Why Did The British Move To Australia

At the end of World War II in 1945, Australia was recovering from major loss of manpower, due to the death toll from the war. The Australian Government needed a way to repopulate the country so they formulated the plan “Populate or Perish”. This was a plan to get British and other European migrants into the country to help repopulate. Both the Australian and British governments started to assist the British in migrating to Australia to strength the economy. Migrants from Britain were preferable to those from other parts of the world because at this time the Australian Government was still implementing the Immigration Restriction Act. When the British migrated to Australia they helped continue to keep the population of Australia mainly British.
One of the first policies that the Australian Government introduced when it first met in 1901 was the Immigration Restriction Act 1901. The Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 meant that the Australian Government only wanted people from ‘white’ backgrounds as opposed to people of coloured backgrounds. Once coming to Australia a dictation test was given to them, at the discretion of the officer in charge. It was used to prevent undesirable people from entering the country. The Immigration Restriction Act stated that “Any person who when asked to do so by an officer fails to write out at dictation and sign in the presence of the officer a passage of fifty words in length in an European language directed by the officer…” (Australian Government, 1901). This meant that the dictation test could be done in any European language, from English to French to languages spoken by a small minority. The test was delivered by the officer, might meant that if the officer didn’t like the person’s appearance then they could give them a language they didn’t speak. British migrants were white, which kept with Australia’s so called ‘White Australia