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Although English is not Australia’s official language, it is effectively the de facto national language and is almost universally spoken. Nevertheless, there are hundreds of Aboriginal languages, though many have become extinct since 1950, and most of the surviving languages have very few speakers. Mabuiag, spoken in the western Torres Strait Islands, and the Western Desert language have about 8,000 and 4,000 speakers, respectively, and about 50,000 Aboriginal people may still have some knowledge of an Australian language. (For full discussion, see Australian Aboriginal languages.) The languages of immigrant groups in Australia are also spoken, most notably Chinese, Italian, and Greek.
Religion
Recorded religious adherence has generally mirrored the immigrants’ backgrounds. In every census since the early colonial era, most Australians have professed to be Christian, principally Anglican and Roman Catholic, but simple materialism has become more influential than Christianity. The number of Roman Catholics exceeded the number of Anglicans for the first time in the late 1980s. In the early 21st century more than one-half of Australians identified themselves as Christian; about one-fourth were Roman Catholic and one-fifth Anglican. Smaller proportions belonged to other Protestant denominations (notably Uniting Church, Presbyterian, and Reformed), and there were also small groups of Jews and Hindus. The proportions registering as Orthodox Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists increased sharply in the late 20th century. Almost three-tenths of Australians professed no religion. In contrast to the European settlers, traditional Aboriginal communities are intensely spiritual. There religion gives meaning to life, and the coordinating theme is the sustaining connection between land and people.
Demographic trends
The population debate—which is laden with considerable controversy—is a long-running affair that has drawn contributors from every walk of life since the beginning of the colonial era. After the mid-19th century, population growth was frequently adopted as an index of economic success and environmental adaptation, and the proximity of Asia’s crowded millions deepened national insecurities. The arrival of thousands of Chinese in Australia during the 1850s gold rushes, followed by the recruitment of South Sea Islanders on the Queensland sugar plantations in the late 1800s, sparked fears of labour competition and influenced the rising nationalist sentiment.
White Australia policy
Responding to the influx of Chinese immigrants, the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 (“White Australia” policy) aimed at excluding all people who were not of British or European descent from entering the country. This law was designed to prevent the diluting of Australia’s Anglo-Celtic heritage—that is, to support the notion of a homogeneous country consisting purely of a “white” population. Under this legislation, migrants who wished to settle in Australia were required to pass a dictation test that was administered in English or a European language. Consequently, this made it extremely difficult for Asian migrants, and by the late 1940s people of Asian descent made up only approximately 0.21 percent of the entire Australian population. Although the policy was both unproductive and discriminatory, it was made more attractive by blending imperial and nationalistic sentiments that proclaimed “population capacities” of 100 to 500 million in Australia’s “vast empty spaces.” In the interwar period the Australian geographer Griffith Taylor argued that there were stringent environmental limits that would restrict Australia’s population to approximately 20 million people by the end of the 20th century. Taylor was vilified and finally hounded out of Australia, but his “environmental determinism,” like his remarkable prediction, was well remembered, particularly since Australia’s population only approached that benchmark at the beginning of the 21st century.
“Populate or perish”
Australia’s diminutive population prior to the outbreak of World War II became further reduced after it suffered some 40,000 deaths during the war. Annual wartime population growth rates during the period from 1939 to 1945 averaged a low 1 percent, with growth from migration being particularly low. The severe labour shortages that occurred during the war and the need for skilled workers to reconstruct and industrialize the country was a significant factor in the change that occurred to the government’s migration policies in the postwar years.
The spread of communism and the wartime threat of Japanese occupation instilled fear and heightened the need for a larger defense force in Australia. Moreover, the mounting belief that substantial growth was essential for the country’s prosperity led Prime Minster Ben Chifley to review immigration policies. In order to secure the country against the possibility of future invasion and to improve the strained postwar economy, large-scale immigration programs were considered essential for increasing the country’s population. Australia’s first Department of Immigration was established in 1945, and Australians were urged by Immigration Minister Arthur Calwell to “populate or perish.”
At the outset, the federal government preferred to maintain British and Irish immigration at a high rate, which was encouraged with the promotion of the “Bring out a Briton” campaign. However, because of improved economic conditions in Britain, this program failed to achieve the intended quota. To further increase the population, the Australian government negotiated “assisted migration” and “private sponsorship” agreements with other European countries that had been left devastated by war and with Middle Eastern countries. People from countries in eastern Europe that had been invaded by the Soviet Union or otherwise incorporated into the Soviet bloc (including Poland, Yugoslavia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary) fled dislocation and persecution. In 1947 the Australian government negotiated agreements with the International Refugee Organisation (IRO) to settle at least 12,000 displaced people a year from Soviet bloc countries.
First and second waves of postwar immigration
By 1953, under the Mass Resettlement Scheme for Displaced Persons, the Australian government had assisted over 170,000 refugees to migrate to Australia. This was the first wave of postwar, non-British European migrants. Upon their arrival in Australia, they were placed in temporary accommodations in transit camps, reception and training centres, holding centres, or workers’ hostels, where they received food and assistance from the government. These war-torn refugees were taught the English language and provided with vocational training. In exchange for their free passage and resettlement in Australia, they were expected to commit to a two-year working contract in whatever jobs the Australian government directed. The majority of these refugees were sent to isolated rural areas to perform unskilled labour, including constructing and maintaining railway lines and roads, working in mines, harvesting sugarcane, fruit picking, and working in manufacturing and building industries.
A second wave of immigration took place during the 1950s and ’60s, which consisted of those seeking employment and a better way of life. From 1952 to 1962, the Australian government negotiated a series of immigration agreements, offering an Assisted Passage Scheme that allowed some eligible migrants almost free passage in return for the provision of labour for two years. These migrants were largely from European countries, principally the Netherlands and Italy in 1951; Austria, Belgium, West Germany, Greece, and Spain in 1952; and Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland in 1954. A large number of southern European migrants arrived in the period from 1954 to 1965. Most of these were young single men who were recruited to provide much-needed labour for large-scale public works programs, such as the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme. Others worked in the manufacturing and construction industries, in which there was a huge demand for labour, as a result of the rapidly expanding population and growing economy. The agricultural industries also employed a considerable number of migrants, particularly southern Europeans who worked in agriculture developing fruit orchards and the sugarcane fields. The work completed by migrants in different sectors was a valuable contributor to Australia’s rapid economic growth. Many industries peaked during this period, particularly the building and manufacturing industries, which came to rely on migrant workers, with one-third of the manufacturing workforce born overseas.