National security and immigration in Australia's twentieth century history

• Mark Finnane
• Australian Policy and History

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Image: publik16 / flickr

09 August 2010This article examines the administration of immigration and border controls as instruments of national security, commonly subject to political contestation of a high order.

It suggests that the Haneef case of 2007 is best understood as the product of an immigration power with a century long history of development.

It considers three cases of immigration control during the inter-war period in order to highlight the contested development of the Commonwealth's constitutional power over immigration.

First, the Irish Envoys case (1923) - when the Commonwealth's deportation power was justified by international obligations and made domestically palatable by the spreading indifference of Irish Australians to the cause for which they spoke.

Second, the Kisch case (1934) - when conventional national security concerns bearing on perceived threats to constitutional government were most in play, but unable to be deployed successfully in ways that would garner the support of all parts of the state apparatus.

Third, the case of the landing rights of Chinese passengers in transit through Australian ports (1929) - which required diplomatic manoeuvring to avoid international insults aggravating an already defensive White Australia's relations with China and the non-British world.

The article concludes by emphasising the open and unpredictable consequences of a politics and administration of the Commonwealth's immigration power when it is exercised as an instrument of national security.

Mark Finnane is Australian Professorial Fellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security, Griffith University.

Image: 'Dr Muhamed Haneef', publik16 / flickr