The state and the welfare of immigrants in Australia · Australian society, as had been expected by the ... chances, and a challenge to the egalitarian ethos ... Making Multicultural

Jakubowicz, Andrew “The State and the Welfareof immigrants in Australia” Ethnic and RacialStudies 12(1), 1989, pp 1-35.

by Andrew Jakubowicz

Abstract

Post-war immigration to Australia has beenaccompanied by two processes associated withthe development of Australian capitalism - theurbanisation process and the"proletarianisation" of the immigrantpopulation. These processes brought with themmajor social problems and the potential forsocial conflict. The welfare system provided ameans to control the immigrant population,which failed to assimilate effectively intoAustralian society, as had been expected by theimmigration planners of the 1940s. Thegovernment policies shifted from"assimilationism", to "integrationism" and thenon to "multiculturalism" and most recently,"mainstreaming". In each case the basiceconomic contradictions of Australian societyprovide the context for welfare policies directedtowards ethnic minorities.

* I wish to acknowledge the contribution ofHelen Meekosha, whose involvement in andreflections on struggles in the ethnic welfareindustry, have provided many of the insightsused here.

1. Capitalism, immigrationand welfare in Australia

An introduction

One of the particular features of Australiancapitalism in the post-war period has been itsdependence on the importation of millions offoreign workers - and the retention of many ofthem as settlers. In 1947 at the commencement

of the planned post-war migration program,Australia had a population of 7.7 million, ofwhom 90.2% were of "British" (including Irish)origin, while 6.0% were of Northern European,0.9% of Eastern European, and 1.5% ofSouthern European origin. By 1984 thepopulation had doubled, to 15.5 million, ofwhom those of British origin made up 76.0%,Northern Europe 7.6%, Eastern Europe 4.2%,Southern Europe 8.0% and Asian 2.8% (seeTable 1) [Price 1984:265-266].

The British settlement of the continent in thelate eighteenth century laid the foundation for aEuropean society, one which saw the metropolisas London and its core values drawn from theBritish experience. Since 1945 Australian socialpolicy structures have had to come to termswith a world in which the internationalmovement of capital and labour has reframeddramatically old assumptions and values. Before1945, Australian governments viewed thesociety of which they were a part as primarilyBritish in affiliation and origin. Theassumptions which underpinned the practices ofthe state led inevitably to a vision of anethnically homogeneous society, with valuesbroadly shared amongst all classes. The practicesand policies within which these assumptionswere embedded included programs whichexcluded non Europeans (The White Australiapolicy - adopted by the new Federal Parliamentin 1902), and a variety of moves to exterminatethe Aboriginal people [Yarwood 1982].

However the years of the Great Depression andthe Second World War provided ample evidenceto the state and to Australian capitalists, of theneed for an increase in the labour supply farabove that provided by natural reproduction. Inaddition the domestic market in Australia wassmall and could barely provide a stimulus to thedevelopment of domestic manufacturingindustry. So in search of workers and consumers

1Making Multicultural Australia The state and the welfare of immigrants in Australia

The state and the welfareof immigrants in Australia

for Australian capitalism, the great post warimmigration program was put in place as part ofPost War reconstruction by the Australian LaborParty government in the years 1945 to 1949.The workers would have to come from a farwider pool than the traditional source of theBritish Isles could provide. The recruitment ofnon-British and later non-European immigrantsdirectly challenged the strongly held views aboutthe appropriate composition of Australiansociety. The management of those changes bythe historically interventionist Australian state(1) provides important insights to the way inwhich ethnic groups and therefore "ethnicity",have been constituted in political and socialdiscourse.

The Australian experience of immigration hasoften been analysed in terms of the "epochs" ofsettlement policies pursued by successive centralgovernments [ e.g. Martin 1978, Birrell andBirrell 1981, Wilton and Bosworth 1984,Committee of Review of Migrant andMulticultural Programs and Services 1986].Usually these epochs have been identified as"assimilationism", "integrationism " and"multiculturalism", or even more simply as justthe first and last of these. At some point inhistory, usually located in about 1978 andassociated with the recommendations of theReview of Post Arrival Services and Programs(the Galbally Report), there was suppposedly aparadigm shift from the monocultural emphasisof the post war era, to a recognition of culturalpluralism and a sympathetic understanding ofthe many ethnic experiences that were nowlegitimately seen to constitute contemporaryAustralian society.

However this paradigm shift did not occur inany mystical way, and indeed the developmentof contemporary responses to the flow ofimmigrants into Australia has had a decidedlypragmatic character. This paper addresses therelationship between the material changesoccurring in Australian capitalism in the postwar period and the form through which thestate sought to manage the relationship betweenimmigrant workers, the emergent ethnic middleclass, and the structural demands of Australian

capitalism. A focus for analysis in this case is thewelfare system, with its interwoven, historic,concerns for the maintenance of both class andgender hierarchies. Before detailing theseprocesses, it is necessary to identify clearly thesignificant points in the development ofsettlement policies, as important changes cameto be institutionalised. These are presented inoutline in Table 2, and then each policy epochis defined.

1. Assimilationism: involved the developmentand implementation of policies which assumedthe natural superiority of the dominant culturalpractices of Anglo Australian society. Theseresumed that immigrants would become "like"Anglo Australians over time. This apparently"natural " process of individual adaptation tothe dominant mores could be subverted by theretention of historic ethnic cultural practices byimmigrants. Such retention was vilified, whilestate energies went on "breaking up" potentialconcentrations of Non English SpeakingBackground( NESB) immigrants .

2. Integrationism: provided a moresophisticated perspective whichacknowledged/recognised the importance ofsocial groups as intermediaries between theindividual and the wider society. Thusgovernment came to see ethnic groups - bothinformal networks of association and moreformally constituted specific purposeorganisations, as a means of supporting theindividual through the settlement process, theend point of which was still his/her assimilation.Or if the immigrant would not or could notachieve this socially valued goal, then his/herchildren would be assimilated into the stillculturally homogeneous society at large.

3. Multiculturalism I: Ethnic Rights: providedthe opportunity for the state to accept a morepluralist view of society in its policies, inresponse to emerging demands from NESBworkers. The structural location of NESBworkers in the production relations ofAustralian capitalism [see Collins 1978] wasrecognised as a source of unequal access to lifechances, and a challenge to the egalitarian ethos


and claims being made by the central state atthe time. When ethnic minorities claimedspecial rights to cultural maintenance and therecognition of the equal legitimacy of differingcultural practices, the traditional AngloAustralian presumption of superiority waschallenged. Society was seen to be comprised ofcompeting, unequal groups, on whose behalfthe state should intervene, even to the extent ofmodifying the economic order which allowedsome sectors to profit from the subjugation ofothers.

4. Multiculturalism II: Social Cohesion: soughtto play down the conflictual and antagonisticrelations revealed by the ethnic rightsperspective. A culturally pluralistic andharmonious society was possible, provided thatall groups recognised the core values of theeconomic and political system, and that culturaldifferences did not "harden" into economicrelations of superordination. The economicorder was not open to question in this process.

5. Mainstreaming: superseded that form ofcultural pluralism which had degenerated into astring of small, poorly funded, low qualityservices provided on a shoe string by ethnicgroups to their members, with little or noincrease in the responsiveness of the coreinstitutions of society. Even when the statesupported such "ethno-specific" services therewas little evidence of a "real" pluralistconsciousness in other state institutions. Thishad been one of the unachieved goals of theethnic rights movement. The "mainstream"institutions were those which provided servicesto the "whole community", but which had oftendone little to recognise the ethnic and linguisticdiversity of that community. "Mainstreaming"would try to ensure NESB people had "access"to mainstream services, which should be able torespond to them effectively. Their needs wouldbe assessed fairly, by people who understoodthem, so that they received an equitable share ofpublic resources consistent with those needs.This increasingly contentious perspective, as weshall see below, locates the central concern forgovernment in "communication", and avoidsmany of the structural issues (such as the quality

of the mainstream service to non-NESBconsumers).

Table 2 describes the broad pattern ofimmigration to Australia in the period 1947 to1986, during which time these policiesdeveloped and were institutionalised. The broadeconomic situation, the average annual inter-censal immigration rate, and the dominantpolicy paradigm at the time have beentabulated. However the policy changes were notinstantaneous "paradigm shifts", but ratherconsolidations of arrangements that wereamended pragmatically as the situation was seento demand. A detailed assessment of thesepolicies in terms of the human services andwelfare programs which gave them effect in thelives of immigrants forms the core of this paper.A Diagrammatic representation of this situationfor the period 1947 to 1978 appears in Fi g u re 1.

The various government instrumentalitiesinvolved in the planned migration program after1945 slowly perceived that government - thestate in all its operations - would be faced withthe management of a difficult settlementprocess. Within this process many conflicts werelikely. Governments sought to minimise thepotential for social disruption by adoptingpolicies and programs which would prevent theemergence of "immigrant ghettoes" in Australia.

The development of Australian capitalism hasbeen heavily dependent on the importation oflabour power and capital. The major investmentperiod for manufacturing growth took place inthe years from 1947 to 1970, and thereafter theAustralian economy was marked by majorcontractions of manufacturing employment.

Table 3 provides data on the sources ofimmigrants to Australia in the years 1945 to1985. The first post war immigrants were malerefugee workers from eastern Europe,introduced into the construction and heavymetals industries where industrial unionmilitancy had developed most strongly duringthe war. (One effect of these workers was toreplace Anglo Australian women who had oftenperformed these tasks during the wartime


period). In many cases these new workers playedan important part in breaking progressiveleaderships in those unions.

Immigrant women were introduced intodomestic service, light industry and processwork, and into service industries such ascleaning. Non-English speaking immigrantshave continued to be used in those jobs whichare the least attractive, most dangerous, and paythe lowest base wage rates [Collins 1981,1984 ]

The heaviest recruitment of immigrant workersfor manufacturing industry took place up in theperiod to 1971, and saw the "catchment"extended to Malta, Germany, Italy, Greece,Yugoslavia, Turkey and Lebanon. Theexpectation of British dominance expressed byimmigration ministers in the immediate postwar period was challenged from the outset bythe actual sources of immigrants available. Bythe early 1960s this cultural diversity was ofsuch concern that the Australian governmentwas prompted to initiate a "Bring Out ABriton" program [Wilton and Bosworth 1984].

From the early 1970s the pattern ofimmigration began to change. Two factors wereimportant here. Firstly, the abandonment of theWhite Australia policy, which had historicallybeen used to exclude Asian, Pacific and blackAfrican immigrants, under international andprogressive internal pressure openedopportunities to "non Europeans". Asimportantly, the transfer of resources tospeculative resource development and out ofmanufacturing, meant that the demand for"muscle" labour was reducing, to be replaced bythe demand for "intellectual" workers. Therising unemployment of the period alsoprompted the Labor Party government (1972 to1975) to cut annual rates of immigration fromnearly 200,000 (as it was in 1968) to just over50, 000 for the year 1975-76. The downturn insouthern European migration triggered in thisperiod was not to be reversed, and throughoutthe 1970s and into the 1980s, new sourcesprovided the larger part of the immigrant flow(after the traditional leading providers -Britainand Ireland). South Americans, many refugees

from the massacres following Allende'sassassination in Chile, Poles evading marshallaw, Lebanese fleeing the conflagration in theircountry, and Indo Chinese from Vietnam,Kampuchea and Laos, entered Australia underhumanitarian programs.

In the five years from 1981 to 1985, the patternof immigration changed once more. In thatperiod there was an 86% increase in the numberof Vietnamese, an 82% increase in the (smaller)number of Filipinas, and a 44% increase inMalaysians, mainly Chinese professionalsescaping the "bumiputra"(Malay advancement)policy of their government. Two changes whichintroduced English speaking immigrants insignificant numbers were the rise in SouthAfricans (up 28%) and the rise in U.S. citizens(up 26%).

By June 1985, some 21.1% of the Australianpopulation was overseas born. Of these, 35.6%were of British or Irish origin, with 8.4% fromItaly, 5.8% from New Zealand, 4.8% fromYugoslavia, 4.6% from Greece, 3.6% fromGermany, 3.1% from the Netherlands, 2.4%from Vietnam, 2.1% from Poland, 1.8% fromMalta, 1.8% from Lebanon. The remaining26% came from just about every country in theworld, including those in sub Sahara Africa[Australian Bureau of Statistics 1986].

The result of this migration process was a rapidincrease in population and an increasingproportion of the population born overseas incountries where English was not the firstlanguage. The proportions of the populationand total population size at each post war censusare provided in Table 4. It is clear that differentsource areas present different migration profiles- with significantly different implications forsettlement policies. An examination of these inthe field of welfare provides the focus for thenext section of the paper. Figures 2, 3, and 4,demonstrate these profiles for European/NorthAmerican, Non-European populations, and theproportion of the Australian population bornoverseas as at the censuses from 1947 to 1981.


2. The Structure of Welfare

A pattern of exploitation, domination andresistance has developed within Australiansociety as part of the constitution of culturalrelations. The welfare provision made availableto immigrants during their experience ofsettlement offers a site for investigating thisproposition in more detail. Governments usethe welfare system to maintain the generalconditions necessary for the productivity ofcapital and the social cohesion of society .Within the welfare system the boundarieswithin which human services and social securityare able to operate are set by these wider socialgoals. Most welfare, (understood as the dailymaintenance of human labour power, itsnurturing, and generational reproduction) isprovided by the unpaid work of women - eitherin the home ( as domestic labour) or throughvarious voluntary and community organisations(as "volunteers").

Welfare arrangements in advanced capitalistsocieties have been described as processes ofcontrol mediated through the provision ofmaterial support to categories of eligiblerecipients. Thus Offe notes in his discussion ofKeynesian welfare states such as Australia, that:

The means by which the welfare state intervenes [tomeet human needs] consist of bureaucratic rules andlegal regulations, monetary transfers and theprofessional expertise of teachers, doctors, socialworkers, etc.... the welfare state can be said to bepartially dispel the motives and reasons for socialconflict...[and] performs the crucial functions of:removing some of the needs of the working classfrom the arena of class struggle and industrialconflict.... [Offe 1984:194-195].

Thus immigrants enter a network of gender andclass relations which are already embedded inand, in part, constituted through the welfareprocess. Immigrants enter an Australian societyin which these arrangements have long been inplace. Historically the welfare state in Australiahas mediated the class, race and gender relationswhich constitute the Australian social

formation. In the case of gender, Cass hasargued that women:

as the providers of the 'hidden welfare system',because of their caring obligations are vulnerable topoverty... Even though women's labour forceparticipation has increased since the World War II,the sex segmentation of the labour market [inAustralia] continues to concentrate women in anarrow range of occupations that offer reducedopportunity for security, advancement and higherearnings. [Cass 1985: 89-93].

The welfare system impinges on immigrantsthrough all three dimensions of social relations -as workers, as men and women, and in terms ofcultural hierarchies. As workers, they often havedependents in their countries of origin whomthey support from their Australian wages, butfor whom they cannot claim deductions againsttheir taxes. The system of welfare impinges onthem as members of families, with itsassumptions about appropriate gender roleswithin families - the care of the sick, peoplewith disabilities and the elderly most often fallson women in the family. Yet elderly immigrantsare often not eligible for the means-tested agedpension, which in Australia is provided out ofgeneral revenue, not wage-deducted socialinsurance. Pension eligibility requires ten yearsresidence in Australia. Immigrant women, whileexpected to carry the double burden of workand domestic labour, are most often in the mostpoorly paid, dangerous and insecure jobs, withlittle access to child-care or other social benefits.

Government policies have been concerned tomanage two central social processes inAustralian society which reflect the broaderdynamics of production and socialreproduction. These are the proletarianisation ofthe population brought about by thecentralisation and concentration of capitalistdevelopment, and the urbanisation of thepopulation which emerged from the spatialmanifestation of these dynamics. The welfareinstitutions ostensibly planned to provide forthose immigrants most vulnerable to theseprocesses, have developed in a welfare systemremarkably slow to recognise and meet the


challenges to welfare posed by these rapidprocesses of change.

The "long boom", liberal and socialdemocracy.

National, state and local governments have alltaken some responsibilities for the welfare ofAustralian residents since 1945. Outcomestherefore vary significantly for Australians livingin different parts of the country. The welfareservices available to immigrants are affected bywhere they live, what rights they bring fromtheir countries of origin, and their experiencewithin the economic reality of Australiancapitalism. Welfare here is used to describe astate of well being created by access to basiceconomic and social security, health, educationand housing services [Jones 1983].

Welfare arrangements in Australia loosely grouptogether in a broad "welfare state" which for themost part incorporates a "residual" model ofwelfare [ Mishra 1981, Graycar 1983]. The roleof the state is generally argued to be theprovision of a basic safety net. Thrift and privateinstitutions are expected to deliver effectivecoverage for the needs of old age, infirmity andill health. "Voluntary agencies" have providedmost specific and personal services toidentifiable client groups, such as the disabledand elderly, though Commonwealth and stateprovision has increased since 1973. Governmentextension of the provision of social securitysince 1945 has not freed those people totallydependent on state transfers from poverty[Tulloch 1979, Harding 1984].

The centralisation of the income taxingfunction with the Commonwealth governmentin 1944 resulted in a national focus for incomesecurity - child endowment, unemploymentbenefits, aged pensions, invalid pensions,repatriation payments (for returned servicepersonnel), widow pensions, single carerpayments. State governments sustained theirhistoric role of social control and the provisionof individual services, such as hospitals, childprotection, adoption, corrections, emergencyaid, and regulation of voluntary agencies. The

role of local government varies from State toState, and within States, so that the range andquality of services differ markedly.

Reform of the welfare state has followed thegeneral trends in other developed capitalistsocieties. The post war period, associated withthe long period of economic growth, wascharacterised by an increasing intervention bygovernments to manage the social consequencesof the boom. There was an increasing demandfor government or institutional provision ofservices previously provided within the familythrough the unpaid work of women. Theincreasingly mobile work force demanded bypost war patterns of industrial developmentfragmented earlier extended family andcommunity networks. Where this mobility wasinternational, as with migration, thefragmentation had very deep consequences forsocial well being.

As each new social collectivity emerged able toarticulate a specific set of needs, or as socialchanges which resulted in particular social criseswere identified by government, ad hocarrangements were instituted. Certain crucialassumptions were institutionalised within thisprocess. The first distinguished between thedeserving and undeserving poor, an historicdivision fundamental to the welfare state incapitalist societies. The strategies werenecessarily different, but were predicated on thebelief that no welfare provision should act as adisincentive to take whatever paid employmentwas on offer [Watts 1982, Higgins 1982 ] .

The second assumption was that the primaryrole of women was as wives and mothers. Themaintenance of the family was a central goal ofsocial policy. Embedded within this policy goalwas the necessity to ensure that the unpaidlabour of women was available to reproduce thesocial relations of capitalist society, and thelabour power of its paid workers. Throughoutthe 1960s and 1970s skilled labour shortagesdrew women into the work force and resulted inincreasing, though limited, state provision orfunding of services such as child care, women'shealth centres, and women's refuges (2).


The wealth generated by the long boom wasperceived by the social democratic nationalAustralian Labor Party government of 1972- 75as a means of funding the extension of thewelfare state [ Jakubowicz et al. 1984: 56-69] .An "institutional" guarantee was to be giventhat all citizens/residents should be able toparticipate fully in society. In part, thisparticipation would be achieved through accessto effective, affordable, and high quality socialprovision by the state or voluntaryorganisations. A target of 25% of average weeklyearnings was set for all pensions, while themeans test on aged pensions was to be removed(thus suggesting it was a right of all citizens). Anational medical insurance scheme funded froma levy on income was established (Medicare). Anational social welfare plan would provide localtripartite bodies with funds to develop locallyrelevant services (the Australian Assistance Plan).

Neo-conservatism and the "deserving poor".

The return of the conservative Liberal/ National(Country) Party to federal government in1975/6 led to the effective abandonment of theemergent institutional models of welfare, andthe rapid reversion to the ideology associatedwith residual concepts. In response to theaccelerating social problems resulting from theinternational crisis of capital, there was areassertion of the benefits of the free market,reduced state expenditure, and private thrift andchoice. The new government proposed that thestate revert to concern for those "really" in need,and abandon welfare for the middle classes[Graycar 1983] . Much closer surveillance ofbeneficiaries was introduced to reduce supposedfraud, while systematic ideological attacks onstate dependants (particularly youngunemployed and those on invalid pensions)became common place.

The emphasis on the role of the family inwelfare re-emerged as did ideological pressuresthat asserted the priority of woman's work inthe home. As unemployment increased in theearly 1980s, cuts in direct services, realreductions in benefits, and a focus on "marriedwomen taking the jobs of unemployed youth"

signified an attempt to pursue the lead profferedby the New Right strategies of Thatcher inBritain, and Reagan in the U.S.A. [ Sawer1982]. All these directions were associated witha sustained commitment to move the allocationof the social surplus towards capital and profit,and away from labour and wages. In part thiswas done by cutting those elements of the socialwage amenable to bureaucratic and politicalreduction.

These perspectives on the role of the state, as anagency of monetary restraint and limitedextension of state services, sat uncomfortablywith the Australian Labor Party commitment toinstitutionalised welfare and the eradication ofpoverty. The national Labor government after1983 sought means of incorporating thesecontradictory elements in its social Accord withthe trade unions. The agreement between thegovernment and the Australian Council of TradeUnions traded real wage rises to individualworkers, for elements of redistributive justiceand social wages, while holding downgovernment borrowing, and attempting toclosely target welfare services and incomesecurity. Government identified youth and theaged as the groups towards whom servicesshould be focussed, and whose welfare thebroader economic strategies seemed to bemissing.

3. Concepts of the immigrantin welfare policy 1960 -1986

Assimilating...

In order to make sense of welfare services tomigrants we need to understand how the"migrant problem" and the "problems ofmigrants" were conceived of by policy makers.As with the overall management of thesettlement process, the arrangementsconstructed to contain the social experience ofimmigrants were affected by the dominantideologies about ethnic group relations. The firstfifteen years of post-war migration were typifiedby an assimilationist rhetoric. This rhetoric wasbased on a notion of the "natural" processes ofassimilation, which portrayed the necessary


succession of conflict, competition,accommodation and assimilation [Wilton andBosworth 1984] . Government policy tendedtowards actions which would minimise thepotential of ethnic group formation, andthereby minimise the likelihood of inter groupconflict.

Federal provision was initially restricted toBritish Commonwealth immigrants, so that fornon British there were at various timeslimitations on access to unemployment benefits,invalid pensions, widows pensions, agedpensions, and social work (human services) etc.The government's national Social Fund whichostensibly provided the source for thesepayments was assumed to require "deposits" inthe form of many years of taxes paid before anindividual who was an alien could make awithdrawal through a claim for benefits. Theother side of this implicit equation presumedAustralian society had made the sameinvestment in the education and upbringing ofthe immigrant as for the Australian born worker- though in fact these costs were borne by thesociety of origin.

International migration could be seen as atransfer of wealth (as human capital) from theseoften poorer regions to advanced capitalistsocieties such as Australia. The conflict over theeconomic role of immigrants and therefore theirsocial rights has been one of the continuingfeatures of the welfare scene in Australia [Birrelland Birrell 1981, de Lepervanche 1984, Burnleyet al. 1985, Norman and Meikle 1985, Withers1986].

The sustained concern throughout theassimilationist period was to "individualise" theimmigrant families, incorporate their childreninto an Australian culture, and effectivelyeradicate the cultural distinctiveness ofimmigrant collectivities. The "Good NeighbourCouncil", a government sponsored volunteerscheme to resocialise immigrants ( mainlyBritish initially) into becoming good Australiansthrough contact with Anglo Australians, was themost overt expression of the residual,assimilationist, individualising strategy.

Government settlement policy was one ofdispersal, which was reflected in publicstatements deploring the creation of immigrant"ghettoes" in inner urban areas. The retentionof language and culturally specific behaviour byparents in the home was castigated as a cause ofdelinquency and deviancy amongst the young[Dovey 1960].

By 1949, soon after the commencement of largescale planned and funded immigration, theImmigration Department had established 39social work positions, which were to be directedtowards aiding the natural absorption ofimmigrants into normal Australian behaviour.They provided a case work service, primarily toBritish immigrants, though the Department'sexpectations that general community servicescould respond to immigrant needs after a shortperiod proved to be unfounded. The residualand voluntaristic nature of communityprovision, delivered primarily through religiousand/or charitable agencies, was barely adequatefor those who were linguistically competent inEnglish.

The Assimilation division of the Departmentmarginally increased its social work positions(even though it could not fill a number ofthem) to respond to demands for case workservices in immigrant hostels. The case workapproach relied on referrals to communityagencies. In the first post war recession (1952)positions were cut as part of a general PublicService reduction. The cut back in positionscontinued until the end of the decade, on thebasis that assimilation was a whole communityresponsibility. The demand for case worksupport would supposedly be met through thevolunteer structure of the Good NeighbourCouncils. Specific Department services forimmigrants were argued to be antithetical to thepolicy of assimilation. This philosophy reflectedthe developing conservative position that welfareshould be provided through the voluntary sector[Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs1985a:44 ff ].

As Australia entered the first of the recessionsthat marked the downturn of the long boom in


1961, much of the unemployment was absorbedby the thousands of immigrants recently arrivedin the country. Outbreaks of violence occurredat Migrant Hostels during demonstrationsprotesting the lack of jobs and poor socialsecurity provision[ Wilton and Bosworth 1984,Jakubowicz et al. 1984]. These complaints wereheightened, as the post war redevelopment ofEurope had put in place quite elaborate socialsecurity and national insurance schemes forindustrial workers in many of the countries oforigin.

Industrialists continued to press for sustainedimmigration despite the recession, on twogrounds. Firstly, immigrants were seen to raiseaggregate demand for products such as housing,motor vehicles and other consumer durables;secondly, by the early 1960s industrialists hadcome to depend on the sustained flow ofmalleable immigrants as a pool of labour whichlessened labour militancy in the unions, andcould be worked more intensely under poorerconditions of employment.

In the face of potential reduction in the supplyof immigrants from traditional sources, theFederal government effected some changes tosocial security provision. However there werestill significant differences in benefits for newerarrivals from non British backgrounds. Therecession resulted in many social problems,particularly in inner urban areas. Chainmigration of families and friends sponsored byrural workers from Southern Europe generatedexactly that intensity of settlement of ethnicgroups in local communities that"assimilationism" has been supposed to avoid.State and local governments, and voluntaryagencies were forced to respond to particularpatterns of "social fallout" generated in theseprocesses.

State psychiatric institutions reported increasingnumbers of mentally disturbed immigrant men,for whom the diagnosis made was one ofschizophrenia. However it became clear in thefirst half of the decade that the typicalprecipitating scenario was one of individualisolation and economic hardship, and that

psychiatric labelling generated a smokescreenwhich placed the blame on the victim. Inschools, the apparently systematic denigration ofthe historical experience of the parents of ethnicchildren by the dominant cultural mores(required by and rooted in assimilationism)resulted in intergenerational conflict, resentmentby parents, and poor educational outcomes formany children [Martin 1978] .

Demands by parents and communityassociations grew for the recognition of theirculturally specific experience as legitimate andrespectable. Government policies came underincreasing attack for their laissez-faire responsesto the poor quality and relevance of mucheducational, welfare and health provision.Government recognition of these pressures cametogether with the necessity to forge links withthe leadership of the emerging communityassociations in order to continue recruitment oftraditional source country immigrants. Thiscoalescence of interests was given expression as"integrationism", the official nationalgovernment terminology after 1964 [Martin1978, Jakubowicz et al. 1984] .

Integrating...

The new philosophy perceived thatassimilationist goals would require theparticipation of organised ethnic collectivitiesthemselves in absorbing the pressure and pain ofthe settlement process. The state could notafford to allow its minimalist view of welfarethat permeated general social provision inAustralia in the decade after 1960 to beundermined. The apparently endless set ofdifficulties generated for Australian traditionalservices by immigrants began to appear asexactly such a threat. Welfare departmentsprovided low level services and were notequipped for serious responses to deeply feltneeds, especially if expressed in languages otherthan English. Professional interpreters were nonexistent within government services, exceptoccasionally in some courts. Bi-lingual staff wererarely recruited to the state and federal servicebureaucracies and if they existed would mostlikely be separated from countrymen with


whom they might identify too closely.

By the late 1960s unforeseen social effects oflarge scale immigration, such as urban sprawland poor social provision, were having adevastating effect on the quality of life for manyAustralians. Researchers rediscovered poverty inAustralia at the end of the decade, and revealedthat recent immigrants were in grave danger ofbeing in poverty if they were on a single basicincome with many children and high rents. Ifthe male breadwinner left the household, thewoman, old people and children would be indire straits - with few if any social supports,living in overcrowded conditions andattempting survival below an already extremelyaustere poverty line [Henderson 1975, Martinand Cox 1975, Jakubowicz and Buckley 1975].

The notion of "integration" permitted a transferof responsibility for direct services to the poorand damaged, from government onto ethniccollectivities - and in particular women. As earlyas 1959 this had been prefigured by a " drasticreduction" in the social work provision by theDepartment of Immigration - only 11 of the 42positions established by 1952 remained. Thewelfare of immigrants "was seen to be theresponsibility of the Australian community as awhole" [Department of Immigration and EthnicAffairs 1985a:46 ] . The failure of mainstreamvoluntary welfare agencies to respond to theneeds of non English speaking immigrantsraised considerable concern within the "ethniccommunities", as the social effects of rapidurbanisation upon and proletarianisation ofsuch immigrants, intensified.

This "community" concern took concrete formin welfare associations, managed for the mostpart with a sense of noblesse oblige by the petitebourgeoisie, or in some cases the hautebourgeoisie , of the relevant language groups.The larger collectivities developed voluntarywelfare bodies modelled on the Australianvoluntary sector organisations. Such a structurecould be guaranteed to sort out the deservingfrom the undeserving poor, and maintain socialcontrol within collectivities. In particular itcould manage the problems created for the

patriarchal order by the proletarianisation ofimmigrant women. These problems includedtheir increasing economic independence, withits tendency to result in their increasingresistance to their historic subordinate positionin the family.

The Immigration Department instituted asystem of grants-in-aid [1969 onwards], as acontribution towards the employment by Angloand migrant organisations, of welfare and socialworkers to work with migrants. This schemewas supposed to meet the needs emerging in thecommunities, while protecting mainstreamorganisations from demands of ethniccommunities.

The apparent success of grant-in-aid welfareofficers ( quasi professional welfare aides)working with migrant organisations such asCo.As.It. (Comitato d'Assistencia Italiano)prompted the Immigration Department to seekthe appointment of numbers of its own welfareofficers after 1971. This was as much as a resultof a new found concern for the welfare ofimmigrants as it was to ensure the settlementprocess became no rockier, difficult and off-putting for prospective immigrants than it hadalready become [Jakubowicz et al. 1984: 44-48].These welfare personnel were introduced,gingerly and with trepidation, into a SocialWork section which had previouslyconcentrated its efforts on the evaluation,screening and management of immigrantsseeking repatriation on grounds of mental illnessor familial breakdown. The Department washesitant about allowing itself to be seen asanything more than a referral point for crisisaid. It was also wary of legitimating the claimsby ethnic community social and communityworkers that immigrants were facing severe andcontinuing social deprivation.

Multiculturalism 1: social democracy andethnic rights

The return of the Australian Labor Party tonational government in 1972/3 after 23 years inopposition, allowed a number of interests thathad been historically repressed to argue their

1 0Making Multicultural Australia The state and the welfare of immigrants in Australia

case publicly. A Migrant Workers' movementhad begun to call for the right of immigrantsemployed in Australia with overseas dependentsto claim those people for taxation purposes.Demands surfaced for a pluralist range ofservices, from welfare to media, which would beinfluenced by and serve the needs of the varietyof communities by then well established inAustralia. These claims became to be managedwithin a policy framework labelled as"multiculturalism", based on a social philosophyostensibly concerned to ensure that minoritieswould be recognised as legitimate social entitieswith long term interests which could besupported by government.

The Commission of Inquiry into Poverty,established by the Liberal government in 1972,was expanded from a concern just for incomesecurity to an examination of those manyaspects of social relations which limited welfare -including legal practice and services, healthprovision, and education [e.g. Henderson 1975:269 - 281, Jakubowicz and Buckley, Cox andMartin 1975]. A series of studies examined therole of ethnic communities in the provision ofservices, and the particular needs of ethnicminorities which were excluded by traditionalpractice.

Meanwhile the Social Security Departmentdeveloped a welfare rights officers program tofacilitate an advocacy role by communityorganisations of their clients' interests. Some ofthese positions went to ethnic welfareorganisations . Within the Australian AssistancePlan ( A.A.P.) migrant community developmentofficers were appointed in some regions, inorder to support the participation of ethniccommunities in decision making about localwelfare priorities [ Martin 1978: 50 ff].

The Immigration Department was reconstitutedin 1974 as a Department of Labour andImmigration, with a labour recruitment focus.Its previous responsibilities for welfare werespread throughout the service departments, withmigrant units being established within SocialSecurity, Education, and Health. The implicitmodel of welfare under Labor required

government to accept responsibility forfacilitating access and participation byminorities, and to ensure core departments ofthe state would meet the needs of minorities,either directly or through support for otherorganisations. Thus the early stage ofmulticulturalism was strongly affected bydemands for minority rights, but thisperspective barely survived the fall of the Laborgovernment in 1975.

Multiculturalism 2: neo-conservatism

The return of conservative ideology with thecoalition Liberal/ Country (National) Partygovernment after 1976 reinstituted a residualphilosophy of welfare. The A.A.P. wasabandoned, and the welfare rights officersprogram dissolved. The right to claim overseasdependents for taxation purposes was effectivelywithdrawn. The Immigration Department wasre-formed and assumed once more its historicrole of managing minorities through the controlof welfare and other services, signifying theimportance of these tasks in its new name ofImmigration and Ethnic Affairs. In 1977 thegovernment announced a review of post-arrivaland settlement services for immigrants, whichreported to the Prime Minister in April 1978.

The Galbally Report, (as it was known after itschairman Frank Galbally Q.C.), claimed thatAustralian society was at a turning point withregard to settlement services, and advanced amulti-dimensional program of services [Galbally1978a]. The cost of these programs effectivelymatched the savings from the removal of taxconcessions for overseas dependents [Galbally1978b:1-20]. The funds thus released weretransferred in practice from the ethnic workingclass to the ethnic petite bourgeoisie andintelligentsia through the creation of "ethnic"jobs. The Department welfare officer programestablished under Labor would be cut back, andthe funds redirected to the emerging ethniccommunity welfare agencies. Support was givenfor ethnic schools, radio, welfare grants toorganisations for the employment of socialworkers, and the establishment of local MigrantResource Centres (M.R.C.s) to provide advice


and referral services. The M.R.C.s would havelocally elected committees; effective controlrested in the budget provided by and officersappointed by the Department of Immigrationand Ethnic Affairs [ Meekosha and Rist 1982] .Access radio, previously provided in Melbournethrough the Australian BroadcastingCommission to language programmingcommittees elected at public meetings [at radiostation 3ZZ], was closed down by aCommonwealth police raid. It was replaced byclosely-controlled government radioprogramming with no provision for access orcontrol by community members. Governmentmonitoring was maintained through anappointed board for the new organisation, theSpecial Broadcasting Service, which then beganto operate radios 3EA in Melbourne and 2EA inSydney [ Dugdale 1979] .

Just before the Galbally Report was released(though not apparently with any conspiratorialintent), the Department of Social Securityimplemented a campaign which wouldostensibly stamp out schemes to defraud theInvalid Pensions program. In dawn raids acrossAustralia police arrested hundreds of Greekpensioners and a number of doctors, seizedmedical records, and broadcast that they hadbroken a Greek Social Security fraud ofmammoth proportions. Utilising pre-existingstereotypes based on the concentration ofMediterranean immigrants in dangerous jobs,and their propensity to be injured, thegovernment carried out a witch hunt inAustralia and Greece against the many victimsof the migration experience. The Case wasfinally abandoned in 1985, and an inquiryrecommended widespread compensation tothose who had been intimidated, threatened andharassed [ Jakubowicz et al. 1984: 79 -81].

One crucial element in the structure of welfarethat came to the fore in the late 1970s was thesituation of aged immigrants. As the majority ofmigrants had arrived as young adults in thethirty years from 1947, many were ageing andabout to become dependent on the state aspensioners. Studies revealed limitedaccommodation and support for the earlier

arrivals, who had been displaced people, mainlymen, without family networks, or women athome to carry the burden of their care. Inaddition, the emphasis on family reunion as aprinciple of immigrant selection after 1976meant that many elderly people were arrivingunder Maintenance Guarantees signed by theiradult children. Immigrants from non Britishcountries had to have been in Australia for tenyears to be eligible for the Aged Pension, andany special benefits they received in themeantime could be recovered from theirchildren/guarantors [ Hearst 1981]. As theeconomic situation worsened, and former twoincome families became single income, orovertime dried up, or family obligationsincreased with new children, these pressures onthe poorer families to meet their obligationsoften resulted in major hardship. A nationalcampaign developed to end MaintenanceGuarantees, which the Government relabelled asGuarantees of Support in 1982.

Multiculturalism in practice was a very complexaffair - many service departments resisted thedirect provision of culturally specific services.Often the "community" organisations necessaryunder government regulations to allow funds tobe directed towards specific groups, did notexist. Many of the organisations that emergedwere "created" by government employeesanxious to find "legitimate" bodies to fund.Such funding would then provide evidence of aneed being met. These structures of welfare thatemerged under the grant-in-aid scheme werebased on the voluntary provision of labour bywomen in the communities.

Employed workers were often poorly trainedand even more poorly managed: they were morelikely to lack formal qualifications and beresponsible to inexperienced committees, thanwere employees in the large Anglo Australianvoluntary organisations or in government. Theysuffered from overload, burnout and industrialinjuries such as Repetition Strain Injury ( alsoknown as tenosynovitis, cumulative traumadisorder, musculo-skeletal injury or occupationaloveruse injury) [Meekosha and Jakubowicz1986]. Commonwealth direct services (such as


Settlement Centres) were often cut when"community" programs (such as the M.R.C.s)were established. Workers rarely receivedsuperannuation, study leave or any of the manyother conditions available within the statesector. The emphasis was on the privatisation ofservices where possible, and the development of"community" structures to carry the burden ofwelfare.

An evaluative review of the Galbally proposalsin 1982 by the Australian Institute forMulticultural Affairs, itself a creation of theGalbally Report, claimed that the proposals hadbeen generally effective. The Evaluationdeclined to suggest any action on the conditionsof welfare workers in the ethnic communityagencies. It did however argue for thewithdrawal of the D.I.E.A. from a casework rolein the community (outside hostels) and that theDepartment should concentrate on developingvoluntary organisations to extend welfare[Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs1982]. All these proposals sat comfortablywithin the generally conservative strategy whichcharacterised the final years of the Liberalgovernment. A co-ordinating committee insidegovernment would seek to ensure longer termimplementation of the "finely tuned" proposals.

The Evaluation met widespread condemnation[Jakubowicz et al.1984: 84 ff], as did theInstitute, which was seen by many as closelyaligned politically to the Liberal Party. TheAustralian Labor Party pledged a full review ofthe Institute as part of its 1983 electioncampaign.

4. Ethnicity and Welfare:the contemporary nexus.

Mainstreaming 1: access and equity

Whatever it felt about the Institute, the newLabor Government accepted many of theproposals it had advanced in its Evaluation ofthe Galbally program. Minor modificationsintroduced by Labor included an extension ofthe Grant-in-Aid Scheme to include tradesunions with heavy migrant memberships. The

multiculturalism espoused by the Liberals hadresulted in strong support for quite conservativeethnic community organisations and verylimited action by service departments, whichwere facing broad cuts to their fundingthroughout the Galbally period. Under Labor,increasing rhetorical pressure was directedtowards the task of drawing service departmentsinto an engagement with the problems ofmeeting the needs of all Australians. Howeverthe pressure continued in favour of anenvironment in which women would return tothe home, and "community care" would replacestate provision delivered through paid workers.

This process was given the name of"mainstreaming", a term drawn from earlierproposals in New South Wales emerging fromits Ethnic Affairs Commission. The economicstrategy of Labor also acted as a constraint onadditional funding for services. Mainstreamingwas presented as a means of redirecting alreadyscarce resources to effectively cover the needs ofethnic minorities as part of these core programs.One Minister referred to the rationale of thisprocess as "all snouts out of the trough". Theimplications were that the special positionaccorded to ethnic minorities under the policyof multiculturalism would be modified. Theywould become just one interest group amongstmany competing for a declining slice of thewelfare cake - in a period of general retreat fromthe welfare state.

The ad hoc arrangements had evolved inresponse to the various periodic crises ofcapitalism. The disparate fall out of both thecrises and the responses on minority culturalgroupings constituted, by the late 1980s, arange of occasionally contradictory andinequitable programs. While some notion of theparticular welfare needs of ethnic minorities wasapparent at the Commonwealth and state levels,and for some local government bodies , thepractices arising out of these perceptions hadonly a few commonalities.

The Commonwealth effectively used differentdefinitions for the extent, coverage andaccessibility of its services, depending on the


program and the apparent logic of costs andbenefits. Thus aged pensions were not availableuntil ten years after arrival, though taxes werepayable immediately. Citizenship brought noautomatic access to welfare rights beyond thoseavailable to permanent residents, except theright to permanent employment in theCommonwealth public service. Unemploymentbenefits were immediately available, as werechild endowment and supporting parent'sbenefit. Access to invalid pensions, particularlyafter the raids of 1978, was rather more difficultfor immigrants in practice, if not de jure.

Income security was confused by the lack of anational contributory superannuation programin Australia, so that reciprocal agreements withcountries of origin to share in the cost ofincome security for retired workers weredifficult to achieve. In 1985 theCommonwealth embarked on a reconstructionof the rights to retirement pensions ofimmigrants, arguing that full pensionentitlement would only be available toAustralian residents after 35 years residence.Australia argued that other countries in whichimmigrants had worked also shared in theresponsibility for financing the workers'retirement. Modifications to the proposals tookplace after heated resistance from Italian andGreek collectivities - though the driving forcetowards this "rationalisation" remained aconcern for the prospective fiscal drain implicitin an ageing population. No consideration wasgiven by the government to the socialinvestment made in immigrant workers by theircountries of origin, and the value of this toAustralian development in the post war period.

Some programs however continued to be madeavailable to immigrants for long periods afterarrival, such as Migrant Resource Centreservices. Others were limited to very shortperiods - e.g. hostel accommodation, full timeEnglish courses etc. One outcome of theseprocedures was a growing ethnic voluntarysector which depended, as did many of theAnglo institutions, on government subsidies.

As mainstreaming began to "bite", a number of

these institutions had central governmentsupport withdrawn. In 1984/85 there were 207applications for grants-in-aid by welfareinstitutions, of which 47% were from "ethnicorganisations" (3), 18% from general welfareagencies, 12% from church agencies, 6% fromMigrant Resource Centres, and 17% fromagencies concerned with specific needs, fromthose of women, the handicapped, drugdependency to housing.

The strategy of mainstreaming, as articulatedfirstly in New South Wales and then in theCommonwealth, proposed that Departmentswere to be required to prepare and implementstrategies which indicated a concern to ensurethat the specific needs of immigrants would bemet by their generic programs. Howeveraffirmative action recruitment of minoritycommunity individuals for mainstream jobs,which such mainstreaming would require, wasnot perceived as a matter related to servicedelivery.

Unlike some states with their Ethnic AffairsCommissions , the Commonwealth lacked acentral co-ordinating body concerned to ensuretargets were set and met. Such a unit existed forwomen, in the Office of Status of Women inthe Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet,and units to co-ordinate provision of services tothe aged and people with disabilities wereestablished in 1985 in Ministerial Offices in theDepartment of Community Services. TheAustralian Institute of Multicultural Affairs hada statutory co-ordination function, but faced alevel of distrust and cynicism withingovernment departments and among manycommunity groups. The service Department ofImmigration and Ethnic Affairs was entrenchedwithin bureaucratic structures of competitionwith other service departments, and lacked theparticular authority of the state commissions.

In the 1985 Budget negotiations, the Ministerfor Immigration and Ethnic Affairs gainedCabinet support for a requirement that allrelevant Ministries file with him by the end of1985, and review each year thereafter, an Accessand Equity statement. The apparent trade-off


was that he would not seek any increases inwelfare funding through his department, andindeed after 1986 there is likely to be no growthin the number of grants available to communityorganisations (after steady increases in numbersfrom 1978 to 1985).

An indication of these dilemmas and thedirection the negotiations would lead, arecovered in the recommendations to a meeting ofrelevant Ministers for Immigration and EthnicAffairs on immigrant women's issues in 1985. Anational conference of immigrant women co-ordinated by the Women's desk in theCommonwealth Department identified the toppriorities as i) improved health, safety andworking conditions for the female immigrantwork force; ii) improved access to language,education, training, and retraining for immigrantwomen; iii) improved access to culturallyappropriate child care; iv) improved services foraged and ageing immigrant women [Depart-ment of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs 1985b].

In New South Wales the government policy ofrequiring ethnic affairs policy statements fromall government departments, authorities andinstitutions, was a projection of the earlierstrategy for equal employment opportunity.Departments were required to file plans whichwould identify the impact of policies on ethnicminorities, and how they would overcome thedisadvantages ethnic minorities might face inattempting to use their services. The StateDepartment of Youth and Community Serviceshad previously adopted a consultants' reportwhich inter alia proposed that people with racistv i ews should be neither appointed nor pro m o t e dwithin the department. In addition dozens ofbi-lingual staff were recruited to front lineservice positions in heavily ethnic localities, weremany previously "general" positions werereconstituted as bi-cultural ones. All policy areashad to address the needs of cultural minoritiesas part of their normal functioning [Jakubowiczand Mitchell 1982].

In Victoria the position of the major ethnicwelfare institutions rendered the question ofmainstreaming more controversial. While

supporting the general propositions that coreservice departments should respond to thedemands and needs of cultural minorities, theagencies claimed that their ethnic specificity wassimilar to the religious specificity of othertraditional bodies such as Catholic, Protestantand Jewish institutions. They laid claim to longterm legitimacy as an integral element in thewelfare system, a particularly complex problemat a time government was seeking a means ofreducing expenditure. Numerous proposalsemerged in Victoria for formulæ which wouldallow a "rational" allocation of resourcesbetween mainstream and ethno-specific services.Some of these were carried into national debates[e.g. by National Population Council EthnicAffairs and and Settlement Services Committeechairman David Cox, see Cox 1982, NationalPopulation Council 1985a, b; and VictorianEthnic Affairs Commission 1985] .

By the late 1980s the four Labor States of NewSouth Wales, Victoria, South Australia, andWestern Australia had Ethnic AffairsCommissions with Boards composed ofrepresentatives chosen by government to reflectsome diversity of views within the leadership ofcommunities. The Victoria E.A.C. tended to berather more concerned with employmentintervention strategies, arguing its prioritiesshould lie with modifying the negative impactof the class position of poor immigrants [e.g.Victorian Ethnic Affairs Commission 1984].

New South Wales was generally more concernedwith maintaining links with the ethnic petitebourgeoisie through support for communalwelfare projects in which these class fractionswere most evident [ e.g. Ethnic AffairsCommission of New South Wales 1984 a, b].The other Labor States fell somewhere betweenthe two in their focus. Tasmania andQueensland had small ethnic affairs units withintheir welfare departments, but their programswere limited in scope and range. In both theseStates provision of specific services to ethnicminorities remained the effective preserve ofCommonwealth programs.


Mainstreaming 2: streamlining and targeting

The Minister for Immigration and EthnicAffairs reported to Parliament in April 1986 onthe progress of the Access and Equity Plansrequired of service departments under the 1985Budget agreement [ Minister for Immigrationand Ethnic Affairs 1986] . The report was lessthan sanguine in its assessment of progress,suggesting that many departments failed tounderstand the basic principles ofmainstreaming or multiculturalism. As a resultof this analysis, the government announced anumber of actions which would require alldepartments and authorities to "take steps to:

(a) improve the effectiveness of theiractivities to ensure "access-and-equity"for migrants in the delivery of FederalGovernment services and programs;

(b) ensure these activities are co-ordinatedand monitored within the frameworkof progressive administrative reform;

(c) develop, by 30 September 1986 a 3year plan of action to commence on 1July 1987 to give effect to theguidelines... given current resourceconstraints; and

(d) specifically identify in the three-yearplans the needs of migrant women andmeasures to ensure their access toservices and programs. [Department of Immigration andEthnic Affairs 1986b].

As ideology, the statements read well, andcontain some apparently unexceptionalcommitments. The government claimed theycould be achieved in practice by "close targeting"of programs, and the use of program budgeting.However, the plan failed to overcome a crucialnexus - that these changes were to beimplemented at exactly the time major cutswere to be made to existing programs andservices, in all government departments.

The Minister for Immigration and EthnicAffairs initiated a review in late 1985 of thepost-arrival strategy of the government. Thereview committee reported in August 1986. Thereview (known as ROMAMPAS - the review ofmigrant and multicultural programs and services- or the Jupp review, after its chair Dr JamesJupp, a Canberra academic) sought to delineatethe philosophical principles that should beadopted in the pursuit of mainstreaming. Someof these had already been sketched out in theNSW Ethnic Affairs Commission considerationof the issues - the right of all Australians toaccess to services regardless of ethnic racial orreligious origin or preferences was one. Theequity question was also involved - that the"quality" of service should be equivalent.

Another Labor government attempt to pursuethis line of argument in the education area hadalready had to confront thorny dilemmas ofgender and class inequalities [see Jakubowicz1984]. This Participation-and-Equity program(PEP) had been designed to overcome barriersto participation in education for girls, NESBchildren and Aborigines - but had not beenparticularly effective. In the wake of PEP, thegovernment abolished the MulticulturalEducation Program of the national SchoolsCommission - claiming it was no longernecessary as the schools in Australia hadachieved the goal of becoming "multicultural",and even if they had not, it was now a"mainstream" State education responsibility.This decision was taken despite the clearevidence that school failure amongst NESBimmigrants was still very much higher thanamong native born students, as was theirunemployment rate after leaving school[Jakubowicz and Castles 1986, Horvath 1986 ].

The Jupp review went on to argue that theGovernment had to recognise it had aresponsibility to advocate multiculturalprinciples as well as implementing action toensure equitable access to Federal programs andservices. All government decisions should takeaccount of the ethnic and cultural diversity ofthe society. These proposals were publiclyadopted by the Government [Minister for


Immigration and Ethnic Affairs MediaStatement 12 August 1986] - and advanced asthe ideological position of the state. The PrimeMinister reiterated this position, claiming thegovernment 's "commitment to multiculturalAustralia is stronger than ever" [Prime MinisterMedia Statement 22 August 1986]. Anunequivocal commitment was given to theenhancement of "multicultural values".

The operational expression of mainstreamingand the commitment to multicultural valueswas contained in the Budget produced by theHawke government in August 1986. In a seriesof moves the Government closed down theAustralian Institute for Multicultural Affairs, cutexpenditure on English as a second languageprograms for immigrant children, confirmed thecessation of funding under the MulticulturalEducational Program, indicated that the HumanRights legislation planned for introductionduring the next year would not proceed, andabolished the Special Broadcasting Servicethrough amalgamation with the other nationalbroadcaster, the Australian BroadcastingCorporation.

The Institute was to be replaced by an Office ofMulticultural and Ethnic Affairs, responsible tothe Minister, with a brief to carry out themonitoring of the Access and Equity directivesof the government. An earlier proposal by theJupp committee that such an office should belocated within the Department of PrimeMinister and Cabinet was firmly rebuffed byboth the Departmental bureaucracy and thePrime Minister himself. Public outcry by ethniccommunities was widespread on many of thesemoves, and indeed led to a grudging agreementto place the Office for Multicultural Affairswithin the Department of Prime Minister andCabinet but under the direction of the Ministerfor Immigration and Ethnic Affairs. Defendingthe budget, Minister Hurford claimed that"multiculturalism was healthy and growing",and that "streamlining and specific targeting"was now the order of the day [Minister forImmigration and Ethnic Affairs MediaStatement 21 August 1986]. The concernsexpressed were related to reducing expenditure

by the state, while maintaining the "bloc" withthe ethnic bourgeoisie that had been createdthrough the former multicultural strategies.

The Budget marked a turning point in theprovision of services to ethnic groups via smallgrants to ethnic organisations. The "marginal"model of multiculturalism had beendemonstrated to have increasingly little pay offpolitically, and allowed any concern withredistributive justice through governmentcentral activities to be minimised. However,little was put into place to replace the programsand services so rapidly abandoned.

5. Conclusion

The welfare provision for migrants is boundedby two central concerns of the state in Australia- that the general conditions necessary for thereproduction of capitalism over time aresustained; and that the unpaid work of womenat home and in the community is available tokeep the costs of reproducing labour at aminimum. Even where women are increasinglydrawn into paid work, the development ofwelfare and community services depends on theassumption that many of the services will be infact provided by women in their traditional roleas domestic carers. That dynamic can beperceived within the particular programsimplemented to meet the needs of immigrants(which therefore define what these needs maylegitimately be), and in the categories that fromtime to time include or exclude them. Theprograms and procedures ostensibly designed forthe welfare of migrants may have that as anoutcome - but this is not their primaryfunction.

The provision of human services and socialsecurity to cultural minorities in Australia hasalways been the outcome of other processes ofconflict and struggle. Most recently thesustained implosion of fiscal constraint has beencarried out behind ideological presentations ofpluralistic policy. Initially the policies carried thelabel of multiculturalism, then mainstreaming,and most recently, (in recognition perhaps ofthe less than effective response of the


"mainstream", a problem identified with regularconcern since the early 1950s) by a publiccommitment to "access" and "equity"[e.g.National Population Council 1985] . Accessrelates (unclearly) to the notion that the primaryproblem for ethnic minorities has been their"exclusion" from services, not the structurallocation of many NESB immigrants within thatpart of the working class in Australia most atrisk in sustained periods of economic recessionand industrial reconstruction. Equity has beendescribed as "fairness" by the Minister forImmigration - that immigrants should get noless than is their due, but no more either.However the determination of what equitymight mean in practice is left to the workings ofthe highly pragmatic political system.

The issues presented for public debate involvethe clarification of criteria under which thelimited "available funding resources" are to bedistributed. The process of distinguishing thedeserving from the undeserving poor hasbecome the focus for action. Government goalsappear to be concerned more with shifting theburden of welfare within the poor, from theimmigrant to the Anglo Celtic recipient, so thatthe marginally better-off English speaker hashis/her access reduced, in order to improve theequity available to the non English speaker. Thewelfare market place has been opened up toensure competition between organisationsinterested in providing welfare. Yet theunderlying issues, tensions and conflicts, are stillthose of a culturally marked, class based andgender split society, in which the dominantorder utilises the the state to manage theminorities. The provision of welfare provides acrucial mechanism through which thishegemony is sustained.

Notes

1 An issue of terminology - I use theAustralian state [lower case] to refer tothe ensemble of institutional practiceswhich lays claim to legitimateauthority and resort to the use ofcoercion; a State [upper case] refers toa particular geopolitical formationwithin Australia - e.g. New SouthWales, Tasmania, Queensland etc.

2 A detailed range of discussions ofwomen and the welfare state inAustralia can be found in Baldock andCass 1983, though they do not containa discussion of immigrant women. Forrecent approaches to the theoreticaland practical relationships betweenethnicity class and gender from afeminist perspective, see Juteau-Leeand Rogers 1981, Martin 1984, andAnthias and Yuval-Davis 1983.

3 Figures provided by the Department ofImmigration and Ethnic Affairs; majorethnic groups include Indo Chinese (9grants awarded,16.5 rejected), Yugoslav(8/6), Spanish (1/4), Turkish (1/11),Lebanese (0/10), Greek (2/7) andItalian (2/5).


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Table 1:

"Ethnic Origin" of contemporary population,Australia, 1947, 1984

ETHNIC ORIGIN 1947 % 1984 %

English 3,922,000 50.9 6,968,000 45.0Scottish 1,133,000 14.7 1,883,000 12.1Irish 1,757,000 22.8 2,705,000 17.5Welsh 142,000 1.8 217,000 1.4BRITISH 6,954,000 90.2 11,773,000 76.0

German 312,000 4.0 635,000 4.1Scandinavian 84,000 1.4 155,000 1.0Dutch 17,000 0.2 232,500 1.5Other 47,000 0.7 155,000 1.0NORTH EUROPE 460,000 6.0 1,178,000 7.6

Polish 24,000 0.3 162,000 1.0Yugoslav 15,000 0.2 250,000 1.6Other East 33,000 0.4 245,000 1.6EAST EUROPE 72,000 0.9 657,000 4.2

Italian 72,000 0.9 635,000 4.1Greek 23,000 0.3 372,000 2.4Other 21,000 0.3 232,500 1.5SOUTH EUROPE 116,000 1.5 1,240,000 8.0

West Asian 10,000 0.1 186,000 1.2South Asian 9,000 0.1 77,500 0.5South East 3,000 - 94,000 0.6Chinese 17,000 0.2 77,500 0.5Other 1,000 - - -ASIAN 40,000 0.5 435,000 2.8

Other 8,000 0.1 46,500 0.3Aborigine 59,000 0.8 170,500 1.1

TOTAL 7,709,000 100.0 15,500,00 100.0

Note: Ethnic origin reflects the ethnic descent of all Australian residents, as calculated by Price, 1984. It includesall those born in Australia, and overseas.



Table 2:

Immigrant Settlement Policy Epochs and AustralianCapitalism, 1947-1986.

Years Economic Settlement Annual AverageSituation Policy Net Immigration

July/June

1947 to Post War Assimilation1954 Reconstruction 91,289

1954 to Long Boom Assimilation 83,5361961

1961 to Recession/ Assimilation/ 79,0971966 Expansion Integration

1966 to Industrial Integration 104,2281971 Consolidation

1971 to Expansion/ Multiculturalism I: 40,3761976 Recession Ethnic Rights

1976 to Recession Multiculturalism II: 83,7521981 Social Cohesion

1981 to Recession/ Multiculturalism II: 1981-19851986 Industrial ----> 78,240

Reconstruction Mainstreaming:Access and Equity

Data from: Australian Bureau of Statistics 1986, Price 1984.

Table 3:

Sources of Migrants to Australia, 1945-1985 (Rank order 1-10).

1945-1959*

1 United Kingdom 506,296 34.9 %2 Italy 192,626 13.3 %3 Netherlands 108,568 7.5 %4 Poland 74,988 5.2 %5 Germany 67,861 4.7 %6 Greece 63,341 4.4 %7 Malta 40,716 2.8 %8 New Zealand 39,172 2.7 %9 Yugoslavia 31,524 2.2 %

10 Hungary 26,829 1.9 %

Total 1,448,754 79.6 %

1959-71**

1 United Kingdom 618,464 41.62 Italy 164,060 11.13 Greece 139,512 9.44 Yugoslavia 107,608 7.35 Germany 48,601 3.36 Netherlands 36,595 2.57 Malta 32,237 2.28 New Zealand 26,905 1.89 U.S.A. 20,078 1.4

10 Lebanon 19,939 1.4

Total 1,478,839 82.0

1971-1982**

1 United Kingdom 248,780 30.12 New Zealand 66,402 8.33 Yugoslavia 35,661 4.44 Lebanon 30,267 3.75 Greece 21,617 2.76 Italy 21,046 2.67 S.Africa 18,070 2.28 Malta 17,622 2.29 U.S.A. 17,156 2.1

10 Turkey 16,356 2.0

Total 809,096 60.3

1984#

1 United Kingdom 12,950 18.82 Vietnam 9,510 11.83 New Zealand 5,770 8.44 Philippines 2,870 4.25 Hong Kong 2,010 2.96 Kampuchea 1,660 2.47 Malaysia 1,650 2.48 S.Africa 1,640 2.49 Germany } 1,610 2.3

10 China } 1,610 2.3

Total 68,810 55.6

1985#

1 United Kingdom 11,610 15.02 New Zealand 9,080 11.73 Vietnam 8,490 11.04 Hong Kong 3,290 4.25 Philippines 3,160 4.16 China 3,140 4.17 Malaysia 2,410 3.18 Lebanon 2,380 3.19 India 1,950 2.5

10 U.S.A. 1,520 2.0

Total 77,510 60.8

* Citizenship of long term and permanent arrivals,except for U.K., S.Africa, New Zealand and Malta,where figures are for country of last residence for longterm and permanent arrivals.

** Net settler gain by country of citizenship.

# Settler arrivals by country of citizenship.

Sources: Australia, Department of Immigration, 1977,Australia, Department of Immigration and EthnicAffairs,1983, Australian Bureau of Statistics 1986.



Table 4:

Migration and population growth 1947-1981Birthplace of Australian Population.

1947 1954 1961 1971 1976 1981

Australia 6,835,171 7,700,064 8,729,406 10,176,320 10,829,616 11,393,861

New Zealand 43,610 43,350 47,011 80,466 89,791 176,713

UK and Eire 541,267 664,205 755,402 1,088,210 1,117,600 1,132,601

Northern Europe 33,775 147,118 265,013 281,874 268,918 279,739

Southern Europe 50,910 173,193 358,331 538,254 509,156 529,762

Eastern Europe 24,368 172,727 219,491 297,243 300,839 312,658

Middle East 3,796 7,871 12,496 41,852 60,558 83,278

Central/West Asia 10,987 22,114 35,653 76,904 106,431 143,272

Sth/East Asia 8,632 15,823 22,331 35,203 51,334 120,267

Central/North Africa 1,671 9,855 20,663 49,280 54,945 63,272

South Africa 5,866 5,971 7,896 12,655 15,565 26,965

North America 10,293 12,777 29,577 42,873 45,001 50,310

South America 1,337 1,719 2,218 12,879 35,731 45,937

Pacific 3,145 3,358 4,529 6,885 9,663 16,721

TOTAL* 7,579,358 8,986,530 10,508,186 12,755,638 13,548,448 14,576,330

*Includes "others" not recorded here.Source: Australia, Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs,1983

Figure 2:

European And North American Born, As At Census Year


Figure 1: Net Immigration to Australia

Figure 4:

Total Population of Australia


Figure 3:

Source Countries Other Than Europe/Nth America

Documents

The state and the welfare of immigrants in Australia · Australian society, as had been expected by the ... chances, and a challenge to the egalitarian ethos ... Making Multicultural