Geoffrey Blainey - Views On Asian Immigration

Views On Asian Immigration

On 17 March 1984, Blainey addressed a major Rotary conference in the Victorian city of Warrnambool. He regretted that the Hawke Labor Government in “a time of large unemployment” was bringing many new migrants to the areas of high unemployment, thus fostering tension. He blamed the government, not the migrants themselves. Criticising what he viewed as disproportionately high levels of Asian immigration, then running at 40 per cent of the annual intake, he added: "Rarely in the history of the modern world has a nation given such preference to a tiny ethnic minority of its population as the Australian Government has done in the past few years, making that minority the favoured majority in its immigration policy.". Three days later, in response to the prediction of the "increasing Asianisation" of Australia made by Labor's Immigration Minister Stewart West, Blainey argued: "I do not accept the view, widely held in the Federal Cabinet, that some kind of slow Asian takeover of Australia is inevitable. I do not believe that we are powerless. I do believe that we can with good will and good sense control our destiny ... As a people, we seem to move from extreme to extreme. In the past 30 years the government of Australia has moved from the extreme of wanting a white Australia to the extreme of saying that we will have an Asian Australia and that the quicker we move towards it the better.

Blainey's speech, along with subsequent articles and a book on the subject, ignited nation-wide controversy, especially in the Australian federal parliament which had not debated the principles of the immigration policy for many years. Most critics argued that Blainey’s views were moderate and not racist. "All peoples of the world are worthy and deserve respect": that was the prime principle set out in the book, All for Australia, which he wrote on the topic. However, he criticised the belief that "immigration policy should primarily reflect the truth that all "races" are equal. On the contrary, an immigration policy should not, any more than a trade or tariff policy, be designed primarily to reflect that fact." According to Blainey, the Australian government's immigration policy was increasingly being based on multiculturalist ideology at the expense of the national interest and the majority of Australians. He argued: "We are surrendering much of our own independence to a phantom opinion that floats vaguely in the air and rarely exists on this earth. We should think very carefully about the perils of converting Australia into a giant multicultural laboratory for the assumed benefit of the peoples of the world."

His views were to receive the support of a majority of Australian voters, both Labor and non-Labor voters, as a national Gallup poll confirmed in August. Victorians especially disapproved of the University’s conduct in this matter.

In contrast, while Blainey was briefly in Europe in May, a professor and 23 other history teachers from the University of Melbourne distributed a public letter distancing themselves from what they called his “racialist” views. quoted in.

Other historians, including lecturers in Asian history, refused the request to sign the letter. In the following fortnight the historians were strongly criticised –- more than they were praised—on the opinion pages of Australian daily papers.

After a crowd of left-wing students and marchers, mostly from outside the University of Melbourne, broke into the heavily-guarded building where Blainey was conducting a tutorial in historical research, he was advised by the university on security grounds that it must cancel all his future addresses within the University for the rest of 1984. In Brisbane on 5 July, when he gave a memorial address in honour of a deceased Queensland businessman—in the Mayne Hall at the University of Queensland and chaired by the chancellor Sir James Foots - noisy protesters tried to dislocate the meeting. These and similar protests were major items in the national television news. Blainey continued to express his views periodically on TV, radio and his own newspaper columns, but not in his own university. He retained his main position as Dean of the Faculty of Arts .

Blainey and his family were subject to threats of violence, prompting him at the police’s request to remove his name and address from the public telephone book and organise security for his home. According to fellow historian Keith Windschuttle: ‘The immediate consequence of all this was that Blainey, easily Australia's best and most prolific living historian, was effectively silenced from speaking at his own university. ….. This violation of academic freedom, clearly the worst in Australian history, provoked no protest at all from the university's academic staff association, nor from the university council, let alone his own departmental colleagues.’.

In December 1988, Blainey resigned from the University of Melbourne and resumed his former career as a freelance historian. In 1994 the Victorian government appointed him as first chancellor of the new University of Ballarat, but the position was honorary.

Subsequently, in December 2007, the University of Melbourne granted a Doctor of Laws to Blainey and declared that he was in Australia probably a unique professional historian, noting that he had fostered wide public interest in history. The citation observed that 'few graduates of this University have exerted greater influence on national life.'