The Library History Project
The Library
The department's library is open to the public by appointment.
Telephone: 02 6224 6219
Email: library@immi.gov.au
Street Address:
DIAC National Office
6 Chan Street
Belconnen ACT 2601
Digitising our history
Staff in the department's library are working to digitise and make some historical documents held in the collection electronically available to the public. The first of these documents is a collection of statements by the first minister for immigration, the Hon. Arthur A. Calwell. These statements were bound into three volumes in the 1960s and cover the years 1946 to 1949. The following documents are examples of the historical documents in these volumes.
Volume 1, 1946 – 1947
- British migration to Australia – the ‘ten pound immigrants’ (360KB PDF file)
- Calwell examines Australia's attitude to the admission of refugees (1.3MB PDF file)
- Immigration means more – not less – work (542KB PDF file)
- US veteran migrants bound for Australia (845KB PDF file)
Volume 2, 1948
- Minimum target of 70 000 migrants achieved during 1948 (371KB PDF file)
- Australian war brides return with American ex-servicemen husbands in 1948 (104KB PDF file)
- Educating European migrants in the Australian way of life (240KB PDF file)
- Migration as a source of farm labour (509KB PDF file)
- Majority of immigrants under 30 years of age in 1948 (250KB PDF file)
Volume 3, 1949
- ABC broadcast – ‘Greatest year ever in Australian immigration’ (743KB PDF file)
- Calwell denies that former German SS officers were among displaced person migrants (207KB PDF file)
- Nationality and Citizenship Act comes into force on Australia Day (337KB PDF file)
- Immigration policy statement to the House of Representatives – September 1949 (1.8MB PDF file)