technologically illiterate and therefore they had to adapt their techniques. They met this by a policy which was on the whole welcomed by the Australian trade unions of discriminating in favour of resident Australians in the better kind of jobs, the ones which did call for better understanding and more experience, and the migrants were used in the others. [Coombs, Interview] 22

The demand for labour to meet the backed up demand created by decades of Depression and War, for housing, urban services, consumer goods and other commodities could not be met from Australian domestic population growth. Very low rates of natural increase during the 1930s were soon to become evident in smaller cohorts of working age [Wood, 1946; Bostock and Nye, 1934], a phenomenon exacerbated by wartime losses. In addition the increment to the workforce in the shape ofdemobilised servicemen was partly offset by very high rates of family formation which removed large numbers of women from the workforce, a situation exacerbated by wage cuts proposed for women workers. This process of family formation which might have been a sign of high rates of natural increase in the future was of fairly circumscribed significance since it was highly unlikely that early-twentieth century fertility rates would be reinstated. As one influential contemporary woman wrote:

...We have fought the bloodiest war in history to demonstrate the wrongs of Nazism, among them, surely, the doctrine of women as breeders of warriors. [Cuthbert, 1946]

Not only could Australia not supply the necessary labour force, but it became obvious within twelve months of the end of the war that neither could Britain. Already in 1945, the Commonwealth Immigration Advisory Committee had raised the possibility of mass immigration of non-British Displaced Persons and in early 1947, after setting up a cabinet committee on the subject of DPs, CalwelI, together with his Private Secretary, R.H. Armstrong, set off for a tour of the DP camps. Calwell, stressed the need to speed up agreements with the International Refugee Organisation 'as other countries were in the migration field', [Davies, 1971: 151]. Chifley personally authorised the agreements by cable on 4 July, 1947 and by October the Australian Migration Office had been established in Germany, headed by Brigadier Galleghan. Within a year the target had been increased to 100,000. In twenty months, funds were being approved for the program purely on Chifley's personal authorisation, overlooking Treasury rules, and the eligible national categories were being rapidly widened. By April 1949, Galleghan had been given discretionary powers to admit to the program any national group recognised as refugees by the International Refugee Organisation, [Davies, 1972; Armstrong, Interview]. The quality of this headlong rush to acquire DPs as migrants is perhaps best illustrated by the Ministerial directive to Galleghan of February, 1947 that all widows, deserted wives and unmarried mothers together with their children would be admitted to Australia irrespective of nationality. The Minister informed Galleghan that he wished no publicity for this directive, particularly in the matter of unmarried mothers, [Davies, 1971 :163].

Yet the importation of non-British migrants would create problems for any Australian government which had to by-pass the entrenched power of the Australian working class. 23

During one of the most militant phases of Australian labour organization the fears of an immigrant labour flow eroding the conditions extracted from capital at the workplace, and promised to those who had fought the war, should not be underestimated. Given that improved labour discipline was one of the hoped-for outcomes of the migration program as far as the state and capital were concerned, the migration program had to be introduced in a manner which minimized working class resistance.

The other major factor was the complex pressure to push women out of the workforce into the home. Thus immigrant male workers were to be used to replace women in jobs in which they had been employed during the war. In one very important sense Australian women workers who had fought increasingly successfully throughout the war for better wages and conditions, often against the male dominated unions, were the major domestic victims ofthe immigration program [McMurchyet.a!. 1983:113]. The women left behind in the countries of origin were another group of victims.

.2 Migration and Labour Force Discipline

Migrant workers, particularly refugees, are particularly amenable to manipulation and exploitation within the workforce. As we have noted [above Chapter 1.1] migrant labour is flexible and "plastic" to labour market requirements. From the outset of the Australian migration program, there was working class and trade union unrest at the implications of migration for working conditions. As early as the first months of 1948 the South Coast branch of the Federated Ironworkers' Association rejected out of hand the proposal of the steel companies to employ 400 DPs on the grounds that they were anti-union and of pro-fascist antecedents. The union demanded that only those cleared by the Federated Ironworkers' Association as having a clean record and an anti-fascist history should be employed.

From the start the government was acutely sensitive to this sort of charge and attempted at every opportunity to rebutt it. It had been advised by the Commonwealth Immigration Advisory Committee in February, 1946 to

.. .launch a national publicity campaign conditioning the Australian citizen for the arrival ofmigrants, assuring him (sic) that the new citizen will MAKE jobs, not TAKE them. [Commonwealth Immigration Advisory Committee, 1946:36] 24

The government took this advice closely to heart, taking every opportunity to re-assure workers in the tones that Calwell used to the Victorian Trades Hall in April 1948, where he said that:

...migrants would not be used to worsen prevailing working conditions, nor would they be 'used' in any industrial trouble in the industries in which they were employed. [Sydney Morning Herald, 7 April, 1948]

Generally speaking, the attempt was made to characterise opposition to the immigration program as being confined to a small group of communists, acting in pursuit of motives other than the well-being of Australia. The Sydney Morning Herald editorialised that "all thinking Australians" supported migration on the dual grounds of national security and development. It was only to "serve communist ends" and to "preserve their monopoly" that the Federated Ironworkers' Association and the Miners' Federation sought to "throttle down" production by opposing the flow of immigration [Sydney Morning Herald, 3 October, 1948].

Union members had indeed fought to win that "monopoly" right to protect their conditions of work. To hear this hard-won right questioned in the context of the debate on mass immigration can scarcely have been re-assuring and the Federation responded, defending its ban on immigrant labour in the following terms:

...we do not oppose the entry into the industry of workers on any ground of nationality, race or colour. But we are in opposition to any plan for mass assisted migration of national groups, or workers known to have an outlook and training foreign to the ideals of the Australian working class movement. [Sydney Morning Herald, 29 October, 1948]

The miners and ironworkers were by no means alone. Calls against immigration came from a wide range of unions including some historically as non-militant as the Australian Textile Workers Union, [Markus, 1981]; for instance the ATWU had opposed the militant struggles of the women members in 1943. [McMurchyet.al. 1983:113]. Eventually Calwell could placate the Federated Ironworkers' Association only in the following terms:

I am happy to be able to inform your Association that the necessary as­ surances have been given by the Broken Hill Proprietary Company Limited, which undertakes-

i. not to engage any unnaturalised displaced person for its operating staff, i.e. to undertake work with tools on normal award classifications;

ii. to employ displaced persons on jobs least attractive to Australian workers and to take advantage of the availability of displaced persons to effect desired transfers of Australian workers wherever possible and" to give them the benefit of 'pickings' wherever practicable; ... 25

[A. Calwell to E. Thornton, 20 June, 1949, in Markus, loc.cit.]

The conflict between the absolute necessity for mass migration from the point of view of the future development of Australian capitalism, and the opposition of a substantial, articulate and strategically important section of the native-born working class made impera­ tive an ideological package which could resolve their contradiction. The ideology that was constructed was assimilationist and racist - rendering invisible the acceptable immigrants and unacceptable the potentially very visible. If the Miners' Federation chose to stress the 'foreign outlook and training' of the non-British immigrants then government and employers chose to stress a common 'European' descent which was in some way a different quality in a migrant from that of the 'Asiatic'. This bogus distinction was used to focus the suspicions and the latent xenophobia of the Australian working class on its specifically racist elements. Whereas European migrants presented no threat to the living standards of the native-born since they only came to "MAKE jobs, not TAKE them", Asians were most definitely presented as such a threat. Thus Chifley in a 1949 radio broadcast:

. .. one of the earliest national ideals of Australia was the establishment of a nation of high living standards with equal opportunity for all. Early Commonwealth legislators saw that the greatest possible threat to such an ideal was a pool of cheap labour.

It was then and still is, a fact that the most likely sources ofcheap labour for those who wished to exploit it were the Asian countries so near to Australia. That is how and why Australia established the restricted immigration policy which has been followed by all governments.

Chifley went on to say that this policy was not as completely insular as it might appear since ultimately admitting Asians to Australia would only delay the development of Asia. Now was the programme really based on racism as demonstrated by the fact that:

... during the war Australia gladly offered refuge to those who needed it and in the last few years many thousands of such people have returned to their countries to which they belong with nothing but gratitude in their hearts. [Chifley, 1949:646]

This speech is remarkable not only for the charming picture of the gratitude felt by wartime refugees for being systematically and ruthlessly deported by Calwell's new Immigration Department [Palfreeman, 1965:passim ]; it is remarkable for what it reveals about the thrust of government policy, as much in what it does not as as in what it does. Most important, of course is the nakedly racist contention that the problem of preventing a "pool of cheap labour" is solved by excluding Asians whereas the scores of thousands of Europeans admitted during the previous months could have no such effect. 26

As early as 1947, Calwell was campaigning for the use of the term "New Australian" and informing the press that: " ...the men are handsome and the women beautiful", [Sydney Morning Herald, 16 December, 1947].

It is probably true that only a Labor government could have sold the immigration program to the labour movement. L.F. Crisp, for example, recounted how the Inter-departmental Committee on migration, set up in 1942, and on which he served, set out from the first to encourage a 'constructive attitude' in the union leadership, emphasising the humanitarian aspects of the programs, such as the intake of orphans from Europe, and the fact that such migrants would have relatively little immediate impact on the employment situation and would, in any case, have become 'dinkum Aussies' by the time they did, [Crisp, Interview].

To this emphasis on the cultural assimilability of migrants was added a constant and inseparable insistence on the lack of labour market effects that migrants generally, and not just orphaned children, would have. The general line was that migrants could not force down wage costs (or slow down their escalation) in existing areas of employment. They simply did jobs which would otherwise not have been done (or were done by women in the war period). Typical of this emphasis was the speech made by Calwell announcing the first Australian Citizenship Convention in 1949, a large a part of which is taken up with rebutting the objections of the 'prejudiced and insignificant few' by reciting a list of production bottle-necks which had been overcome by the use ofmigrant labour. Apart from the fact that this list reads like a litany of typically low-paid and dirty jobs, there is a heavy emphasis on the benefits to be expected by 'Australians' from opening up these bottle-necks, particularly in the areas of public utilities and housing as well as in labour-intensive areas such as hospitals, given the fact that:

...one in ten new Australians working in Australia is engaged in nursing or other domestic work in hospitals or similar institutions. [Calwell, 1949:143]

In these areas migrant women were exceptionally important as a labour source.

The housing questions was, in fact, an important and perennial subject of speeches by those involved in selling the program, which is scarcely surprising given that competition for the extremely limited housing stock was likely to be one of the main ways in which the native-born would encounter the migrant presence. Here, as in the question of employment the official line was that migrants would have only beneficial effects for the native-born. Not only did the migrant labour force break production bottle-necks but Calwell was even prepared to maintain at one point that migrants came to build houses, not to live in them. 27

This sustained concern with social order and the control of the labour force provided the central dynamic within which social policy responses to the migrant presence were developed and implemented.

.3 Assimilation as Social Policy

Migrants were thus supposed to have minimal impact on the fabric of Australian social relations, and migrant women were assumed to be totally invisible. Any process or action which heightened visibility had to be prevented. Thus national groups as avenues for the delivery of any service were anathema - the national (or ethnic) group was seen as the major barrier to assimilation. Any problems experienced by immigrants had to be the result of their individual incapacity or pathology, either medical or psychological. Migrants would effectively not exist as a social issue, as they had been selected to be healthy and young. Non-British migrants would have to earn their social rights through years of labour and taxation - only then would they be permitted to enjoy the social provision of the increasingly affluent society.

Given the problems the assimilationist policy had been designed to address in Australian social relations, it seemed to work throughout the 1950s. By the mid-1950s the immigration program was an accepted, almost unquestioned fact ofAustralian life: the objections of the labour movement had diminished. Migrants were sufficiently invisible that it was seriously maintained in government publications as late as 1960 [Dovey, 1960] that assimilation, in the officially recognised sense was proceeding apace. The extraordinary prosperity of the 1950s in a certain sense, ensured that ideology became reality. The immigration program did have many of the effects on conditions and relative wages predicted by those opposed to it, yet native-born workers did not have to endure its consequences. An incorporated union leadership was content to accept it and a linguistically excluded migrant workforce had no way of changing this attitude, even in those unions where migrants became a majority of the membership. The labour market acted as the main distributor of welfare for migrant men. This was far less true for women, who were very dependent on their men. Though migrants were institutionally discriminated against and segmented in the labour market, full employment ensured sufficient survival chances that protest against the system as a whole remained sporadic and usually muted. Only when the labour market slackened, as it did briefly in the early fifties, did the system as a whole seem to come under strain.

The twin themes of exclusion and control can be seen operating most clearly through the major institutional structures set up to oversee and make smooth the process of migration: 28 the Immigration Department, the various Immigration Councils and the Good Neighbour Council. In none of these was the voice of the migrant, still less the voice of the working class migrant female, heard to any significant degree throughout the 1950s. Working class migrant women simply did not exist on the dominant social agenda with needs and legitimate aspirations in their own right.

The Department was staffed by demobilized service officers, and concerned itself primarily with the selection, transportation and initial settlement of migrants, often in ex-army camps such as Bonegilla. The first Commonwealth Immigration Advisory Committee was set up in 1945, and included officers of the major employers' associations, and the Australian Council of Trade Unions and NSW Trades and Labour Council. It was not until 1967 that the first non-British immigrant, a man, served on one of the Advisory Councils.

The labour movement participation in the process of ideology creation is apparent in the role played by Australian Council of Trade Unions Secretary, Albert Monk. Monk was a regular speaker at Citizenship Conventions during the 1950s and his speeches can be used to mark the increasing ethnic segmentation of the Australian workforce.

" Thus in his 1956 address on 'Our Second Million Migrants' [Monk, 1956] he re-stated the three tenets of the migration credo - population, development, security - in echo of the state and industry position advocated by Immigration Planning Council chairman Sir John Storey [Storey, 1954:10]. Storey had argued in 1954 that some domestic unemployment was inescapable and should not be used as an argument against migration, [Storey, 1954:10]. Monk stated that the "flow of migrants cannot be turned on and off like a tap" [1956:14] and that "properly planned migration cannot cause general unemployment - rather the reverse", [Monk, 1956:18]. Monk also argued that "without ... support from the trade union movement, no government could have carried out with so little friction a program of the magnitude that has already been achieved", [Monk, 1957:3]. To stress the point Monk indicated that Australian workers, presumably male, had benefitted and 'consolidated' their own position in the wake of migration. Australian women were far less advantaged by the process which had a major effect of reinforcing their traditional domestic role.

While the unions denied that there was any discrimination against migrants in their ranks, the non-English speaking migrants were seen as a problem for the unions in terms of representation. Migrant women's needs were rarely alluded to, while their role was seen primarily one of family formation and social reproduction. Overall, however, it was the benefits of the migration program to the Australian-born worker that were stressed, as in the 1958 Convention: 29

· ..the introduction of migrant workers at the bottom of the ladder often meant promotion or up-grading for Australian workers and relieved them of the necessity to seek emploYment in remote areas or of an arduous character · .. even in apparently adverse emploYment situations there is room for, in fact need for, an immigration program. [Monk, 1958:6,7]

Monk's contributions to the Citizenship Conventions angled to the interests of the native­ born worker, locating the immigrant in the role of 'problem' to be absorbed by 'Australian' society are generally typical of most contributions to the Conventions. The tone had been set by Calwell in announcing the purpose of the first 'rally' in 1950 as:

· .. ... concerned merely with the problems ofco-operation between various groups of people. It will be designed to promote a nation-wide movement towards an appreciation of the privileges and responsibilities of Australian citizenship. [Calwell, 1949:141]

From the start these Conventions were meetings in which debate was bounded by the un­ questioning acceptance of assimilationism and the necessity for large-scale immigration. Although non-British migrant representatives from time to time raised the question of recognising 'national groups' at the conventions, the predominantly anglophone convention membership persistently and overwhelmingly rejected such suggestions [Lippmann: Inter­ view].

The first Convention which had been planned as a national meeting in which assimilationist programs could be debated and the necessity of the migration program reinforced, was the the brainchild of Immigration Secretary 'Tas' Heyes, and the former Minister Calwell. It was enthusiastically adopted by Holt, who in his opening address to the 1950 Convention, presented the key items in justification of the migration program - migrants were for the most part to be directed into those areas of labour shortage where even award wages were too low and conditions too poor to attract local workers. They provided the unskilled labour for timber getting, and firewood collection, for steel production, sugar refining, motor vehicle production, hospitals and welfare institutions, coal transportation, railway maintenance, as fettlers on the Trans-Australia Railway, in water and sewerage, in dam construction and irrigation in remote areas, and in seasonal crop harvesting and private domestic service, [Holt, 1950:7ff].

John Storey, the Immigration Planning Council chairman, detailed this same argument, stressing the importance of migration for rapid population growth, seeing the goals of this growth lying in its economic industrial and security implications. The workers to be provided by migration were absolutely crucial for the development projects, as Australian 30 workers would be more involved in family formation. In addition to the development tasks, migrants were necessary to fill the jobs previously taken by women who were being urged back into domestic labour and procreation, [Storey, 1950:5, Cuthbert, 1946, Borrie et al 1946].

Storey went on to identify the resistance of the mining unions to migrants as a problem, requiring "all those concerned in the coal industry to recognise and live up to their responsibilities", [Storey, 1950:7,12]. Finally, Storey pointed out that the New Australians would not become Australians overnight, and that "migrant children are the ones on whom we should concentrate", [DIGEST, 1950:9]. Caroline Kelly, an anthropologist, critically questioned the concept of assimilation, pointing out that there were many different types of migrants, and that there were some real questions to be asked about the 'Australian way of life' to which the immigrants were being asked to assimilate, [DIGEST, 1950: 13]. But at the same time, the overall drive was to sell migration to the Australian populace, and the Convention was to serve as a conduit for the evidence and arguments for a further twenty years.

The first inquiry into social welfare issues associated with migration was initiated by the Federal government in the wake of the 1951 Convention. The issue was migrants and crime, and the Inquiry found that the incidence of serious crime was appreciably lower among migrants than in the Australian population, and had decreased since post-war immigration began, [Holt, 1952:8; Commonwealth Immigration Advisory Council, 1952]. In introducing the 1952 Migration Program to the Convention, Holt proudly reported that the Italian and Dutch programs were well underway, with the first party of Italians men having been sent to the Port Kembla Steelworks of Australian Iron and Steel, whose Mr. I.M. McLennan spoke "in glowing terms of economic contribution the new arrivals were making", [Holt, 1952:10]. Holt also tied the assimilation of migrants closely to the restricted nature of the Immigration policy, such that:

Our policy of restriction is not based on any notion of racial superiority, but on a frank and realistic recognition that there are important differences of race, culture and economic standards which make successful assimilation unlikely. [Holt, 1952:21]

Thus apart from a recognition of racism as a key element of Australian culture, Holt was ­ indicating that the acceptance of bourgeois and professional Asians who were sufficiently acculturated to Australian behaviour, would not be impossible. The real danger supposedly lay in an Asiatic proletariat and/or petty bougeoisie. Indeed, even European immigrants had been selected early on for their 'Aryan' physiognomy - particularly those DPs arriving 31 on the first ship - the SS General Heitzelman, [Kiddle, Armstrong: Interviews]. The Italian arrivals and the public fears alluded to by Holt about immigrant crime provide in fact some of the defining characteristics of the 'assimilationist' ethic, to be re-asserted by Sir Richard Boyer, NSW Good Neighbour Council President and ABC Chairman, in 1957 as:

...not just to ensure that the newcomer is contented, comfortable and well occupied - but that he is indeed finding his comfort and well-being in a community which is distinctively Australian. [Boyer, 1957:9]

.4 Conflict and Order

The new migration program revealed certain fundamental contradictions within Australian class society - through which new immigrants poured like water rushing through a sluice. If the industrial processes slowed, it would be those immigrants who would carry the brunt of both the economic and social costs.

Migrant women were active in opposition to the glib platitudes and cruel reality of as­ similationism in practice. The Cowra camp inmates for instance 'mutinied' against poor rations and crude discipline, flying "a black flag as a symbol of mutiny", [Sydney Morning Herald, 20 November 1950].

The latter half of 1952 witnessed the outbreak of the first sustained resistance by immigrants to the conditions that they were experiencing. The economic downturn of the period reduced demand for labour, putting the government's commitment to full employment under stringent test for the first time since 1947. On 18 July, two thousand unemployed Italian immigrants, mostly single men, threatened to riot and set fire to the Bonegilla camp if they were not either found work or repatriated. The Federal government moved 200 troops and five armoured cars into the camp and set up a tight security guard. The next day the Italians made their case to the press, having met with the Liberal Immigration Minister Holt. They had not worked since Christmas, and were heavily in debt to the Italian banks that had advanced their passage money. The migrants then planned to march on Canberra if Prime Minister Menzies refused to guarantee them jobs. Holt acted rapidly, and in a peculiarly organic analogy, halved the following year's migrant intake (from 150,000 to 80,000) - providing "a breather to enable us to digest more comfortably the very substantial intake", [Sydney Morning Herald, 25 July, 1952]. 32

Unemployed Italian immigrants at the Maribyrong hostel marched on the Footscray Com­ monwealth Employment service, and staged a one-day hunger strike, demanding work or repatriation. Some of the Bonegilla 'rioters' caused a fracas on Sydney station in October. The men were heavily in debt and penniless, with escalating bills to Commonwealth Hos­ tels,* [Sydney Morning Herald, 12 October, 1952:1]. Two hundred unemployed Italians marched from the Matraville and Villawood camps on the Italian consulate in Sydney. Fist fights broke out as police prevented the marchers going to the Italian legation in Double Bay. The Italian minister sought to defuse the situation, claiming, "we are latin, exuberant. It is the customary thing in Italy and I have been trying hard to tell these boys that it is not the thing to do in their new country", [Sydney Morning Herald, 31 October, 1952]. An ALP State parliamentarian claimed that a leading Communist had 'fomented' the new Australians into breaking the law, [Sydney Morning Herald, 31 October, 1952].

Holt denied that there was any breach of contract with the Italian workers by the Govern­ ment, and also blamed Communist 'activity'. Throughout November the Immigration debate continued, with Cabinet expressing its 'concern' over the serious incidents involving unemployed immigrants. Senior government officials also admitted that if the Government in fact had a 'moral' obligation to find work for assisted immigrants, this only extended to "endeavours to find work for skilled trades with Australian recognised qualifications", [Sydney Morning Herald, 2 November, 1952]. The Immigration Planning Council advised a revision to the migration program to concentrate on the recruitment of skilled workers in short supply, rural workers to overcome the continuing 'de-manning' of agricultural and pastoral industries resulting from internal migration from low pay areas, and family migration - women and children, wives, fiancees, [Sydney Morning Herald, 4 November, 1952]. The government intensified its earlier response, and cut back on the provision of assisted passages for unskilled Italian immigrants.

However, while the Government maintained its distinction between British and non-British migrants both in the sense of its distinctive 'moral' obligation to the British, and in the separation of the British into special camps and hostels, the British themselves reacted angrily to the combination of unemployment and high hostel charges. Rent strikes began in Melbourne and Adelaide as families faced eviction for non-payment of hostel charges. Melbourne migrants held a mass demonstration outside Commonwealth Hostels Limited * p.w.: £4.7.6d. Unemployment benefit:£2.1O.0d. Paid to Hostel:£2.0.0d Increase in weekly debt while unemployed:£2.7.6d. 33 office, while the Adelaide hostel residents adopted Gandhi's tactics of 'passive resistance', [Sydney Morning Herald, 21 November, 1952].

In the midst of these continual outbreaks of resistance, a group in Sydney established the All Nations Club, to provide a 'cultural bridge' (H.C. Coombs was a member of the first Board, and another committee member, M. Diamond, was to be appointed in 1980 to the Council of the Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs).

Passive resistance continued until British migrants clashed with Commonwealth and State police in brawls over evictions at the Brooklyn Camp. One thousand migrants held a mass protest over the evictions of families whom Holt had described as the "less enterprising", [Sydney Morning Herald, 21 November, 1952, 22 November, 1952]. Finally, the national British Migrant Welfare Association announced that if the evictions were not immediately halted 20,000 British immigrants would be urged to walk out of the hostels and demand immediate repatriation, [Sydney Morning Herald, 23 November, 1952]. The next day Holt set up a committee to investigate the complaints and the C.H.C suspended further action on the evictions. While 500 British migrants, delegates to the BMWA, met at the Bunnerong camp to applaud the 'victory', a large meeting of non-British migrants - Yugoslavs, Greeks, Italians, Cypriots, Russians and Czechs - met at the Sydney Trades Hall to demand an end to all mass migration and repatriation of unemployed migrants who wished to return to their home countries, [Sydney Morning Herald, 24 November, 1952]. Needless to say, little notice was taken of their demands.

The Government's longer term response to these events was to ignore them publicly, while preparing Australian Security Intelligence Organisation files which were used to deny citizenship for many years to the ringleaders of the Italians, [Storer: Interview]. At the 1953 Citizenship Convention, Holt reiterated the importance of migration for economic growth, deeming 'irresponsible' any who would oppose such a viewpoint. Migrants were described as mobile, in contradistinction to the proclivities for fixed settlement of local workers. Finally, it was agreed by Holt that the major cuts in migration targets announced in the wake of the Bonegilla riots to allow 'digestion', were the result not of "difficulties in finding employment for migrants as in difficulties experienced by Commonwealth and State governments in providing the funds necessary to meet the capital needs of a rapidly expanding population", [Holt, 1953:11]. 34

The argument about the relation between economic crises and migration is, of course, a continuing one.* There is a close relationship between processes in the labour market, changes in class formation and class relations, and the development of political interventions in class relations including welfare policies. The Assimilationist phase increasingly took on the characteristics which rendered it finally untenable as public ideology and to some extent,as social practice. The concept of assimilation, while containing in its more liberal postulations an awareness of the need to allow immigrants time to adjust and maintain their own 'cultures', was still presented as a 'battle' which Australia had to win, [Rivett 1958:6]. The view that migrant organisations were useful buffers in this process was not widely accepted, though Jean Craig [Martin] saw them as an "effort at co-operation amongst immigrants to cope with an unfamiliar situation", [Martin 1953/81 :23]. Martin went on to argue that maintenance of culture required maintenance of groups and organisations, which raised questions about the suitability of the concept of assimilation in terms of 'an' Australian way of life [see also Kelly 1974, White 1981].

The first major resistance to the assimilationist dogma at a Citizenship Convention was presented by the first 'ethnic' speakers - Titia and G.J. van Keulen. In a sensitive condem­ nation of the crude mainstream position, Mr. van Keulen presented 'assimilationism' as the attempt to create 'robots who do what they are told and live as want them to'. Integra­ tion, its replacement, was classified as a two-way process of adjustment by immigrants and Australians, [van Keulen 1959:11]. The conditions necessary for 'integrationism' to grow and flourish would yet be some years ahead, and would depend upon a number of factors, many outside the control of the Australian state. Even in 1959, however, the base supports of assimilationism were crumbling. In the next chapter we outline the process and its consequences.

* Birrell and Birrell [1981:254] argue that "the Government had sought to maintain its immigration targets even during times of recession as in 1951-2, 1961 and, of course, during the late 1970s". However, nett immigration targets were cut dramatically in response to the 1952 crisis, with new migration falling from 102,879 (1951-2) to 58,064 (1952-53), while in the wake of the 1961 crisis it dropped from 85,190 (1960-61) to 48,410 (1961-62) 35

CHAPTER THREE

THE LONG BOOM

.1 Changing class relations

The assimilationist/white Australia package which had dominated the conduct of both immigration and social policy in the late 1940s and 1950s did not survive the 1960s. In fact by the end of that decade the whole approach of both the major parties and the bureaucracy appears to have undergone a radical change. The white Australia policy, a cornerstone of Australian political life since Federation, was expunged from the manifestos of both the Labor and Liberal parties. There was an associated and apparent dismantling of the assimilationist system of exclusion and control and its replacement by a new rhetoric and an apparently new set of policy objectives to be identified as "integration".

Most current accounts saw integration as a halfway house, still trapped in assimilationist practice but exposing possibilities for future liberating developments. The main source of struggle for integration has been identified amongst "Australians located within established organisations but (who) were often in some or another way in marginal positions", [Martin, 1978:36] and "Welfare workers, intellectuals and to some extent ... migrants themselves", [Birrell and Birrell, 1981:233]. Essentially the role of these individuals was to bring to the attention of the 'government' the fact that migrants were not assimilating, that they could and should not be expected to do so and that the continuing assimilationist slant of government policy was leading to a crisis, particularly in the education and welfare system.

This partial explanation does not take into account the contradictions to which assimilationist policies were directed. The welfare of migrants was not the central policy concern of assimilationism, and indeed, their welfare relative to the native born was in some respects quite seriously impaired as a direct result of this policy. This had already been quite evident long before the mid-1960s. It was not, however, an increased concern with migrant welfare which led to the abandonment of this policy but rather a realisation that not only had the basic contradiction which necessitated assimilationism been resolved ­ (or, at least, replaced by new ones) - but also that assimilationism was no longer 'working' in the sense we have described above. 36

The high rate of immigration was seen to be crucial to economic growth - as for instance noted by employer's spokesman Sir John Allison at the 1965 Citizenship Convention -

... today the bottle-neck in the Australian economy is a serious shortage of labour [1965: 65] .

There were however major structural changes occuring in the Australian labour market as a result of the migration process and the increasing segmentation which had resulted from it. The segmentation had in fact been encouraged from the outset of the program, if initially to placate militant unions and permit allocation of migrant workers to strategic industries. Collins has pointed out the inevitability of this process, noting that 'segmentation of workers according to ascriptive traits' is a permanent feature of the capital accumulation process, [Collins, 1978:52]. In the Australia of the post-war period the most obvious lines of division around which different ascriptive traits could be organised were ethnic and gender based. Collins demonstrates by reference to skill categories and occupational distribution that this type of segmentation not only existed from the start but was increasing through the later fifties and sixties due to the tendency for Southern and South-eastern European migrants who dominated the immigration totals at this time to be overwhelmingly classified as unskilled workers, [Collins, 1975: passim]. Lever-Tracy basically supports Collins' proposition that non-English speaking migrants as a whole have been segregated into the least skilled and lowest paid jobs and that this has been more true of Southern than of Northern Europeans. The sorting process has been partly linguistic in that

... once the non-Anglophone is type-cast as unskilled earlier qualifications and later acquisition of English cannot countervail, [l981a:23]

The non-recognition of qualifications also exacerbates the "locking-in" process, as a majority of immigrants doing unskilled jobs had been employed at higher skill levels in their countries of origin, or in other countries in which they had worked, [Lever-Tracy, 1981a:25]. Recent IIlawarra research, which suppops Levr-Tracy's argument, found that over one-third of those speaking Engglish at survival level or below had been in Australia for more than ten years. In the case of those writing at this level just over half had been in Australia more than ten years. Investigation of English language usage indicated some of the dynamics of segmentation. For example, those in the labour force who spoke little or no English were generally employed in occupations, such as unskilled steelworks' labourers where the repetitive nature of the job, the work environment (noise, heat) and to some extent the prevalence of ethnically homogeneous work-gangs meant that ability to speak English was in no sense a necessity: in the immortal words of one respondent "Labourer use muscles, not mouth", [Morrissey and Palser, 1983: passim]. 37

"unskilled" migrants were also characterised by lifestyles which further intensified their social disadvantage. They tended to need high incomes to afford private accommodation - many were excluded from the public housing sector by government regulation. They carried heavy household debts incurred in migration or assisting others to migrate ("chain­ migration"). They were experienced in the discipline of labour, yet were linguistically excluded from trade union participation. In the face of assimilationist dogma and racist attitudes, their socio-political activities tended to be within their own communities, [Zubrzycki, 1964, Ream, 1976].

These are precisely the characteristics required in the labour force of an industrial society which has evolved on the basis of relatively low-technology, high labour-capital ratios and a consequently large demand for workers to perform repetitive mechanical tasks in line or process forms of production: the sort of industrial structure, indeed, that was present in Australia. This segmentation of the labour force removed the basic raison d'etre of assimilationism, for its benefits for the Australian-born working class had been fully recognised, [Monk, 1958]. While there was considerable inertia, and resistance to change in the policy of assimilation within the government, some changes were inevitable if the migration program, on which so much emphasis had been placed, was going to survive.

There were growing fears by the late 1950s that the supply of immigrants might be slowing down, or that those that could be recruited might be less "assimilable" than in the past. Monk warned at the Citizenship Convention of 1958 that

... if we are to attract the best migrants, in these days of European prosperity, we must be able to show them and their governments that Australia is consistantly sincere in its desire to receive them as permanent settlers and that there are, and will continue to be, opportunities for them to improve their situation by adopting this as a new homeland, [1958:13-14].

The recovery of Europe meant that the gap between Australia and some of its previous source countries gradually closed, in some cases completely. This reduced the incentive to remain in Australia, particularly among the more assimilable national groups such as the British North Europeans. Such factors were generalised to other nationalities in varying degrees during the 1960s, by the Italian 'economic miracle', by the increase in intra-European labour mobility following the signing of the Treaty of Rome, and by the sharply increased German demand for foreign workers following the erection of the Berlin Wall and the consequent throttling of the labour flow from the German Democratic Republic. 38

Table 1: Settler Loss by Birthplace (Males) by 1970-71 (%) Cohorts UK Eire Germany Nether- Yugoslavia Italy Greece Year of Arrival lands

1960-1 27.1 41.9 31.4 31.3 31.4 21.7 1967-8 22.6 40.8 37.9 30.1 33.5 18.9 1968-9 15.5 31.1 29.9 19.5 30.7 24.9 1969-70 6.3 18.9 17.1 26.6 25.6 21.8

(Source: BirreIl and Birrell, 1981:78, Immigration 971:32)

Nearly eleven thousand British migrants left Australia in the period January 1959 to June 1962, as did 1200 Germans and 1600 Dutch. In fact by 1960-61 Greek immigration was in a ratio to German of 3.4:1. The pressure on the immigration programme increased in 1961 as the Italian government, in the wake of the recession of that year and another outbreak of rioting by a new generation of migrant unemployed at Bonegilla, refused to renew the migration agreement following the Australian refusal to accept guarantee conditions for the welfare of Italian migrants. These included job and accommodation guarantees, recognition of qualifications and passage assistance for unskilled workers. It is indicative of the effect of the 'recruitment crisis' that these conditions, unnacceptable to the Australian government in 1961 were largely acceptable (though scarcely implemented) by 1968 when the Turkish agreement was signed. Italian immigration subsequently fell dramatically and changed in character, consisting almost entirely of unskilled chain-migrating Southerners as the skilled Northern workers headed increasingly to Switzerland and Germany, [Jupp, 1966:15, Immigration, 1971:51,55J.

The concern deepened over the difficulties of recruitment as other factors, notably Australia's American alliance, complicated the "attractions" of migration. In Britain, the most suitable potential migrants:

... also happen to be those with teenage boys and they are therefore the ones most likely to be put off by the Australian involvement in Vietnam ... even when the Australian law on conscription is put to them there seems to remain a deep fear that conditions will change and that Vietnam will loom larger rather than smaller in Australian life. [Australian: 5 August 1967] 39

While high rates of return and difficulties in recruitment occupied the government departments and conventions, manufacturing capital reiterated its demands for more and more immigrants.

The concern of industrialists in this respect should be seen in the context of the industrial role of (increasingly) Southern European workers. The main effect of linguistically-based labour market segmentation was to ensure the availability of highly-pressured, financially insecure, alienated and disorganised workers to work in conditions and for rates (although set by Award) unacceptable to the native-born worker. The stability of this form of industrial organisation was in one way strengthened and in another weakened by the fact that it tended to involve high rates of turnover: strengthened because this further reduced the possibilities of organised action around questions of conditions: weakened because it necessitated a continual supply of 'new' workers, [Wilenski: Interview]. This latter effect could provide a heavy demand for imported unskilled workers, even when the overall labour market situation was relatively slack. That this state of affairs existed because of the particualr requirement of Australian industry, rather than being forced on it, as argued by the Birrells [1981] by the gastarbeiter 'motivations' of the newer Southern European migrants seems borne out by the figures for rates of return. Southern European rates of return were actually lower than that for Germans and Dutch for almost the whole of the 1960s and for most of the period not significantly different for those for the British [See Table 1.].

•2 Race and Class

The problem of "race" edged to the fore amidst the general problems with assimilationism. Aboriginal groups had begun to criticise the assimilationist program of the Australian Government while students utilised techniques of the American "freedom rider" to expose domestic racism and condemn assimilationist race relations programs, in a famous "ride" through outback New South Wales in 1965.

The shift in Australia's trading/military ties away from Britain and towards Pacific nations, particularly Japan, the increasing sensitivity of the United States to the race issue and the increasing voice of non-European countries in world affairs during a decade of rapid decolonisation, all combined to make an overtly racist policy such as this an increasing embarrassment on the world stage. 40

Assimilationism in its more extreme form could not have survived the abandonment of white Australia, quite simply because of the racist undertones in the assimilationist view itself. If becoming assimilated meant, as it did, becoming indistinguishable from a fourth generation Anglo-Australian then it was clearly going to be something of a tall order for people of different skin tones than those that Europeans like to think of as 'white'. In this sense the abandonment of white Australia at least implied an abandonment of racist policy. Initially the main function of the changes was to drop the embarrassing racist rhetoric whilst maintaining to the maximum possible degree the comforting racist reality. The new policy meant that for any individual, racial characteristics would no longer act as an automatic bar to entering Australia but that this would not alter the over-riding aim which was:

... to maintain a predominantly homogeneous population neither exclusive nor multi-racial. given the fact that:

Australia has no history of social pluralism ... It may develop gradually and to limited extent but that is not something to be forced on any nation or any people, including Australians. That would not be social pluralism but social masochism No nation in history has set out to develop a multi-racial society. [Snedden: 1968,9]

Thus the basic change announced by Immigration Minister Opperman in March 1966 was that:

Application for entry by well-qualified people wishing to settle in Australia will be considered on the basis of their suitability as settlers, their ability to integrate readily and their possession of qualifications which are in fact positively useful in Australia ... the changes are not, of course, intended to meet general labour shortages or to permit the large-scale admission of workers from Asia. [Lynch: 1969:8,9]

Integration as social policy would mean that the process would be viewed slightly differently - a generation would be allowed for accommodation to the realities of Australian society.

We ask particularly of migrants that they be substantially Australians in the first generation and completely Australians in the second generation. [Snedden, 1968:11]

Integrationism provided the formula through which a more interventionist policy could be pursued in order to provide a better image of migrants' conditions in Australia whilst at the same time retaining assimilation as the ultimate goal - even though the word itself fell into 41 disuse. It did not change the ultimate aim of assimilation into the unchanged Australian mainstream. This aim was expressed colourfully in the 1950s, when

... many of the more conservative-minded Greeks particularly those from islands and backward rural areas, insist on continuing the old national custom of arranging their children's marriages ... it is, above all, in our schools that the battle of assimilation will be won. [Rivett, 1958:6]

The 'battle of assimilation' was as much an attempt to proletarianise as to Australianise immigrants; that is to incorporate them smoothly into existing Australian class structures and the existing pattern of class domination. This process was passively resisted partly by the return of migrants to their homelands and partly by the establishment of communal institutions. These institutions - soccer clubs, welfare organisations, schools etc. - provided an arena in which intra-communal class relations could and did develop. Traditional mores drawn from the country of origin were mobilised to sustain patterns of dominance and control in closeted networks within the class relations of a wider society. 'Integrationism' provided the framework within which these networks could be connected to the wider system of class relations. The state engaged in a process of recognising (and thus partially incorporating) the emerging ethnic petite bourgeoisie as the 'leaders' of their respective 'national groups'.

This process did not only operate in one direction. The system as it grew provided opportunities for the non Anglo-Celtic bourgeoisie to press on the cultural boundaries of the Australian ruling class, forcing an extension of the permissable limits of cultural pluralism and also forcing a limited public recognition of the dissonance between ideology and reality. This engagement grew as the evidence accumulated from Martin's 'definers' of the apparent links between 'migrantness' and deprivation, [Martin, 1978] .

•3 Social change and migrant welfare

In a pivotal paper given at the 1961 Citizenship Convention, Morvern Brown, then Professor of Sociology at the University of New South Wales and chairman of the NSW Good Neighbour Council drew together many of the threads of the new integrationism. He suggested that inter-ethnic tension had been minimal in Australia due to unprecedented economic expansion ("the long boom") which meant that

... opportunities for social mobility have been high so that frustration arising from economic reasons has not been so widespread. Migrants have 42

not incurred the resentment of Australians by competing with them for scarce work ... [Brown, 1961:3,4]

The feared social conflicts, a central force in the earlier production of the policy of assimilation had not eventuated. There was space as a result for a degree of cultural pluralism: always however, constrained within boundaries set by Anglo-Australia.

. .. while the assimilation of migrants is a desirable objective, it need not and should not clash with the rights of migrants to lead their own lives and maintain their own national attachments alongside their gradual identification with Australia ... while assimilation is the ultimate goal that all migrants should seek '" we all have an obligation to see that neither cultural uniformity nor cultural pluralism is exalted to the point where they operate like cults ... variety can nurture personal endeavour and the rise of new men to augment the ranks of the social elite. [Brown, 1961:10,11]

Assimilation meant to Brown the acquisition of the deeper values that made up the Australian tradition and bound Australians of all classes together. It was legitimate to retain affection for the land of origin so long as this did not clash with the basic values and symbols that 'all Australians have come to feel worthwhile'. These quintessential core values were summarised by Brown as

i. equality of opportunity;

ii. the right to a 'fair go';

iii. the right to social and legal justice;

iv. the right to a standard of living for all that allows a decent family life and the pursuit of human happiness under conditions that guarantee human dignity to all. [Brown, 1961:12,cf., Australian Council on Population and Ethnic Affairs 1982:5,12]

This speech clearly circumscribed quite narrow limits to cultural pluralism. It did recognise and appreciate the potential role of the emergent ethnic petite bourgeoisie in an augmented 'social elite'. There was also the implication that there were few if any substantial sections of the now-legitimated national groups which were not in fact beneficiaries of the rights conferred in accordance with these core values. 43

Yet, within a few months of Brown's speech, the 1961 recession had settled in, triggering new riots at Bonegilla, this time 'Yugoslav-led', [Jupp, 1966:30]. Again the riots were over unemployment and the virtual forced-labour status imposed on non-British immigrant workers. The conditions in the camp were such as to perpetuate 'the practices of fifteen years ago' [loc cit], while the Bulletin [11 November 1961:12] reported on migrants who had been in the camp ten months with only a few weeks of casual work. Whilst this may be seen as a somewhat extreme example of the lack of protection afforded to migrants by 'Australian' core values it is indicative of the dissonance between the ideology of and the reality of the migration experience which assimilationism widened during the sixties.

The ethnic bourgeoisie was in a crucial position in the developments of the 1960s. Although historically marginalised and patronised by the bureaucracies and politicians, they nevertheless shared the class values of the stage managers. They were thus able to develop the means of negotiating improvements in their own status and power through the welfare system. The Immigration Department did not seek with foresight to co-opt the ethnic leadership in some grand conspiracy. In fact, the process was very much one of attitudes changing due to enforced contact. Anglo supremacist values were still deeply embedded with many bureaucrats resisting strongly the leap into the 'national group' arena.

As an example of this, Walter Lippmann, an Australian Jewish Welfare Society (AJWS) leader and migration activist and also the first non-British migrant appointed to the Immigration Advisory Council (1968) described the first meeting of the lAC he attended. Lippmann hesitantly proposed that a special effort should be made to bond the children of migrants so that they could study social work and then work within their own ethnic community.

You could have heard a pin drop - there was a strong silence. After the meeting one of the senior officers of the Department said, 'What are you doing now, cup of coffee? Mr. Lippmann, this business about encouraging children of migrants to work within their own ethnic groups that you were making, that's not the stuff we want.' That was the atmosphere in 1967 in the Department ... They looked with suspicion at ethnic groups developing their own services, their own pressure groups ... [Lippmann: Interview]

Nevertheless, such attitudes were to come increasingly into conflict with a tendency to utilise the national groups for the purposes of the Department and in so doing to emphasise the pivotal role of 'community leaders'. Thus, at the 1968 Citizenship Convention, Departmental Secretary Peter Heydon argued that more 'specific and rational use' should be made of migrant and national groups. He referred to problems in mental hospitals, and in particular to the 'ways that had to be found of supplying very special attention of a 44 professional character to these migrants' whom he described as 'unfortunate casualties of a large-scale immigration movement', [DIGEST, 1968:53]. Heydon utilised the juxtaposition of concepts to imply that individual psychopathology was the crucial social problem. In response to that problem he indicated that 'there were some areas, particularly in the larger cities, where the most practical measures would be in making it financially possible for people with the right skills to work amongst existing agencies', [1968:54]. In the same year Heydon appointed an officer, Jim Houston to examine the possible contribution of the national groups, or, as Houston put it 'to try and engage the goodwill and support of the organisations to do the Department's dirty work', [Houston: Interview]. In that year also, the first grants-in-aid were made. The same Citizenship Convention as Heydon had addressed, heard a theoretical justification of the new Department line emerging from Dr. Jerzy Zubrzycki of the Australian National University. Drawing on the work of the American sociologist Milton Gordon [1964] Zubrzycki argued that:

While behavioural assimilation has taken place in Australia to a considerable degree, structural assimilation - the process by which immigrants and their descendants have become distributed in the social and occupational structure and have entered the political, social and cultural organisations of the receiving society - has not been very extensive, [1968:23].

The lack of occupational and social 'distribution' referred not to the lack of a concentration in the working class - but to a lack of an ethnic bourgeoisie and intelligentsia. The aim of government policy should thus have been, if we 'decode' Zubrzycki, to intervene sufficiently in the social structure to ensure that the economically upwardly mobile and dominant members of ethnic communities were accorded political and social recognition, status and prestige.

In 1968, Mr. Barnard, Deputy Leader of the ALP identified some crucial future problems, in particular that:

... the great economic and social re-adjustments produced by technological innovation will fall with particular severity on unskilled and semi-skilled migrants ... Australia is lagging sadly behind its competition in absorption techniques. [Barnard, 1968: 10]

At the 1969 Australian Institute of Political Science Conference on Poverty, where Professor Henderson released the first findings of the 1966 Melbourne study, W.C. Wentworth, Minister for Social Services reasserted the the real role of government was simply to provide residual support where the market failed, [Australian Iinstitute of Political Science 1969]. Yet for working class non-English speaking unskilled immigrants, the market was not providing for their welfare, particularly in personal or familial crisis. 45

Moreover, social policy was designed to maintain the 'incentive' to work and to enforce a labour and social discipline that was most beneficial to the male Anglo-Celtic middle class. Indeed Whitlam used Henderson's argument and data in a classic address to the 1970 Citizenship Convention on the welfare implications of migration. Whitlam locked the crisis in migrant settlement into an overall critique of the ideological and material crisis of the Australian state.

The fact is that for too long most Australians have assumed that the benefit of migration is all on one side. We tend to assume that mere permission to settle among us is a boon of such transcendental quality that simple gratitude and silent compliance are the sole duties of those upon whom this benefit is conferred. We have never been prepared to treat urgently for reasons either of justice or expediency, the matter of trade and professional qualification. We have thought it natural that migrants should be content to fill the lowest paid occupations, accept the costliest housing in the ugliest areas, send their children to the most crowded and least equipped schools, and accept worse health services, worse public transport, fewer recreational amenities and poorer urban services than are available in any European cities and centres from which they have come.

Australians now have to realise that in matters of health, housing, education, social welfare and urban services, Australia compares increasingly unfavourably with the very countries which provide - and must continue to provide - most of our migrants. We should no longer expect migrants to settle for the second rate, particularly when so much of what passes for our best is itself second rate by the standards of the countries with which we compare ourselves ...

(Migrants) have not the social capital for their establishment in marriage and accommodation. One migrant in every twelve becomes a victim of mental illness. Last year 23,500 migrants left Australia and took up residency elsewhere, mostly for housing reasons, but often because of health costs. [Whitlam, 1970:9]

The urban problems, issues of health insurance, housing and education were canvassed and it was clear that for Whitlam immigrants were suffering not because they were immigrants but because they were poor and isolated. The middle class migrants, the more affluent who benefitted from their dominance of the working class did not require the transferable pension, nor were they likely to be among 'the thousands of migrants (who) are injured in the course of their industrial employment every year in Australia', lop cif. :10].

This middle class immigrant sector included academics such as Zubrzycki, persons influential through the ethnic press, and the central figures in the ethnic welfare organisations which began to proliferate after 1968. Snedden's determination to 'use the national group for a whole range of purposes which would allow us to utilise all existing settlers to help new settlers' [Snedden: Interview] was in part a response to the pressure of editors of the ethnic newspapers. Snedden named in particular Nino Randazzo of 11 Globo. 46

[Randazzo who had founded the newspaper in 1959 along with Valmorbida and La Robina, had been an unsuccessful Democratic Labor Party candidate in the 1963 Victorian elections [Carli, 1982]. Also of importance were Costanza of La Fiamma and Dunin-Karwicki of the Association of Foreign Language Newspapers in Australia who were included in the Publicity Council at the Citizenship Convention of 1965, [Digest, 1965].

The role of the welfare agencies and some of the complex of factors shaping them can be seen from a brief account of the formation and development of two agencies, Comitato d'Assistencia Italiano (Co.As.It.) and Australian Greek Welfare Society (AGWS). The former, in particular demonstrates the ways in which social control, national class relations, both inter- and intra-communal and homeland political issues coalesced in the later 1960s.

Co.As.It. in particular has played a crucial role in the creation within the state of the concept of the "ethnic welfare agency", its appropriate role and field of work. It is also a very useful example of the way in which "ethnicity" is constructed and contested within the process of the class struggle.

The Co.As.It. model had its roots in the Italian community struggles against Fascism in the Melbourne of the 1930s. They were focussed around the establishment of a Casa d'Italia in Melbourne. Cresciani notes that:

besides exploiting existing institutions, the Fascists endeavoured to create new ones, more appropriate to their needs, constant attempts were made to build a Casa d'Italia in areas densely populated by Italians, [1980:28].

However, anti-Fascists acted quickly and established their own Casa in 1938, as a centre of education, generating and stimulating culture, in order to give the working class its leaders [Cresciani 1980:128]. It also contained a library, and ran dances, lectures, and political rallies, one of which was addressed by future Labor Immigration Minister Arthur CalweIl.

According to Cresciani, a leading light in the pro-Mussolini Casa group was G. Vaccari, then Fiat agent in Australia. The Fascist Casa was planned to provide a roof for returned service, youth, welfare, propaganda and sporting organisations. It would also include the Fascist Women's Organisation, the Dante Alighieri Society and the Club Cavour. This Casa had close links with the Catholic Church hierarchy, which was particularly concerned to establish Italian language children's schools to protect children "from the insidious objectives of the Communists" [Cresciani 1980: 188]. With the fall of Mussolini, Vaccari joined the Archbishop Mannix and B.A. Santamaria to set up an Italian Relief Appeal, the main clandestine aim of which was to erode support for the Italian Anti-Fascist groups. 47

Vaccari was instrumental in moving attitudes of Labor politicians such as Calwell against the Italian Left, and was described by Cresciani as the most remarkable representative of the group known as fiancheggiatori [1980:209] or opportunistic fellow travellers of Mussolini.

After the War, the Relief Fund became the basis of the 'Comitato Ascivescovile per l'Assistenza Agli Italiani', and it gained strong support from the Labor Government. According to Carli [1982:10] the Committee provided a base 'to contact and influence Italian migrants', and there were close links established between the National Civic Council, the Democratic Labor Party and the group associated with Vaccari after the 1956 ALP split in Victoria. The Italian experience was filtered to the Australian government by people like Mr. and Mrs. Vaccari and Randazzo of 11 Globo. The 'dangers' of national groups identified in the 1950s increasingly appeared to some senior political figures and public servants, not as threats but as opportunities, [Snedden, Vaccari: Interview].

In 1967 G. Vaccari and his wife, Elva Vaccari were involved in the establishment of Co.As.It. in Melbourne. The organisation was the initiative of the Italo-Australian bourgeoisie and petite bourgeoisie which by the mid 1960s was faced with a vastly increasing Italian population, much of which was southern and landless, compared to their own northern land-owning/business origins, [Ware 1981, Vaccari: Interview].

From the appointment of the first social worker on, there was continual conflict within Co.As.It. (Vie) over practice and day-to-day operations. The Committee was made up of people in the Vaccari network, Italians and Halo-Australians who met to nominate each other once a year at the annual general meetings. There was continuing tension with the social workers, who resented Mrs. Vaccari's Grande Dame style, her fierce insistence on helping the 'deserving' and castigating the 'undeserving' poor, personally visiting the 'poor' to give them food parcels and check up on their behaviour. Nevertheless, Co.As.lt. was the first welfare agency established to meet the needs of one ethnic community in the wake of the Long Boom inflow.

The development of a proposal for a Greek social welfare agency in Sydney separate from the Archdiocese was canvassed at meetings in 1969, but to no effect. In Melbourne, however, the success of Co.As.It. and the emergence of the community development perspective of the EMC (Ecumenical Migration Centre) provided a stimulus to the establishment of the third 'ethnic' welfare agency - The Australian Greek Welfare Society. The Society was created not by the entrepreneurial bourgeoisie who had been involved in 48

Co.As.It., but by a group of younger professionals, many of pre-war families, who had surmounted the problems of the newer arrivals.

The initial activists were Spiro Moraitis, a general practitioner, George Papadopoulos, a lawyer, and Nick Polites, a retired businessman, later to become a social worker. Their perception was of their clients, and other community members not receiving basic services, not indeed receiving anything like an appropriate response to their needs, [Moraitis, Papadopoulos: Interview]. Papadopoulos recalls that in about 1968 an increasing proportion of the work coming to the Greek-Australian legal firm with which he worked was of an advisory or form-filling nature. The firm gave this advice freely but it was becoming a major drain on the partnership and a source of concern about the lack of any suitable services. The 'needs' of the people with whom Papadopoulos and Moraitis worked were clearly not being met, a failure intensified by the increasing numbers of working class Greeks in the inner urban area and the poor quality of already over-extended services.

These increasing problems were perceived by people such as Papadopoulos and Moraitis as problems associated with the failure of the Anglo-Australian welfare system that should be addressed within that system. Papadopoulos described the frustration of trying to handle individual cases through a resistant and unsympathetic bureaucracy. With Moraitis, he identified the problems of workers' compensation cases where Greek clients suffered a 'disproportionate' number of injuries, and it took longer for their claims to be resolved, [see Morrissey and Jakubowicz 1980:passim, Papadopoulos, Moraitis: Interview].

In addition to the ethnic-based welfare agencies a number of cross-community organisations were formed in the later 1960s. Their importance lay in the links they made between migration and poverty, both in terms ofresearch and political lobbying. These organisations also developed some of the approaches which were to be of importance in the following decade.

.4 Tbe Politicisation of Migrant Welfare

The politicisation of immigration and migrant welfare developed rapidly in the years between the 1969 and 1972 elections. The 1971 Australian Institute of Political Science (AlPS) Conference on Migration drew up the main contestants ofthe debate, before a large Canberra audience. Jean Martin explored the question of pluralism: distinguishing the cultural ('the existence side by side within the framework of a single society of distinctive life-styles and institutional arrangements') from the structural version ('the situation where 49

a society's population is divided into distinct groups or sections') [Martin 1971:98] Her findings on these issues were inconclusive, though she had argued as early as 1953 that ethnic institutions were necessary for the retention of cultural identity, [Martin, 1981 :Ch.l]. She did believe that: -,-I I We are discovering that to be a non-British migrant in Australia today I -I means that you are more likely to be poor and socially isolated than the :1 rest of the population, and that your children are more likely to suffer educational disability than other children. I [Martin, 1971: 108]

\ -I Walter Lippmann, Chairman of the Migrant Welfare Committee of the Australian Council of Social Service and member of the Immigration Advisory Council responded to Martin with a call for a 'multicultural' society, [1971:114]. He identified a process of change at the cultural level:

:1 In the last ten years we have gingerly shifted the accent from migrant assimilation to migrant integration, recognising that there are differences in cultural background, experience, environment, and outlook which distinguish most migrants and even their children from the majority of -II -) Australians. -I I For most migrants ethnic background is meaningful because it is an _1 -\ important part of their personality. Coming to a strange country, they find security and a sense of belonging to their own national or ethnic group. We .1 -i are doing ourselves a great disservice in not openly recognising them and I utilising them for development of a multicultural society. Let us do away , with ambivalence: acculturation is taking place among the immigrants but we must not cripple their personalities by expecting them to renounce part of themselves. -'I [Lippmann, 1971:113-114] i ( i While the 'new' policy of integration had officially replaced assimilation in 1964 with 'I \ the renaming of the relevant Department of Immigration section, it is important to I recognise that its roots lay not so much in the process of cultural sensitization implicit I in Lippman's view, but in the harsher realities of international economic change and I I collapsing domestic urban infrastructures. The new policy emerged as a result of the l concern of Immigration Department bureaucrats, politicians and industrialists over falling immigration, conditioned by increased inter-action with emerging ethnic 'leaders'. The I ! new synthesis was an extremely unstable one on which to base the policy. The political \ processes intitiated by the recognition of national groups developed their own momentum. l ,I Integrationism was an inadequate policy anyway, in that it required government to accept I responsibility for a substantial range of migrant welfare needs while instituting no effective I machinery to meet these needs.

"I i I I 50

This ideological shift was taking place at a time when public awareness of the disadvantages suffered by many migrants was increasing. The ability of groups of migrants to articulate this deprivation was also increasing, during a period of radical questioning of many aspects of the conservative political system, not least its attitude to social welfare.

The urban crisis in Australia during the mid to late 1960s ostensibly a period of "boom", was expressed primarily in the poverty of the public provision of services. This crumbling, and often barely existing network of schools, hospitals, social services, child care centres, public transport and public housing created unprecedented problems for service delivery agencies. Many of these crises were simply ignored, particularly when those experiencing them could not articulate their demands in English.

In the period 1961-66, net migration of the overseas-born accounted for 53070 of Sydney's metropolitan population growth and for 57070 of Melbourne's, [Choi and Burnley, 1974:59]. During that period Italians made up 28% of all non-Commonwealth immigrants and Greeks 31070. In fact in 1966 something like 44070 of all post-war Greek arrivals had come to Australia in the previous five years and in 1964-5 Greeks accounted for 35070 of all non-British settlers. The rapid growth in the concentration of South European migrants in the inner city areas led to a process in which migrants were to be established as a disadvantaged group, thus exposing the gap between the rhetoric and the reality of integrationism.

Generally, the thrust of contemporary social research was that whereas for "all recent migrants the incidence of poverty was not significantly different from the population as a whole", [McCaughey, 1970:19], the lack of social mobility among working class Southern migrants and their lower earning were significant. McCaughey found that one in five (19.70/0) of recently arrived Greeks were 'poor' or 'marginal' compared with the Australian figure of 13070 and the Italian figure of 17070. Moreover, non-English speaking immigrants with few skills were greatly at risk of being poor if something else in their environment went 'wrong'. Injury, illness or unemployment, the loss of overtime, having a large family, were workforce-related causes of poverty. For a recent migrant, the chances of being in poverty were very much higher than for the Australian born. This was the result of a 'migrant' status only amongst the unskilled and semi-skilled working class, and was not apparently predictable by 'ethnicity'. McCaughey summarised her findings by noting that most 'migrants' had:

. .. shared in the general prosperity. But in the older and sometimes decaying inner city areas there are big concentrations of Southern Europeans who were less fortunate. Many live in overcrowded conditions beset by 51

problems of poverty, poor health, and dear housing. Their children go to schools which are old and poorly equipped for both work and play. [1970:143-4]

Prosperity was a dream with a declining rate of satisfaction throughout the 1960s, despite high immigration rates. Australian social welfare services - both in personal social service and income security - bypassed many of the problems experienced by non-Anglo immigrants. These problems included those created by the 'no-income' aged parents on maintenance guarantees, familial responsibilities stretching over thousands of miles, excessive housing costs, the poor health care provision and the lack of bilingual personnel in the caring professions.

This type of evidence when matched against the rhetoric of the Immigration Department and poor provision of services by the Government produced increasing frustration in those involved in service delivery. This frustration was well expressed at the 1970 Citizenship Convention by Professor John Lawrence of the University of New South Wales School of Social Work who stated that:

. .. recent official statements and the activities of the Integration Branch of the Immigration Department demonstrate a new-found concern for the social welfare of migrants. This recent concern seems to have been stimulated at least as much by the need to have living conditions which, competitively with other countries, will attract and retain skilled labour, as by a genuine concern for their personal well-being as fellow human beings. [Lawrence, 1970:5]

Lawrence's solution, and one which was to gain a great deal of acceptance in some of the more active community organisations, was his advocacy of the professionalisation of ethnic services - in particular what has become known as community development. Without professionals employed at the intra-organisational, inter-organisational, and community level, the danger was that "service systems are more likely to serve the needs of the functionaries of the system rather than people for whom the system had been established", [1970:9].

The ineffectuality of the existing agencies was highlighted in Sydney and Melbourne by the emergence of new types of welfare agencies. These agencies sought to understand the range of personal and social issues generated for cultural and other minorities by a sloppy and inadequate, individual-pathology approach to welfare needs. In Melbourne, the Australian Council of Churches had, in the 1950s, set up a youth project in Fitzroy to meet the social needs of single male youth, primarily Hungarians fleeing the 1956 uprising. The Brotherhood of S1. Laurence, an Anglican group, later to be the base of the ...

• I 52

Melbourne Poverty establishment, provided the intial support [D.Cox, Scott: Interview] for the project. David Cox, a young minister, established a coffee house/expresso bar centre, which worked with Hungarian refugees, and later young Yugoslavs. The organisation, the Ecumenical Migration Centre (E.M.C.), also worked with young Greeks who lived in the inner urban area and for whom the politico-religious structure of the churches provided little support. Cox described the Centre work as that of 'mediation' throughout the early and mid 1960s, seeking to provide a way of overcoming the 'isolation' of immigrant youth from the inter-community structures, [D.Cox: Interview]. The EMC continued its 'bridging' work which was essentially assimilationist in goal - to overcome the distance and resistance between immigrant youth and the host society. Alan Matheson joined the EMC in 1966, after three years as a street worker in an inner city parish 'with two dying churches', [Matheson: Interview]. The street work style was influenced by contemporary strategies developed in the USA and Britain around unstructured contacts, and the establishment of informal networks. Unlike Cox, Matheson had been a school teacher. The mid-60s provided Matheson with a very real contact with hundreds of second generation youth, troubled by unemployment, family tensions, and lack of support and opportunity. Many of these issues were those of an urban proletariat - intensified by structural racism and discrimination and social networks which lacked detailed 'survival knowledge'.

For the most part resources for these programmes came from the Victorian Council of Churches, with little if any State support. The assimilationist policies of the Federal government, while increasingly wrapped in integrationist 'two-way' rhetoric, as always allowed the voluntary sector to pursue its programmes of under-resourced, over-stretched and essentially voluntarily staffed casework and groupwork.

In Sydney, organisations such as the South Sydney Community Aid (also a protestant Church-based organisation) and the Migrant Issues Group were addressing similar problems. The Group was an informal network of mainstream 'community-based' professionals and newly active social welfare personnel of ethnic origin or associated with 'ethnic' or 'migrant' agencies. It provided a focus for discussion of the crises in migrant services, though its inchoate structure rendered it directionless - particularly as many of the key activists in the Group sought to use it in support of particular bureaucratic battles. The Group was generated by a coalition of workers drawn from the community health section of the NSW Health Commission, and met regularly in Paddington. Earlier proposals that the Group should provide a base for Action Groups were blocked, primarily by the Immigration Department social worker, [Migrant Issues Group Minutes 7 April 1971: 14 July 1971]. The major issues raised were those of the crisis in medical and psychiatric 53

interpreting, while particular sub-committees met to act on issues affecting Lebanese and Turkish immigrants. By August 1971, the Group had produced a special interpreters' sub-committee which sought to convince the Good Neighbour Council executive to act on the issue. The GNC social worker and field officer participated in the Group, but the GNC executive refused to accept the proposal, [Migrant Issues Group Minutes 15 September 1971].

Such tension between the GNC field staff and ethnic welfare personnel, and the GNC executive was to lead to major political clashes on this and other issues and eventually the abandonment of the Council by many ethnic groups. By the end of 1971, the Immigration Department social worker was playing an increasingly 'controlling' role in the meetings, while the focus of discussion had shifted to provision of English classes. A Special Interest Group, which spun off from MIG also produced a model of approaches to migrant welfare - remarkably similar to Liffman's 1981 study of immigrant welfare, [Liffman, 1981 :25-28]. these were:

i. ethnic based welfE!l'e service;

n. locally based migrant welfare service;

ill. locally based general welfare service;

iv. centrally located general information welfare service. [Migrant Issues Group, 1971:2]

The activities of the Migrant Issues Group indicated that there was very little organised strategy at the local level. No real impact was made at the time, though the issues raised by the Group were to be of continuing importance.

I . ,i' The 1967 Turkish Migration Agreement opened up immigration from the Asian continent on a formal basis, and reflected the reduced interest from traditional sources. The Turkish Migration Agreement, even if more honoured in the breach than the observance also marked the public acceptance of a new level of government responsibility for migrant welfare, [Yalchin, 1973]. The Agreement [External Affairs, 1967] recognised the right of Turkish children to learn their own language in Australia and sought to guarantee access to English language classes to all assisted migrants, [Article 21:1]. Moreover, in possibly the most ambiguous clause, given the state of social services at the time, 'Turkish citizens employed in Australia' were to be given the social service and national assistance benefits 'which Australia provides (for) ... its own citizens on the same terms as apply to its own citizens', [Article 18:1]. They were also to have the same standards of health, industrial

-, 54 safety and lodgings. According to both Yalchin (in 1973 editor of the Turkish Herald) and others, crucial needs in relation to childcare, housing and labour market exploitation did emerge rapidly but were in no way addressed by the Australian Government, [Yalchin, 1973, Dimech: InterviewJ

The implications of a pluralistic thrust to policy became more identifiable when the Government announced early in 1972 that certain pensions would be payable to Australian citizens while outside the country. The entitlement was to cover Aged, Invalid and Widows pension payments only in those countries with which Australia had a reciprocal agreement, [Sydney Morning Herald, 31 January 1971:1J. While the Government was preparing the legislation other 'migrant' problems were being publicised. The Bulletin [11 March 1972:25J, under the headline 'Nothing to excite Turkish delight', described the problems of Turkish settlement, reporting Turks who claimed that Australian officials in Ankara had lied about Australia. The major problems were housing and child-care.

Throughout 1971 and 1972 newspaper articles exposed the plight of immigrants and the development of inner urban ghettoes. Thus in April 1971 the Sydney Morning Herald ran a feature article on 'the sad men without women', cataloguing the despair of lonely immigrant men. The article pointed out that male immigrants had outnumbered female by 27,682 to 14,200 in the 15 to 44 years age group, [Sydney Morning Herald 22 April 1971:7], and despite earlier programmes in consultation with the Young Women's Christian Association to bring out single women this was yet another migrant 'problem' to which the Department had no effective response, except perhaps 'the market'. Later that year the Herald ran another feature examining the question of immigrants as 'industrial cannon fodder', [Sydney Morning Herald 28 September 1971:6J.

The debate on migration, so clearly marked out at the 1971 AlPS Conference, also contained a strong attack on the programme from the emergent environmentalist lobby. The general argument advanced by the Zero Population Growth advocates was to restrict immigration as part of a general anti-growth strategy to guarantee community welfare and protect the environment, [Sharp 1971: 130ff, and also Birrell and Birrell, 1981J. The migration intake (237,000 in 1969) [Appleyard 1971:26] was seen by some critics such as Walsh as the result of vested bureaucratic interests by the Department of Immigration. "Nowhere [in the public serviceJ is bureaucratic self-survival so highly developed as it is in the Department of Immigration", [1971: 169].

The impact of such criticism can be seen from the Department reaction to the NSW Mental Health Association's conference on "Controversies Concerning Australian Migration", 55

[29 May 1972]. According to Merenda [Interview] the welfare staff of the Immigration Department were prohibited from attending by the Senior Social Worker on the grounds of the potentially radical comments by the speakers. The conference was important enough to elicit a personal letter to each speaker from F.J. Darling, Executive Director of the Employers' Federation of NSW, commending the editorial from the March 1972 The Employers' Review. The article advocated the continuation of a high level of migration, with one of the propositions concerning immigrant welfare, housing and education leaving no doubts as to the Employers' perception of migration:

To argue that the migrant population has imposed undue and perhaps unnecessary strains upon our social institutions such as schools, hospitals and the like is unfair because in the majority of cases migrants have in fact occupied housing in what had become depressed inner suburbs where their children helped to fill the schools built a century ago, and which otherwise would be lying partly idle.

It is fair to say, that the migrant population has in many instances utilised housing, services and amenities which naturally-born Australians were not prepared to occupy or utilise. And this has been to the advantage of the 'old' Australians who owned older properties in those older suburbs who have reaped substantial capital gains from this demand.

The prelude to the 1972 Federal election focussed attention on the importance of the 'ethnic' vote. The role of the ethnic communities was featured in an assessment of the political position of the ethnic press, The Bulletin [7 October 1972], claimed the Italian .' press was neutral, while the Greek papers would support Labor. Calomeris of the 'Hellenic Herald' identified unemployment as the crucial issue.

The pension agreement with Italy was reached in November, as were the agreements with Turkey, Malta and Greece. However the Liberal Party seemed not to have sensed the extent of groundswell for the ALP in many ethnic communities, and failed to develop any specially targetted policies or material, other than a commitment to high migration levels, [Lajovic: Interview]. Whitlam responded to the portability agreements by urging international portability without prior inter-governmental agreement, [Sydney Morning Herald, 6 November 1972:2].

The December election brought a social democratic party into power in Canberra for the first time in 23 years. It was the Party that had initiated the Migration program. In 1972 it was pledged to cut back on migration and divert resources to the welfare of the community. It was also committed to a non-racial migration program, and the removal of inequality and discrimination. Australian class relations, of which immigrants were a crucial and

." 56 growing part, were changing such that the hegemony of an Anglo-Celtic bourgeoisie could be and was threatened. 57

CHAPTER FOUR

THE GROUNDWORK FOR MULTICULTURALISM

.1 Social Policy under Labor

The Australian Labor Party has traditionally pursued a social program which has been concerned with extending the scope of the state - in this sense it has generally held to an "institutionalist" strategy of welfare. This approach need not lead it into major conflict with the core values and structures of the "liberal political order". Indeed,as we have shown, in the case ofthe migration program, a Labor government had been able to institute a major labour inflow with far less social conflict than a conservative government would have caused.

The Labor Party has tended to pursue questions of social justice above those of individual rights and freedoms, which while not contesting the fundamental logic of the free market has tested those boundaries. The Labor Party has been aware of the need to limit the primary role of the labour market as the allocator of welfare, and has proclaimed its commitment, however momentary, to increased public participation in and reduced bureaucratic control of the other components of the welfare system.

The Labor Party that came to power in 1972 did so at a time when the conflict over the Australian role in Vietnam, the recent political instability in the coalition parties, and the social, economic and political fall-out of the ending of the long boom, were eroding the conservative myopia of post-war social policy. The press to reform the system in pursuit of the values of social justice and equity was thus heightened, at least until the conservative counter attack was firmly in place. Peter Wilenski, to be Labour and Immigration Department Secretary in the last year of that Labor government has noted that:

The Whitlam Labor Government was firmly reformist. Its major concern was with the inequalities it saw in Australain society - inequalities in access to education and to health care, inequalities in urban environment, inequalities in housing, inequalities in other basic amenities - and it set out to correct those inequalities whether they were based on income, sex or ethnic origin. [Wilenski 1978:28]

The Labor Party sought to introduce reform through the utilisation of the bureaucracy. Yet the bureaucracy was the agency through which the processes of control necessary to 58 sustain an inegalitarian and exploitive social and economic system had been instituted. The bureaucratic constraints reflected the central role of the state in the maintenance of the conditions necessary for the accumulation of capital, reproduction of capitalism, and the continuing dominance of the social class which gained the most benefit from that system. The Labor Ministry was soon being "resocialised" by that bureaucracy, and much of the reformist zeal disintegrated under this systematic erosion by the public service, [Wilenski 1978:35]. The Immigration Department senior bureaucrats were not only classic expressions of their class, but also enshrined in a very specialised and refined manner the subtle and not-so-subtle racism of a Department historically charged with the preservation of racial purity.

Al Grassby, the Labor Immigration Minister (1973-74), has suggested that the Citizenship Conventions were abandoned by the Department after 1970 because of the insistence of Australian Chinese that they wished to attend [Grassby: Interview], while Wilenski claimed that initial Labor hostility to Immigration arose from some Labor Ministers' belief that there were 'many racist officers in the Department or people who were unconsciously racist', [Wilenski: Interview].

Labor's initial move in immigration was the reduction of the immigrant intake by 21.40/0 [Sydney Morning Herald, 17 July 1973], foreshadowing an attempt to link migration policies to labour market requirements and social welfare, [Wilenski: Interview; Mulvihill 1972:4-5]. However, the crucial interventions were those which sought to empower the inarticulate and disadvantaged sectors of society, among which migrants were a major group. Martin, for instance, identified the Australian Assistance Plan as a crucial program which allowed the formation of Regional Councils of Social Development through which migrant issues could be raised. It had 'the most potential to change' [1978:50]. Another strategy was a rCither more bureaucratic manoeuvre developed by Grassby as Immigration Minister. This was the establishment of Migrant Task Forces designed to overcome bureaucratic blockages generated by inter-departmental committees, [Wilenski, 1978:37]. The first Task Force was created in NSW in March 1973, chaired by Labor MHR Dr. R. Klugman. Its ten other members included three Department officers, three Good Neighbour Council officials, two Anglo-Australian social workers, a state bureaucrat and an academic [Migrant Task Force NSW 1973:3]. The communal response to the initiative included a critical circular labelled 'AI's Task Farce'. While the circular carried no signatures, contemporary reports attributed it to activists involved in the Melbourne ethnic rights movement. The Melbourne circular claimed that: 59

A fresh and close look at migrant welfare provisions has been long overdue and the Minister for Immigration had indicated that he considered this necessary. He promoted anticipation of the appointment of persons other than the self-same who have contributed so much under the previous government to the preservation of the status quo.

However, the 'new' task force is characterised by conservative and uncritical persons who supported and worked for the past policies that gave rise to the current social condition of migrants in this city ...

The ridiculous state of affairs exists where there is absolutely no migrant representation on the Task Force. The least that one could expect is that those members of our ethnic community who have been actively involved in the migrant welfare field be represented on the Task Force ...

No confidence can be placed in the entire operation and as a 'contribution' to migrant welfare it is shameful. Persons interested or working in the field should consider whether they have responsibility to indicate their disappointment and to press for more satisfactory arrangements.

Following these and other critical comments, the Task Force membership was expanded to include a number of professionals of ethnic origin, active in their communal organisations (e.g. George Lapaine, an Italian solicitor involved in Co.As.It. (NSW) and later a Liberal government appointee to the Board of the Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs).

The Task Force reports brought together the contemporary arguments being developed within the welfare sector [vide: Migrant Issues Group] and foreshadowed many of the proposals that were to be part of the 1978 Galbally report, [Bertelli, 1979]. On welfare issues the national conference of Task Forces in February 1974 canvassed proposals on community relations, interpreters, ethnic communities, social services, information, migrant education and citizenship. In announcing the national Conferences, Grassby said:

The fact that the Australian Government has found an additional $10 million to promote welfare services to migrants was due largely to the public awareness which has been created in every state by the migration Task Forces. [News Release, Dept. of Immigration, 89/73, 25 November 1973]

The proposals relevant to social policy included a commitment of Department of Immigration staff to a community development orientation, an extension of the grant-in­ aid scheme to welfare officers, and support for community development and social action in grant-in-aid agencies.

The extension of direct Departmental welfare services to immigrants was announced by the Minister in March 1973. The Department was to increase greatly the number of welfare officers to forty-eight - sixteen in Sydney, seventeen in Melbourne, four each 60 in Brisbane and Perth, three in Hobart and Adelaide and one in Darwin, [Scotton and Ferber, 1979:221]. The scheme had its origins, according to Francesca Merenda, in the Department's perception of the role of Italian community volunteers in the settlement of the Sicilian earthquake victims in Australia in the late 1960s. The Department drew heavily on 'untrained' volunteers, though Merenda had a long experience of voluntary welfare, her father having helped set up the Halo-Australian Club after coming to Sydney following his release from internment. Merenda was the first Immigration Department welfare officer, appointed in 1971. The expansion of the scheme was in the 'pipeline' before the 1972 election, though Grassby accelerated and increased the appointments, [Grassby, Merenda: Interviews] .

There was also strong support for the limitation of maintenance guarantees to three years, and automatic eligibility for invalid and widows pensions. The housing problems of migrants were placed on the agenda for future action, with emphasis on the use of low-interest loans. In recognition of the extended family pattern so prevalent in some migrant communities, family health insurance should be extended to include aged dependent parents who were under maintenance guarantees. There were also proposals for work-based child care programs employing child care workers of appropriate ethnic origin [Migrant Task Forces Social Services 1974: passim.) Strong support was given to the role of ethnic groups in integration, while the Victorian group, under the influence of Lippman, discussed the question of multicultural Australia, recommending:

That a national workshop be held to explore the concept and implications of the 'family of the nation'. [Migrant Task Forces Community Relations, 1974:2]

In addition, the NSW Task Force circulated a report on Community Resource Centres [Jakubowicz, 1974] which drew on an earlier proposal from the same source [May 1973] for a Community Relations Commission. The Resource Centre would be a neighbourhood based organisation supported not by one Department but by the Government as a whole, while local communities might help to define needs. These might include:

Information - along the lines of the Canadian Neighbourhood Information Services and Citizens' Advice Bureau. These generate a flow of information both to people in need of such information and also act as feedback to government on the effects of their programs on the street.

Interpreters - to develop a pool of local interpreters to be made available to all those in need of such services at short notice. Such interpreters would service not only the requirements of the local information centres but also local hospitals and doctors and local workers. 61

Community Development - this would aid the formation of local groups and provide them with access to resources to generate and protect their own interests.

Legal Aid - a Legal Aid and Counselling Service via funding from the Federal Attorney-General's Department to provide a variety of legal information and support services.

Local Planning - to provide information on local governments and regulations and act as an access point to advocacy planners where there is a need for this service.

It is envisaged that such a Centre would service a varying population of between 12,000 and 20,000 people. [Jakubowicz 1974:2-3] [see also Jakubowicz and Buckley, 1975]

While the proposition was aimed at the provision of Government resources to heavily migrant neighbourhoods, an issue discussed by di Nicola, a locality-based worker with the Australian Assistance Plan funded Inner Sydney Regional Council for Social Development [Martin 1978:50-52], more autonomous developments were occuring within certain ethnic communities, and inter-communally among working class, community and trade union activists.

•2 Strategies Inside and Outside the State - Ethnic Rights

'Ethnic rights' approaches were drawn from the perspective which claimed that 'migrants' were not 'clients' with 'needs' to be 'met' but rather participants in society with rights to be satisfied.

In Victoria, the Australian Greek Welfare Society formalised itself around that strategy. In 1970 the small informal group which was to form the Australian Greek Welfare Society held a series of discussion nights and seminars, which included Matheson and Moustakis from the EMC. This group was involved in 1972 with an intra-communal struggle for control of the Greek Orthodox community in which they were successful, [Moraitis: Interview]. Soon after the 1972 election they approached the new Australian Government for support, having canvassed the appropriate models of welfare with Co.As.!t. and the Australian Jewish Welfare Society, [Storer, Lippmann, Moraitis, Papadopoulos: Interviews]. The Community was not perceived as a 'welfare' agency, so the group which had previously met to discuss social issues as the Greek Professionals group, used that organisation to establish AGWS. As well, Papadopoulos was an active member of the ALP. Despite these contacts (or because of them?) resistance within the Department to a Greek grant was very strong. 62

Grassby kept on promising us a grant-in-aid but it took a lot of telegrams and a tremendous amount of lobbying to get that one grant-in-aid. [Moraitis: Interview]

The effectiveness of lobbying over the Department also paralleled struggles against the Department-supported, very conservative Good Neighbour Council in Victoria [Storer: Interview]. In the process of refining the concept of ethnic rights that Storer had begun to propound in 1973 (he joined the Fitzroy Ecumenical Centre in late 1972, later to be the Centre for Urban Research and Action; CURA], AGWS activists became heavily involved in social policy under the Labor government. Papadopoulos, a college lecturer, was appointed as 'the statutory migrant' to the Social Welfare Commission, which launched the Australian Assistance Plan, [Coleman, Papadopoulos: Interviews].

Marie Coleman, Chairman of the Social Welfare Commission from 1973 to 1976, suggested that the Greek and Italian professional groups - the intelligentsia and their bourgeois allies - were perhaps seeking to build up

exactly the same kind of empire that Anglo-Australian welfare organisations and churches had built with the aid of government. [Coleman: Interview]

The Greek professionals, influenced by the EMC and CURA, were developing an ethnic rights argument - that some services could be more effectively delivered intra-communally while governments should also extend their own programs making them more responsive and sensitive to ensure ethnic access. In pursuing this track, they provide some evidence for the class basis for the mobilization of ethnicity in advanced capitalism as lying with the intelligentsia, as suggested by Smith [1981]. There is additional evidence about the class dimension of the "ethnic" rights issue in the relationship between the intelligentsia and the bourgeoisie within particular "communities".

The Italian welfare organisation, Co.As.It. provides a successful case study to explore a number of these issues. We have already noted how Co.As.It. provided the model chosen by the Conservative government as the appropriate response to the welfare needs of immigrants. The model institutionalised the power of the dominant strata in the Italian community. However, by 1972 this power bloc was facing an intensifying contest for control of the community, and its legitimacy as the Italian welfare voice was threatened. In late 1972 a branch of FILEF (Federazione Italiana Lavoratori Emigrati e Famiglie] was established in Melbourne. The organisation had been established in Europe in the early 1960s in the wake of the guest-worker program in Switzerland and West Germany, and was one of a number of political party and trade union linked migrant workers' politics/welfare 63 organisations such as Associazone Nazionale Famiglia Emigrate (linked to the D.C.I. ­ Christian Democratic Party). By the early 1970s many of these organizations had begun to make demands of the Italian government for state provision of financial resources.

The issues of migrant workers were to be discussed at a national conference in 1975, following which state funds would be allocated according to the evident strength of the groups outside Italy.

The FILEF strategy in Australia involved a linkage of community work and political demands through grass roots organisation in heavily working class areas of Melbourne. In the spirit of Gramsci and in reflection of the anti-fascist Casa d'Italia of 1938-40, FILEF's main organiser, I. Salemi, began to build a strong local base, involving many working class Italians. The primary focus was on the training of cadres in community organising. It was hoped to transfer the lessons of Italian urban social movements to the Australian context.

The crucial role played by Co.As.It. in the Melbourne and also Australian development of ethnic welfare, became apparent during the period. In 1974 the then Minister for Social Security Bill Hayden met with a group of Melbourne ethnic rights workers and in that meeting evolved a proposal that within six months became the Welfare Rights Officers program. The concept was drawn from strategies developed in the UK and Canada, and argued that the major issues in inequality were rooted in a process of political oppression, and had to be confronted at the level of political process: advocacy, conflict, confrontation on denial of rights, [Matheson, 1974]. By 1974 FILEF was strong enough to apply for and be granted a Welfare Rights Officer. After seven years of almost total domination of the Italian welfare field by Co.As.It. with its strong conservative bias, the appearance of FILEF created a major crisis for the Committee.

From the beginning the conflict was ideological -

FILEF was saying that there were many problems; Co.As.It. saying we are solving them, but underneath there aren't any problems. [Bertelli: Interview]

However, as a strategy to head off overt conflict the Federal Government ensured that Co.As.It. was also awarded a Welfare Rights Officer [Angelone 1977:64-67]. FILEF had also utilised the ethnic rights strategy, but in the case of the Italian community this strategy was tantamount to a class-based struggle, contesting the hegemonic role of the Italian bourgeoisie. 64

While the struggles took place in the community, there were clear linkages between the dynamics of those conflicts and class action in the factories by immigrant workers. These were framed by the growing industrial problems apparent as the long boom dissipated in the onset of a global crisis and recession. In April 1973 the Department of Labour rejected a proposal by Broken Hill Proprietary Co. Ltd. to recruit 300 migrants for its Whyalla plant in South Australia.

The reasons given were that wages and conditions were insufficient to attract Australian workers because it had the second highest unemployment rate in the country. [Sydney Morning Herald, 17 July 1973]

The growing economic and social crisis underpinned action by the 'industrial cannon fodder' at the Ford Broadmeadows vehicle plant. The workers struck against the union and 'rioted' in June. Migrant worker leaders soon organised a migrant workers' conference in Melbourne in October [Martin, 1978: 199-201). The resolutions declarations and proposals of the Conference contained propositions about Social Needs and Rights as well as industrial issues. The first of the former was that 'money sent overseas for the support of family and other dependants should be tax deductable', [Committee on Migrant Workers' Problems 1973:8]. The attacks on the trade union leadership, who for years had generally supported the migration program and its creation of an 'ethnic' stratum in the workforce, were outspoken and consistent. The Conference, for instance, agreed that:

. .. the migrants' lack of representation in the trade union movement, the poor communications between migrants and their unions and between migrants and their fellow Australian workers, had limited the means by which migrants can make their own particular demands known and has prevented their effective participation in the working class struggle. This has helped to allow the continuation of an exploitative and racist immigration policy and the even more vicious exploitation of migrants and especially women migrants ... [Committee on Migrant Workers' Problems 1973:8]

.3 The Onset of Multiculturalism - Bureaucracy in Motion

The 'integrationist' model was being reconstructed within the state initially as the 'family of the nation', and then as 'multiculturalism'. Throughout 1973 pressure was brought to bear on Immigration Minister Grassby to hold a public debate on the end of the 'homogeneous and cohesive society', [Lippmann, Grassby: Interview; Migrant Task Force, Community Relations, 1973]. Lynch as Immigration Minister under the Liberal government had declared in 1971 that Australia was just such a united and cohesive community which should reject: 65

undigested minorities ... substantial groups of ethnic ongm were very different from the host community: proud of that difference and determined to perpetuate it: seeking to discourage inter-marriage: desiring to have separate political representation: and ready to dispute the efforts of the national government to encourage integration. [Lynch 1971:15-16]

Grassby asserted that Australia was to be a multicultural society and that cultural differences should be recognised and respected - not that by 1973 they could be ignored, [Grassby: 1973a]. A reference paper had been prepared by Jim Houston, the National Group's officer in the Department who said of the process of getting it to Grassby:

· .. what was frustrating to me was it soon became clear that none of the stuff that I was putting up was getting through to him, it was being sat upon by people at top level ... it came to a head ... when I was asked to write a speech for Grassby to give in a symposium called Australia; the year 2000 and seized the chance and wrote a whole great diatribe of ideology for him · .. to this day I don't know how it ever got through the Department ... [Houston: Interview]

Not only Houston had problems by-passing the bureaucracy. Lippmann was continually unsuccessful in even meeting with Grassby officially about the issue. Lippmann had proposed such a seminar to the Immigration Advisory Council before the election in 1972, but had been blocked by the Department.

They not only refused to support it but they felt it was a very dangerous thing to do. Then when Grassby became the Minister, we reversed our talks about that, and we in fact asked for a meeting with the Minister to discuss it. After long hunting back and forth the meeting was eventually set up to discuss the desirability of such a conference.

· .. Grassby was late, there were introductions, the usual preliminary talks, talked for about ten minutes, when a senior Departmental Officer came and called him out and wasn't seen back.... Needless to say, the conference on multiculturalsim never took place. [Lippmann: Interview]

Grassby confirmed that senior Departmental officers had advised him not to become involved in any discussions about multiculturalism due to its 'unfortunate' connotations of multi-racialism. A non-racial immigration policy clearly did not mean, for the Department, a multi-racial society, [Grassby: Interview].

In the May 1974 election, Grassby lost his Parliamentary seat, partly as a result of his electorate suffering excessively from many of the decisions in the 1973 budget, partly as a result of the major racist campaign against him, [Sydney Morning Herald 23 July 1974]. In June the Prime Minister announced the 'dismemberment' of the Department of Immigration. No existing account of the dismemberment of the Department does more 66 than offer an explanation in terms of disjunction between the Departmental view and the policy commitment of the Labor Government to the reduction of intake levels. The essence of this view is that a Department that had formed a remarkedly consistent and rigid 'line' on immigration was, in 1972, subjected to political masters who were attempting to reverse an orthodoxy unquestioned from the top since 1947. While it is clearly the case that there was political disagreement over immigration levels which did, in fact, lead to considerable friction between Grassby and the Department, this does not exhaust the reasons for dismemberment.

Certain sections of the Labor party saw the experience of migrant disadvantage as extending well beyond the arrival period, a view which was strongly resisted by the Department. In addition influential members of the government, Whitlam and Grassby included, regarded many Department officers as racist. They felt that the existence of the Department 'ghettoised' ethnic affairs, preventing a generalised sensitization of service delivery departments to migrant problems. Labor social policy by 1974 was increasingly identifying rigidity within the Commonwealth bureaucracy as a major impediment to social change. Thus, Social Security perpetuated residual and punitive responses to social need, while Immigration enshrined a numbers-oriented program which was patronising and resistant to the idea of migrant welfare programs beyond the post-settlement period.

The crucial action in the dismemberment of the Department, that of the move of the Recruitment and Planning Section to the Department of Labour under Whitlam's ex-secretary Wilenski as Permanent Head, was never carried through. However the move of Migrant Services Unit to Social Security marked a sharp break with both previous settlement and social welfare policies. The insistence of the Labor Government on reduced immigration levels arose not just out of trade union pressure but also out of a conviction that migrants themselves might be the most disadvantaged by continuing high immigration during periods of contracting employment. In fact, reduced immigration was necessary to achieve three key programs of the Labor Government:

i. Resolution of the crisis in urban services (through Urban and Regional Development): migration had increased urban populations far more rapidly than basic services could accommodate, leading to inner urban ghettoisation, unplanned sprawling suburbia and non-existent public transport and infra­ structure, [Birrell and Birrell, 1981].

ii. Overcoming inefficiency of industry: hiding behind high tariffs, Australian industry had used immigrants as cheap labour in poor working conditions, 67

and had continued to lobby for high levels of migration, even as unemploYment rose. In the view of Labor ministers the Department was in collusion with employers to provide replacement labour for vacancies caused by high labour turnover in low paid and poor conditions thus avoiding the use of new, more efficient technologies.

ill. Institutionalised social rights: Labor's social philosophy of Government guaranteeing to citizens the opportunity for a full and satisfying life, even when dependent on social security benefits, of stimulating participation in social, political and economic affairs by the more powerless members of society, was stYmied by Immigration Department resistance to anything but a residual notion of welfare need.

The range and centrality of programs and interests affected by or affecting the decision to dismember the Department suggests it was a very significant event. It follows that the decision of the Liberal party while in opposition in August 1975, to reconstitute and expand the functions of the Department, represents a reversal of Labor Party policies over a much wider range of issues than mere target figures for immigration. The transfer under Labor of Immigration personnel to other Departments, a difficult enough process, was rationalised as a means of ensuring all Departments were made sensitive to migrant needs. However, the effect was somewhat different despite the desire to 'institutionalise ethnic sensitivity' through all government Departments, [Houston: Interview].

There was no preliminary thinking and no planning about it and the senior Departmental officers that were the conservative elements in terms of assimilation policy ended up as key personnel 'experts' on migrant issues in other Departments, and therefore in a blocking situation ... the conservative element was dispersed and it was in fact, in some respects put into a much more powerful position ... in Social Security for instance ... there was always a brake there on the development of cultural pluralism in services. [Lippmann: Interview]

Thus a strategy that might have moved services into a more culturally relevant stage actually froze development by introducing exceptionally conservative perceptions of migrant needs into mainstream bureaucracies. However, given the role of the state in the maintenance of class relations, and the location of non-English speaking migrants in the Australian class structure, the movement of the middle class, male, racist bureaucrats around the Public Service may have been of marginal importance in affecting the welfare of migrant working class men and women. 68

.4 The Ethnic "New Class" and Social Policy

Jean Martin described the period leading up to the Labor government and immediately after its fall, as one of 'increasing differentiation among definers and in constructs and action', [Martin 1978:50]. Increasingly the ethnic bourgeoisie and intelligentsia superseded the Anglo-Australian mediators of the migrant experience, as the more traditional methods of social control became irrelevant, were by-passed, or were cracked in loud and angry struggle. For instance, in July 1974, a meeting of ethnic groups in Melbourne called to discuss the 'rationalisation' of the Department of Immigration, resolved to establish a working party to examine "how ethnic groups might further their cause under the present government", [Storer 1975:86]. The result was the establishment of the Ethnic Communities Council in Victoria. The Ethnic Communities Council of New South Wales was created at a public meeting at the Sydney Town Hall on 27 July 1975, a meeting addressed by Whitlam and Fraser. The NSW Council had had its origins in the migrant committee of the Inner Western Regional Council for Social Development, [Ethnic Communities Council 1975] .

In the process following re-organisation of the Immigration programs, Hayden as Social Security Minister responded to the criticisms from the ethnic communities, now increasingly well organised, divorced from the old assimilationist superstructure, and seeking independent status and influence. Seven weeks before the Sydney public meeting to launch the NSW Ethnic Communities Council, Hayden announced the appointment of a Migrant Social Welfare Advisory Council. The Council met for the first time two weeks after the Sydney meeting, and established a special committee on the migrant aged; this was planned to take up the unfinished business of the former Immigration Advisory Council; Committee on Social Patterns which had been reviewing the salient features in a study of older migrants since August 1973, [Scotton and Ferber 1979:735].

Thus, while Martin may well be accurate in describing the process as differentiation, this hardly provides an explanation of what was occurring. The deeper structural issues were those of an industrial working class in a declining industrial sector, which lacked representation, power and control, having their interests projected by a leadership which was increasingly 'of them', though not necessarily 'for them'. The most effective advocates of ethnic rights perspectives, such as those in Greek welfare in Melbourne, were arguing that services could be best designed and provided by the ethnic communities - that is, by the bourgeoisie and intelligentsia of those communities on behalf of their own working class. The process emerging was one of inter-ethnic alliance of 'progressive' groups, against the hard line assimilationists of the old Immigration Department and the old Good Neighbour 69

Council. In the 1975 GNC elections the Victorian Ethnic Communities Council candidates were defeated, though it was "the first time in its history members of ethnic organisations forced an election for all positions on the executive", [Storer 1975 :88]. Following the election, Bill Hayden as Social Security Minister approached Professor Sol Encel of the University of New South Wales to carry out a study of the Good Neighbour Council, an investigation that had been urged upon the former Immigration Department as early as June 1973, [Helman: Interview]. (This study was never completed, though the Galbally review in 1978 was to recommend that the Commonwealth withdraw support from the Councils).

The class nature of ethnic politics and therefore class issues in social policy affecting ethnic minorities were emerging in the light of these various struggles over 'definitions' and rights. The Liberal Party appointed Michael MacKellar to replace Malcolm Fraser as Shadow Immigration Minister in June 1974. While there was almost no clear policy for MacKellar, (the Financial Review describing his speech on the 'carve up' of the Immigration Department as 'predictable criticism ... and ... absence of any firm statement of the Opposition's policy' [Financial Review 31 July 1974] the period up to the 1975 election was to be spent by MacKellar on two political tasks -

i. establishing groups of pro-Liberal migrants to advise him in each state;

ii. pushing the case, with Fraser's support, that there should be a Department of Immigration with an Ethnic Affairs function and that such a commitment was vital to build up a coalition with the ethnic middle classes, [MacKellar: Interview] .

These moves were to be the basis of the conservative ethnic policy after the fall of the Whitlam government. The strategy was to be based on social control through the intra-communal power relationships, building on the historical process of co-option and incorporation that the Immigration Department had used for three decades. The crucial change would be the active use of social policy initiatives to reinforce the power and the status of the more conservative and economically dominant elements in Australian society. Inter-personal strategies of control through the reinforcement of social work modes of intervention, and social pathology models of "problem" would be institutionalised even further. The return of the conservatives to power in 1975 provided the opportunity to implement that strategy. 70

CHAPTER FIVE

NEO-CONSERVATISM, SOCIAL DEMOCRACY AND MULTICULTURALISM

.1 Neo-conservatism and social policy

The return of the Liberal/Country Party coalition to the Treasury benches in December 1975 introduced a more sophisticated and complex response to the issues associated with migrant settlement. The traditional conservative policy had insisted on a homogeneous society in which migrant problems were solely those of the culture-shocked, psychotic or socially traumatised individual - that is, essentially problems located in the pathological state of the individual, the incompatability of his/her 'culture' to that of the cohesive Australian society, and the failure of his/her own culture to equip the immigrant with the appropriate 'cultural baggage' to integrate [Lynch 1971:16].

MacKellar and Fraser recognised that the Australian polity over which they were regaining control, if not mastery, had changed quite significantly. Overt class conflict now existed in the Italian community, such that the 'traditional' patronage systems were inadequate to their internal tasks of control and maintenance of class domination. The Greek community was no longer totally immersed in the struggles around the Junta and the Church split [Papadopoulos, 1974], and was developing an articulate and technically sophisticated leadership, with close relationships to the Australian Labor Party, including, after 1975, Greek Branches in Victoria [Allan, 1978]. The immigrant working class was heavily pro-Labor, as too was the emerging Southern European middle class, exactly that strata which in the Anglo Australian communities had been won by the ALP in 1972 and won back in 1975 to the conservative cause.

The political strategy of the conservative parties was heavily affected by monetarist theory, the publicly expressed belief in the values of the free market, and a voluntarist approach to welfare. The question to be addressed by MacKellar was not that of 'the ethnic vote', that is, how to attack some monolithic bloc, but rather how to impress upon the ethnic middle class that the Liberal Party was even more sympathetic than Labor to their desires for status and mutual recognition. [for a neo-conservative analysis, see Sestito 1982].

The problem was exacerbated by the large increase of citizenship approvals under Labor, which had increased the ethnic electorate, [Ethnic Communities Council 1975:7]. In 71 addition, many Left migrant leaders such as Sgro and Zangalis in Melbourne, who had been refused citizenship by the former Liberal government had been enfranchised under Labor, [Storer, Interviews].

The re-assessment of social policy as it affected migrants had already been foreshadowed in MacKellar's success with the shadow Cabinet. With Fraser's support he had convinced them that, despite their still strong assimilationist views, there were very real political and electoral advantages to be had from recreating the Department of Immigration, and extending to it an Ethnic Affairs responsibility [MacKellar, Interview]. Once in power MacKellar began to reconstruct the Department, seeking to regain many of the crucial powers necessary to cement the accord that he was attempting to develop with the leadership of many ethnic groups [MacKellar, Interview]. When there was some argument over this process in Cabinet [Age 7 May 1976 'Ministers Tussle for Public Service Control', Rodopoulos, 1977: xiii], the matter was delayed until the Bailey Inquiry established by the Prime Minister advised the Government on the implementation of the new Federalist social policy.

The process of this 'accord' can best be seen in the Federal government's intrusion in the FILEF/Co.As.It. relationship. As noted above, in 1975, Co.As.It. had been given a welfare rights worker grant by the Labor government, to minimize the political 'flack' from the FILEF grant, and as an attempt to introduce more progressive and participatory strategies despite the very conservative management of the agency [Benn, Interview]. MacKellar and Guilfoyle responded to Co.As.!t. pressure and in August 1976 cancelled the FILEF grant on the grounds that 'two grants were being currently provided to Italian community groups in Melbourne' [Scotton and Ferber 1980: 326].

Despite this particular intervention on the side of a conservative ethnic agency, the government extended the grant-in-aid scheme more generally to the employment of welfare workers, allowing ethnic agencies to employ less qualified workers, and reducing their dependence on Australian-trained social work professionals in the name of the more culturally sensitive practice of the ethnic worker. One effect of this was to allow, if not encourage, the employment of very conservative former volunteers in organisations such as Co.As.It. (Wollongong), thus allowing the Government to utilise the welfare programme for direct patronage. Another effect was the de-skilling of welfare for migrants, by accepting ethnicity as a sufficient qualification for employment, thus reducing the quality of service. 72

But these ad hoc responses allowed only an initial coverage of the field and, as Martin could quite correctly comment at the time, it did appear that the Liberal Party held precisely the opposite stance to Labor's 'initiating activist and interventionist' mode [Martin 1978:73]. Martin noted that:

The impact on minorities in general, and migrants in particular of a residual, individual deficiency concept of welfare - associated with devolution of responsibility and cut-backs in public expenditure - is, quite simply, that initiating and longterm planning on a national scale disappears as a government function. . [1978:75]

However, it was not a 'hands-off' programme, but a deliberate and sophisticated development of co-optive processes, designed to cement their acceptance by more conservative ethnic leaders, while co-opting and thus effectively silencing criticism from the intelligentsia and progressive middle class leaders. This process was initiated with the Bailey Report, which provided the blue-print for social policy, and the Galbally Report, which constructed the edifice sketched in the Bailey Report.

The Task Force on Co-ordination in Welfare and Health was established by Cabinet in July 1976 [Bailey Report] and reported to the Prime Minister in December 1976. It was concerned with economy and efficiency as key criteria, and used these as guides to assess the health and welfare services available to migrants, amongst others. The Task Force ostensibly believed 'that the long term aim for welfare/health programs for special groups should ultimately be equality of the welfare/health status of all members of society' [Bailey 1977:136]. In general, Bailey accepted one of the rationales of the Labor dismemberment of the Immigration Department, namely that services providing Departments need to ensure 'that they are geared to provide migrants, as members of the general community, with relevant services' [1977:154]. While the question of 'relevant in whose terms' was left unresolved, the Task Force nevertheless recommended that the DIEA 'be given the function of assisting with immediate post-arrival and initial settlement ... (since) ... those (officers) directly associated with the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs are from all accounts the best equipped to assist with information, advice and other assistance' [1977:152-2]. The Task Force also proposed that the Good Neighbour Councils be independently reviewed as they 'have not always managed to cope as effectively with non-British migrants' [1977:156], but did not recommend the return of the crucial grants-in-aid to the DIEA [1977:158].

The New Federalism policy of the Fraser government reduced expenditure significantly in areas of housing and urban and regional development between 1975/6 and 1978/9. These 73 are crucial areas for migrant welfare, for it was the cost of housing which significantly increased the migrant household's likelihood of being in poverty [Henderson 1975:269ff.], and those who were poor were concentrated in urban areas with the most run-down or non-existent services. The process which was central to this cut in the social welfare of working class immigrants was formalised in the Bailey Report [Elliott 1982:126]. Yet this social policy cut-back impinged least upon the consciousness and needs of the ethnic bourgeoisie.

The Government pursued the Bailey recommendation on the Good Neighbour Councils, particularly in the light of the open conflict in Melbourne. This conflict finally resulted in the Ethnic Communities Council gaining control in 1976, despite strong opposition from groups at that stage closely aligned with the Women's branch of the Victorian Liberal Party. The Government extended the Bailey proposals to create a full Review of Post Arrival and Settlement Services, and chose Frank Galbally, a Melbourne barrister who had defended Italian migrants charged after the 1961 Bonegilla riots, as its chairman. Other members included the social worker from AGWS, Nick Polites, Francesca Merenda, MBE, an active Co.As.It. volunteer, an employee of the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs and a former member of the migration advisory committee to the NSW Liberal Party, and Carlo Stransky from Western Australia. The Prime Minister's Department appointed Ann Kern, formerly secretary to the Bailey Task Force, to co-ordinate the Galbally secretariat.

The Galbally Review was thus predicated immediately on certain structural assumptions -

i. acceptance of the thrust of the New Federalism and (implicitly) the social policy of the New Right;

ii. a 'clientele' which was to be either co-opted or ignored;

iii. a budget to be found by reducing direct benefits to the ethnic working class, by 'socialising' those benefits and re-allocating them via bureaucratic or 'voluntary' organisation discretion.

It also asserted the 'ethnic group' approach by systematically excluding any reading of the history of migrant settlement in terms of other than cultural dissonance. The Galbally Report was launched at a period of major cuts in the general welfare of the Australian working class, immigrant and native-born alike and of a general redistribution of wealth 74 towards the corporations and the bourgeoisie disguised behind an ideology of welfare which asserted the importance of the 'truly needy' [Elliott 1982; Tulloch 1979J.

While the Report was in preparation, and in response to Galbally's advice, the Prime Minister moved migrant welfare back to Immigration and Ethnic Affairs. The move was unsuccessfully opposed by Polites [Merenda, InterviewJ. The choice had been made between 'rational' social policy arguments of groups such as the Australian Council of Social Service, that 'migrants should not be segregated from the general community services in this manner' [quoted in Martin 1978:71], and the political strategy being devised by Galbally and the Prime Minister's office. As Bertelli [1979] was able to show, little in the Report was new - and indeed many of the ideas had been developed by the Labor government. Bertelli claimed that 'extensive groundwork for the Review Group had, in fact, already been done by the various Migrant Task Forces' [Bertelli 1979:5].

Graycar has suggested that:

in terms of funds being made available for migrant services, migrants appear to be the clear winners ... After several decades of virtually ignoring migrants the Commonwealth Government has been working in the last five years at improving its relations with the migrant communities. [Graycar 1979:60]

While the latter part of the statement is correct, the first sentence accepts uncritically the 'reality' that the Galbally Report was designed to create. When examining the key welfare recommendations in the Galbally Report, it should be borne in mind that they were drawn up ostensibly following widespread consultations, and at a time when the Australian economic situation was clearly worsening. Unemployment was beginning to increase markedly, for instance, with the unemployment rate for males born outside Australia, (admittedly a crude category including everyone from American computer engineers to Turkish labourers) reaching higher levels than that for Australian born in 1976, for all male migrants who had been in the country eight years residence or less. By September 1978, male migrants who had been in the country up to seventeen years had a higher unemployment rate than Australian born.

In a capitalist system, access to the labour market and engagement in paid work is the major method of welfare allocation. That source was becoming increasingly discriminatory towards migrants as a means of welfare provision at exactly the time other welfare services were being eroded. The Galbally Report noted only its belief that: 75 u.'" ...... ",a.u.,,,,., UJ. Ulll;;l1J.VJ.VYJ.lll;;l1L i:l111Vllg1iL 1111g1i:l1lL1i an:: rne same as lor Australian-born workers. [Galbally 1978:91]

Yet the Report itself presents data which showed great discrepancies between native born and migrant unemployment rates, the response to which was a suggestion 'to consider the special needs of migrants in the operation of the NEAT program' [Galbally 1978:91]. Having carefully avoided any consideration of the structural location of non-English speaking migrants and the rigidifying ethnic sedimentation in increasingly vulnerable labour market locations, the Report also avoided most of the crucial issues in welfare. Avoidance, in fact, may be an incorrect term, for it appears in retrospect that the presence of Prime Minister's Department staff such as Kern, and the crucial though informal role played by the Prime Minister's senior adviser, Petro Georgiou, in determining the boundaries of recommendations, ensured that issues and positions antithetical to the thrust of conservative ideology, would not be aired [Coleman, Merenda, Interviews].

Table 2 Unemployment rates by birthplace and period of arrival in Australia - (proportion of relevant labour force; per cent).

Born in .Born outside Australia, by period of arrival. Australia At May Before 1958-61 1962-67 1968-74 Jan.75- 1976 1955 May 76. Males 3.4 2.0 3.0 3.4 4.6 6.2(a) Females 5.4 3.4 5.3 5.5 5.7 16.5(a) Persons 4.1 2.4 3.8 4.1 5.0 10.1 At Sept. Before 1961-65 1966-70 1971-76 Jan.77 1978 1961 Sept.78 Males 5.3 4.1 6.4 5.9 6.6 12.3 Females 7.0 4.3 7.3 8.3 8.4 24.7 Persons 5.9 4.1 6.7 6.8 7.3 16.6

Note: (a) Based on small estimate and thus subject to high sampling error. Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, The Labour Force, Cat.No. 6203.9, 6204.0 from Scotton and Ferber 1980.41.

The direct welfare service issues addressed by the Committee were also filtered through a politically conservative though technically advanced set of assumptions about the state, ethnic groups and social welfare. The bureaucracy was characterised as slow moving, with a low level of sensitivity to the changes occurring in ethnic communities. In particular, grants-in-aid allowed a more 'flexible and personal response to changing needs, especially where such services are provided by ethnic organisations' [Galbally 1978:68]. 76

The contradiction involved in the grant-in-aid programme contained components such as:

i. although it is claimed that 'in general the grant-in-aid scheme offers one of the most effective means of meeting migrants' needs' [Galbally 1978:68], in fact it represents a means by which the systematic under-resourcing of welfare can be maintained and disguised. Thus grants-in-aid did not cover the full cost of employing the workers. These costs were absorbed either by the organisation (voluntary contributions or volunteer effort) or by the worker herself, through worker overload and high burn-out rates. Thus the GIA scheme involved workers and clients in specifically 'migrant' areas, being forced to accept a service which was significantly below standards of analogous services in the non-migrant area.

ii. despite apparent positive discrimination in favour of migrants, the GIA Scheme was a low-cost alternative to effective multicultural welfare provision under Award conditions within or through government.

ill. maintenance of the fiction that 'ethnic communities' existed in a self-evident form, disguising the fact that in reality it was the officers of the Department and their political masters who determined what was in fact the 'community', when conflicting groups of the same national origin applied for grants (eg Greeks in Sydney, Italians in Melbourne). It was likely to be the case that those organisations which exhibited the best fit with the bureaucratically defined categories of need and processes of welfare delivery [ie Bailey residuality], would be funded. It was not necessarily.the case that these organisations would be equipped to identify the 'real dimensions of need' in the 'communities' to which they were oriented.

iv. a 'self-help' orientation placed the onus for meeting needs back on the community, both in terms of the initial philosophy and the power of termination after three years; in fact, the 'communities' most in need were exactly those with the least well-developed petite bourgeoisie able to utilise and operate welfare programmes.

The crucial focus of the income security analysis was to reduce both the disadvantages and advantages that migrants experienced. Five areas of income security were identified in which migrants had particular problems or opportunities -

• residence qualifications,

• maintenance guarantees,

• special benefits administration (all negative),

• overseas pensions,

• tax rebates on overseas dependents (both ostensibly positive). [see Galbally 1978 pp.82-87 for full text]

While the disadvantages were documented adequately and allowed for repetitions of earlier reports and submissions, no recommendations were made to overcome them. Rather, it was 77 proposed, yet again, that residency qualifications and maintenance guarantees be reviewed. All three of the 'disadvantages' affected working class and poorer migrants, particularly those whose guarantors were employed in declining industries. They were not vitally important for the more affluent, powerful or knowledgeable. One of the 'advantages' initially described by the Report was dissolved in its own commentary. Discussing overseas pensions, the Report decided "there is no 'double payment'" [1978:87]. The most important proposal regarding income security referred to the question of tax rebates, made on the basis of claims for dependent spouses, children, parents, parents-in-law and invalid relatives living overseas. This cost some $20 million per annum according to the Report, and was an inequitable scheme. The proposal to terminate the rebate fell most heavily on poorer, working class families from countries with rudimentary social security systems. In the August 1978 budget, all such concessions and rebates were terminated [Scotton and Ferber 1980:333]. Over the first three years of the Galbally program this recommendation would return a nett profit to the Government on the Galbally Report - saving some $72 million against expenditure planned at $50 million [Hansard 27 September 1979:1678].

An apparent major innovation of the Report was the proposal for multicultural resource centres. The centres were seen as a solution to the Good Neighbour Council problem, and in Melbourne the MRC simply took over the premises and some of the GNC staff. The centres were drawn from a number of models - the earlier proposals presented to the February 1974 Task Forces Conference, the Department's own centre in Parramatta, itself derived from GNC developments at the Newtown office, in inner western Sydney, the AGWS Multicultural Resource Centre in Prahran and the Springvale Centre in Melbourne [Merenda, Hellman, Interviews; Galbally 1978:64]. It was a cobbled-together set of propositions and 'needs', left loose and undefined in the name of local control under supposedly minimal Departmental direction. Essentially the propositions contained the following implications:

i. locality based centres under the control of ethnic leaders selected by the Minister - a 'grass roots' patronage and status system, below that of the state settlement committees or the national advisory councils;

li. taking over the responsibility for supporting emerging ethnic organisations, a task at which the GNC's had effectively failed;

ill. stimulating, training and managing volunteers.

Effectively then, given the re-orientation of the Migrant Service Units towards consultancy, community development and co-ordination [Galbally 1978:71], the Migrant Resource Centres were to be poorly funded, understaffed and volunteer based, acting as a conduit for 78 prestige and status to those appointed to their management committees. The Department would 'evaluate' them [1978 Appendix 119], a process which, as it turned out, the Department seemed unable to comprehend [Meekosha and Rist, 1982].

The priority given to 'self-help' activities and to counselling approaches failed totally to reflect the deficiencies in community welfare that migrant workers and their families were experiencing. The emphasis on self-reliance in the Report created the image of Australia as some huge fast flowing free market, into which migrants stumbled, and then rapidly regained their footing. The principles of equal access and equal opportunity, cultural maintenance, self-help and self-reliance upon which the Report built [Galbally 1978:4] were not compatible with the reality of Australian class relations in the late 1970's. In that sense, the Report was fundamentally ideology - one aim of which was to reconstruct public knowledge about settlement services to migrants.

The most important direction of the report was its separation of migrants into two 'animals' - one cultural and the other economic. The economic animal was then effectively erased from the analysis in any important sense, leaving only a culturally suspended 'ethnic', without any class location and independent of any class relations. As the assimilationist strategy had sought to introduce migrants into particular class locations with minimal cultural change, so the Galbally strategy was to sustain those class relations by concentration on the cultural, interpersonal and communications manifestations of those relations. So too, the role of migrant women was totally left out of the analysis - except for a token and ritualistic nod in their direction.

To summarise the Galbally Report it contained a number of salient entry points into the class dynamics and contradictions of the 'migrant' relationship to Australian capitalism. The Galbally program was one part of an overall strategy which sought:

i. to institutionalise the ethnic group model by re-asserting the primacy of ethnicity in social relations [see also, Australian Ethnic Affairs Council 1977, 1979; Australian Council on Population and Ethnic Affairs, 1982; Cass 1983b:148].

ii. to institutionalise the ethnic group model so as to crystallise the concept of the ethnic group as an organisation (rather than the more diffuse notion of a community) and to set up bureaucratic forms which were only accessible to organisations.

iii. to specify the ethnic bourgeoisie and petite bourgeoisie as the target for the allocation of government resources by creating them as almost the only legitimate intermediary between government and the mass of the migrant population. 79

iv. to institutionalise inter-ethnic competition by specifying ethnic status as the crucial definer.

v. to break the concept of migrant into two pieces: one of which is culture and ethnicity, the other of which is class location, expunging the class question from the equation.

vi. to re-assert the domination of the Department by re-instituting in it those programs which Labor had carved out in 1974.

vii. to draw together the political and ideological institutionalisation of knowledge creation about migrants in Australia through the creation of the Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs (whose first Director was to be Petro Georgiou under a Committee chaired by Frank Galbally).

viii. to cement into the heart of the delivery of welfare services to migrants, the exploitation of women, particularly migrant women, as part-time, overstressed, short-term, low paid workers in the 'ethnic' welfare sector.

The responses to key areas of need were minimal and located service-delivery into an increasingly over-stressed and under-resourced dependence. For example, in spite of the fact that the Galbally philosophy identified deficiencies in English language ability as a key vector of deprivation, the total earmarked for increases in class provision was $32.4 million spread over 3 years. Recent surveys have established however, that sub-survival levels of English language ability exist in considerable fractions of even the long-term resident population [King and Palser 1983]. By and large, the mechanism for English language provision, the Adult Migrant Education Service remained an under-resourced, inadequate organisation characterised by ad-hocery, lack of professionalism and lack of involvement from migrant communities.

•2 The Hidden Reality of Galbally

Two events which took place around the time of the publication of the Galbally Report reveal the unreality of the Galbally picture of migrant existence and the real thrust of the Galbally program. They were the Greek social security raids and the persecution of Ignazio Salemi.

A new Departmental Secretary, Patrick Lanigan, had been appointed to the Department of Social Security in August 1977 and the Migrant Services Units had been returned to Immigration and Ethnic Affairs in November 1977. On the weekend of Friday 31 March 1978 over 100 Commonwealth Police officers launched large-scale co-ordinated raids, focussed on Sydney's Greek community. At about the same time a DSS Compliance Unit 80 was established to 'probe suspected malpractice' [National Times, 3 February 1979:11]. According to Marian Wilkinson [ National Times, foc citJ the investigations had begun in October 1976 and had intensified following the Commonwealth Auditor General's criticism of the Department of Social Security for over-payments and inadeqate checks and controls for determining eligibility. The police raids authorised by Lanigan led to some 586 Greek patients having their invalid benefits suspended, as well as 105 invalid pensioners resident in Greece.

A large meeting of the Greeks took place in Sydney on 20 April 1978 though Lanigan had personally intervened with the conservative Archbishop Stylianos to prevent a pre-recorded TV interview attacking the Department, going to air. Lanigan then issued a press release on 19 April, which promised medical reviews 'very quickly', and the confirmation of pensions and benefits in the meantime. The 1977-78 Annual Report of the Department claimed that any beneficiaries in financial difficulty would be sympathetically treated. Wilkinson documented case after case where Greek clients of Sydney Greek welfare workers Angela Manson, Vivi Koutsanadis and Maria Baldas went for months without any income as a result of the raids. The communal trauma was immense, with 168 beneficiaries committed for trial, along with six doctors and six agents. David Rofe QC for the Crown, alleged at the committal proceedings some 1,400 people were involved in a conspiratorial secret society known as a 'Kolpo' and headed by a godfather or 'demos' [Sydney Morning Herald 27 March 1979J. While by late 1982 most of the defendants had been discharged or had charges against them withdrawn, the 'case' is still an open sore in the Sydney Greek community. The Crown case finally took 260 sitting days to present over 3 years and cost $7 million. By April 1982, for instance, only 19 defendants were left under the conspiracy charge. Opening for the defence, Marcus Einfeld QC stated:

this case has wrought such massive injustice, costing millions of dollars and has created such divisions in society, and in particular the Greek community, with its relentless and heartless prosecution of poor, battling families. [Sydney Morning Herald 14 April 1982]

The systematic harassment and intimidation continued however, such that although the 1983 Labor Government announced an inquiry into the case, it refused to allow any questions to be raised regarding the role ofthe bureaucracy in the affair. The only question on the agenda was to be compensation rights. Sustained, vindictive persecution was to be legitimised and forgotten. [see "Nightmare continues for Greek case victims", National Times, 27 January 1984J. 81

State control activities also were the central rationale in the strategy adopted to 'smash' community action developments in the Melbourne Italian community. Where sustained denigration of personal honour was used to destroy networks of working class Greeks injured by industrial and social hazards and thus put into question any arguments about the dangers faced by working class migrants [see Morrissey and Jakubowicz 1980 for an analysis of this process as an ideology to control workers], direct political action was adopted in the Melbourne case.

The Salemi affair in Melbourne was essentially the denouement of the FILEF/Co.As.It. conflict. Ignazio Salemi, a FILEF organiser, was extremely important in the communal organisation around education, welfare and employment issues in Melbourne. The FILEF strategies called for the development of an aggressive advocacy of social and welfare rights, and the creation of local networks in working class Italian communities. The strategy was essentially one of empowering the immigrant working class rather than its 'leaders' (defined as those -holding formal organisational posts) [Storer, Benn, Bertelli, Interviews; Storer 1975; Angelone 1977].

In 1975 Salemi sought to have his visa extended. At the insistence of conservative Italians and other people associated with the Liberal Party, MacKellar rejected the request [Benn, Interview]. In January 1976 Salemi sought permission to remain under the Immigration Amnesty, but was refused [Carli 1982:45]. Salemi appealed against the decision, and fought it through the courts. He also became active in the public access radio station operated by the ABC 3ZZ. (The station was closed by the Liberal government in 1977 and replaced with the Government controlled radio 3EA, from which all domestic controversy was barred [Dugdale 1979]). Salemi was finally deported in October 1977, as the Galbally Committee was discussing the welfare and broadcasting issues for its report. The Galbally Report refers nowhere to the Welfare Rights Program, nor to the question of public access to ethnic radio. Rather, participation was to be restricted to those appointed by the Government to the National and State Ethnic Broadcasting Advisory Councils. Information needs were to be assessed by volunteers and 'suitable' agencies or from listener surveys [Galbally 1978:113J. The Report sought to demobilize the ethnic working class.

.3 Corporatist Strategies

The implementation of the Galbally proposals was overseen by an Implementation Task Force, which included Commonwealth Government officials, but excluded any community participation. Participation outside government was to be restricted to the on-the-ground 82 management of projects such as the Migrant Resource Centres, the Settlement Councils, and to the various 'consultations' carried out by the appointed members of the Australian Ethnic Affairs Council and its successor, the Australian Council on Population and Ethnic Affairs. The concept of state-based committees or continuing forums in which policy could be debated, as with the Migrant Task Forces, was not discussed and participatory as against consultative or volunteer frameworks simply disappeared. However, within the Italian community some changes did occur, particularly in Melbourne.

In 1979 an Italian Co-ordination Committee coalition in partnership with Italian and Australian welfare professionals in Co.As.It., increasingly frustrated with the Vaccari style, argued for the incorporation of the Committee. In the ensuing election, and with Mr. Vaccari deceased, a new 'ticket' was elected led by Mr. Justice Gobbo, later Sir lames, an Italo-Australian with close links to the progressive wing of the Liberal Party. At the end of 1979 Co.As.It. received a further two grants-in-aid.

The Evaluation ofthe GalbaIly program was announced by the Prime Minister in September 1981. It was to be carried out by the Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs, an organisation established by the Government in response to the Report. The Institute had been necessary 'because of the lack of information on multicultural developments in Australia and overseas .. , (such an Institute) ... would engage in and commission research and advise government bodies on muIticultural issues' [GalbaIly 1978:12]. However the Evaluation in fact took place in a context in which:

.. , to support pluralist incrementaIist intervention, government must seek increasingly elaborate justifications for its failure to respond at the level of rational, comprehensive planning. Increased emphasis on accountability, monitoring and evaluation is one outcome of the need for justification. [Green, in Spalding, 1981 :20]

One of the leading international texts on evaluation [Rossi and Freeman 1982] distinguished between 'comprehensive evaluation' and 'program utility assessment'. Evaluation is defined as:

Analysis covering the conceptualisation and design of interventions, and the monitoring of program implementation and the assessment of program utility.

Program utility assessment, which is only one part of the evaluation process, is a:

study of the effectiveness (impact) and efficiency (costs to benefits or effectiveness of programs). [1982:17] 83

Thus the 'Evaluation' was really a much more limited process than a comprehensive evaluation one which in fact assured that the conceptualisation and design of the interventions were unproblematic [see also Cass, 1983a:6]. The Ministerial reference called for "an evaluation of the objectives and implementation of the Report ... which will:

i. assess the effectiveness of the implementation of the report;

li. determine whether the overall objectives are being achieved;

iii. determine whether the Report's objectives and recommendations remain valid; and

iv. recommend whether the objectives and recommendations should be pursued in the future and what changes (if any) should be made." [Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs 1982:8]

The underlying assumption was that no question could reasonably be asked about the appropriateness and validity of the original objectives when they were developed - surely a crucial issue in an evaluation which included the 'conceptualisation and design' of a program [Rossi and Freeman 1982:16].

Thus we are left with an 'Evaluation' which simply reaffirmed the objectives, making no analysis of them, and which then proceeded to pursue a standard format -

i. statement of Galbally argument and conclusions;

li. assessment of process of implementation and barriers to achievement of goals;

iii. conclusion and recommendations.

Our study has located the Galbally Report in the context of increasing unemployment particularly amongst migrants during the period 1974 to 1978. The figures were drawn from Scotton and Ferber [1980] and from the Report itself [1978:142]. Detailed time scale figures were not provided in the Evaluation so that the detailed pattern of the deteriorating labour market position of non-English speaking migrants was not available [Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs 1982:228]. Moreover as Birrell [1982:14] noted in his assessment of the economic context of the Evaluation, 'there is no discussion or even acknowledgement' of the economic environment in which the Evaluation was operating. The proportion of migrants in manufacturing industry increased over the period, and job competition in Australia's low skilled labour market was becoming intense [BirrelI1982:15]. 84

A seminar sponsored in Sydney by the NSW Ethnic Communities Council, the Australian Council of Churches, the NSW Teachers Federation and five other organisations on 18 September 1982 carefully assessed the recommendations made in the Evaluation. The background papers for the conference opened with the statement about the political and social context in which the Evaluation was prepared.

The blandness of the AIMA report is initially disconcerting. Anyone reading this report who had not lived in Australia during the 3-4 years since the Galbally Report was adopted would be unaware that passionate debate had taken place about the Report itself ('conservative ideology masquerading as social policy?') and about ethnic affairs generally in that period. Indeed, the lived reality of migrants' existence is nowhere reflected in the Report.

No echo is to be found in these pages of the class/ethnicity debate, the 'self-help' debate ('a respectble cover for transfer of major responsibilities, but minimal resources, from the public to the private sector?') the occupational health debate ('are migrants accident prone?'). The special issues confronting migrant aged and migrant women which have received increasing attention from ethnic workers themselves in the past few years are acknowledged in the AIMA report only to be consigned to the catch-all grant-in-aid Scheme for solution.

In short, it seems extraordinary that three years of worsening economic conditions, deteriorating living standards for the majority of Australians significant changes in immigration policy and serious challenges to the Government's migrant settlement policy have not prompted the AIMA evaluation team to suggest any serious policy or priorities for post-arrival programs and services for migrants. The AIMA report is a very conservative document. [Ethnic Communities Council 1982a:2]

The assessment of the Employment recommendations to come from the Conference were similarly concerned with the Evaluation as ideological masquerade.

The discussion on employment is verbal window dressing, naive, partially informed and a grossly insulting trivialisation of the working lives of immigrant workers ... the Evaluation failed to assess the relevance or value of existing government training and unemployment programmes for adult and youth ... the Evaluation almost totally ignores questions of structural unemployment, and while touching on issues of unemployment, no proposals or recommendations take these issues into account. .. [Ethnic Communities Council 1982b:14]

Similar processes operated in the welfare areas of the Evaluation. The major recommendations for the expansion of the grant-in-aid scheme rested on some responses from existing grant-in-aid agency users, and agency management and employees. However the major reason that clients gave for utilising the agency, was that it had a language capacity and understood the client's 'cultural background' [Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs 1982:188] - this in itself would not preclude a service being provided 85 by a government unit, except that such a service would be more costly, as Award conditions would apply. The grant-in-aid recommendations raised the grant to a level so that "the value of grants must not be allowed to erode to the detriment of an agency's ability to maintain the service for which awards are made" [1982a: 189]. This had occurred as a result of major pressure from agencies and grant-in-aid workers on the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs. However, after Year One, with out-turn funding almost guaranteeing a drop in real grant value (as the Commonwealth Department of Finance significantly under-predicts the next year's inflation rate), the financial situation of agencies would erode again. The grants were also not sufficient to ensure agencies could offer facilities, salaries and job conditions (study leave, travel allowance, long service, superannuation, etc.) analgous to those in either the State or Commonwealth Public Services. While agency management, particularly in ethnic organisations, welcomed grants at a higher level and more extensively available, the reality of continuing second rate funding continued, requiring subsidies by workers and communities.

The crucial recommendations on migrant welfare in the Evaluation thus deepened the direction of voluntarism and migrant community 'double taxation' [Papadopoulos, Interview] for the provision of essential social services. While grants-in-aid were increased, the Evaluation refused to argue that workers should be guaranteed minimum conditions of employment [1982a:190]. In addition, no additional funding was proposed for Migrant Resource Centres, while most Settlement functions were to be transferred to them. Thus if the Galbally proposal of $50,000 per Centre (as at April 1978) had been maintained in real terms it would have represented $75,000 at mid-1982 prices. Actual expenditure per Centre, however was only $57,000. No comment on this problem appeared in the Evaluation, other than a proposal for out-turn funding, which, in the case of at least one Centre, cut the real value of the Centre budget by a significant amount. The recommendations in the Evaluation effectively attempted to tighten Departmental control, and in particular wrest back gains made by the Centre committees against the Department (viz. nine elected positions on the Committee being reduced to seven [1982:198]). [For a detailed assessment see Meekosha and Rist 1982].

The Evaluation then proceeded to re-organise the Department welfare program once more ­ with the Migrant Service Units concentrating on direct services to new arrivals. A new Unit, the Community Welfare Unit, would be established to work on community development and consultancy with ethnic communities [Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs 1982a:206]. Thus a Departmental unit was to be created, the task of which was to identify emerging 'leaders', create community organisations and ensure that they were structured to 86 fit in with Department programs, and in particular with the social analysis of the Liberal government.

Storer and Faulkner noted in their discussion of the Evaluation that there is an 'implicit' social theory built into the analysis. This theory 'might include the following notions':

• Australian society is built on the basis of individuals and groups trying to maximise their interests;

• essentially, it is a free market society - in which individuals and groups bargain and negotiate for their economic and social interests;

• the role of Government is to provide opportunities for individuals and groups to commence such bargaining on a roughly equal footing; Le, all that is required is to provide opportunities for people to get to a position where they can 'compete' for resources and services;

• consequently the 'well-being' of migrants is defined in terms of access to Government services. It is not defined in terms of attempting to change structures or in terms of providing better/more income security; better jobs; high status work; or in terms of equity in resource allocation;

• in essence this is a status quo view of society; the Report does not want structures/institutions to change; it does not want any major changes to power structures or decision making processes; rather, it wants to incorporate the 'new ethnics' into the existing game but only after the rules have been established, and the umpires decided upon.' [Faulkner and Storer 1982:6]

Such a social theory does not of course 'hang suspended' as ideology. Rather, it is part of the systematic reinforcement of ruling class power through the re-assertion of social relations which have at their root the obfuscation of class conflict.

The Evaluation, as a social policy document which was accepted almost in toto by the Commonwealth Government, raised some absolutely central questions about social policy formation. Not the least of these is the 'knowledge' base used in formulating the recommendations.

Leon Peres, consultant on Migrant Welfare to the Evaluation noted that there was no assessment of the correctness of the Government's position - 'we accepted the fact of the Government's position' and simply addressed the questions of administration. Thus, for Peres, the evaluation task, while complex and detailed, essentially looked at the continuing relevance of Galbally recommendations, and the barriers to implementation [Peres, Interview]. Most of these barriers were administrative, and in particular to be found, according to the Evaluation, in the Department of Social Security. 87

The evidence was based on the consultants reports, surveys, public sessions, etc., though no indication is given in the Evaluation of the weight placed on these sources. The two major surveys, the Geographical Assessment of Service Provision (GASP) and the survey of Information, Needs and Use of Services (SINUS) provide some insight into the research strategy of the Institute. The 'research design was not based on hypothesis testing' [Sheldrake/Jakubowicz, 2 September 1982]. While refusal rates in GASP were close to 10070 and refusal rates in SINUS were about 10% apparently little use was made of the comparative material from the six language groups approached (Arabic, Greek, Italian, Serbian/Croatian, Spanish , Vietnamese) [Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs 1982:18-19]. This could have resulted from the creation of cell sizes of less than 40 - though no statistical tests appeared in the text, and the only tabulated findings appeared to be in the form of frequency tables [Sheldrake/Jakubowicz 19 November 1982]. Such wide tabulations allow an almost limitless choice of interpretation, and rendered the utilisation of the data suspect.

Dr. Wolfgang Weber of Vienna's Wirtschaftuniversitat and a consultant to the Institute, [Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs 1982:345], suggested that the Evaluation team failed to take any account of the context of his input, and in the final report, simply failed to include any of his input at all. He agreed that the Evaluation was fundamentally a 'political document' [Weber, Interview]. Dr. Jocelyn Dunphy of Deakin University made a more dramatic response. Retained as the consultant on child care, her 150 page report with its thirteen appendices was reduced to four pages [Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs 1982:252-256]. The Evaluation provided a sustained critique of the Office of Child Care and intimated major disagreements beteen the Office and the Galbally Implementation Team over the policies and their practical application. Indeed the former Director of the Office has suggested that the original proposals were unrealistic, and emerged from a refusal by Galbally to address the problems of cuts in child care funding at the time [Coleman, Interview].

As the Evaluation did not question the initial proposals in the Report, it could hardly assess their relevance to the problems of child care needs. The Report, after all, was the 'reality' of 1978 and was thus a document that had to remain inviolate. A similar process but one exacerbated by the erosion of public child care and increased Government support in the way of subsidies to private enterprise dogged the Evaluation consultant's findings. Thus Dunphy noted of her study and its uses by the Institute that its substance and conclusions had been utterly changed ...

. ..•.__._-_._---_._----- 88

I had shown the need for further organised monetary support for child care. Instead I read that monies supplied were often used for purposes other than those intended.

I had recommended budgetary and other means of assistance. Instead I read that the Grants in Aid were to be a channel for implementation of the Galbally Report recommendations - the very channel I had pointed out was unworkable for the needs that were to be met.

I had stated that the situation was critical - an urgent moral and political issue for government. Instead I saw it presented as a minor issue, of small urgency. [Dunphy 1982a:l]

Dunphy also reflected on her experience, that

If I had known more about the situation, I would not have been caught out as I was: but if I had known more I would not have been chosen for the job. [Dunphy, Interview]

The final version of the Evaluation focussed attention on the failure of the Office of Child Care to do as it was told, and the removal from the agenda of any question of financial problems. It thus fitted in perfectly with the general strategy of the Government, .., and included such misleading references as that to "the additional resources which the Commonwealth Government has directed to the employment of ethnic children's services workers" [Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs 1982:256], at a time that community child care programs were facing over-all real cuts.

The methodological obscurity of much of AIMA's 'research', the experience of many workers in the ethnic welfare field of its methods of 'consultation', the experience in relation to it of such researchers as Dunphy and Weber, as well as the close personal and political links of key figures at the Institute to the Fraser government, all cast severe doubt on its status as a non-political organisation. Essentially the role of Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs has been to institutionalise a flow of 'knowledge' on multicultural policies utilising models and methods compatible with the conservative residualist approaches established by Galbally [see also Cass 1983a:6].

In fact the Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs Evaluation demonstrates just how much a central part of Australian class relations migrants, now ethnics, have become. Social policy advice presented and adopted as 'scientific' and empirically valid is in fact increasingly servicing the system by which the more oppressed and dominated sections of the ethnic communities are contained and managed. In many cases well meaning and culturally aware people, with long experiences of struggles for cultural affirmation, have 89 been incorporated into this process. There was little if any hard evidence that the directions expressed in the social policy of the Commonwealth under the Liberal Government with regard to the welfare of the majority of working class migrants, single parents, unemployed second generation youth, the working class aged, the disabled of the ethnic communities, were playing any part in improving their welfare. Rather, those policies tended to reinforce the marginalisation of the migrant working class, and close off those few avenues of protest and challenge that had been opened, particularly in the development of ethnic rights in the mid 1970s. One of the more effective means to this end, was to ensure that those who might have asked the right questions were 'bought off' with grants [Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs 1982:189], prestige and status [Fraser 1981, MacPhee 1981, Marsh 1983, Papadopoulos, Interview], or excluded by termination of financial support [ego Ecumenical Migration Centre workers, Matheson, Interview].

•4 Ideologies of Conservatism

Mainstream state policies represented one arm of a debate within the conservative establishment over the most effective means of maintaining ruling class hegemony - the so-called 'cohesive society' - during a period of rapid social change. This position had been most effectively proposed by the Liberal Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser. In an address to the first meeting of AIMA members late in 1981, Fraser's oratorical presentation neatly captured the nuances of the strategy:

Many of you present tonight were and continue to be central actors in the history of Australia's multiculturalism. It must be a source of wry amusement to you to hear on occasion the suggestion that multiculturalism is some opiate for the ethnic masses concocted to divert attention from what are described as 'real issues' ...

The key lesson to be drawn from their (other countries') experience is that there is no social peace to be found in the failure to acknowledge the rights of ethnic minorities and to realise their full potential socially, economically, politically and culturally. For if these rights are not recognised, the assured consequence is a loss of trust in the society that cannot be quickly regained. The result is demands for change generated at a tempo that no society can accommodate. [J.M. Fraser, to members of the Institute of Multicultural Affairs, 30 November 1981]

The components in this presentation included:

i. the proposition that the ethnic and community leaders were 'central' to the history of multiculturalism, and the corollary, that those processes in which 90

they were central indeed encompassed the most important interchanges in the development of multiculturalism;

ii. the attempt to label all critiques of multiculturalism as the work of revolutionary communists and therefore invalid, by the introduction of Marx's discussion of religion as "an opiate of the masses";

iii. the implication that gradual social progress and betterment was occuring at a measured and reasoned pace;

iv. the idea that social peace, (Le. the present social order), should be sustained and that this could best be done by acknowledging the 'rights' of ethnic minorities to realise their potential and retain their culture through their leaders;

v. the contention that society is sustained by the 'trust' of its members, rather than through coercion, ideological manipulation, or economic entrapment.

The roots of this argument lie in the particular contribution to the development of 'multiculturalism' of sociologist Jerzy Zubrzycki, Professor at the Australian National University.

In an early commentary on the problems with assimilationist concepts, Zubrzycki [1960] proposed a 'group affiliation' approach to an analysis of the adjustment of immigrants to their arrival in Australian society. Zubrzycki argued that it was the process of primary group creation that provided the most useful way into understanding how the individual immigrant coped with the processes of adaptation. From there it was a small step to the recognition that the retention of the informal cultural group was absolutely crucial to restabiIisation of the personality in a new environment. At the time this presented a radical theoretical challenge to the idealised processes of assimilationism which the Dovey Report to the 1960 Citizenship Convention was applauding [Dovey, 1960].

Zubrzycki applied a 'functionalist' theoretical approach to Australian society, which he perceived as a social system in equilibrium with a set of values governing behaviour. The new arrival requires the 'group' as an entry point into the new society, so that the 'equilibrium' of the society can be maintained under the impact of migration [1968:21].

This view reflects the ideas of consensual theorists such as Talcott Parsons, and contains certain assumptions about the current social order and the way it is sustained. Such socially 91 conservative but culturally progressive views were elaborated following the publication in the USA of Milton Gordon's seminal work on assimilation in American society [Gordon 1964]. Gordon developed an important typology of immigrant-host society relations, and suggested a process of development from Anglo conformity (assimilationism) to melting pot (integrationism) to a final appreciation of the plurality of social groups and the possibility of societies which could accept cultural pluralism, while avoiding structural pluralism.

Propositions about pluralism form the central ground in the conservative debate over multiculturalism. Zubrzycki proposed in 1968 that the real test of Australian democracy was not only the degree of cultural pluralism it allowed, but also its ability to prevent the emergence of structural pluralism. Social policy should be directed to ensure that ethnic minorities did not become concentrated at the base of the sodo-economic ladder, and that ethnic background should not be a barrier to social mobility - particularly for the second generation, [Zubrzycki, 1968]. In addition, he asserted the goal of integration by which he meant acceptance and internalisation of core Australian values by all immigrants. [His description of these core values was to appear most clearly fifteen years later [Australian Council on Population and Ethnic Affairs, 1982].] By 1971 Zubrzycki had been appointed to the Immigration Advisory Council, and in that year he chaired his first major Government Inquiry - into the Departure of settlers from Australia [Commonwealth Immigration Advisory Council 1973]. The Report foreshadowed the findings of numerous other committees, but in particular recommended that:

Ethnic groups should be encouraged, through the provisions of resources and facilities, to become involved in helping to bridge cultural gaps in the community. [1973:14]

The Report concluded that migration should be continued not only for production and consumption reasons, but:

... to develop a more diverse and viable society and to sustain cultural and social minorities whose contribution is needed to enrich any community, especially one as remote as ours from the world's great centres ofcivilisation [1973:15].

The three crucial documents in the development of the conservative strategy of multiculturalism were those prepared under Zubrzycki's guidance through the Australian Ethnic Affairs Council [1977] - the Brown Paper; in co-operation with the Population and Immigration Council [1979] - the Blue Paper, and the White Paper produced by the Council on Population and Ethnic Affairs [1982]. The most radical paper was the first - where Jean Martin played a crucial role, [Papadopoulos, Interview; Australian Ethnic Affairs Council, 1977:1].The emphasis of multiculturalism was placed on social cohesion, 92 equality and cultural identity. Yet even at that stage, focus was on the 'acceptance of the arrangements for allocating social resources' - in other words, the acceptance of the general structure of class relations in Australia. The focus on inequality, while in passing recognising the existence of poverty, sought only to ensure that ethnic origin or skin colour should not create an additional disadvantage for the poor. The final 'value' is the emphasis on the retention of cultural identity of groups of people, but only as those are articulated through groups which accept the principles of social cohesion. However, the Report did recognise the potential for subversion of egalitarian processes in Australia - and sought to resolve those which threatened social cohesion, by its advocacy of the importance of ethnic groups. It claimed that failure to recognise these 'groups' had led to 'aggressive claims to ethnic rights', [1977:9 c.f. Storer, 1975].

The emphasis placed on ethnic communities as the medium through which immigrants could relate to Australian society, and even internalise an Australian nationalism, was re-asserted in the Blue Paper. The image was created of 'national communities' whose interest could be effectively expressed through the leadership of organisations created for this purpose. This pluralist vision, while recognising some inequities in the system, made no mention of the class relations which immigrants entered.

The final Report - the White Paper - made concrete the essentially conservative force of Federal multiculturalist policies. It was very much Zubrzycki's personal vision, [Neutze:lnterview], but one congruent with the then contemporary policies of an extremely conservative and anti-working class government. The impression is given that Australians have equal access to the law, education and power - yet the reality is of a society in which the law discriminates against the poor and the weak, and in which the education system is utilised by the ruling class to reinforce their privileges and control the working class [e.g. Connell, et.al., 1982, Jakubowicz and Buckley, 1975]. The Report asserted yet again the existence of a core of cultural and moral values - as though they were a given, not a result of the assertion of force and manipulation of ideology in the maintenance of hegemonic control by the minority and privileged groups that make up the ruling class.

Despite the concentration on the pursuit of the goal of social cohesion, the strategy has come under critical attack from the libertarian right. Such a criticism might be unexpected for it came from people and groups which shared many of the espoused values of that conservative core which had made most of the running on multiculturalism.

The neo-conservative insistence on the lone economic man in the free market of robust entrepreneurial capitalism becomes difficult to defend in the case of ethnic minorities. The 93 critical question for libertarians is the role of the state, and how much it should interfere in what is seen as a normal process of assimilation into the Anglomorphic mainstream [Knopfelmacher, 1982; Chipman 1978, 1980a,b]. Assimilation is proposed as a 'natural' process which over time produces the best possible effect. Any action by the state to interfere with this process can only have dire consequences [see also Sowell, 1981a]. This perspective was taken up by Knopfelmacher in a carefully argued case, which assumed the superiority of Anglomorph political and social institutions, and proposed therefore the abandonment of multiculturalism. Knopfelmacher praised Zubrzycki's own arguments [1982:47-48], though he opposed the proposal of the ACPEA [1982] under Zubrzycki, that social cohesion was best achieved through the recognition of minority cultures linked to the insistence on shared institutional values. Rather Knopfelmacher argued that Australia's principal national asset was its 'cultural homogeneity' [1982:64].

Here there is not a disagreement of goal, merely of tactics - and the attacks by the 'neanderthal' Right, such as those proferred by Ruxton of the Victorian RSL [Jupp 1983:156] - are largely less elegant statements of similar tactical differences (with a racist overlay that Knopfelmacher would disclaim). Indeed the cruder propositions with their heavily racist overtones allow the milder conservatives to advance more effectively on the same ground by drawing to them those liberals who fear and abhor racist, xenophobic and anti-semitic thuggery [see also Jupp 1983:153,156].

The policy implications of the libertarian critique can be found in the work of Sestito [1982] and similar commentators on multiculturalism. They argue that the policy is a creation by political parties in pursuit of their electoral alliances, not the result of needs or demands emerging autonomously from the ethnic masses. However, this approach undervalues the very important social policy strategies espoused by neo-conservatism, namely that the defence of multiculturalism allowed many of its social programs to be initiated behind a veneer of liberal and humanitarian concern.

.5 Social Democracy and Multiculturalism

The 1983 Federal elections returned another Labor Government to power in Canberra. The victory had been foreshadowed by a crumbling of the strategies developed by the conservative parties to manage the very deep economic and social crises of Australian society [Haupt with Grattan, 1983]. In particular, the crucial ethnic affairs portfolio had been handed to conservative Brisbane Liberal, John Hodges, after six years under the more moderate and sophisticated supervision of Michael MacKellar and Ian McPhee 94

[J.Jupp, "Monitor", ABC Radio, 12 March 1984]. However the neo-conservative view of the migration process, the role of immigrants in Australian society and the appropriate social policy responses to this perception were firmly in place within the bureaucracy. The state had 'digested', with the barest sign of heartburn, the ideological construction of the Institute of Multicultural Affairs with all its anti-working class, sexist, and implicitly racist connotations [Cass, 1983b: 41ff, 114ff, 293ff].

The Federal bureaucracy over which Labor took control in March 1983 was even more socially conservative than it had been in the 1972-75 period. [HawkerI981:11-22]. Monetarist theories of the crisis, their sharper edges blunted in pursuit of social order, were pervasive throughout the Public Service and indeed in the Labor Party Parliamentary Leadership as well. [E. Cox: interview]. The reformist zeal that had characterised Labor in 1972-3, was diminished. Indeed, the most conservative of 'multicutural' policy papers, the ACPEA document "Multiculturalism for All Australians: our developing nationhood" [1982], the principal author of which had been Zubrzycki [Zubrzycki/Jakubowicz, 26 October 1982] had been released to bi-partisan support [Cass 1983b:125] in 1982.

The Labor Party Immigration and Ethnic Affairs Minister, Stewart West, MHR for the NSW industrial seat ofCunningham, centred on Wollongong, inherited a most complex and difficult situation in which to instigate reform. As the only Cabinet Minister publicly on the Left Wing of the Labor Party, he was also faced with many struggles over wider policy issues than just those affecting his portfolio. His Department was conservative, and though many of the 1946 generation had recently retired, it still carried on the central role that it had played in embedding neo-conservative social policy discourse into the development of ethnic welfare over the previous seven years. The boundaries had been established by the uncritical 'bipartisanism' adopted by the Labor Party. The rhetoric under Labor did begin to change, however, so that the Minister's speeches contained reference to 'class' issues, and a Women's Desk was established in the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs. Expenditure was increased on program areas such as grants-in-aid and migrant resource centres, but there was no re-evaluation of the effectiveness or implications of these programs in reforming class and gender relations. Organisations such as trade unions and Workers Health Centres, long rejected by the conservative Ministers, received grants-in-aid for work with members of ethnic minorities.

A major social policy initiative was the implementation of the review of the Institute of Multicultural Affairs, by a committee chaired by Moss Cass, a former shadow Immigration Minister, with a membership which included Alan Matheson of the ACTU, Eva Cox formerly on the staff of the previous shadow Social Security Minister, Don Grimes, and 95

Prof. Laki Jayasuriya of the University of Western Australia, (CRAIMA). Their Report was brought down in December 1983 [Cass 1983a:,b] and immediately triggered an uproar of protest orchestrated through the Institute and led by Galbally as its Chairman.

.' The Review found that the Institute had been neither effective nor efficient and had been a costly failure [Cass 1983a:67, Sydney Morning Herald, 9 December 1983]. A consultant to the Review Committee, Jeannie Martin noted that the program of multiculturalism that the Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs had institutionalised.

allowed conservative exponents of multiculturalism to sidestep any consideration of the structure of the economy in favour of the political and cultural in their accounts of NES migrant inequality ... inequality itself has been reinterpreted as the cultural monopolisation of social resources, where ethnic group membership is the critical criterion of exclusion or monopolisation. [Cass 1983b:147]

The Institute reacted to this Review with a detailed Response, [Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs, 1983] [also known as AIMA vs. CRAIMA], in which it contested the veracity and validity of the CRAIMA Report. However, the most telling defence of the Institute was that put by Galbally immediately on the release of the Review:

The fact is that the present government, after exhaustively reviewing the Institute's major report on migrant services, only weeks ago accepted overwhelmingly the recommendations the Institute had made to its predecessor. [Sydney Morning Herald, 12 December 1983]

The action by the Government to which Galbally referred was that contained in a November 1983 statement by the Minister. Known as the COPAPS document (Committee on Post Arrival Programs and Services) [West, 1983b] it was a state of play report by the bureaucracy on the 1982 evaluation recommendations put to the coalition government. The Public Service ingestion of the Institute program was adopted by the Labor Government with a few amendments. Of the 89 recommendations and 54 proposals listed, 15 recommendations and seven proposals were amended (usually due to time constraints, to increase funding or to modify the "command" role proposed for the Federal bureaucracy by the Institute) [West, 1983b:I-26].

The criticisms raised for instance in the Committee of Review Report [Cass, 1983a,b], foreshadowed in the comments made in 1982 by the Sydney meeting organised by the Ethnic Communities Council [Ethnic Communities Council of New South Wales, 1982a,b], and the general and specific arguments advanced in the Migration Action critique of the Evaluation [Faulkner and Storer, 1982; Meekosha and Rist, 1982; Birrell, 1982; 96

Jakubowicz, 1982] appear to have had little if any effect on the Labor government. Indeed, except for a "more and bigger" philosophy, it can be concluded that the neo-conservative world view advanced by the Institute has been absorbed with little modification into the conceptualization of the "ethnic dimension" [Martin, 1981] in Australia held by the party of social democracy. The dominance of these forces was further highlighted when a Commission of Inquiry established to explore the Greek Social Security Conspiracy had its terms drawn to exclude any investigation of role of the Department of Social Security, (Sydney Morning Herald, 1 February 1984]

The neo-conservative argument is that the process of immigrant integration into Australian society can best be achieved by ensuring "irrational" barriers of culture are removed, and that the "free market" is allowed to operate. The joint A.I.M.A./Film Australia film series "The Migrant Experience" utilised two leading New Right ideologues, Frank Knopfelmacher and Robert Manne, [Manne , 1982; Knopfelmacher, 1981,82] to make concluding comments to this effect, in its overview episode "Setting Out" [Cass, 1983b:67­ 71]. While recognising the importance of "ethnic communities" as a bolster for individual adaptation to the Australian market, there is general acceptance of the structure of inequality - the concern is to ensure only that economic inequality does not take on or retain over the generations a particular ethnic coloration. There is little difference, as Knopfelmacher has acknowledged, between the New Right and the "mainstream" conservative multiculturalists such as Zubrzycki in this central regard, [Knopfelmacher, 1982:47-8]. Despite the importance of this underlying logic, Labor policy at the Federal level is also effectively engulfed by a similar perception.

Attempts to move beyond this neo-conservative straitjacket have been made in both New South Wales and Victoria. The Labor government in New South Wales has developed a rather sophisticated rhetoric of reform since its publication of the Ethnic Affairs Commission "Participation" Report to the Premier in 1978, [Ethnic Affairs Commission of New South Wales, 1978]. Recent criticism of the Commission for its avoidance of class issues in state welfare policy have led to some changes. It has raised serious debate on the question of how much neo-conservative multiculturalism protected mainstream social institutions from the impact of an ethnically diverse gender-split, working class. In New South Wales this issue was explored initially by Jakubowicz and Mitchell in a report to the Department of Youth and Community Services. They demonstrated that the Department was conservative and Anglo-centric and its critical problems were in part the result of its failure to accept responsibility for and adapt its operations to the welfare needs of ethnic minorities. This was despite five years of pressure from the Ethnic Affairs Commission, 97 which had itself effectively pursued a strategy of low quality welfare services through miserably funded welfare workers who lacked training, resources and adequate pay and conditions. "The losers in this situation are the ethnic communities, the disadvantaged and disposessed in those communities and the workers" the Report concluded, [Jakubowicz and Mitchell, 1982:72-73].

The Department adopted the recommendations ofthe Report and initiated an active process of recruitment, training and program development, despite hostility and resistance from many staff, [Norman et al., 1983; Jakubowicz, 1983]. The Commission also produced a new stratagem, which it referred to as "bringing ethnic affairs fully into the mainstream". The Commission noted that

current economic recession and the accompanying restructuring of the economy, as well as placing an incredible strain on the State's (and nation's) welfare sytem, are having a particularly devastating impact on the immigrant workforce ... Although the interface of class and ethnicity may not be well understood, it seems likely to the Commission that strategies which are arrived at changing mainstream services, will give the maximum opportunity to address class and structural inequalities. [Ethnos, No. 29 DecemberlJanuary 1983/4:1-4]

The Commission succesfully convinced the New South Wales Government to require Departments and statutory authorities to introduce Ethnic Affairs policy statements, similar to those required under Equal Employment Opportunity provisions. The Commission argued against marginalisation of ethnic issues and in particular sought to specify the rights of groups to services and duties of government administrations in relation to them. Whatever the outcome of these strategies, they represent a conscious attempt to expose the class (though not gender) implications of multiculturalism. Similar arguments have been advanced by former CRAIMA member Professor Jayasuriya, who has commended the "Totaro Report" [Participation] [see Jayasuriya, 1983, 84a,b] for its commitment to "mainstreaming".This debate and the strategies adopted leave the overall issue of the role of the state in the maintenance of the social relations of capitalism comparatively unquestioned, though the structural dimensions of inequality are rather more exposed.

The Victorian Labor Government sought to build this structural awareness of deeply rooted inequality into its own State Ethnic Affairs Commission. It saw the test of multiculturalism as lying in the effectiveness of that perspective in achieving justice, "especially as it could be defined in terms of welfare justice", [Sheppard, 1983: 10]. The Victorian Review Group recognized the failure of the New South Wales Ethnic Affairs Commission, and suggested the cause lay in the reluctance of the latter body to set priorities - implicitly those of justice and equity, [Sheppard, 1983:44-5]. The Review Group specified its priorities to be those 98 of relevance to migrant workers, in particular migrant women workers, and isolated young unemployed migrant women, [Sheppard, 1983:48-50].

The social democratic responses to nearly forty years of post-war immigration have thus contained a range of critical perceptions of the "multicultural project". At the Federal level neo-conservative definitions with their concomitant reinforcement of ruling class ideology and power seem to continue. In the States, the immediacy of economic and social crisis has forced a clarification of the class issues. It is yet an open question as to whether that awareness can be translated into social policies, which strengthen the working class in its struggle with capital, or merely allow a more sophisticated process of co-option and social control to be instituted. 99

CHAPTER SIX

CONCLUSIONS AND PROPOSALS

.1 Class Conflict, Gender Divisions and Ethnic Welfare

Australian capitalism in the post-war period has been built on the labour of immigrant workers. The manufacturing base of that capitalism depended on the continuing importation of workers, men and women, willing to put up with poor working conditions ­ perhaps to move on to other similar jobs in other similar factories. That ocean of labour, some of whom "made it" into the petite bourgeoisie, some of whom were disabled, some

of whom returned to their countries of origin t most of whom stayed as industrial workers until the labour shedding shake-out of the last decade - have fundamentally changed the cultural framework through which class relations in Australia are experienced. To say this is not:

to reduce ethnicity to class. It does mean exploring the relation between structures of dominance and their transformations with the way people culturally respond to domination and social change ... We need to examine the relation between capital accumulation, international labour migration and the establishment of immigrant communities ... In capitalist societies, the enduring structures are class relations. Changing cultural forms are generated in the reproduction of these relations, in resistence to their reproduction, and in their transformation. [de Lepervanche, 1984:217]

This Report began by suggesting that the welfare of ethnic minorities had a comparatively low priority in the development of social policy addressed to their needs. Indeed, we have demonstrated that the main effects of ethnic welfare have been to sustain a system of class domination which has built into it a segmented labour market, in which cleavages on gender and ethnic lines have been embedded over the past forty years. We have demonstrated the process through which these cleavages are experienced, and have explored the way in which social policy is an outcome of the dynamic of class relations. We have noted that the costs of the ethnic welfare system that has emerged in this process have been born substantially by migrant women - as industrial workers in a segmented labour market where migrant women experience the worst working conditions and the poorest protection; as welfare workers, where the conditions of employment amount to super-exploitation in the voluntary sector by the state; in the family where their sole responsibility for the care of family members is reinforced by sexist ideologies within the family, and racist ideologies 100 in the wider society which allow "cultural norms" as a rationale for exploitation and oppression.

The involvement of the state in the maintenance of these systems of class and gender inequality has been institutionalised in the as yet unchanged programs of the Federal government. The recognition of the necessity for change at State level has been constrained by an economic crisis in which:

the former hegemony of the Anglo-Saxon bourgeiosie has had to bow to the power of transnational capital and to the cultural diversity of those who live here. [de Lepervanche 1984:217]

A class analysis of ethnic welfare focusses on developing a critique of mainstream social policy, and the central commentaries upon it. However, there is also the recognition that many of the criticisms arise due to the contradictions of contemporary Australian capitalism, contained within the possibilities provided by either liberal or social democratic strategies which seek to reach an accommodation with capitalism. This is not to say that there is no potential to advance the interests of working class ethnic minorities within capitalist society. As our analysis has indicated, there have been many occasions when resolute and careful organisation has provided benefits and grasped possibilities. Some of these were based on an awareness of the cultural nature of class relations, and avoided, initially at any rate, some of the traps of the ethnic group model, [Cresciani 1980, Papadopoulos 1974].

Liffman [1981] has proposed a perspective for immigrant welfare research which seeks to identify the shared, intensified and specific implication in welfare of immigrant status. While this helps to highlight certain issues, they do not appear particularly novel. Indeed most have been proposed for action by advisory and investigative committees since the late 1960s, with in most cases little action occuring which has been of much benefit to the migrant working class. Liffman's typology generates the following "immediate issues of pressing concern"

• Immigration law, with regard to family reunion policy, deportation, and its effect on welfare;

• the implication of an ageing population;

• residency qualification for security of income;

• agency employment of ethnic workers and client response;

• child care; 101

• workers' compensation;

• informal welfare workers and networks (volunteers; 'agents');

• assessment of cultural awareness courses;

• family crisis and counselling services;

• rehabilitation services. [1981:36]

The central question appears to be one of the universal versus specific services and the strategic problems created by any choice between them.

Jamrozik [1982] has argued that as most of the welfare problems for migrants are created in the private sector, the solutions included in multiculturalism must not be allowed to disguise this fact. In addition he mentions the way in which "ethnic" welfare programs can intensify the dependance of the migrant in need on the welfare system, thus presumably deepening the control exerted by the communal bourgeoisie and the professional "system managers". Yet the technical arguments still appear to dominate contemporary debate, particularly as this debate is taking place at a time when overall provision - the social wage and the services which support it - are under attack and face real reductions in value.

The failure of present social policy to address major issues in the welfare of ethnic communities and in particular their poorer, least organised and most vulnerable members has been well recognised. Lippmann for instance asserted the central value of ethnic agencies in responding to the needs of their communities - and suggested that this is not clearly recognised by government, or possibly by other voluntary agencies, [1982:14 fL]. Liffman, [1983] responding to the A.I.M.A. evaluation of Galbally [1982] noted that many organisations and commentators had expressed views critical of the social policy directions of the government with regard to migrant welfare. Jayasuriya makes similar points in his demand for "mainstreaming", [1984b].

We turn finally to some basic proposals that should be considered in opening up the crucial questions of class, ethnicity, gender and social policy in Australia. We have chosen to raise in outline only proposals which incorporate action research perspectives into programs which seek to empower working class men and women to take more active control of their own lives and circumstances. 102

.2 Proposal 1: Children's Services

Child care is not only about the needs of children, but about the social and economic needs of those who nurture and care for them. A child care and pre-school education centre would be established as part of a locality-based complex concerned with the needs of migrant women. Such a centre would require the participation of a number of government departments in the provision of resources, would concentrate on pre-school programs, and seek the active participation of parents in child care where appropriate. In particular, the importance of creative play would be stressed. The centre would also provide the locus for adult English classes for women, and an advice and action centre around issues of concern to working women and those who had no paid work. The child care program would require greatly extended resources to ensure competent, trained staff were available. The educational philosophy of the centre would also provide a base for detached child care workers employed by the centre, who would be able to provide support, advice and aid for home-based child care. Such workers should have some training in the recognition of child abuse. They should also be able to transfer skills effectively and be a point of trust and contact for women isolated with children at home.

The development ofthis proposal would require the active co-operation of State and Federal governments, local women's and ethnic organisations, and possibly local government. The project should be designed to include procedures for evaluation, feedback and change. Funding would be necessary to allow this evaluation to be developed as part of the project.

•3 Proposal 2: Migrant Women

The Report has barely scraped the surface of the issues effecting migrant women. It is vital that a major effort be made to develop strategies through which working class migrant women could develop their skills and capacities to participate more effectively in contesting the social relations which currently constrain them.

This effort should involve contracted research, action research projects, pilot and developmentally structured projects in the workplace and the community which address the issues of class, gender and ethnicity directly. Sufficient resources must be guaranteed so that the current experience of short-term, poorly funded and volunteer based schemes are not replicated. Particular attention should be paid to the experience and needs of younger working class women, especially those who have been unemployed for some time. 103

Emphasis should also be placed on those women whose lives are caught in the most exploitative situations.

•4 Proposal 3: The Aged

The problems of aged working class migrants are comparable to those experienced by the Anglo Australian working class aged - exacerbated by linguistic isolation, social estrangement, cultural disorientation and exceptional poverty, [Hearst, 1981]. We would argue that the Aged Persons Homes Act be reviewed, so that it is possible to develop structures of support which maintain people within the communities in which they have lived. An exploration should also be made of the extent of poverty amongst the ethnic aged, and urgent action taken to abandon the Assurance of Support scheme (which has replaced maintenance guarantees). Special Benefit is an insufficient stand-by for old people in poverty and distress, as it does not provide the all important ancillary benefits of the Age Pension. As it is unlikely on the basis of their past record, that the A.I.M.A. response to their reference on the ethnic aged will explore class relations in any depth (rather than socio-economic categories) such a study should be initiated, if possible in co-operation with the Institute of Family Studies.

Special consideration should also be given to the issues involved in the care of the ethnic frail aged. This problem is particularly important, as communities expend large amounts of energy to raise funds to be matched by the Commonwealth, only to find the results nowhere match the extent of need. Indeed the class and cultural assumptions in Commonwealth grants programs for the aged require careful and detailed research on the allocational effects of the investment.

•5 Unemployment and Technological Change

The welfare implications of technological change, the world crisis of capitalist overproduction, and the reconstruction of Australian capitalism have barely been explored in Australia. An action research project could be developed in conjunction with T.A.F.E. to examine the problems and potential of job retraining towards technologically sophisticated "sunrise" industries. We have indicated in the body of the Report that the major determinant of welfare is access to employment, and for the ethnically-segmented older workforce the feasibility of retraining is a crucial question. The most vulnerable workers are unskilled labourers who rent accommodation and have children still at school. 104

These workers are concentrated in exactly those economic sectors which, even if they do "recover", will do so as far more technologically sophisticated and capital intensive projects than they are at present. The welfare implications of these developments require documentation, and public debate about possible strategies.

That debate must necessarily be made meaningful to the non-English speaking working class - a challenge to the consultative processes of social policy formation which has never previously been addressed. It is very important therefore that the trade union movement be brought to recognise the particular problems of non-English speaking workers who are facing redundancy. Strategies of resistance where these are developed must contend with the problems to be overcome in building a "multicultural" "factory-floor" organisation, which is anti-racist, non-sexist and class-oriented.

Given the welfare implications of employment, these problems should be recognised as legitimate concerns of social policy, and unions could be funded to develop those strategies and networks. In addition, multilingual welfare rights teams should be established on a pilot basis to operate within working class ethnic neighbourhoods to develop the links between the workplace and the community likely to be necessary for survival as the economic crisis deepens. Perhaps pilot neighbourhood welfare rights action groups could be tried, which seek to bring together employees of the welfare state, employed and unemployed workers and their families, and the union movement.

One of the continuing criticisms of the situation with regard to migrant youth unemployed is their low level of utilisation of central government programs - eg: C.Y.S.S., S.Y.T.E.P., [Jakubowicz et al., 1980]. The appropriateness of many of the schemes is suspect, except as social control, or as Jamrozik has hinted:

The policies adopted seem to be chosen for their visible effect ... (and) have always been subject to political manipulation and expediency. [1982:9-10]

The issues raised by the impact of the current crisis on the migrant working class cannot be usefully resolved by studies, surveys or static research. The possibilities for sensitive and effective social policy can only be determined by practical programs which reach working class migrants and involve them in developing responses communally in the situation they share with their English speaking colleagues. 105

APPENDIX

INTERVIEWEES

Note: Organisational Affiliation is for identification purposes only, and does not imply that the individuals represent the organisations or cureently hold the positions listed.

Organisational Affiliation

Armstrong, R. Former Secretary, Dept. of Immigration 11-2-82 Atkin, E. Co.As.It., Sydney 18-2-82 Batzias, D. Ecumenical Migration Centre, Melbourne 2-7-82 Benn, C. Phillip Institute ofTechnology; Co.As.It., Melbourne 3-7-82 Bertelli, L. Ecumenical Migration Centre, Catholic Multicul­ 3-7-82 tural Centre, Melbourne Borrie, W.D. Australian Academy of Social Science 10-3-82 Bottomley, G. Macquarie University 6-5-82 Boulos, v. Ethnic Communities Council of N.S.W. 22-2-82 Buckland-Fuller, D. Ethnic Affairs Commission of N.S.W., Greek 7-5-82 Orthodox Community Byrne, E. Dept of Immigration Social Worker, Director, 26-2-82 F.A.C.S.A. (NSW) Calabrese, N. Victorian Trades Hall 21-4-82 Choudhuri, E. Migrant Services, Dept. of Social Security 6-5-82 Cobby, N. Melbourne Migrant Resource Centre 30-6-82 Coleman, M. Director, Office of Child Care, Dept. of Social 5-4-82 Security Coombs, A. Australian National University 31-3-82 Costanzo, E. 'La Fiamma' Italian Newspaper 30-4-82 Cox,D. University of Melbourne 22-4-82 Cox,E. Committeee of Review of A.I.M.A.; former staff 30-9-83 D. Grimes Crisp, L. Australian National University 31-3-82 Dean-Oswald, H. Member, A.I.M.A.; Victorian Ethnic Affairs 26-10-83 Commission de Lepervanche, M. Sydney University 17-3-82 di Biase, B. F.I.L.E.F. (Sydney) 22-2-82 Dimech, M. Ethnic Communities Council of N.S.W. 18-2-82 Doyle, U. Office ofthe Minister for Immigration and Ethnic 8-1-84 Affairs Dunphy, J. Deakin University 2-7-82 Dunstan, D Former Labor Premier, South Australia 22-6-82 Falk, B. Melbourne University 5-7-82 Fleming, P. Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs 30-6-82 Frost, A. Ecumenical Migration Centre 2-7-82 Gorton, J. Former Liberal Prime Minister 6-5-82 Grassby, A. Former Labor Immigration Minister 24-3-82 Grimes, D. Labor Party spokesperson, Social Security 19-3-82 Hayton, E. Good Neighbour Council, Wollongong 13-7-82 Helman, M. Good Neighbour Council (NSW) 26-2-82 Houston, J. Dept. of Immigration; Australian Council of 16-4-82 Churches 106

Jamieson, P. Ecumenical Migration Centre 2-7-82 Jupp, J. Canberra C.A.E. 9-3-82 Kalaifatis A. A.M.W.S.U. 4-5-82 Kalisperis, J. Ecumenical Migration Centre 2-7-82 Kent, L. Labor M.H.R. 19-4-82 Kiddle, G. Dep1. of Immigration official 6-5-82 Koyunugluy, G. Ecumenical Migration Centre 2-7-82 Lajovic, M. Liberal Senator 14-4-82 Lamarchesina, C. Ecumenical Migration Centre 2-7-82 Lazarus, G. Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs 22-4-82 Liffman, M. Ecumenical Migration Centre 21-4-82 Lippmann, W. Australian Jewish Welfare; Melbourne M.R.C. 22-4-82 Lozzi-Cuthbertson, N.S.W. Ethnic Communities Council; Ethnic 22-2-82 N. Affairs Commission Luby, B. Dep1. of Social Security 6-5-82 MacKellar, M. Former Liberal Immigration and Ethnic Affairs 14-4-82 Minister Mapolar, R. Ecumenical Migration Centre 2-7-82 Martini-Piovano, G. Co.As.It. (Melbourne) 1-7-82 Marcello, C. 'La Fiamma' newspaper 30-4-82 Matheson, A. Australian Council of Trade Unions 30-6-82 Meekosha, H. Illawarra Migrant Resource Centre 3-2-84 Menadue, J. Former Secretary, Dept of Immigration and 30-4-82 Ethnic Affairs Merenda, F. Member, Galbally Committee; Welfare Worker 31-3-82 DIEA; Co.As.It. Sydney Moraitis, S. Australian Greek Welfare Society 20-4-82 Nalbantides, J. Ecumenical Migration Centre 2-7-82 Neutze, M. Australian National University; Member, A.C.P.E.A. 5-4-82 O'Neill, J. Australian Council of Trade Unions 20-4-82 Papadopoulos, G. AGWS; AIMA; Victorian Ethnic Affairs Commission 1-7-82

Peres, L. Melbourne University 5-7-82 Polites, N. Member, Galbally Committee; AGWS 22-4-82 Price, C. Australian National University 10-3-82 Rist, L. Illawarra Migrant Resource Centre 15-3-82 Rivett, K. University of New South Wales 18-2-82 Rodopoulos, L. Victorian State College 4-7-82 Scott, D. Brotherhood of S1. Laurence 1-7-82 Sgro, G. Labor M.L.C. (Victoria), F.I.L.E.F. 22-4-82 Shaver, S. Macquarie University 18-3-82 Sidoropoulos, T. Labor M.L.A. (Victoria) 5-7-82 Skoroszewski, A. Ethnic Communities Council ofN.S.W. 22-2-82 Snedden, B. Former Liberal Immigration Minister 25-3-82 Storer, D. Institute of Family Studies; Victorian E.A.C. 30-6-82 Taliano, J. Co.As.It. (Melbourne) 1-7-82 Vaccari, E. Co.As.It. (Melbourne) 1-7-82 Weber, W. Wirtschaft Universitat, Vienna 20-5-83 West, S. Labor M.H.R.; Minister for Immigration and 15-3-82 Ethnic Affairs Wilenski, P. Former Secretary, Dept. of Labour and 30-3-82 Immigration Zubrzycki, J. Australian National University 10-3-82 107

REFERENCES

ALFORD, R., 1975, "Paradigms of Relations Between State and Society", in Lindberg et.a!. (eds.).

ALLAN, L., 1978, "Ethnic Politics - Migrant Organisation and the Victorian ALP", Ethnic Studies, 2:2.

ALLISON, J., 1965, "Address", Australian Citizenship Convention, Canberra, January.

ANGELONE, C., 1977, "Hassling with the Department of Social Security: FILEF's Welfare Rights Program", in Sandford (ed).

APPLEYARD, R., 1971, Immigration: Policy and Progress; A Background Paper, in: Wilkes (ed.).

AUSTRALIAN COUNCIL OF SOCIAL SERVICES (ACOSS), 1972, "The Making of Social Policy", Australian Report to XVI International Conference on Social Welfare, ACOSS, Sydney, August.

AUSTRALIAN COUNCIL ON POPULATION AND ETHNIC AFFAIRS (ACPEA), 1982, Multiculturalism for All Australians; our developing nationhood, Australian Council on Population and Ethnic Affairs, AGPS, Canberra, May.

AUSTRALIAN ETHNIC AFFAIRS COUNCIL (AEAC), 1977, Australia as a Multicultural Society, AGPS, Canberra, August.

AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE OF MULTICULTURAL AFFAIRS (AIMA), 1982a, Evaluation ofPost-Arrival Programme and Services, Melbourne.

AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE OF MULTICULTURAL AFFAIRS (AIMA), 1982b, Annual Report, Melbourne.

AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE OF MULTICULTURAL AFFAIRS (AIMA), 1983, Response to the Report to the Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs ofthe Committee of Review of the Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs, A.I.M.A., Melbourne, 17 December.

AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE OF POLITICAL SCIENCE (AlPS), 1961, Australia, 1970 and Beyond, Angus and Robertson.

AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE OF POLITICAL SCIENCE (AlPS), 1969, Poverty in Australia: Proceedings of the 35th Summer School, Angus and Robertson, Sydney.

AUSTRALIAN POPULATION AND IMMIGRATION COUNCIL (APIC), 1976, A Decade of Migrant Settlement: Report on the 1973 Immigration Survey, AGPS, Canberra.

AUSTRALIAN POPULATION AND IMMIGRATION COUNCIL (APIC), 1979, Multiculturalism and its Implicationsfor Immigration Policy, APIC and Australian Ethnic Affairs Council, AGPS, Canberra, June.

BAILEY, P .H. (Chairman), 1977, Task Force on Co-ordination in Welfare and Health, Proposals for Change in the Administration and Delivery ofPrograms and Services, AGPS, Canberra. 108

BAILEY, P.H. (Chairman), 1978, Task Force on Co-ordination in Welfare and Health, Consultative Arrangements and the Co-ordination of Social Policy Development, AGPS, Canberra.

BANTON, M., 1983, Racial and Ethnic Competition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

BARNARD, L., 1968, "Migrants Generate Economic Growth", Australian Citizenship Convention, Canberra.

BENDIX, R., 1966, Max Weber: an intellectual portrait, Methuen, London.

BERESFORD, M. and KERR, P., 1980, "A Turning Point for Australian Capitalism: 1942-52", in: Wheelwright and Buckley (eds.).

BERTELLI, L., 1979, " It's not the Thought That Counts ... Reviews of the Immigrant Situation before Galbally", Migrant Action, IV: 1.

BETEILLE, Andre (ed.), 1969, Social Inequality, Penguin, Harmondsworth

BERTHOUD, R. and BROWN, J., 1981, Poverty and the Development ofAnti-Poverty Policy in the UK, Heinemann for the Policy Studies Institute, London.

BIRRELL, R., 1982, "The Economic Context of the Evaluation", Migration Action, VI: 1.

BIRRELL, R., and BIRRELL, T., 1981. An Issue of People: Population and Australian Society, Longman Cheshire, Melbourne.

BLACK, L., 1982, "Social Democracy and Full Employment", APSA Conference, Perth, August.

BLANDY, R., 1978,"Migrant Workers in Australia", in Graycar, A. (ed.),

BONACICH, Edna, 1980, "Class Approaches to Ethnicity and Race", Insurgent Sociologist, Vol.X., No.2, Fall, p.9-24.

BORRIE, W., 1949, Immigration: Australia's Problems and Prospects, Angus and Robertson, Sydney.

BORRIE, W., 1958, "British People for the Commonwealth",Australian Citizenship Convention, Canberra.

BORRIE, W., 1959, The Cultural Integration ofImmigrants, UNESCO, Paris.

BORRIE, W.D. (Chairman), 1975, Population and Australia: A Demographic Analysis and Projection; First Report ofthe National Population Inquiry, AGPS, Canberra.

BORRIE, W.D., et.al., 1946, A White Australia: Australia's Population Problem, papers read to the AlPS Summer School, Australasian Publishing Co. with AlPS, Sydney.

BOSTOCK, William, 1978, "Australia's Ethnic Revolution", Quadrant, 128, Vol.XXII, No.3, March, p.43. 109

BOTTOMLEY, Gillian, 1981a, "Class, Gender and Ethnicity",Ethnicity and Class Conference, Wollongong, August.

BOTTOMLEY, G., 1981b, "Social Class Ethnicity and Health", CHOMI, reprint 438, EMC, Melbourne.

BOURGOIS, Phillipe, 1981, "Class, Ethnicity and the State among the Miskitu Amerindians of Northeastern Nicaragua", Latin American Perspectives, Issue 29, VoI.VIII, 2, Spring, pp.22-39.

BOYER, Sir Richard, 1957, "The Australian Good Neighbour Movement - Past and Present",Australian Citizenship Convention, Canberra.

BRAIN, P., SMITH, R. and SCHUYERS, G., 1979, Population, Immigration and the Australian Economy, Croom Helm, London.

BRAVERMAN, H., 1974, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the 20th Century, Monthly Review Press,New York.

BRETON, Raymond, 1979, "The Structure of Relationships Between Ethnic Collectivities", in: Driedger (ed.),

BRIDGES, Lee, 1981/2, "Keeping the lid on: British urban social policy 1975-81", Race and Class, VoI.XXIII, Number 2/3, Autumn/Winter.

BROWN, M., 1961, "Prejudice and the Migration Programme",Australian Citizenship Convention, Canberra.

BRYSON, L., 1977, "Poverty Research in Australia", Australian and New Zealand Journal ofSociology, 13:3, October.

BRYSON, Lois and EASTOP, Ian, 1980, "Poverty, Welfare and Hegemony, 1973 and 1978", Australian and New Zealand Journal ofSociology, 16:3, November.

BURNLEY, 1. (ed.), 1974, Urbanisation in Australia: the post-war experience, Cambridge U.P., London.

CALWELL, A., 1949, "Immigration", Hansard, House of Representatives, 8 September, pp. 139-144.

CANADA, 1969, Report of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, Book IV: The Cultural Contribution ofthe Other Ethnic Groups, Queen's Printer, Ottawa.

CARLI, Carlo, 1982, "From Ethnic Rights to the Galbally Report: the politics of multiculturalism and the Melbourne Italian Community", Paper submitted to the Political Science Department, Melbourne University, Melbourne, October.

CARROLL, John, 1982, "Paranoid and Remissive: The Treason of the Upper Middle Class",in Manne (ed.).

CASS, B., 1981, Unemployment and the Family: The Social Impact of the Restructuring of the Australian Labour Market, SWRC Reports and Proceedings No.7, UNSW, April.

...... _---~------110

CASS, Moss (Chairman), 1983a, "Report to the Minister of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs", Committee ofReview ofthe Australian Institute ofMulticultural Affairs, I, AGPS, Canberra.

CASS, Moss (Chairman), 1983b, "Report to the Minister of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs", Committee ofReview ofthe Australian Institute ofMulticultural Affairs, n, AGPS, Canberra.

CASTELLS, M., 1975, "Immigrant Workers and Class Struggles in Advanced Capitalism: the Western European Experience", Politics and Society, 5:1.

CASTELLS, Manuel, 1978, "Collective Consumption and Urban Contradictions in Advanced Capitalism" in City, Class and Power, Macmillan, London.

CASTLES, Stephen and KOSACK, Godula, 1973, Immigrant Workers and Class Structure in Western Europe, IRR and Oxford UP, London.

CHIFLEY, B., 1949, "Australia's Immigration Policy", Current Notes, 20:5, April-June.

CHIPMAN, Lauchlan, 1978, "Multi-cultural Myth", Quadrant, No.128, Vol.XXn, No.3, March, pp.50-55.

CHIPMAN, Lauchlan, 1980a, "Equality Before (and After) the Law", Quadrant, No.151, Vol.XXIV, No.3, March, pp.46-51.

CHIPMAN, Lauchlan, 1980b, "The Menace of Multiculturalism", Quadrant, No.158, Vol.XXIV, No.10, October, pp.3-6.

CHIPMAN, Lauchlan, 1981, "Ethnicity", in: AE-S. Tay (ed.), Teaching Human Rights, AGPS, Canberra.

CHIPMAN, Lauchlan, 1982, "The Children of Cynicism" in Manne (ed.).

CHOI, C. and BURNLEY, 1., 1974, "Population components in the growth of cities", in: Burnley (ed.).

CLOUT, H. and SALT, J., 1976, "The Demographic Background" in: Salt and Clout (eds.).

COLLINS, J., 1975, "The Political Economy of Post-War Immigration" in: Wheelwright and Buckley (eds.).

COLLINS, J., 1978, "Fragmentation of the Working Class" in Wheelwright and Buckley (eds.).

COMMITTEE ON MIGRANT WORKERS' PROBLEMS (CMWP), 1973, The Migrant Workers' Conference, Committee on Migrant Workers' Problems, Melbourne, 2 November.

COMMONWEALTH IMMIGRATION ADVISORY COMMITTEE (CIAC), 1946, Report, Canberra.

COMMONWEALTH IMMIGRATION ADVISORY COUNCIL (CIAC), 1952, Migrants and Crime in Australia, Canberra. 111

COMMONWEALTH IMMIGRATION ADVISORY COUNCIL (CIAC), 1973, Inquiry into the Settlers from Australia, Commonwealth Immigration Advisory Council, Committee on Social Patterns, Final Report, AGPS, Canberra, July.

COMMONWEALTH IMMIGRATION ADVISORY COUNCIL (CIAC), 1974, "Interim Report", Committee on Community Relations, Commonwealth Immigration Advisory Council, Department of Labor and Immigration, Canberra, 9 August.

CONNELL, R., and IRVING, T., 1980, Class Studies in Australian History, Longman Cheshire, Melborne.

CONNELL, R., et aI, 1982, Making the Difference, Allen and Unwin, Sydney.

COPLAND, Sir Douglas, 1951, "The Economic Implications of Large-Scale Migration", Second Australian Citizenship Convention, Canberra, January.

COPLAND, Sir Douglas, 1957, "Immigration and the Expansion of the Australian Economy",Australian Citizenship Convention.

CRESCIANI, G., 1980, Fascism, Anti-Fascism and Italians in Australia: 1922-1945, ANU Press, Canberra.

CROUCH, C. (ed.), 1979a, State and Economy in Contemporary Capitalism, Croom Helm, London.

CROUCH, Colin, 1979b, "The State, Capital and Liberal Democracy", in: Crouch (ed.).

CROUGH, Greg and WHEELWRIGHT, Ted, 1982, Australia: a client state, Pelican, Ringwood.

COX, D., 1982, The Delivery of Welfare Services to Immigrants, Department of Social Studies, University of Melbourne, Parkville.

COX, David and MARTIN, Jean, 1975, Welfare ofMigrants, Commission of Inquiry into Poverty, AGPS, Canberra.

CUTHBERT, Grace, 1946, "Filling the Empty Cradles", in: Borrie et.al.

DAHRENDORF, R., 1969, "On the Origin of Inequality Among Men", in: A. Beteille (ed.).

DALE, l., 1981, "A Marxist Perspective" in: Taylor-Gooby and Dale.

DALY, M.T., 1982, Sydney Boom, Sydney Bust: The City and its property market 1850-1981, George Allen and Unwin, Sydney.

DAVIES, Arthur, 1977, "Migrant, Ethnics, Refugees and the 'New Federalisms', in: Jaensch, D. (ed.).

de LEPERVANCHE, Marie, 1980, "From Race to Ethnicity" Australian and New Zealand Journal ofSociology, 16, No. I.

de LEPERVANCHE, Marie, 1984, "Immigrants and Ethnic Groups", in: Encel et al. 112

DESPRES, L. (ed.), 1975, Ethnicity and Resource Competition in Plural Societies, Mouton, The Hague.

DIGEST, 1950, Digest ofProceedings of the Australian Citizenship Convention, January 1950, Department of Immigration, Canberra.

DIGEST, 1965, Digest ofProceedings of the Australian Citizenship Convention, January 1965, Department of Immigration, Canberra.

DIGEST, 1968, Digest ofProceedings of the Australian Citizenship Convention, January 1968, Department of Immigration, Canberra.

DOFNY, Jacques and AKIWOWO, Akinsola (eds.), 1980, National and Ethnic Movements, Sage and International Sociological Association, Studies in International Sociology 19, London.

DONOLO, Carlo, 1980, "Social Change and Transformation of the State in Italy", in: Scase (ed.).

DOVEY, Hon. Mr. Justice (Chairman), 1960, The Progress and Assimilation ofMigrant Children in Australia, Commonwealth Immigration Advisory Council, Canberra, ACT, February.

DOWNER, A.R., 1959, "Australia and Asia: the case for our immigration policy" ,Australian Citizenship Convention, Canberra. .. DRIEDGER, Les, (ed.), 1978, The Canadian Ethnic Mosaic: A Quest for Identity, McClelland and Steward, Toronto.

DUGDALE, J., 1979, Radio Power: A History of 3ZZ Access Radio, Hyland House, Melbourne.

DUNCAN, G., (ed.), 1978, Critical Essays in Australian Politics, Edward Arnold (Australia), Melbourne.

DUNPHY, J., 1982, "Ref: Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs - Evaluation of Post-Arrival Programs and Services" , Letter, 3 September.

EIPPER, C., 1983, "The Magician's Hat, A Critique of the Concept of Ethnicity", Australian and New Zealand Journal ofSociology, 19 No.3.

ELKIN, A.P., 1946a, "Is White Australia Doomed?", in: Borrie et.a!.

ELKIN, A.P., 1946b, "Rethinking the White Australia Policy", in: Borrie et.al.

ELLIOT, Grant, 1982, "The Social Policy of the New Right", in: Sawer (ed.).

EMPLOYMENT AND YOUTH AFFAIRS (EYA), 1981, "Survey of Migrant Clientele in Selected OCES in NSW" (mimeo), Sydney.

ENCEL, Sol, 1981, "Introduction", in: Martin.

ENCEL, Sol et al, 1984, Australian Society: Introductory Essays, 4th Edition, Longman Cheshire, Melbourne. 113

ENLOE, C., 1981, "The Growth of the State and Ethnic Mobilization: the American experience", Ethnic and Racial Studies, 4:2, April.

ETHNIC AFFAIRS COMMISSION OF NSW (EAC), 1978, "Participation", Report to the Premier, Government Printer, Sydney.

ETHNIC AFFAIRS COMMISSION OF NSW (EAC), 1979, "Survival and Beyond: Refugee Services in NSW", Vol.l, Sydney.

ETHNIC COMMUNITIES COUNCIL OF NSW (ECC), 1975, Proceedings, Inaugral meeting, Ethnic Communities Council of NSW, Sydney Town Hall, 27 July.

ETHNIC COMMUNITIES COUNCIL OF NSW (ECC), 1982a, Evaluation ofPost Arrival Programmes and Services, papers for a Public Seminar, Ethnic Communities Council of NSW, NSW LT., Sydney, 18 September.

ETHNIC COMMUNITIES COUNCIL OF NSW (ECC), 1982b, "Evaluation of Post Arrival Programmes and Services: Recommendations and comments from interested groups at a public seminar held by the Ethnic Communities Council, 18 September 1982", Sydney, [n.d.].

EXTERNAL AFFAIRS, Dept. of, 1967, Agreement between Australia and Turkey: concerning the Residence and Employment of Turkish Citizens in Australia, Treaty Series, 1967 No.22, Canberra.

FAULKNER, A. and STORER, D., 1982, "The Georgiou Report: A Disservice to Galbally", Migration Action, VI: 1.

FOLIN, Mavino, 1981, "The production of the general conditions of social production and the role of the state", in: Harloe and Lebas (eds.).

FOUCAULT, M., 1977, "The political function of the intellectual", Radical Philosophy, 17.

FRASER, J.M., 1981, "Inaugral Address on Multiculturalism to the Institute of Multicultural Affairs", Office of Prime Minister, Canberra, 30 November.

FREEMAN, G., 1979, Immigrant Labor and Racial Conflict in Industrial Societies, Princeton UP, Princeton, N.J.

FRIEDMAN, M., and FRIEDMAN, R., 1980, Free to Choose, Seeker and Warburg, London.

GALBALLY, Frank, (Chairman), 1978, "Migrant Services and Programs: report of the review of post-arrival programs and services for migrants", AGPS, Canberra, May.

GEORGE, V. and WILDING, P., 1976, Ideology and Social Welfare, RKP, London.

GILSON, M. and ZUBRZYCKI, J., 1967, The Foreign-Language Press in Australia, 1848-1964, ANU Press, Canberra.

GINER, Salvador and ARCHER, Margaret, (eds.), 1978, Contemporary Europe: Social Structures and cultural patterns, RKP, LondoI}. 114

GINER, Salvador and SALCEDO, Juan, 1978, "Migrant workers in European Social Structures", in: Giner and Archer (eds.) 1978.

GINSBERG, Norman, 1979, Class, Capital and Social Policy, Macmillan, London.

GIRLS' OWN, 1983, "Black Immigrant and Third World Women", Girls' Own Sydney Feminist Newspaper, No.lO, Feb-Mar.

GLAZER, Nathan, 1975a, "Ethnicity: a World Phenomenon", Dialogue, Vol.8, No.3/4, (Abridged from Encounter).

GLAZER, Nathan, 1975b, Affirmative Discrimination: Ethnic Inequality and Public Policy, Basic Books, New York.

GLAZER, Nathan, and MOYNIHAN, Daniel, (eds.), 1975a, Ethnicity: Theory and Experience, Harvard UP, Cambridge, Mass.

GLAZER, Nathan and MOYNIHAN, Daniel, 1975b, "Introduction", in: Glazer and Moynihan, (eds.).

GORDON, M., 1964, Assimilation in American Life, Oxford University Press, New York.

GOUGH, lan, 1979, The Political Economy ofthe Welfare State, Macmillan, London.

GRASSBY, A., 1973a, A Multicultural Society for the Future, Immigration Reference Papers, Department of Immigration, AGPS, Canberra.

GRASSBY, A., 1973b, Australia's Decade of Decision, Immigration Reference Paper, Department of Immigration, AGPS, Canberra.

GRAYCAR, A., (ed.), 1978, Perspectives in Australian Social Policy, Macmillan, Melbourne.

GRAYCAR, Adam, 1979a, "Backlash, Overload and the Welfare State", Australian Quarterly, September.

GRAYCAR, A., 1979b, Welfare Politics in Australia: a Study in Policy Analysis, Macmillan, Sydney.

GRAYCAR, A., 1983 (ed.), Retreat from the Welfare State, George Allen and Unwin, Sydney.

HALL, Raymond, (ed.), 1979, Ethnic Autonomy - Comparative Dynamics, Pergamon, - New York.

HARLOE, Michael and Lebas, Elizabeth, (eds.), 1981, City, Class and Capital: New developments in the political economy ofcities and regions, Arnold, London.

HARRIS, H.L., 1946, "Australians from Overseas" , in: Borrie eLal.

HAWKER, G., 1981, Who's Master, Who's Servant?, George Allen and Unwin, Sydney.

HAUPT, Robert and GRATTAN, Michelle, 1983, 31 Days to Power: Hawkes Victory, George Allen and Unwin, Sydney. 115

HEAD, Brian, 1982, "The new right and welfare expenditures", in: Sawer (ed.).

HEARN, J., 1976, "Migrant Participation in Trade Union Leadership", Journal of Industrial Relations, 18, June.

HEARST, S., 1981, Ethnic Communities and Their Aged, Ethnic Communities Council of Victoria, Melbourne.

HENDERSON, R., (Chairman), 1975, Poverty in Australia, Commission of Inquiry into Poverty, First Main Report, AGPS, Canberra, April.

HENDERSON, R., (ed.), 1981, The Welfare Stakes: Strategies for Australian Social Policy, Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, Melbourne.

HENDERSON, R., HARCOURT, A. and HARPER, R., 1970, People in Poverty: a Melbourne Survey, Cheshire for Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, Melbourne.

HIGGINS, Joan, 1978, The Poverty Business: Britain and America, Basil Blackwell, London.

HIGGINS, Joan, 1981, States ofWelfare: Comparative Analysis in Social Policy, Blackwell and Robertson, Oxford.

HIGGINS, W., 1978, "State Welfare and Class Warfare", in: G. Duncan (ed.).

HILL, Michael, 1980, Understanding Social Policy, Blackwell, Oxford.

HILL, Richard Child, 1980, "Race, Class and the State: The Metropolitan Enclave System in the United States", Insurgent Sociologist, Vol.X, No.2, Fall. pp.45-60.

HIRSCH. Joachim, 1980. "Developments in the Political System of West Germany Since 1945", in: Scase (ed.), pp.115-141.

HOGAN. D., 1978, "Education and the Making of Chicago Working Class, 1880-1930", History ofEducation Quarterly. Fall.

HOLLINGWORTH, P., 1972, The Powerless Poor: a comprehensive quide to poverty in Australia. Stockland Press, Melbourne.

HOLT, Harold, 1950. "Address".Australian Citizenship Convention. Canberra. January.

HOLT. Harold, 1951, "Address",Second Australian Citizenship Convention, Canberra, January.

HOLT, Harold, 1952, "Address".Third Citizenship Convention, Canberra.

HOLT, Harold, 1953, "Address",Fourth Citizenship Convention. Canberra.

HOLTON, Bob, 1981. "History and Sociology in the Work of E.P. Thompson", Australian and New Zealand Journal ofSociology, 17: 1.

IMMIGRATION, Dept. of, 1971, Australian Immigration: Consolidated Statistics, No.5, AGPS, Canberra. 116

JAENSCH, Dean, (ed.), 1977, The Politics of"New Federalism". APSA, Adelaide.

JAKUBOWICZ, A., 1974, Community Development Projects Involving Migrants: multi­ purpose community resources centres, a report to the NSW Migrant Task Force, Sydney, (mimeo).

JAKUBOWICZ, A., 1981, "State and Ethnicity: multiculturalism and ideology", ANZ Journal ofSociology, 17:3, December.

JAKUBOWICZ, A., 1982, " 'This Evaluation Was Not It': A Political Overview", Migration Action, VI:l.

JAKUBOWICZ, A., 1983, "Ethnic Welfare: problems in policy formation and implementation", Social Alternatives, July.

JAKUBOWICZ, A. and BUCKLEY, Berenice, 1975, Migrants and the Legal System, AGPS, Canberra.

JAKUBOWICZ, Andrew and MITCHELL, Glenn, 1982, Community Welfare Services and Ethnic Minorities; A report to the Department of Youth and Community Services, Contracted Research Paper No.l, YACS, Sydney, July.

JAMROZIK, A., 1982, "Migrants and Welfare: Is there a need for special provisions?"; Paper presented at 'Multiculturalism: Rhetoric and Reality' Conference, UNSW, 17 September.

JAYASURIYA, L., 1983, "The Facts, Policies and Rhetoric of Multiculturalism", Australian Society, 2:6, July.

JAYASURIYA, L., 1984a, "Whither Multiculturalism", m.s., January.

JAYASURIYA, L., 1984b, "Into the Mainstream", Australian Society, 3:3, March.

JESSEL, Levic, 1977, The Ethnic Process: an evolutionary Concept of Languages and Peoples, Mouton Publishers, The Hague.

JONES, Catherine, 1977, Immigration and Social Policy in Britain, Tavistock, London.

JONES, M.A., 1983, The Australian Welfare State, George AlIen and Unwin, 2nd ed., Sydney.

JUPP, J., 1966, Arrivals and Departures, Cheshire-Lansdowne, Melbourne.

JUPP, J., 1983, "Multiculturalism: Friends and Enemies, Patrons and Clients", Australian Quarterly, 55:2.

JUPP, J., 1984 (ed.), Ethnic Politics in Australia, Allen and Unwin, Sydney.

KATS, T., 1982, "Immigrant Woman: Double cost or relative improvement", International Migration Review, XVI:3, Fall.

KELLY, M.J., 1974, "History of the Good Neighbour Movement", unpublished ms., Sociology Dept., La Trobe University. 117

KENNEDY, R. (ed.), 1982, Australian Welfare History: Critical Essays, Macmillan, Melbourne.

KING, R., and PALSER, J., 1983, "The English Language Needs of Inner City Migrant Families", Community Research Centre University ofSydney, AMEPResearch and Evaluation Report.

KNOPFELMACHER, Frank, 1981, "Beware of the Cauldron", The Bulletin, 24 March, pp.38-40.

KNOPFELMACHER, F., 1982, "The Case Against Multi-culturalism", in: Manne (ed.).

KRINGAS, P., 1980, "Sociology and Australian Ethnic Relations", Ph.D Thesis, Australian National University.

KRYGIER, Martin, 1980, "Discrimination and Anti-Discrimination: Law, Affirmative Action and Human Rights", Quadrant, No.157, Vol. XXIV, No.9, September, pp.4-10.

KUBAT, D. with MEHRLANDER, U. and GEHMACHER, E., (eds.), 1979, The Politics ofMigration Policies; The First World in the 19705, Center for Migration Studies, New York.

KUBAT, Daniel, 1979a, "Introduction", in: Kubat et.al. (eds.).

LAJOVIC, Misha, 1981, "Migrants, Politics and the Liberal Party", in: Jupp (ed.).

LAWRENCE, R., 1968, "Responsibility for the Welfare ofEthnic Minorities",in: Throssell (00.).

LAWRENCE, R., 1970, "Organised Action for Migrant Social Welfare", Background Paper, Australian Citizenship Convention, Canberra.

LEES, Ray and SMITH, George (eds.), 1975, Action-Research in Community Development, RKP, London.

LEWINS, Frank, 1980, "Ethnic Schools and Multiculturalism in Australia", J. Intercultural Studies, VoU, No.2, p.30-39.

LEWINS, Frank, 1981, "Class or ethnicity? Class and ethnicity? Assessing the role of cultural and structural factors in ethnic relations", Paper presented to Ethnicity and Class Conference, Wollongong, August.

LEVER TRACY C., 1981a, "Post-War Immigrants in Australia and Western Europe, in reserve or centre forward?", Paper presented to Ethnicity and Class Conference, Wollongong, August.

LEVER TRACY C., 1981b, "Immigrants and their Incomes: An Open Pair of Scissors", Ethnic Politics Conference, Canberra, December.

LEVER TRACY C., 1981c, "Labour Market Segmentation and Diverging Migrant Incomes", Australian and New Zealand Journal ofSociology, 17:2.

LEVER TRACY C., 1983, "The New Australian Working Class: The Case of Ford Broadmeadows", Arena, 62. 118

LIFFMAN, Michael, 1981, Immigrant Welfare: A Research Perspective, SWRC Reports and Proceedings No.6, UNSW, Sydney, April.

LIFFMAN, M., 1983, "Marking Georgiou's Report", Australian Society, 1 February.

LINDBERG, L., ALFORD, R., CROUGH, C. and OFFE, C., (eds.), 1975, Stress and Contradiction in Modern Capitalism, Lexington Books, D.C. Heath and Co., Lexington.

LIPPMANN, Lorna, 1979, "Current Atttitudes to Asian Immigration into Australia", Ethnic Studies, Vo1.3, No.l, pp.35-45.

LIPPMANN, W., 1971, "Discussion", in: Wilkes (ed.).

LIPPMANN, W., 1982, "The Importance of Ethnicity Based Agencies", in: VCCSD.

LUKES, S., 1975, Emile Durkheim: his life and work - a historical and critical study, Peregrine Books, London.

LYNCH, P., 1971, The Evolution ofa Policy, AGPS, Canberra.

McCAUGHEY, J., 1970, "Migrants", in: Henderson, et.al.

McGRATH, Morag, 1975, "Social Needs of an Immigrant Population", in: Lees and Smith.

McMURCHEY, M. et aI., 1983, For Love or Money, Penguin, Ringwood.

McPHEE, I., 1981, "Address", Institute ofMulticultural Affairs, Melbourne.

MACKIE, F., 1982, Structure, Culture and Religion in the Welfare of Muslim Families, DIEA, AGPS, Canberra.

MANNE, R., (ed.), 1982, The New Conservatism in Australia, Oxford UP, Melbourne.

MARABLE, M., 1981, "Race, class and conflict: intellectual debates on race relations research in the United States since 1960, a social science bibliographical essay", Sage Race Relations Abstracts, 6:4, November.

MARSH, G., 1983, An Historical and Sociological Study of the Australian Greek Welfare Society, M.A. Thesis, La Trobe University.

MARKUS, A., 1982, "Labor and Immigration", Post-war Reconstruction Seminar, Australian National University, Canberra.

MARSHALL, T., 1965, Class, Citizenship and Social Development, Doubleday, New York.

MARTIN, J., 1971, "Migration and Social Pluralism", in Wilkes (ed.).

MARTIN, Jean, 1978, The Migrant Presence; Australian Responses 1947-1977, Research Report for the National Population Inquiry, George AlIen and Unwin, Sydney. 119

MARTIN, Jean, 1981, The Ethnic Dimension: Papers on Ethnicity and Pluralism, edited by S. Encel, George Allen and Unwin, Sydney.

MATHESON, A., 1974, "A Welfare Rights Program for Ethnic Groups", in: Social Security Quarterly, Vol.l, Autumn, pp.1O-14.

MEEKOSHA, H. and RIST, L., 1982, "The Resource Centres: Boom or Bust?, Migration Action, VI:1.

MENDELSOHN, R., 1979, The Condition of the People: Social welfare in Australia 1900-1975, George AlIen and Unwin, Sydney.

MIGRANT ISSUES GROUP (MIG), 1971, "Summary of Proceedings", Migrant Issues Group, Sydney.

MIGRANT TASK FORCE - N.S.W., 1973, Report to the Minister, Department of Immigration, Sydney.

MIGRANT TASK FORCES, Conference of, 1974, "Community Relations", Migrant Task Force Secretariat, Canberra, 21-22 February.

MIGRANT TASK FORCES, Conference of, 1974, "Social Services", Migrant Task Force Secretariat, Canberra, 21-22 February.

MILLIBAND, Ralph, 1973, The State in Capitalist Society, The Analysis of the Western System of Power, Quartet Books Ltd., London.

MISHRA, Ramesh, 1981, Society and Social Policy, (Second ed.), Macmillan, London.

MONK, A.E., 1956, "Our Second Million Migrants - How Should We Absorb Them?", Australian Citizenship Convention, January.

MONK, A.E., 1957, "Migrants in Industry", Australian Citizenship Convention, January.

MONK, A.E., 1958, "Immigration and Employment", Australian Citizenship Convention, January.

MOORE, Robert, 1977, "Migrants and the Class Structure of Western Europe", in: Scase (ed.), 1977, pp.136-149.

MORRISSEY, M, and JAKUBOWICZ, A. 1980, "Migrants and Occupational Health: A Report", SWRC Reports and Proceedings, No. 3, November.

MORRISSEY, M. and PALSER, J., 1983, English Language Learning in the Illawarra AGPS, Canberra.

MULVIHILL, J., Sen., 1972, "Address", Apex Metropolitan International Relations Seminar, 21 May.

NEUWIRTH G., 1969, "A Weberian Outline of a Theory of Community", British Journal ofSociology, Vo1.20.

NEWMAN, William, 1979, "Theoretical Perspectives for the Analysis of Social Pluralism", in: Driedger (ed.). 120

NEW SOUTH WALES COUNCIL OF SOCIAL SERVICES (NCOSS), 1978, Unemployed Women, A Report to the Premier of NSW, Council of Social Service of NSW, Sydney, December.

NORMAN, C., HALLEY, S., PRESTON-STANLEY, J. and COFFIL, J., 1983, Multiculturalism in the New South Wales Department of Youth and Community Services, YACS Community Developemnt Bureau, Sydney, August.

NOVAK, M., 1983a, "Ethnic Enterprise" , Making It in America Conference, Philadelphia, April.

NOVAK, M., 1983b, "The New Ethnicity", Quadrant, May.

O'CONNOR, James, 1973, The Fiscal Crisis ofthe State, St. Martin's Press, New York.

PAPADOPOULOS, G., 1974, "The Greeks, Social Welfare and Australia", Antipodes, pp. 12-14, Winter, (also Chomi Reprint, No.227).

PARK, Robert, 1922, The Immigrant Press and Its Control, Harper and Bros, New York and London, (Republished 1970, Scholarly Press, Michigan).

PARKER, N. (ed.), 1973, Focus on Migrants: a social work perspective, ACOSS, Sydney.

PARKIN, F. (ed.), 1974, The Social Analysis ofClass Structure, Tavistock, London.

PATTERSON, 0., 1975, "Context and choice in ethnic allegiance: a theoretical framework and Caribbean case study", in: Glazer and Moynihan, (eds.).

PIORE, M., 1979, Birds of Passage: Migrant Labour and Industrial Societies, CUP, Cambridge.

POLENBERG, Richard, 1980, One Nation Divisible: Class, Race and Ethnicity in the United State since 1938, Penguin, Harmondsworth.

PORTER, John, 1975, "Ethnic Pluralism in Canada", in: Glazer and Moynihan, (eds.).

PRETECEILLE, Edward, 1981, "Collective consumption, the state and the crisis of capitalist society", in: Harloe and Lebas, (eds.).

PRICE, Charles, (ed.), 1960, The Study of Immigrants in Australia, Proceedings of Conference on Immigration Research, ANU, Canberra, August.

PRICE, Charles, 1963, Southern Europeans in Australia, Oxford UP, Melbourne.

PRICE, Charles., (ed.), 1966, Australian Immigration: A Bibliography and Digest, Department of Demography JAS, Australian National University, Canberra.

PRICE, Charles., (ed.), 1970, Australian Immigration: A Bibliography and Digest, No.2 Department of Demography JAS, Australian National University, Canberra.

PRICE, Charles, 1981, "Immigration Policies and Refugees in Australia", International Migrationt Review, Vol.15, No.53/54, pp.99-108. 121

PRICE, C.A. and MARTIN, J.I., 1976, Australian Immigration: A Bibliography and Digest, No.3, Part 1, ANU, Canberra.

RANSTEAD, Donald, 1980, "Ethnic Confusions in Australia", Quadrant, Jan/Feb.

REIN, Martin, 1970, Social Policy: Issues of Choice and Change, Random House, New York.

REX, John, 1981, "A working paradigm for race relations research", Ethnic and Racial Studies, 4:1, January.

REX, J., 1982, "The 1981 Urban Riots in Britain", International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 6:1, March.

REX, John and TOMLINSON, Sally, 1979, Colonial Immigrants in a British City: A Class Analysis, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.

RIESMAN, D. with GLAZER, N. and DENNEY, R., 1961, The Lonely Crowd: A study of the changing American character, Abridged edition, Yale UP, New Haven.

RIVETT, K. (ed.), 1962, Immigration: Control or Colour Bar?, Immigration Reform Group, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne.

RIVETT, R. 1958, "The Migrant and the Community", Australian Citizenship Convention, Canberra.

RODGERS, B. with DORON, A. and JONES, M., 1979, The Study of Social Policy: a comparative approach, George Allen and Unwin, London.

RODOPOULOS, L., (ed.), 1977, Aspects of Social Service Delivery to Immigrants, Clearing House on Migration Issues, Melbourne.

RODOPOULOS, L., 1981, Welfare Practice and Education, Culture and Ethnicity, CHOMI Bibliography No.8, Richmond, Victoria.

ROE, Jill, (ed.), 1976, Social Policy in Australia, Cassell.

ROOM, Graham, 1979, The Sociology of Welfare: Social Policy, Stratification and Political Order, Blackwell and Robertson, Oxford.

ROSSI, P., and FREEMAN, H., 1982, Evaluation: A Systematic Approach, 2nd ed., Sage, Beverly Hills.

SALT, J. and CLOUT, H., (eds.), 1976, Migration in Post-War Europe: Geographical Essays, Oxford UP, Oxford.

SANDFORD, R. (ed.), 1977, We've Got No Choice: A Welfare Rights Perspective, V.C.O.S.S., Melbourne.

SAWER, Marian, (ed.), 1982, Australia and the New Right, George Allen and Unwin, Sydney. .

SASSOON, A., 1980, Gramsci's Politics, Croom Helm, London. 122

SCARMAN, Rt. Hon. the Lord, 1981, The Brixton Disorders: Report of an Inquiry, HMSO, London.

SCASE, Richard, (ed.), 1977, Industrial Society: Class, Cleavage and Control, George AlIen and Unwin, London.

SCASE, Richard, (ed.), 1980, The State in Western Europe, Croom Helm, London.

SCHAEFER, Richard, 1979, Racial and Ethnic Groups, Little, Brown, Boston.

SCOTTON, R.B. and FERBER, H., (eds.), 1979, Public Expenditure and Social Policy in Australia, Vol.1 The Whitlam Years 1972-75, Longman Cheshire, Melbourne.

SESTITO, Raymond, 1982, The Politics of Multiculturalism, CIS Policy Monograph 3, Centre for Independent Studies, Sydney.

SHARP, P., 1971, "Why Continue Immigration?", in: Wilkes (ed.).

SHEPPARD, G. (Chair), 1983, Access and Equity: The Development of Victoria's Ethnic Affairs Policies, A Report of a Review Group to the Minister of Ethnic Affairs, Melbourne.

SHERINGTON, G., 1980, Australia's Immigrants 1788-1978, George AlIen and Unwin, Sydney.

SHORT, lames lr., (ed.), 1981, The State of Sociology: Problems and Prospects" Sage, London.

SIVANANDAN, A., 198112, "From resistance to rebellion: Asian and Afro-Caribbean Struggles in Britain", Race and Class, Vol.XXIII, Numbers 213, Autumn/Winter.

SMITH, A., 1981, The Ethnic Revival, Cambridge University Press, London.

SMOLICZ, Jerzy, 1979, "Individualism vs. Collectivism: social relations in ethnic groups", Ethnic Studies, Vo1.3, No.1, pp.13-24.

SMOLICZ, Jerzy, 1981, "Core values and cultural identity", Ethnic and Racial Studies, 4:1, January, pp.75-90.

SNEDDEN, B., 1968, "Looking at Some Aspects of Australia's Immigration Policy", Address to Monash Liberal Club.

SOWELL, T., 1981, Ethnic America: A History, Basic Books, New York.

STEINBERG, Stephen, 1981, The Ethnic Myth: Race, Ethnicity and Class in America, Atheneum, New York.

STIASSI, A., 1979, Gli Italiani in Australia, Patron, Bologna.

STORER, D., (ed.), 1975, Ethnic Rights, Power and Participation Toward a Multi-cultural Australia, Monograph No.2, CHOMI, Ecumenical Migration Centre and CURA, Melbourne.

STOREY, John, 1950, "Address", Australian Citizenship Convention, Canberra, January. 123

STOREY, John, 1954, "Address", Australian Citizenship Convention, Canberra, January.

TAFT, R., 1965, From Stranger to Citizen: a survey ofstudies ofimmigrant assimilation in Western Australia, University of WA Press, Perth.

TAY, Alice (ed.), 1982, Teaching Human Rights, AGPS, Canberra.

TAYLOR-GOOBY, P. and DALE, J., 1981, Social Theory and Social Welfare, Arnold, London.

THROSSELL, H., (ed.), 1968, Ethnic Minorities in Australia, ACOSS, Sydney.

TITMUSS, R., 1974, Social Policy: An Introduction, Allen and Unwin, London.

TOWNSEND, Peter, 1976, Sociology and Social Policy, Penguin, Harmondsworth.

TULLOCH, P., 1979. Poor Policies: Australian Income Security 1972-77, Croom Helm, London.

TULLY, J., 1960, "Experiences in Integrating Italian Farmers into an Extension Programme and into the Farming Community of the MIA", in: Price (ed.).

URRY, J., 1981, The Anatomy ofCapitalist Societies, the Economy, Civil Society and the State, Macmillan, London.

VALENTINE, C., 1972, Culture and Poverty, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Van den BERGHE, P .L., 1975, "Ethnicity and Class in Highland Peru", in Despres (ed.).

Van den BERGHE, Pierre, 1978, "Race and Ethnicity: A Sociobiological Perspective", Ethnic and Racial Studies, 1:4.

Van den BERGHE, Pierre, 1982, "Australia, Canada and the United States: Ethnic Melting Pots or Plural Societies?", Australian and New Zealand Journal ofSociology, 19:2.

Van der VELDEN, J., 1981, "Class, ethnicity and the reproduction of the conditions of capitalist production", Paper presented to Ethnicity and Class Conference, Wollongong, August.

VECOLI, R.J., 1972, "European Americans: From Immigrants to Ethnics",

Van KEULEN, Titia and G.J., 1959, "Assimilation or integration?", Australian Citizenship Convention, Canberra. International Migration Review, 6, 403-34.

VICTORIAN CONSULTATIVE COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT (VCCSD), 1982, Multiculturalism and its implications for Service Delivery in Australian Society, Multicultural Australia Paper No.18, CHOMI, Richmond, Vic­ toria.

WALSH, M., 1971, "The Politics of It All", in: Wilkes (ed.).

WARE, Helen, 1981, A Profile ofthe Italian Community in Australia, Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs and Co.As.It., Melbourne. 124

WEBER, Max, 1978, Economy and Society: an outline ofinterpretive sociology, (ed.), by G. Roth and C. Wittick" VoU and 11, University of California Press, Berkeley.

WEST, Stewart, 1983a, "Address", Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs, Third AnnualMeeting, Melbourne, October.

WEST, Stewart, 1983b, Post-Arrival Programs and Services for Migrants: A Review ofthe July 1982 Package ofMeasures, Canberra, November.

WEST, Stewart, 1983c, Government Policies in Action, Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, Canberra, November.

WHEELWRIGHT, E. and BUCKLEY, K. (eds.), 1975, Essays in the Political Economy of Australian Capitalism, Vol.l, ANZ Book Co., Sydney.

WHEELWRIGHT, E. and BUCKLEY, K. (eds.), 1978, Essays in the Political Economy of Australian Capitalism, Vo1.3, ANZ Book Co., Sydney.

WHITE, Richard, 1981, Inventing Australia, George AIlen and Unwin, Sydney.

WHITLAM, E.G., 1971, Labor's Approach to Immigration, Australian Labor Party, Canberra.

WILD, R., 1978, Social Stratification in Australia, George AIlen and Unwin, Sydney.

WILD, R., 1981, Australian Community Studies and Beyond, George AIlen and Unwin, Sydney.

WILENSKI, Peter, (Commissioner), 1977, "Directions of Change: Review of NSW Government Administration", Interim Report, Government Printer, Sydney, November.

WILENSKI, Peter, 1978, "Labor and the Bureaucracy", in: Duncan, (ed.).

WILKES, J. (ed), 1971, How many Australians?, Immigration and Growth, AlPS and Angus and Robertson, Sydney.

WILSON, William, 1978, The Declining Significance ofRace, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

WOOD, G.L., 1946, "Australia's Empty Cradles", in: Borrie et.al., 1946.

WUNDERLY, H., 1960, "A Survey of Immigration and Mental Health in Australia", in: Price (ed.).

YALCHIN, M., 1973, "Civil Rights of the Turkish Migrants in Australia", Submission to NSWMigrant Task Force, Sydney.

YANCEY, William, ERECKSEN, Eugene and JULIANI, Richard, 1976, "Emergent Ethnicity: A Review and Reformation", American Sociological Review, 41(3).

YOUNG, C., COX, D. and DALY, A., 1983, Report of the Greek and Italian Youth Employment Study, DIEA, AGPS, Canberra. 125

YOUTH AND COMMUNITY SERVICES. Dept. of. (YACS). 1977. "Ethnic Diversity: Services and Responsibilities of the Department of Youth and Community Services. Student Unit Project. YACS. Sydney. November.

YOUTH AND COMMUNITY SERVICES, Dept. of. (YACS). 1980. "Multicultural Development Ethnic Community Services". mimeo. June.

ZUBRZYCKI. Jerzy. 1956. Polish Immigrants in Britain, Nijhoff. The Hague.

ZUBRZYCKI. Jerzy. 1960. "Sociological Methods for the Study of Immigrant Adjustment". in: Price (ed.).

ZUBRZYCKI. Jerzy. 1964. Settlers ofthe Latrobe Valley. ANU Press. Canberra.

ZUBRZYCKI. Jerzy. 1968. "The Questing Years". Digest. Australian Citizenship Convention. Dept. of Immigration. Canberra.

ZUBRZYCKI. Jerzy. 1982. "The anatomy of 'Multiculturalism for All Australians.... notes from a paper. Ethnic Politics Conference. ANU, Canberra. 9-10 December.