"White Australia"

The Garricks Are "Ready to Go"

Mr. Stewart Garrick And His

wife and two daughters are packed ready to go to Europe from Perth, WA, where they have been living for some time. His wife, who is a Tongan, and their two children, have been given until September to get out of Australia by Australia’s Minister for Immigration, Mr. Calwell.

Mr. Calwell said in Canberra recently that the fact that Mrs. Garrick “was the cousin of a queen somewhere in the Pacific” (Queen Salote of Tonga) was no reason why he should permit her to stay.

Maoris (who are also Polynesians, of course) are permitted to reside in Aus tralia, due to the direct intervention of the Prime Minister of New Zealand (whose party is kept in power by the four Maori representatives in the New Zealand Parliament).

Mr. Garrick (who is a son of Dr. R.

Garrick, well known in Fiji, where he practised prior to his retirement) said that they now felt that they would be better out of Australia. He had heard nothing from the authorities in Perth or Canberra protests by representative people had been useless. “But the Gov ernment need not worry—we will be gone long before the time limit.”

Mr. calwell’s ban has caused a great deal of interest in Australia. So much so, that recently a Gallup Poll was con ducted on the subject. The result of the i-oii was overwhelmingly against the auto cratic decisions of Mr. Calwell who, in the matter of immigration, has set him self up as some sort of inviolate deity against whose decisions there is no ap peal.

According to their public statements, members of the present Australian Gov ernment set no store by the results of the Gallup Polls. These, however, have been uncanny in their accurate estimate of public opinion on national and political affairs. In the recent Commonwealth referendum (on whether or not the Com monwealth should have permanent powers to control rents and prices) the Gallup Poll, held about two weeks before Australia actually voted, forecast the re sult with extraordinary accuracy.

Comedies in Indonesia

AUSTRALIA’S antics in the inter national field must amuse and amaze the world at large.

Recently, the waterside workers lifted their ban on Dutch shipping, which they imposed two years ago “to assist our In donesian brothers in their struggle against the Imperialistic Dutch.” During the time that this ban was in operation, Mr. Calwell, as Minister for Immigration, was busily deporting about a score of Malays who had married Australian women during the war years, when they were temporarily domiciled in Australia.

He has also “purged” Australia of a couple of Chinamen (also married to Australians), a negro boxer (married to an Australian), and has gone to work on the Garrick family and the Chinese family of another Englishman.

The deportation of all these people has been accompanied by outbursts in the Australian press, and photographs of the deportees being literally dragged out of the arms of sorrowing wives and children at the wharf-side. Mr. Calwell, and the Australian Government generally, ap parently set little store by this, however, dismissing it as a capitalistic newspaper plot. They were sustained by the belief that they were keeping Australia white.

But, last month, Dr. Evatt (Minister for External Affairs) sent a “goodwill mis sion” to Malaya, led by the unfortunate Mr. McMahon Ball, Malaya, official and unofficial, literally fell upon Mr. Me-

Mahon Ball and his mission and tore it to pieces, in the course of which proce dure Mr, Ball was misguided enough to

say that Australia’s immigration policy did not necessarily express the opinion of the majority and was merely the work

of the Minister in charge; moreover, the White Australia policy would probably be modified in the next generation or so.

This, when reported in Australia, raised such a storm of abuse in Trade Union and other circles that Dr. Evatt was moved to virtually disown his emissary of goodwill. Little more was heard of the “goodwill mission,” It quietly returned to Australia in early July.