The complex but controlled society of today, created after World War II, followed in a historic tradition of bureaucratic nation-building (S. Macintyre 2015). This began with the convict settlement of New South Wales from 1788 to the 1840s and then built on a system of state-assisted British and Irish immigration, which lasted from the 1830s until the 1970s. Other Europeans were not excluded before 1901, but were not encouraged, except for Protestant northern Europeans from Germany and Scandinavia (Koivukangas and Westin 1999; Tampke and Doxford 1990). From 1901 until the early 1970s no one was allowed to settle permanently who was not of white European origin, with some very limited exceptions, including some already there (Tavan 2005). Although other states around the Pacific had similar or related policies, none pursued them as rigorously as the new colonies of Australia (Lake and Reynolds 2008).

Such imported labour as had been, or continued to be, introduced included Muslim camel drivers from the north-west of the British Indian empire (the ‘Afghans’) (Bouma 1994; Cigler 1986). Pacific Islanders were recruited for the sugar cane plantations of Queensland and northern New South Wales, but were returned to their islands in 1906 (Corris 1973; Wawn 1893). By 1945 only 1 per cent of the population were not of white, European origin, together with less than 2 per cent from the Indigenous Aboriginal people who had lived in Australia for countless thousands of years. Both of these populations were declining in numbers by federation in 1901. Public policy was designed to maintain this decline (Markus 1979; Palfreeman 1967; Price 1974).

There is a contrast between Australia's early development of parliamentary democracy (Hirst 1988), its later ratifying of international conventions protecting human rights and the right to seek asylum, and its reluctance to extend such rights to minorities – ranging from the early convicts to the current asylum seekers. Unlike similar democracies, Australia does not have a bill of rights, either in its constitution or its legislation. In current debates and public analyses Australian culture is often credited with a basis in British liberal tradition and common law and/ or the Judeo-Christian ethic and eighteenth-century Enlightenment (Gascoigne 2002; Broadie 2003; Herman 2003). These analyses are essentially social myths that treat the development of the past 250 years in favourable and even flattering terms.