Welfare Recipient Patterns Among Migrants
Background - Services for non-english-speaking-migrants
The post-war immigration program continued to cater for the British without discrimination as they, like the Australia-born, were British subjects with full civil rights. But the introduction of 170,000 Displaced Persons (DPs) from Europe between 1947 and 1952 radically changed the orientation of migrant welfare, making the services provided by the Department of Immigration more important.
The DPs were transported to Australia free of charge and housed in former military camps usually at a distance from the cities. They were bound to employment as directed by the Commonwealth, which was not true for the British who were only obliged to remain in Australia for two years or forfeit the cost of their assisted passage.
Services such as English teaching and employment assistance were centred on the hostels. As migrants left these in the 1950s to enter the major cities, the responsibility moved to the Good Neighbour Councils and to such public and private provision as existed.
In most States aliens were ineligible for public housing and consequently many built their own homes on the outskirts of the cities. The Department of Immigration lobbied State housing commissions with eventual success by the late 1960s. Few of the DPs went into public housing. Public housing was much more important for the British, at least until the late 1970s.
A high rate of return to prospering countries like Britain, Germany and The Netherlands, the arrival of many unassisted migrants from southern Europe, the evidence of some social and mental health problems, unhappiness with the 'mainstream' charities organised through the Good Neighbour Councils and the growth of self-help and self-government migrant organisations all combined to create a crisis in settlement policy during the 1970s.
This was addressed by the Whitlam government (1972-75) through the Australian Assistance Plan, and by the incorporation of the Department of Immigration into an expanded Department of Labour and Immigration in 1974, and the transfer of its welfare and educational functions to the mainstream departments responsible. Both these approaches were reversed by the Fraser government which set up an inquiry into services under Frank Galbally reporting in 1978.
This endorsed the principles of multiculturalism in terms of cultural and language maintenance. In the welfare area it supported an 'ethnic specific' approach which rested on the ability of ethnic and immigrant groups to provide welfare assistance with government support and finance.
As a corollary, public support was withdrawn from the Good Neighbour Councils. Grant-in-aid workers were funded and migrant resource centres created — the former numbering eventually about 250 and the latter about thirty. These were administered and funded by the then Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, which also maintained and improved migrant hostels and continued to control the Adult Migrant Education (later English) teaching programs. They were managed by committees drawn from the NESB organisations and had little importance for British, New Zealand or other English-speaking migrants.
At the national and State levels Ethnic Communities' Councils were created from 1974 and received public funds for their operations. They were not welfare deliverers but advocacy bodies with a central interest in migrant settlement.
The Galbally program remains in place in its essentials and has operated under Coalition and Labor Governments. It has not been without its critics — both those who think it too generous and 'divisive' and those who think it a cheap alternative to public provision.
Over the long term it is possible to observe a steady expansion of the Galbally provisions until about 1986 and a movement away from them since. This corresponds to a growing hostile debate on multiculturalism, Asian migration and migrant welfare which was marked from about 1984 and erupted from time to time into the political arena, most markedly with the rise of One Nation in 1996.
There were various lines of attack: that 'billions' were being spent on 'divisive' ethnic activity; that services should be 'mainstreamed' (as services to English-speaking migrants already were); that welfare should only be available for citizens (as had previously been the case for British subjects); that the Department of Immigration was an inappropriate agency for welfare and education; that costs were escalating due to high unemployment among recent arrivals; that immigration and settlement policy was being driven by the 'ethnic lobby'; and that there should be no need for special services for immigrants other than refugees as migrants had been selected for their economic viability.