2026/01/22 by Sean Brawley · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Australian History and Society #Commonwealth, Australian Politics and Federalism #Caribbean history, culture, and politics
paper · doi:10.1080/03086534.2025.2607617
This contribution to the special issue studies the history of the White Australia Policy through an exploration of the intersections between national security, immigration restriction and social reform. This is achieved through an examination of Australian Security Intelligence Organisation’s surveillance of immigration reformers, their organisations and their advocacy for the end of race-based immigration restriction. Informed by the extant historiography on Australian security intelligence, the paper delves into ASIO’s initial assumptions about communism and immigration reform, reflecting broader Cold War fears which support recent scholarly conclusions that ASIO was always predisposed to equate dissent with communist-inspired disloyalty. The study, however, discovers that ASIO’s findings at the time problematise such an analysis, providing further insights into both who the immigration reformers were and how they made their case, and ASIO’s organisational culture in the early 1960s.