UKIP in the lead?

[jewel]

According to this poll in the Telegraph UKIP has an almost 50% lead the Greens are on 27% and then Labour at 10% and Conservatives 9%.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politic ... t-now.html

[Dusak]

At least they show a degree of honesty in their party name, United Kingdom In Pieces.

[Luxor Pharoahs]

UKIP's ideals seem ok at a glance, but we have yet to see major policies on immigration and finances. Immigration is and can be a good thing for all Countries, it can provide expertise, and a major injection into economies, but at the moment the UK is suffering due to not having any for of regulation, and that will not come because immigration policies are determined in Europe by the Quango's.

Has anyone looked at the immigration policies in Australia, at least they are positive and of a great aid to the Australian economy. Emigration to Australia is like trying to open a padlock with a key made of putty. Even English people have to show they can speak the language, have maths skills, and can talk the language fluently. They have to attend on more than one occasion seminars and acquire a certain amount of points during these seminars before they can get a "Live in Australia Visa", they also have to have the required skills Australia is looking for.

[LovelyLadyLux]

Rather the same coming here to Canada. It is a point system and you have to be able to score a certain point level in an employment category (usually professional level) that is needed. AND if you score high enough to come here you typically have to agree to live wherever the gov't wants you to live and that definitely isn't on the southern border. Usually your first 2 years is in an isolated northern community in the middle of the country where you come up close an personal to double digit MINUS temperatures in winter and bugs as big as birds once the sun shines. Once your 2 years is over you can APPLY to transfer somewhere else but that move is typically pretty pricey cause odds are you're in the middle of nowhere.

[Dusak]

UKIP's ideals seem ok at a glance, but we have yet to see major policies on immigration and finances. Immigration is and can be a good thing for all Countries, it can provide expertise, and a major injection into economies, but at the moment the UK is suffering due to not having any for of regulation, and that will not come because immigration policies are determined in Europe by the Quango's.

Has anyone looked at the immigration policies in Australia, at least they are positive and of a great aid to the Australian economy. Emigration to Australia is like trying to open a padlock with a key made of putty. Even English people have to show they can speak the language, have maths skills, and can talk the language fluently. They have to attend on more than one occasion seminars and acquire a certain amount of points during these seminars before they can get a "Live in Australia Visa", they also have to have the required skills Australia is looking for.

Australia is making up for past transgressions concerning its immigration policies. At the turn of the last century the Australian government stated that without an increased number [thousands] of migrant workers/settlers, Australia would collapse. They then produced a policy of forcing out all Asian workers that had settled there, separating families. They had their lands and businesses confiscated and were denied the basics of human rights as they were arrested and dragged through the streets to be incarcerated in large holding centers before being placed onto vessels and shipped out. These were then taken over by whites.

Mid last century they advertised the good life to those in the UK that were suffering poverty and starvation a better life in Australia, promising them farms and fenced off land, all prepared for them to take advantage of the fertile lands. But when they arrived, most just dumped in the middle of nowhere, they had to fend for themselves. Thousands died of starvation, some were lucky enough to make it, but had a tremendous fight on their hands with the local population.

Thousands of children were shipped in from England, orphans and parent-less kids, all expecting to receive the promised good life by the churches and charitable organizations that were spearheading this removal of burdensome and worthless kids. The vast majority of them ended up being used as slaves, beaten, and sexually abused. Legal cases are still going through the courts to this day from these now elderly sufferers.

And let us not forget, Australia was once the biggest penal colony in the world, home to thousands of all types of category criminals. They do say it runs in the blood. G'day.

[jewel]

I wouldn't want to emigrate to Australia even if I was paid a fortune to do do...a local business woman went off there a few years ago with husband to "start a new life" but was back in the UK again within 2 years...
Tony Abbott? He's a major prat and I wonder he's not been taken out before now.

The UK is, in my opinion the best place to live, and why so many migrants want to come here. With this in mind, UKIP has the best approach to this problem. Fartage has some good ideas, just a pity he's an alcoholic.

[Hafiz]

Dusak. Maybe you are just trying to stir the pot or have a joke because everything you say is untrue.

Just some comments - thousands died of starvation, really!. Child emigration, yes but done by the UK government and their Australia based charities. One, who later became head of the national broadcaster, was molested as a child by Viscount Slim so I guess that you could say that the mother country sent its reprobates here, at a vice regal level, to play out their perversions. Yes there are legal cases going on and one class action is about Viscount Slim. Dragged through the street - Really! Discrimination against Chinese 150 years ago but no expulsions etc. etc. Criminals yes but they quickly built a society which is safer, richer, more egalitarian with more social and economic mobility than all but a few nordics. Most of these standards were first met by 1901, a hundred and ten years after first colonization.

I’d be interested in seeing your evidence but God knows what well you drew this swill from.

There is always a risk of responding to these type of slurs but they are so outrageous in this case they should be rebutted even though this forum is about Egypt. Interestingly some of the Anglo-Australian story may apply to the English in Egypt.

Jewell. Over 1.5 million Brits have stayed since the 2nd world war but you are right in saying that others have returned after a year or so. Further others have returned for a second time and stayed but I don’t have figures. Australia is not for everyone but millions from over 180 countries have found it a welcoming place offering a second chance at prosperity.

One rule of thumb is that if you want to emigrate its best to do it whilst you are young and not set in your ways. Many Brits have left it too late and have found retired life expensive, the climate too hot, the locals a bit boisterous and roast beef and quaint pubs hard to find. Its also rarely green and we are short on an upper class and ‘refeened’ manners.

It’s not accidental that Brits (by which I mean English) lead the list of those who have returned home nor why there are Australian epithets which describe their finicky carping ways. An inability to adapt to new circumstances seem to play a part in all this restlessness. Endless complaints by new Australians are not likely to lead to positive relationships with locals and causes many Brits to retreat into carping ghettos whilst most other nationalities get on with making a new life in a new country. Most have not had the experiences that so many English have recoiled from.

My guess is that the returnees are middle class or genteel lower middle class whilst working class Brits find the opportunities from hard work based on merit a refreshing change from England. At the moment we have hundreds of thousands backpackers from all countries working and traveling many with a view to permanently escaping the old world which rather confirms the point about being young and adventurous.

The Scots seem to stay and the widely used term “whinging Pom” is hardly ever applied to them. Their stereotypes are hard working and hard drinking which endears them to all.

Our current PM is 1st generation Australian from English parentage: so his ‘prattness” (your term) may be a result of this background or from his time as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. Our immediate past PM was 1st generation from Welsh background. Both came from modest circumstances. Maybe the takeaway is those with ambition and good genes have stayed and prospered. Also our treasurer is 1st generation Australian- Lebanese and there are many other examples from very modest migrant backgrounds.

I await your evidence to back up your bile but I note that this forum is about Egypt and not about Australia.

[carrie]

Hafiz there was a programme on TV some time ago about Brits emigrating to different countries, one was about a couple with two small kids who went to live in Aussie land. They were provided with accomodation, not spectacular, for a period of time and he found a job as a plumber almost straight away. Kids were enrolled in school and after a couple of months the wife found work. Much crying at first from the wife because she missed her family, especially when they sent over video's of themselves from the "owd country." They were determined to work hard though and make a go of it. Never were they called whinging poms, because they did their best to integrate into the community and NOT make comparisons. A year later they were filmed again, they were buying their own home with swimming pool, living the "outside" life and were very happy with the choice they had made. I do think that where ever you move to you have to do so with the right attitude, to adapt to your surroundings and not try to re create a little Britain. Same could be said about the ex pats who come to live here.

[Who2]

I first voted Labor when they stated that 'they would not interfere with the Radio Pirates when they also lowered the voting age to 18.
Within the year that smooth talking barsteward Benn had made them illegal.
I never voted again until I voted for Tony Blair, what a fu***stupid fool I was to fall for it again..
Never trust anyone called Tony or any MP whatever flag that they deem to wave, thieving bar stewards the lot of them. ..

[Dusak]

All my life Hafiz I have watched and enjoyed documentaries on the TV. All that I have posted is documented fact, although my comments on the chain gangs was more a political satire. AJ documentaries over here have just aired a very interesting one on the Asian problem that I highlighted, as was the children and land settlers last year. Why would I feel the need to rattle the cage bars or be funny about documented facts? I do not, nor ever have been, a believer of everything that I see or hear, but in these cases the film footage said it all. You, as an individual, can make your own mind up, or choose to ignore anything that I have written, up to you.

At the end of the day, it matters not how they arrived there or which country or government sent them or gave them assisted passage, it was the Australian governments job to make certain that they received not only the basics of human rights, but were treated like human beings, a thing that they failed miserably on towards many. And if you invite and welcome all and sundry, then you do not have the automatic right to then cherry pick from the crop, discarding the ones that do not suit you or your countries needs.

There is another good sounding documentary on its way highlighting how the Aborigines had their lands stolen from them, were introduced to alcohol and drugs and placed in shithole of areas to live in as compensation for the pastureland's stolen from them by the wealthy and powerful white population. The children lack education, basic needs and health care. They are routinely shunned by the whites, treated like living garbage and abused in all ways and forms. Of course, it will be up to you if you believe it or not.

[Who2]

Australia ? how are the ethic australians, do they still have a bounty on shooting them ?
What can one expect when we sent all our 'crims there…
Ps: it was 1936 when it was made illegal to shoot them and 1967 when they finally considered them to be Australian.
Pss: Mind you it was the 'enlightened Great British Empire that taught the Nazis about concentration camps.

[Dusak]

Just to lesson the supposed drivel a tad I have collected just a small amount of factual evidence from Wikipedia from public domain records and documents concerning the child abuse of the last century in regards to child migrants to Australia.
Another interesting documentary was aired on AJ this morning concerning the ''white only'' policy Australia adopted. It was quite obvious that Australia was indeed a racist country, on par with the likes of South African and America in that time period. Even though they [the country] was crying out for people with higher education and qualifications, if they were black, of mixed race or Asian, they were always refused entrance no matter what their qualifications and degrees. Again, all these facts with filmed evidence is freely available on the likes of Wikipedia as is the deportation of hundreds of Asians. This was also highlighted on the AJ documentary, showing the turn of events that was to finally see the end of this racist policy by way of the work of a man named Charles Perkings and a young Asian girl of five named Nancy Parsad.

Child Migrants.
Series of Scandals
Throughout its long history, child migration to Australia and other countries has been punctuated by a series of scandals. The lack of educational provision, the overwork and inadequate pay, the suicides following episodes of ill treatment, and the appalling evidence of protracted physical and sexual abuse all have featured in official inquiries or newspaper headlines in both nineteenth century Canada and South Africa as well as post war New Zealand. Consequently, Australia’s experience seems to conform to a common pattern of deceit, betrayal, deception and the corruption of professional, moral and ethical values to the risks of exploitation and abuse. However, Australia chose to continue to recruit these very vulnerable children. In 1937, the Northcote Farm School was established in Victoria, followed a year later by a second Fairbridge Farm at Molong, New South Wales. Northcote received both capital support and revenue grants from the Federal Government as well as assisted passage fares for the children. A group of 114 boys, also financed by the British, Australian and West Australian Governments, arrived at the Christian Brothers’ orphanages near Perth in 1938

The Second World War
Child migration stopped during the war but 577 child evacuees from Britain were cared for by their relatives or by foster parents in Australia, without any financial assistance from either government. However, detailed regulations outlined the very specific obligations of those caring for this group of children. In New South Wales, foster parents were reminded that the wrench of leaving home and the long voyage would produce ‘a very considerable psychological effect on the children.’ Consequently ‘what the children need most of all is a home... and a home is more than shelter and comfort. What a child’s nature asks for even more than food and comfort is love that is ‘understanding’ love.’ This home was to be provided by individual families and not a residential institution.

These views demolish the myth that child migrants received a standard of care which was acceptable at the time but would be judged as inappropriate by today’s standards. There could be no quarrel with the quality of advice outlined nor the standards expected of carers.

Unfortunately, these standards were not applied to the care of child migrants, even those who arrived a decade later in the post war period. There was a clear understanding of the needs of displaced children in1940 which, if applied, would have significantly improved the quality of care received by most child migrants.

The Second World War reinforced widespread anxieties about Australia’s isolated geopolitical position and her small vulnerable population. The fall of Singapore and the bombing of Darwin confirmed that fears of external aggression and invasion were not the product of fevered imaginations but deadly realities which demanded effective remedies.

Consequently, internal factors such as the impact of the 1930’s Depression and the loss of troops in two World Wars combined with external threats to generate the post war slogan: ‘populate or perish’. Government sponsored large scale immigration played a key role in Australia’s postwar plans to defend the nation and rebuild the economy.

Immigrants from Europe, especially from the United Kingdom, were actively recruited. Child migrants were viewed as the best immigrant easy to assimilate and accommodate and with a long working life ahead of them.

War Reconstruction
Perhaps Australia’s plans for post war child migration were the result of panic or genuine fears about invasion. They were certainly over ambitious and totally impractical. Arthur Calwell, the Labor Immigration Minister, intended to bring over 50,000 war orphans to Australia in the first three years of peace. A senior army officer suggested, “If necessary the children could be taken from defeated countries and given English names.”

Confronted with the lack of available shipping to transport these children, it was proposed that an aircraft carrier should be leased. Fortunately, less than four thousand, rather than fifty thousand, children arrived as child migrants during the entire postwar period.

The Federal Government accepted financial responsibility for the recruitment, medical screening and transportation of all assisted migrants. This included child migrants, who received free passages to Australia, maintenance grants and subsidies towards approved capital expenditure, including buildings erected by approved voluntary agencies. The Federal contribution was dominant as it included both capital and maintenance grants while the State and British Governments also made smaller contributions.

The active and positive role of the Federal Government was underlined by Arthur Calwell in 1946 when he stated, “no country needs immigrants of the right type more than does Australia. And no country has taken more energetic steps to secure them.”

Consequently, Australia recruited far more British child migrants in the post war period than any other country.

Thus, the facts of post war migration clearly indicate that the pull from Australia was far more powerful than the push from the United Kingdom in terms of child migrants. Australia wanted more children more quickly than Britain could supply. This interpretation is confirmed by all three of the major studies published in Australia on child migration. To quote Professor Sherington “As the war approached its end, the Australian Government had thus moved to adopt child migration as an important plank of its plan for overall post war immigration. At the same time, the impetus within Britain for child migration had waned.'' These issues were clarified by the Child Migrants Trust in 1994 with the publication of “Empty Cradles” which outlines the leading part played by the Australian Government.

The Trust has no vested interests in holding any one government, charity or church more responsible for child migration than another. The Trust considers that Australia should not have used unaccompanied, vulnerable children to boost its population and economy in the post war period. Australia should not have asked and the United Kingdom should not have agreed to send child migrants. Neither government insisted on the strict standards of supervision which would have protected these children. Both governments should accept shared responsibility for coping with the terrible human costs of these misguided schemes.

Charities and churches also allowed their values and standards to become degraded by their involvement in these schemes. For example, neither protested about the racist nature of these policies or indeed set appropriate standards of care for small distressed children.

Definitions and Destinations
There have been more systematic attempts over the past few years to compile more accurate statistics concerning child migrants arriving in Australia from the United Kingdom. The British Government’s child migrant index at present has details of over 7,000 children sent to Australia from 1920 onwards. During 1988 the Department of Immigration and Multi Cultural Affairs suggested that approximately 10,000 British child migrants had arrived in Australia after the Second World War. Recent research suggests that perhaps a third of this total is a more accurate figure.

In terms of definitions, this submission refers to child migrants as children who were sent to Australia while they were below school leaving age. The youngest children were sent at three years of age, the eldest were fifteen years old but the majority were aged between seven and ten. It was never the intention that these children would return to their families.

Migrating Agencies and Motives
During the twentieth century, many child migrants were brought to Australia by specialist agencies such as the Fairbridge Society which was founded with the sole purpose of migrating young children to populate the Empire. The Fairbridge Society sent approximately 2,300 child migrants to Australia. Religious organisations, including the Catholic Church and the Church of England also played major roles. Barnardos sent approximately 2,340 children to New South Wales. Many of these agencies operated on the assumption that these British children could be given a fresh start many thousands of miles away from all that was familiar.

Contrasts were made between the overcrowded cities of Britain and the under populated rural areas in Australia. Thus, when the Australian Government wished to populate an empty continent, these agencies were keen to assist. However, in many cases the standards of childcare provision in Australia were no better and often worse than in Britain.

For example, in Britain in the post war period, much emphasis was placed on using foster parents and closing large Children’s Homes in favour of smaller, more family orientated homes. Yet in Australia, the legacy of large Farm Schools and the failure to explore family based care condemned the majority of child migrants to a childhood without warm, close relationships with caring adults. The emphasis on changing the child’s external environment did not take into account a child’s vital needs for emotional development and security. Even during the early post war period, this was increasingly recognised in professional circles but child migration policies seemed immune to research findings and at odds with enlightened child care policy.

Charitable and voluntary childcare agencies did not operate under the stricter framework of public accountability which was demanded of local authorities in the United Kingdom. This is one of the main reasons why few child migrants were sent to Australia by local authorities who required Ministerial approval for such decisions.

Child migration was inspired by a variety of motives, none of which gave first priority to the needs of the children involved. It was clear that countries accepting child migrants did not have purely altruistic and humane motives. For example, all excluded handicapped children. In addition, Australia would not accept black children as the White Australia policy continued to influence the selection criteria during the post war period.

'Orphans' as solutions and problems
Describing child migrants as ‘orphans’ or ‘war orphans’ was common practice in the newspaper stories about Britain’s young children and in public pronouncements by politicians. In addition, there was a belief by Catholic agencies that it was better to avoid the stigma of illegitimacy by telling the children that they were orphans. This policy reflected the social values of the time, but this solution created its own problems. Having led children down the road of deception, it would be difficult to admit the truth later. It also required others to collude with this deception.

Child migrants who were told that they were orphans were given a socially constructed identity which did not reflect the truth about their parents. This label played an important role in preventing children from asking awkward questions about their family background and served the immediate interests, not of the children, but of those responsible for them. Again, there was a profound failure of professional intelligence and imagination. Indeed, there was a corruption of standards and ethics by all those involved. These children would grow up and start asking awkward questions of churches, agencies and politicians.

For other child migrants, similar results were achieved by different means. The fresh start philosophy often assumed that a child’s parents were a wholly negative influence. They were seen as a regrettable feature of a child’s past life who should be kept in the past and have no influence on a child’s future. Consequently, many agencies did not send any details of a child’s family background with the child to Australia. These files remained in the United Kingdom.

Rhetoric and Reality
Little attention was given to the long term implications of separating children from their families, their friends, their social context and their country on a permanent basis.
Had these children remained in the United Kingdom, they would have had an opportunity of finding their families at a later time, or indeed, their families could have found them. Not so for child migrants who were told individually and collectively that their parents were dead, that they were ‘war orphans’; that they had nobody in the world and that their country did not want them. The loss and bewilderment was profound. A sense of rejection and isolation was to remain with the majority for the rest of their lives.

After being told fanciful tales of travel to the “Land of Milk and Honey” where children ride to school on horseback and pick up fruit on the side of the road, child migrants were sent to Australia without passports, social histories or even the most basic documentation about their identities. Brothers and sisters were frequently separated on the docks and sent to different institutions in different parts of the country; some were fingerprinted and then loaded onto the backs of trucks for long journeys to institutions in remote regions, only to be put to work as labourers the next day. Most felt an extreme, painful sense of rejection by their family and country of origin. Others felt rather like characters from one of Kafka’s novels; their sentence was obvious exile from their family and home land but the nature of their crime was a complete mystery.

Many of these issues relate to the deeply flawed assumptions which permeated child migration schemes. It was considered that a fresh start in a new country was best achieved by cutting all ties between a child migrant and his or her mother, father and extended family. Only in this context can certain strategies be understood, such as allowing children to Indeed, if these children had really been orphans it would have made it even more difficult to justify a policy of shipping them thousands of miles away to remain in desolate institutions or farm schools throughout their childhood. The most obvious solution to the needs of such children would have involved attempts to find foster or adoptive parents to try to replace in some way that which they had lost, namely their parents, identities and family life. However, as their parents were very much alive, and being deceived in a similar way to their children, adoption was of course rarely considered because it requires the consent of the parents.
Instead, both the children themselves and the wider public were confused and deceived by the inappropriate and untruthful use of the label ‘orphan’.

Roles and Resources
While the Australian Federal Government occupied centre stage, the State Governments were given the role of monitoring standards in the institutions caring for child migrants. Voluntary agencies, including specialist organisations like the Fairbridge Society and church based agencies were encouraged to implement the schemes outlined by the
Federal Government. However, another key feature of these policies which had an adverse impact on all involved was that these schemes were not adequately resourced in financial terms. Thus Barry Coldrey’s study underlines the negative results of six Brothers caring for two hundred and fifty boys at Clontarf in Western Australia in terms of close and tough discipline, a lack of attention to individual needs and a completely institutional style of care. In Coldrey’s words, “the individual was easily lost in the mass.” Clearly, there would be little opportunity for these two hundred and fifty boys to receive the ‘understanding love’ which had been identified as essential a decade earlier. In addition, there was an educational ‘lost legion’ who were scarcely literate and lacked the specialist remedial teachers who might have improved their basic skills.

The Cost Of Poor Quality
The Forde Inquiry details the poor quality of care offered to a group of forty eight child migrants placed at St Joseph’s Orphanage, Neerkol, from 1951 to 1956. Only two of these children arrived with the consent of their parents. Many were later employed in clerical, retail or domestic positions while eight found work as nurses or nursing aides in hospitals.

The report argues that institutions like St Joseph’s were “physically and
emotionally barren places for children in care to live” and were staffed by people who abused children. “This abuse was, in many cases, not simply a one off incident in an environment that was otherwise caring and supportive. It happened to many children almost daily and even when abuse was not actually taking place, there was always the threat or fear of it.” Indeed, the Inquiry found evidence of “the most brutal abuse and neglect.”This abuse went on unchecked because “complaints mechanisms did not exist, and there was minimal monitoring or inspection” by the State Department. By divesting itself of “much of the financial responsibility for the children admitted to denominational institutions, the government surrendered much of its capacity to act as an arbiter of standards.”

Inspection reports were bland so as not to antagonise a valuable and cheap service provider. Clearly, quality control was sacrificed for the sake of economy. The report suggests that “a price has been paid for this policy.” Given these appalling standards, it does not take much to imagine the unspeakable fear and confusion in the hearts and minds of young British child migrants under this brutal regime. There were also serious concerns raised by other inspections across Australia in the post war period.

Ten Pound Poms (also called Ten Pound Tourists) is a colloquial term used in Australia to describe British subjects who migrated to Australia after the Second World War under an assisted passage scheme established and operated by the Government of Australia.Details
Created in 1945 during the government of Ben Chifley as part of the "Populate or Perish" policy by the first Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell, the scheme was designed to substantially increase the population of Australia and to supply workers for the country's booming industries. In return for subsidising the cost of travelling to Australia—adult migrants were charged only ten pounds sterling for the fare (hence the name; in 1945 pounds, equivalent to £377 in 2015), and children were allowed to travel for free—the Government promised employment prospects, housing and a generally more optimistic lifestyle. However, on arrival, migrants were placed in basic hostels and the expected job opportunities were not always readily available. It was a follow-on to the unofficial Big Brother Movement and attracted over one million migrants from the British Isles between 1945 and 1972, representing the last substantial scheme for preferential migration from the British Isles to Australia. In 1957, more migrants were encouraged to travel following a campaign called "Bring out a Briton". Coming to an end in 1982, the scheme reached its peak in 1969; during this year over 80,000 migrants took advantage of the scheme. The cost to migrants of the assisted passage was increased to £75 in 1973 (equivalent to £791 in 2015).
Assisted migrants were generally obliged to remain in Australia for two years after arrival, or alternatively refund the cost of their assisted passage. If they chose to travel back to Britain, the cost of the journey was at least £120 (in 1945 pounds, equivalent to £4,518 in 2015), a large sum in those days and one that most could not afford. It was also possible for many British persons to migrate to Australia on a non-assisted basis before the early 1970s, although most travelled as Ten Pounders. This was part of the wider White Australia Policy. A quarter of British migrants chose to return to the UK but half of these—the so-called "Boomerang Poms"—returned to Australia.
There was a very interesting document concerning these people, the good, the bad and the ugly facts from recorded testimonials from those taking up the offer of migration to Australia, but unfortunately the page would not allow me to copy and past it but it confirmed that a lot had been deceived as to what they could expect when arriving there by the Australian government.

[Dusak]

Just to lesson the supposed drivel a tad I have collected just a small amount of factual evidence from Wikipedia from public domain records and documents concerning the child abuse of the last century in regards to child migrants.
Another interesting documentary was aired on AJ this morning concerning the ''white only'' policy Australia adopted. It was quite obvious that Australia was indeed a racist country, on par with the likes of South African and America in that time period. Even though they [the country] was crying out for people with higher education and qualifications, if they were black, of mixed race or Asian, they were always refused entrance no matter what their qualifications and degrees. Again, all these facts with filmed evidence is freely available on the likes of Wikipedia as is the deportation of hundreds of Asians. This was also highlighted on the AJ documentary, showing the turn of events that was to finally see the end of this racist policy by way of the work of a man named Charles Perkings and a young Asian girl of five named Nancy Parsad.

Child Migrants.
Series of Scandals
Throughout its long history, child migration to Australia and other countries has been punctuated by a series of scandals. The lack of educational provision, the overwork and inadequate pay, the suicides following episodes of ill treatment, and the appalling evidence of protracted physical and sexual abuse all have featured in official inquiries or newspaper headlines in both nineteenth century Canada and South Africa as well as post war New Zealand. Consequently, Australia’s experience seems to conform to a common pattern of deceit, betrayal, deception and the corruption of professional, moral and ethical values to the risks of exploitation and abuse. However, Australia chose to continue to recruit these very vulnerable children. In 1937, the Northcote Farm School was established in Victoria, followed a year later by a second Fairbridge Farm at Molong, New South Wales. Northcote received both capital support and revenue grants from the Federal Government as well as assisted passage fares for the children. A group of 114 boys, also financed by the British, Australian and West Australian Governments, arrived at the Christian Brothers’ orphanages near Perth in 1938

The Second World War
Child migration stopped during the war but 577 child evacuees from Britain were cared for by their relatives or by foster parents in Australia, without any financial assistance from either government. However, detailed regulations outlined the very specific obligations of those caring for this group of children. In New South Wales, foster parents were reminded that the wrench of leaving home and the long voyage would produce ‘a very considerable psychological effect on the children.’ Consequently ‘what the children need most of all is a home... and a home is more than shelter and comfort. What a child’s nature asks for even more than food and comfort is love that is ‘understanding’ love.’ This home was to be provided by individual families and not a residential institution.

These views demolish the myth that child migrants received a standard of care which was acceptable at the time but would be judged as inappropriate by today’s standards. There could be no quarrel with the quality of advice outlined nor the standards expected of carers.

Unfortunately, these standards were not applied to the care of child migrants, even those who arrived a decade later in the post war period. There was a clear understanding of the needs of displaced children in1940 which, if applied, would have significantly improved the quality of care received by most child migrants.

The Second World War reinforced widespread anxieties about Australia’s isolated geopolitical position and her small vulnerable population. The fall of Singapore and the bombing of Darwin confirmed that fears of external aggression and invasion were not the product of fevered imaginations but deadly realities which demanded effective remedies.

Consequently, internal factors such as the impact of the 1930’s Depression and the loss of troops in two World Wars combined with external threats to generate the post war slogan: ‘populate or perish’. Government sponsored large scale immigration played a key role in Australia’s postwar plans to defend the nation and rebuild the economy.

Immigrants from Europe, especially from the United Kingdom, were actively recruited. Child migrants were viewed as the best immigrant easy to assimilate and accommodate and with a long working life ahead of them.

War Reconstruction
Perhaps Australia’s plans for post war child migration were the result of panic or genuine fears about invasion. They were certainly over ambitious and totally impractical. Arthur Calwell, the Labor Immigration Minister, intended to bring over 50,000 war orphans to Australia in the first three years of peace. A senior army officer suggested, “If necessary the children could be taken from defeated countries and given English names.”

Confronted with the lack of available shipping to transport these children, it was proposed that an aircraft carrier should be leased. Fortunately, less than four thousand, rather than fifty thousand, children arrived as child migrants during the entire postwar period.

The Federal Government accepted financial responsibility for the recruitment, medical screening and transportation of all assisted migrants. This included child migrants, who received free passages to Australia, maintenance grants and subsidies towards approved capital expenditure, including buildings erected by approved voluntary agencies. The Federal contribution was dominant as it included both capital and maintenance grants while the State and British Governments also made smaller contributions.

The active and positive role of the Federal Government was underlined by Arthur Calwell in 1946 when he stated, “no country needs immigrants of the right type more than does Australia. And no country has taken more energetic steps to secure them.”

Consequently, Australia recruited far more British child migrants in the post war period than any other country.

Thus, the facts of post war migration clearly indicate that the pull from Australia was far more powerful than the push from the United Kingdom in terms of child migrants. Australia wanted more children more quickly than Britain could supply. This interpretation is confirmed by all three of the major studies published in Australia on child migration. To quote Professor Sherington “As the war approached its end, the Australian Government had thus moved to adopt child migration as an important plank of its plan for overall post war immigration. At the same time, the impetus within Britain for child migration had waned.'' These issues were clarified by the Child Migrants Trust in 1994 with the publication of “Empty Cradles” which outlines the leading part played by the Australian Government.

The Trust has no vested interests in holding any one government, charity or church more responsible for child migration than another. The Trust considers that Australia should not have used unaccompanied, vulnerable children to boost its population and economy in the post war period. Australia should not have asked and the United Kingdom should not have agreed to send child migrants. Neither government insisted on the strict standards of supervision which would have protected these children. Both governments should accept shared responsibility for coping with the terrible human costs of these misguided schemes.

Charities and churches also allowed their values and standards to become degraded by their involvement in these schemes. For example, neither protested about the racist nature of these policies or indeed set appropriate standards of care for small distressed children.

Definitions and Destinations
There have been more systematic attempts over the past few years to compile more accurate statistics concerning child migrants arriving in Australia from the United Kingdom. The British Government’s child migrant index at present has details of over 7,000 children sent to Australia from 1920 onwards. During 1988 the Department of Immigration and Multi Cultural Affairs suggested that approximately 10,000 British child migrants had arrived in Australia after the Second World War. Recent research suggests that perhaps a third of this total is a more accurate figure.

In terms of definitions, this submission refers to child migrants as children who were sent to Australia while they were below school leaving age. The youngest children were sent at three years of age, the eldest were fifteen years old but the majority were aged between seven and ten. It was never the intention that these children would return to their families.

Migrating Agencies and Motives
During the twentieth century, many child migrants were brought to Australia by specialist agencies such as the Fairbridge Society which was founded with the sole purpose of migrating young children to populate the Empire. The Fairbridge Society sent approximately 2,300 child migrants to Australia. Religious organisations, including the Catholic Church and the Church of England also played major roles. Barnardos sent approximately 2,340 children to New South Wales. Many of these agencies operated on the assumption that these British children could be given a fresh start many thousands of miles away from all that was familiar.

Contrasts were made between the overcrowded cities of Britain and the under populated rural areas in Australia. Thus, when the Australian Government wished to populate an empty continent, these agencies were keen to assist. However, in many cases the standards of childcare provision in Australia were no better and often worse than in Britain.

For example, in Britain in the post war period, much emphasis was placed on using foster parents and closing large Children’s Homes in favour of smaller, more family orientated homes. Yet in Australia, the legacy of large Farm Schools and the failure to explore family based care condemned the majority of child migrants to a childhood without warm, close relationships with caring adults. The emphasis on changing the child’s external environment did not take into account a child’s vital needs for emotional development and security. Even during the early post war period, this was increasingly recognised in professional circles but child migration policies seemed immune to research findings and at odds with enlightened child care policy.

Charitable and voluntary childcare agencies did not operate under the stricter framework of public accountability which was demanded of local authorities in the United Kingdom. This is one of the main reasons why few child migrants were sent to Australia by local authorities who required Ministerial approval for such decisions.

Child migration was inspired by a variety of motives, none of which gave first priority to the needs of the children involved. It was clear that countries accepting child migrants did not have purely altruistic and humane motives. For example, all excluded handicapped children. In addition, Australia would not accept black children as the White Australia policy continued to influence the selection criteria during the post war period.

'Orphans' as solutions and problems
Describing child migrants as ‘orphans’ or ‘war orphans’ was common practice in the newspaper stories about Britain’s young children and in public pronouncements by politicians. In addition, there was a belief by Catholic agencies that it was better to avoid the stigma of illegitimacy by telling the children that they were orphans. This policy reflected the social values of the time, but this solution created its own problems. Having led children down the road of deception, it would be difficult to admit the truth later. It also required others to collude with this deception.

Child migrants who were told that they were orphans were given a socially constructed identity which did not reflect the truth about their parents. This label played an important role in preventing children from asking awkward questions about their family background and served the immediate interests, not of the children, but of those responsible for them. Again, there was a profound failure of professional intelligence and imagination. Indeed, there was a corruption of standards and ethics by all those involved. These children would grow up and start asking awkward questions of churches, agencies and politicians.

For other child migrants, similar results were achieved by different means. The fresh start philosophy often assumed that a child’s parents were a wholly negative influence. They were seen as a regrettable feature of a child’s past life who should be kept in the past and have no influence on a child’s future. Consequently, many agencies did not send any details of a child’s family background with the child to Australia. These files remained in the United Kingdom.

Rhetoric and Reality
Little attention was given to the long term implications of separating children from their families, their friends, their social context and their country on a permanent basis.
Had these children remained in the United Kingdom, they would have had an opportunity of finding their families at a later time, or indeed, their families could have found them. Not so for child migrants who were told individually and collectively that their parents were dead, that they were ‘war orphans’; that they had nobody in the world and that their country did not want them. The loss and bewilderment was profound. A sense of rejection and isolation was to remain with the majority for the rest of their lives.

After being told fanciful tales of travel to the “Land of Milk and Honey” where children ride to school on horseback and pick up fruit on the side of the road, child migrants were sent to Australia without passports, social histories or even the most basic documentation about their identities. Brothers and sisters were frequently separated on the docks and sent to different institutions in different parts of the country; some were fingerprinted and then loaded onto the backs of trucks for long journeys to institutions in remote regions, only to be put to work as labourers the next day. Most felt an extreme, painful sense of rejection by their family and country of origin. Others felt rather like characters from one of Kafka’s novels; their sentence was obvious exile from their family and home land but the nature of their crime was a complete mystery.

Many of these issues relate to the deeply flawed assumptions which permeated child migration schemes. It was considered that a fresh start in a new country was best achieved by cutting all ties between a child migrant and his or her mother, father and extended family. Only in this context can certain strategies be understood, such as allowing children to Indeed, if these children had really been orphans it would have made it even more difficult to justify a policy of shipping them thousands of miles away to remain in desolate institutions or farm schools throughout their childhood. The most obvious solution to the needs of such children would have involved attempts to find foster or adoptive parents to try to replace in some way that which they had lost, namely their parents, identities and family life. However, as their parents were very much alive, and being deceived in a similar way to their children, adoption was of course rarely considered because it requires the consent of the parents.
Instead, both the children themselves and the wider public were confused and deceived by the inappropriate and untruthful use of the label ‘orphan’.

Roles and Resources
While the Australian Federal Government occupied centre stage, the State Governments were given the role of monitoring standards in the institutions caring for child migrants. Voluntary agencies, including specialist organisations like the Fairbridge Society and church based agencies were encouraged to implement the schemes outlined by the
Federal Government. However, another key feature of these policies which had an adverse impact on all involved was that these schemes were not adequately resourced in financial terms. Thus Barry Coldrey’s study underlines the negative results of six Brothers caring for two hundred and fifty boys at Clontarf in Western Australia in terms of close and tough discipline, a lack of attention to individual needs and a completely institutional style of care. In Coldrey’s words, “the individual was easily lost in the mass.” Clearly, there would be little opportunity for these two hundred and fifty boys to receive the ‘understanding love’ which had been identified as essential a decade earlier. In addition, there was an educational ‘lost legion’ who were scarcely literate and lacked the specialist remedial teachers who might have improved their basic skills.

The Cost Of Poor Quality
The Forde Inquiry details the poor quality of care offered to a group of forty eight child migrants placed at St Joseph’s Orphanage, Neerkol, from 1951 to 1956. Only two of these children arrived with the consent of their parents. Many were later employed in clerical, retail or domestic positions while eight found work as nurses or nursing aides in hospitals.

The report argues that institutions like St Joseph’s were “physically and
emotionally barren places for children in care to live” and were staffed by people who abused children. “This abuse was, in many cases, not simply a one off incident in an environment that was otherwise caring and supportive. It happened to many children almost daily and even when abuse was not actually taking place, there was always the threat or fear of it.” Indeed, the Inquiry found evidence of “the most brutal abuse and neglect.”This abuse went on unchecked because “complaints mechanisms did not exist, and there was minimal monitoring or inspection” by the State Department. By divesting itself of “much of the financial responsibility for the children admitted to denominational institutions, the government surrendered much of its capacity to act as an arbiter of standards.”

Inspection reports were bland so as not to antagonise a valuable and cheap service provider. Clearly, quality control was sacrificed for the sake of economy. The report suggests that “a price has been paid for this policy.” Given these appalling standards, it does not take much to imagine the unspeakable fear and confusion in the hearts and minds of young British child migrants under this brutal regime. There were also serious concerns raised by other inspections across Australia in the post war period.

Ten Pound Poms (also called Ten Pound Tourists) is a colloquial term used in Australia to describe British subjects who migrated to Australia after the Second World War under an assisted passage scheme established and operated by the Government of Australia.Details
Created in 1945 during the government of Ben Chifley as part of the "Populate or Perish" policy by the first Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell, the scheme was designed to substantially increase the population of Australia and to supply workers for the country's booming industries. In return for subsidising the cost of travelling to Australia—adult migrants were charged only ten pounds sterling for the fare (hence the name; in 1945 pounds, equivalent to £377 in 2015), and children were allowed to travel for free—the Government promised employment prospects, housing and a generally more optimistic lifestyle. However, on arrival, migrants were placed in basic hostels and the expected job opportunities were not always readily available. It was a follow-on to the unofficial Big Brother Movement and attracted over one million migrants from the British Isles between 1945 and 1972, representing the last substantial scheme for preferential migration from the British Isles to Australia. In 1957, more migrants were encouraged to travel following a campaign called "Bring out a Briton". Coming to an end in 1982, the scheme reached its peak in 1969; during this year over 80,000 migrants took advantage of the scheme. The cost to migrants of the assisted passage was increased to £75 in 1973 (equivalent to £791 in 2015).
Assisted migrants were generally obliged to remain in Australia for two years after arrival, or alternatively refund the cost of their assisted passage. If they chose to travel back to Britain, the cost of the journey was at least £120 (in 1945 pounds, equivalent to £4,518 in 2015), a large sum in those days and one that most could not afford. It was also possible for many British persons to migrate to Australia on a non-assisted basis before the early 1970s, although most travelled as Ten Pounders. This was part of the wider White Australia Policy. A quarter of British migrants chose to return to the UK but half of these—the so-called "Boomerang Poms"—returned to Australia.
There was a very interesting document concerning these people, the good, the bad and the ugly facts from recorded testimonials from those taking up the offer of migration to Australia, but unfortunately the page would not allow me to copy and past it but it confirmed that a lot had been deceived as to what they could expect when arriving there by the Australian government.

[Luxor Pharoahs]

There was also a program on TV called Sylvannia Waters, if anyone from the UK saw that they would never want to live in Oz..... Obnoxious, Pig Ignorant, MCP's, and uneducated thick Bar Stewards. Never seen a more dysfunctional family in my life. A poor example..... But like most things portrayed the peoples lives.