An email message from the Refugee Council of Australia brought Ann's attention to the impending arrival of the 1,000,000th humanitarian entrant to Australia. Ann did some of her own research on the Web, noting that the arrivals so far numbered only 950,000 and that the current intake is capped at 20,000 each year. Still, several Websites were getting excited about the one million figure, so Ann thought that summarising them would be a good project to set for an Artificial Intelligence or AI program. Minor errors in ChatGPT's answer have been corrected by Ann. What do you think of the result below?
Since 1947, Australia has resettled 950,000 refugees and others in humanitarian need through a evolving migration program that reflects both its international obligations and domestic priorities. This achievement is one of the most significant in the history of global refugee resettlement, placing Australia among the world’s top resettlement countries per capita.
Australia’s formal humanitarian resettlement began in the aftermath of World War II. In 1947, it accepted its first group of Displaced Persons (DPs) under an agreement with the International Refugee Organization (IRO). These were the 839 Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian Heintzelman passengers upon whom this blog focuses.
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| This photograph really has become an icon: it shows men from the First Transport, the Heintzelman ready to travel by train to Bonegilla after disembarking in Port Melbourne from the Kanimbla on 9 December 1947 Source: National Archives of Australia |
Many of these early arrivals were from elsewhere in Eastern Europe— Ukrainians, Yugoslavs, Czechs, Slovaks, Rumanians, Hungarians, Belorussians, Bulgarians and Poles—who had been displaced by war and Soviet occupation. Around 180,000 DPs arrived between 1947 and 1952, often transported by ship and housed in temporary migrant hostels around the country. This intake was driven both by humanitarian concern and a government policy of “populate or perish,” reflecting Australia’s desire to boost its population and workforce.
In subsequent decades, the program expanded and diversified. The 1970s saw a large intake of Vietnamese refugees following the Vietnam War and the fall of Saigon in April 1974. The “boat people” crisis starting on 26 April 1976 marked Australia’s first major experience with spontaneous maritime asylum seekers, and the government responded with a structured resettlement and community sponsorship approach. This era also included Cambodian and Laotian refugees, who together made up the Indochinese humanitarian intake.
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| Vietnamese boats in Darwin Harbour Source: National Museum of Australia |
In the 1980s and 1990s, humanitarian arrivals included people fleeing civil conflict in Lebanon, the Horn of Africa, and the Balkans. The post-Cold War period saw new waves of displacement, and Australia responded by adjusting its program to accommodate refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, and later Syria. Throughout this time, Australia maintained a commitment to formal resettlement through the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) as well as a Special Humanitarian Program (SHP) that allowed individual Australians and eligible community organisations to propose people in humanitarian need for resettlement.
Today, the humanitarian program is capped annually, with places allocated between the Refugee and SHP categories. While numbers have fluctuated, the average annual intake has been around 13,750 in recent years, though it has occasionally increased in response to global crises. Notably, in 2015, Australia offered an additional 12,000 places for Syrian and Iraqi refugees.
Across the decades, Australia has also built a strong, community-based settlement support system. Refugees are offered language training, employment services, trauma support, and assistance integrating into Australian society. Many have gone on to make significant contributions to Australian life in areas ranging from business and education to politics and the arts.
Despite ongoing public and political debate—particularly over asylum seekers arriving by boat—the structured humanitarian resettlement program remains widely supported and continues to play a key role in Australia’s identity as a multicultural nation. The milestone of nearly one million people resettled since 1947 is a testament to Australia’s enduring commitment to providing refuge and opportunity to those fleeing persecution and conflict.
FOOTNOTES
- As noted in the first entry for this blog, the official figure does not include those who have been able to pay their own way to resettlement in Australia.
- The current annual refugee and humanitarian intake is set at 20,000 people, which means that it will be at least two more years before the 1 million mark is reached.
- Ann gets a glow of satisfaction every time she sees the Special Humanitarian Program mentioned, as she wrote the initial instructions for this and also was charged with the initial selections, in order to test how the instructions and the ideas behind it were working. That was in 1981.
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