Abstract
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Multiculturalism, introduced in Australia after the Whitlam Labor Government came to power in 1972, represented a significant shift in government policy. The White Australia policy, introduced on federation in 1901, had effectively barred nonwhite immigration for the first seventy years of the young nation's history, and twenty-three years of unbroken conservative rule ensured that the nation retained its cultural identity as British, despite the large numbers of non-British and non-English speaking migrants who arrived after the Second World War.