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which, among many other divisive effects, fostered dissatisfaction with ‘the Australian Way of
Life’, now identified with an older generation and irrational consumerism (White, 167). The
1966 election was centered on the Vietnam question, and produced a record majority for the
Liberals, who had exploited traditional fears of Asia, of communism and of internal subversion
(White, 168). ‘Asia’ to Australians in the mid-60s was once again China. ‘To acknowledge
regional complexity and difference contradicted the meaning of “Asia” as the pejorative
antonym of “Australia”’, and the war in Vietnam was fought to halt the downward thrust of the
Chinese Communists (Gerster, Asian Destinies, 63). And yet, Robin Gerster notes, the
Vietnam experience, ‘riddled with contradictions’,
was the historical moment when Australia realised that Asia was the Near
North, not the Far East. But Vietnam revealed nothing if not Australia’s
political subservience to America and its fear of acting independently in its
own region (Gerster, Asian Destinies, 67).
The political divisions subsequent to the war led to the end of ‘The Australian Way of
Life’ approach to immigration. ‘Assimilation’ gave way to ‘integration’ in official attitudes
towards migrants in Australia. ‘Pluralism’ was the new way of coping with the failures with
the old program. At the same time, the ‘White Australia’ policy was quietly replaced, and
small numbers of non-Europeans were admitted in the late 1960s. In the 1970s Australians
identified so much with their ‘multi-cultural’ society that ‘multi-culturalism’ itself became
something of a fad, beckoning the formal abandonment of the ‘White Australia’ policy (White
169). The old prejudices were being thrown out, and a new look at the map prompted some to
attest that Australia was in fact a part of Asia. Others even carried the deconstructionist
argument to its logical, absurd end, saying that ‘Asia, being a construct of the European
imagination, did not exist, and hence there was no threat’ (Broinowski, 1992, 6). ‘Self-
determination’ became the new policy on migrants and Aborigines, and by the early 1970s
Australia was promoting itself as a pluralistic, tolerant, multi-cultural society, although, White
points out, ‘it did not reflect any real improvement in the position of Aborigines and migrants,
most of whom remained on the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder’ (White 169).
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