White Australia policy in the context of Indian Australians

White supremacy is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White supremacy has roots in the now-discredited doctrine of scientific racism and was a key justification for European colonialism.

As a political ideology, it imposes and maintains cultural, social, political, historical or institutional domination by white people and non-white supporters. In the past, this ideology had been put into effect through socioeconomic and legal structures such as the Atlantic slave trade, European colonial labor and social practices, the Scramble for Africa, Jim Crow laws in the United States, the activities of the Native Land Court in New Zealand, the White Australia policies from the 1890s to the mid-1970s, and apartheid in South Africa. This ideology is also today present among neo-Confederates.

Post-war immigration to Australia deals with migration to Australia in the decades immediately following World War II, and in particular refers to the predominantly European wave of immigration which occurred between 1945 and the end of the White Australia policy in 1973. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, Ben Chifley, Prime Minister of Australia (1945–1949), established the federal Department of Immigration to administer a large-scale immigration program. Chifley commissioned a report on the subject which found that Australia was in urgent need of a larger population for the purposes of defence and development and it recommended a 1% annual increase in population through increased immigration.

The first Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell, promoted mass immigration with the slogan "populate or perish". It was Billy Hughes, as Minister for Health and Repatriation, who had coined the "populate or perish" slogan in the 1930s. Calwell coined the term "New Australians" in an effort to supplant such terms as Balt, pommy and wog.

The Whitlam government was the federal executive government of Australia led by Prime Minister Gough Whitlam of the Australian Labor Party. The government commenced when Labor defeated the McMahon government at the 1972 federal election, ending a record 23 years of continuous Coalition government. It was terminated by Governor-General Sir John Kerr following the 1975 constitutional crisis and was succeeded by the Fraser government—the sole occasion in Australian history when an elected federal government was dismissed by the governor-general.

The Whitlam government was highly controversial during its short tenure but achieved some major reforms. Formal relations with China were established, conscription laws were repealed, all remaining Australian forces were withdrawn from the Vietnam War, universal healthcare was introduced and some remaining discriminatory provisions of the White Australia policy were abolished. Tertiary education fees were abolished. However, these and other ambitious reforms corresponded to a crisis: "By mid-1975, inflation hit 17.6 per cent and wage rises hit 32.9 per cent. The economy boomed in 1973 and the first half of '74, but then suffered a severe recession." The Whitlam government was re-elected for a second term at the 1974 double-dissolution election but, following the dismissal, was heavily defeated by the new Fraser government in the 1975 election.