The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Anti-immigration rallies in Australia today may feel like a sign of the times – but history reminds us they are anything but new.
The slogans may have changed, the accents and skin tones of migrants may be different, but the core debate remains strikingly familiar.
Back in the 1950s, the campaign Today’s migrants… tomorrow’s Australians, produced by the Commonwealth Advertising Division, captures the optimism of the era.
Issued by the Department of Immigration, established in 1945 at the close of World War II, the campaign was part of a larger push to grow Australia’s population for defence and economic strength.
Plastered across the country, these posters were intended to assure Australians that migration was not a threat.
In 1947, 97% of people in Australia were either born here or were from Britian. Many Australians feared that new migrants would take their jobs and jeopardise the British-based Australian way of life.
Employment campaigns actually stressed that migrants would fill roles Australians shunned – the so-called “dirty jobs.”
Sounds familiar?
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One of the most striking posters shows a smiling young man holding a cricket bat alongside Dutch, German and Italian figures.
The subtext was clear: don’t worry, they’ll play our game, learn our language, and become “just like us.”
And yet the reality was harsher. Many faced slurs, discrimination, exclusion from jobs or housing, and witnessed preferential treatment for British-born Australians.
Despite these challenges, they became central to Australia’s post-war transformation. They fuelled the country’s economic growth both as workers and consumers, helping industry overtake agriculture for the first time in output. Perhaps the most iconic example was the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme, where 70,000 migrants built 16 major dams, 145 kilometres of tunnels and pipelines, and seven power stations. Such projects laid the foundation for modern Australia’s prosperity.
Instead of shedding their cultures, however, the migrants built new ones: Italian, Greek, Dutch, Maltese and other communities took root, with clubs, festivals, and neighbourhoods that would eventually transform Australia’s social landscape.
Fast forward to today, and the policy language has shifted from assimilation to multiculturalism. Governments now celebrate diversity as a national strength. Diwali lights up Federation Square, Ramadan nights are broadcast on primetime, and schoolchildren casually switch between English and their parents’ native tongues.
If the poster from the 1950s promised that migrants would eventually look and sound Australian, the Australia of today promises something richer: that looking and sounding different does not make you any less Australian.
But listen closely at anti-immigration rallies, and the echoes of the past are deafening.
Then, it was “They’ll take our jobs” and “They won’t fit in.” Now, it’s the very same script, stuck stubbornly on repeat.
The irony is stark. The migrants once feared as outsiders have become the backbone of Australian identity itself – from the European labourers at the Snowy Mountains, to the Asian and Middle Eastern entrepreneurs driving modern business.
Today’s “outsiders” will, inevitably, become tomorrow’s Australians too.
If history teaches us anything, it’s that the very people some reject today will be the ones our grandchildren will thank tomorrow.
68 years on, the “Today’s migrants… tomorrow’s Australians” campaign feels less like propaganda – and more like a quiet truth.
Belonging takes time, but it also takes openness.
Tomorrow’s Australians are, quite simply, the Australians of today, writing the next chapter of a shared story.
READ MORE: March for Australia protest: Diversity is not a threat – it’s a strength.
