We face the gloomy future of being a small nation surrounded by many millions of other people looking enviously at our large continent" . .
Politicians harbouring xenophobic attitudes once again spurred the need for Australia to be populated with only white immigrants. British immigrants however were in short supply. Thus the focal area became the rest of Europe. This included Eastern and Southern Europeans, people whom previously weren't allowed mass migration to Australia. It was thought that these new "non-english" speaking immigrants would discard their own culture and adopt the Australian way of life. In the majority of cases however, this did not happen. As a case of this, many of these migrants had to endure continual intolerance and bigotry. In 1947 there was 171 000 displaced Europeans living in Australia, including Poles, Estonians and Latvians. By the time the government changed over from Labor to Liberal, immigration was in full flow. The Liberal party did not see this increased population as a means of protecting our nation though, they were happy for either the US or Britain to do that. Instead, they focused on increasing the labour force for the expansion of our manufacturing sector.
The "White Australia" policy soon became an increasing embarrassment as relations between the world and Asia developed. With the Governments emphasis on the expansion of our manufacturing sector, Australia didn't want to tarnish any possible trade relations. Hence modifications were made to the "White Australia Policy". Originally, these modifications were not intended to allow a large, unrestricted flow of predominant non-white Europeans into the country. In March 1966 this changed though, with a policy being passed allowing non-Europeans to migrate to Australia as a matter of policy, rather then in special circumstances. This was the beginning of the end for the "White Australia policy", which was ultimately abolished in 1972 and replaced with the policy of multiculturalism.