Tony Abbott recalls a whiter Australia than I do. Menzies rejected his version, as do many Liberals

August 2, 2026 — 1:30pm

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When I was growing up there in the 1960s, Petersham was not the neighbourhood of well-to-do Greens and Bollinger socialists it has since become. It was then an unfashionable suburb, relatively poor, much favoured by migrants who had fled war-ravaged Europe to seek a new life in Australia. Many of the families on my street were from Greece and Italy. Our next-door neighbours were Chinese.

At the local convent school, St Thomas’s Lewisham (where one of my classmates was Greg Sheridan, who would become the prominent journalist), the kids came from the same diverse mix of migrant families. The nuns taught us that all souls are equal in the sight of God.

The word “multiculturalism” hadn’t been invented then, but for me, multicultural Australia is the only Australia I have ever known. Anthony Albanese grew up in much the same milieu in neighbouring Marrickville. Tony Abbott, raised in the then monocultural suburbs north of the harbour, no doubt had a different childhood experience.

The “White Australia policy”, which had been a bipartisan consensus since Federation, was formally rescinded at that time, when the Holt government passed the Migration Act of 1966. This was the culmination of efforts by several coalition ministers from the late 1950s onward. The immigration minister, Sir Hubert Opperman, a leading critic of the policy, played an important role in unwinding it.

Sir........

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