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Category: Interviews »

Subject: Cultural Studies »

John Lack on contradictions of Arthur Calwell's involvement in immigration

John Lack and Mara Moustafine.

Historian John Lack unpacks the contradictions of Arthur Calwell's involvement in immigration

Created:

unknown

Date Added:

13 February 2009

Source:

source not available

Format:

mov (Quicktime);

File size:

3.4MB

Length:

01min17sec

Transcript

A:

00:07

Arthur Calwell is the – if not the architect, then the exponent of Labor’s post-war immigration plan which is very much inspired – at least in Arthur – by the American melting pot experience that he has – whose effects he’s witnessed in Australia with the American ex-servicemen. So he is on the one hand, he is a generous and compassionate and wide-thinking man. And his record on Jewish refugee settlement is – despite what some critics say – is really magnificent.

00:46

He had to achieve that against vicious anti-Semitism in Australia. He had to achieve it by stealth in many ways. And he did in fact manage to get, you know, 10 or 20,000 survivors of Nazi brutality – he managed to get them to Australia and so this is a very complex man.

01:17

End transcript