Australia has been recruiting and accommodating new settlers for 230 years (Borrie 1994). Policy was more logical and coordinated after Federation in 1901, when immigration became the full responsibility of the Commonwealth government. Before that preference was given to British settlement through free entry and subsidized passages, varying from colony to colony, but advised and organized from London. After that, policy became increasingly uniform and bureaucratized in the hands of colonial and state governments until 1920 and then by the Commonwealth and the Immigration Department, founded in 1945. At all stages, from convicts to the present, there was state involvement to a more active degree than in many other countries. The great exception was the gold rush of the mid-nineteenth century. But even there the state intervened in the form of armed troops at Eureka. After the Commonwealth took over in 1901 the White Australia policy dominated selection for 70 years. After that selection was still based on preferences determined by the Commonwealth, with special favour for British and New Zealand applicants with skills, as it was for the previous century.

Finally, in 2015 a bureaucratic epoch ended. The amalgamation of Immigration and Customs into Border Protection meant that for the first time in 70 years (excepting the brief Whitlam break) there was no Commonwealth department expressly committed to all aspects of immigration, multiculturalism, citizenship and settlement. Controlling and discouraging asylum seekers had become the central priority (Pickering 2005). A backlog of unvisaed asylum seekers were interned in Manus and Nauru with no prospect of settling in Australia, according to ministers from both major parties. The Migration Act, amended late in 2014, refined the criteria for granting asylum and left the definition of a refugee in the hands of departmental officials and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). The UN Convention was reduced to a nullity as far as Australia was concerned. Boats were turned back before they reached the extended Australian sea borders (Corlett 2005). The amalgamation of Immigration and Border Protection and an armed and militarized Australian Border Force was not welcomed by many public servants. Some moved away from the new ministry, whose functions were control rather than settlement (Mackenzie-Murray 2015). One immediate result was a strike wave by public servants, causing serious delays at airports and mainly aimed at pay and conditions.