Arthur Calwell, Australia’s first Minister for Immigration, had been thinking and reading about population growth as a means of ensuring Australia’s security even before he became a Federal Member of Parliament in 1940. No, he did not coin the ‘populate or perish’ phrase – that honour goes to Billy Hughes – but he certainly popularised it. This summary of the life of the man who brought our family members to Australia in 1947 as part of the commencement of his migration program, by Fiona Basile, was published in the Melbourne Catholic on 21 September 2022. It is reproduced here by kind permission. Additional footnotes have been provided by Mary Elizabeth Calwell, Arthur Calwell's one surviving child.
 |
| Arthur Augustus Calwell Source: Museum of Australian Democracy |
Mary Elizabeth Calwell was just a schoolgirl when her father, Arthur Calwell, was sworn in as Australia’s first federal minister for immigration in 1945. Labor’s Ben Chifley had become prime minister, and World War II was coming to an end. Calwell had a visionary plan for a large-scale immigration scheme—a plan that would later see him labelled ‘the father of multiculturalism in Australia’.
In his inaugural parliamentary speech on 2 August 1945, less than three weeks after his appointment, and before the official end of World War II, Calwell presented his vision for Australia:If Australians have learned one lesson from the Pacific War, it is surely that we cannot continue to hold our island continent for ourselves and our descendants unless we greatly increase our numbers. We are about 7 million people, and we hold 3 million square miles of this earth's surface … much development and settlement have yet to be undertaken. Our need to undertake it is urgent and imperative if we are to survive … The door to Australia will always be open within the limits of our existing legislation ... We make two things clear ... The one is that
Australia wants, and will welcome, new healthy
citizens who are determined to become good
Australians by adoption. The second is that we
will not mislead any intending immigrant by
encouraging him to come to this country under
any assisted to unassisted scheme until there is a
reasonable assurance of his economic future ...
Though Calwell died in 1973, having served in federal politics from 1940 to 1972, the impact of his policies and work in initiating and implementing post-WWII immigration to Australia continues to be felt today, including within our Archdiocese’s rich tapestry of multicultural faith communities.
Reflecting on her father’s legacy, Calwell’s daughter Mary Elizabeth notes that both historian Geoffrey Blainey and former Prime Minister Bob Hawke believed that Labor’s greatest achievement in the 20th century was probably Calwell’s ambitious immigration scheme.
Calwell was born in 1896 in West Melbourne. Many immigrant families lived nearby, so he enjoyed friendships with people from Jewish, Lebanese, Italian, Greek and Chinese backgrounds. He spoke fluent Irish and some Mandarin and French.
Calwell was raised in the Catholic faith of his mother and Irish grandparents, and was the eldest of seven children. He attended St Mary’s Boys’ School in West Melbourne and won a scholarship to attend St Joseph’s College in North Melbourne, both run by the Christian Brothers. He is reported as saying, ‘I owe everything I have in life, under Almighty God and next to my parents, to the Christian Brothers.’
Arthur Calwell’s mother died in early 1913. Although his father was a policeman and later Police Superintendent, a university education was not possible, so Calwell began work as a clerk for the Victorian State Government, first in the Department of Agriculture and then in the Department of Treasury. He was secretary of his ALP Branch at just 18 years of age, and was elected to many ALP and union positions, including Victorian ALP president from 1930 to 1931—the youngest person at that time to have held that position—and was the first president of the Victorian branch of the Amalgamated Australian Public Service Association, Clerical Division, from 1925 to 1931.
In 1921, Arthur Calwell married Margaret Murphy, who died just five months later. Ten years on, in 1932, he married Elizabeth Marren, an Irishwoman who was social editor of the Catholic weekly newspaper, the Tribune, and had also been a journalist at the Advocate. They met through Irish organisations. They had two children, Mary Elizabeth and Arthur Andrew, who died of leukaemia when he was 11 years old.
Mary Elizabeth, who went to boarding school at the age of 10, says she was fortunate to have grown up in a home that valued intellectual activities. Both her parents wrote extensively, and in 1933, they established the Irish Review, which continued under other auspices until 1954. Mary Elizabeth says both her parents had a ‘big influence’ on her life.
‘My father wrote for the Age Literary Supplement on American history for the 4th of July, and he quoted spontaneously from the Bible, history or literature in parliament. He was elected to positions in social, cultural and sporting organisations.’
However, it was Calwell’s role as [Australia's first] Immigration Minister that cemented his place in history. To win support, he emphasised the importance of immigration for national development and defence. ‘Australia’s population was 7.4 million with 250,000 available jobs,’ Mary Elizabeth says, ‘and he used the slogan “populate or perish”.’ According to historian Geoffrey Blainey, Calwell’s immigration scheme brought more people to Australia than had come in all the previous years since settlement.
In 1947, Arthur and Elizabeth Calwell, along with his secretary Bob Armstrong, visited 23 countries in just under 13 weeks, travelling by flying boat, plane and ship. In July, Calwell signed an agreement with the United Nations Refugee Organisation to accept displaced persons from European countries ravaged by war. Despite shipping shortages, 100,000 British and 50,000 assisted migrants had arrived in Australia by August 1949, along with many thousands of sponsored migrants.
 |
| The Calwell party in Berlin, 18 July 1947 From left: Brigadier T. White, Head of Australian Military Mission to Germany, Harry Beilby (Department of Immigration), Malcolm Booker (Second Secretary (Political) Australian Military Mission [Department of Foreign Affairs]), possibly Ian Hamilton (Department of Information), Elizabeth and Arthur Calwell, Bob Armstrong (Arthur Calwell's Secretary), the Military Mission's Australian driver with car Source: Calwell collection |
'He allowed Holocaust survivors to come to Australia when other countries were uninterested,’ says Mary Elizabeth. ‘Descendants and survivors are proportionately greater here than in any country outside Israel.’ In 1946, 100 trees were planted in Israel by the Melbourne Jewish Community through the Jewish National Fund (JNF). In 1995, trees were also planted in Melbourne, and in 1998, the Australian Jewish Community established and dedicated the JNF Arthur A Calwell Forest of Life at Kessalon near Jerusalem, Israel.
Mary Elizabeth is particularly proud of her father’s implementation of the Nationality Act 1946, which enabled Australian women to retain their nationality after marriage to a foreigner [an international rarity then], and the Nationality and Citizenship Act 1948, proclaimed on Australia Day 1949, with the first citizenship ceremony taking place in Canberra on 3 February 1949. He also introduced the term ‘New Australian’ to discourage hostility to migrants, and he approved the introduction of Good Neighbour Councils. By 1952, the Australian population had increased to 8.7 million through births and immigration.
When not engaged in politics, Calwell was devoted to the North Melbourne Football Club, becoming the club’s first life member. According to Mary Elizabeth, he was also devoted to the Church, receiving a papal knighthood from Pope Paul VI and being made a Knight Commander of St Gregory the Great with Silver Star in 1963.
[I thank Mary Elizabeth Calwell for her support of my research for more than 20 years now, and Fiona Basile with the Melbourne Catholic for permission to reproduce Fiona's article.]
Footnotes
Arthur Calwell released an autobiography in 1972, titled Be Just and Fear Not, and Labor’s Role in Modern Society in 1963.
Mary Elizabeth published a biography of her father in 2012, titled I Am Bound to Be True.
It was the July 1947 agreement with the Preparatory Commission of the International Refugee Organisation signed by Calwell in Geneva which led, in September and October 1947, to staff from the Australian High Commission in London joining the deputy head of the Australian Military Mission to Berlin as the interviewing panel for the first group of displaced people. That first group were the passengers on the General Stuart Heintzelman arriving in Fremantle on 28 November 1947 – our First Transporters.
Arthur Calwell not only started government-sponsored migration to Australia, which continues today, especially for those determined to be refugees under the terms of the 1951 International Convention on the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol. He not only was responsible for establishing the legal concept of Australian citizenship. He established Australia as a place of refuge for Holocaust survivors in 1945 as well as those displaced by Hitler’s war and Stalin’s expansion of the Soviet Union to its west despite very little shipping after WWII.
Professor Louise Holborn, in her official history of The International Refugee Organization, stated that Australia was the country which most generously responded to the resettlement needs of family units, promoted the resettlement of unmarried mothers and was the only country to perform its own orientation work.
As Minister for Information (1943-1949), Arthur Calwell was in charge of the wartime Censor, employed war correspondents, and controlled Radio Australia and its translators. He ensured that the Australian flag flew on major occasions and that Advance Australia Fair (not God Save the Queen) was played on official occasions, at picture theatres and before the ABC News broadcasts. His department had a film unit which produced many documentaries and employed many important journalists, who promoted our literature and culture in Australia and to millions of people overseas.
Arthur Calwell opposed conscription for military service outside Australia from 1917, vehemently opposed our involvement in Vietnam, defended the separation of Church and State, and worked for social justice through Labor’s commitment to democratic socialism and democracy as the best political system available in the world.
