Australian Minister Denies There is Discrimination Against Jews in Australia

A statement denying that there is discrimination against Jews in Australia was issued here today by Arthur A. Calwell, Australian Minister of Immigration and Information, prior to sailing for Australia after a visit to the United States.

“Before leaving for Australia,” the Minister said, “I want to clear away misapprehensions due to statements by leading officials of the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society, that there is religious discrimination against Jews in Australia. There is so discrimination in Australian law against any people of any religion and, under the (##)dan Conference decisions of 1938, the Australian Government undertook to receive 15,000 victims of Nazi tyranny at the rate of 5,000 a year. Less than 7,000 such persons, practically all of Jewish faith, arrived in Australia before the outbreak of (##), leaving 8,000 still to be admitted.

“First-comers were mostly German and Austrian Jews. As the war proceeded, about 2,000 Jewish people sent to Australia from Great Britain for internment as enemy aliens were released for permanent residence in Australia, and most of them, like the first-comers, are now naturalized citizens. Two thousand more came from the Straits Settlement and the Far East. Since the war concluded, landing permits have been issued to some thousands of Jewish people in Europe who are close relatives of Australian citizens, and more than 2,000 of them have now arrived and have settled in Australia.

“The Australian Government decided some time ago that landing permits can no longer be issued on compassionate grounds and that all persons admitted to Australia in the future must be persons substantially of European origin or descent. There will be no discrimination in regard to race and religion. The agreement recently signed by (##) with the International Refugee Organization for the acceptance by Australia of 12,000 persons a year from the British and American zones in Europe specifically provides that there will be no such discrimination.

“Certain Jewish organizations which want to send people to Australia as religious groups have been told that they cannot occupy, as their proteges, more than 25 percent of the berths in any ship. Because of the limited amount of shipping available (which amounts to 6,000 berths this year and 15,000 next year) most of the space must be reserved for citizens of the United Kingdom who want to make their homes in Australia. The number of British people registered for passage to Australia is more than 400,000.

“It is against those two last-named provisions, and not on the question of religious discrimination, that certain misguided leaders of the Jewish Immigration Aid Society in Europe and America are misrepresenting the position. Responsible Jewish leaders, entirely unconnected with this HIAS organization in Australia, Great Britain, America and Europe, are in complete agreement with the Australian Government’s attitude.”