Arthur Calwell - Political Career

Political Career

Active and energetic in the Labor Party, Calwell was elected President of the Victorian Labor Party in 1931. He was elected to the Australian House of Representatives for the seat of Melbourne in 1940. During World War II, Calwell served as Minister for Information in John Curtin's Labor government, and became well known for his tough attitude towards the Australian press and his strict enforcement of wartime censorship. This earned him the enmity of large sections of the Australian Press, and he was dubbed "Cocky" Calwell by his political foes, cartoonists of the period depicting him as an obstinate Australian cockatoo.

In 1945, Calwell became Minister for Immigration in Ben Chifley's post-war Labor government. Thus, he was the chief architect of Australia's post-war immigration scheme at a time when many European refugees desired a better life far from their war-torn homelands, and he became famous for his relentless promotion of it. Calwell's advocacy of the program was crucial because of his links to the trade union movement, and his skillful presentation of the need for immigration. Calwell overcame resistance to mass immigration by promoting it under the slogan "populate or perish". This drew attention to the need, particularly in light of the recent war in the Pacific, to increase Australia's industrial and military capabilities through a massive increase in the population. In July 1947 he signed an agreement with the United Nations Refugee Organisation to accept displaced persons from European countries ravaged by war.

Calwell was a staunch advocate of the White Australia Policy: while Europeans were welcomed to Australia, Calwell was deporting many Malayan, Indochinese and Chinese wartime refugees, some of whom had married Australian citizens and started families in Australia. Calwell's enthusiasm and drive in launching the migration program was a notable feature of the second term of the Chifley government, and has been named by many historians as his greatest achievement (especially given the labour movement's hostility to earlier migration programs).

In economic policy, Calwell was not a great advocate of nationalisation. According to Gough Whitlam, this was attributed to Calwell’s brand of socialism, which according to Whitlam was “an emotion rather than an ideology, a memory of the social deprivation he observed in Melbourne during the Depression years.”