Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that the National Archives' website and collection contain the names, images and voices of people who have died.
Some records include terms and views that are not appropriate today. They reflect the period in which they were created and are not the views of the National Archives.
Newspaper article about Australian Brahmins and the White Australia Policy
The Secretary of the Australian Labour Party, a Mr. Patrick O’Kelly, treated the delegates to the Commonwealth Conference of Labour Parties with views which should properly be consigned to the gutter.
He said that "we would never allow coloured people into Australia". If he had said that Australia would choose its immigrants carefully irrespective of colour, race, creed that would have been understandable.
However his statement means that the racial purity of the Australian Brahmins will be protected against contamination by peoples who constitute the vast majority of the human race.
Let us state bluntly that Australia is playing with fire when its prominent men make such statements as these. They are no more than deliberate insults to the coloured people, who are their neighbours. It is perhaps worthwhile reminding our Australian neighbour that she is part of a political unit in which the vast majority of its subjects are coloured people. In the recent war, in which the safety of Australia was also involved, the blood of coloured men was shed too. We do not remember Mr. O'Kelly protesting then against the use of coloured soldiers in the war against a race-conscious Japan.
After all Australians must remember that the real inhabitants of their continent are the black aborigines who have been gradually decimated until they now number no more than 6,000. According to Mr. O Kelly "they are a dying race, and are kept on reservations."
We hope that this was not stated as a matter of achievement but in shame and regret.
