1945: National introduction of sickness and unemployment benefits. With memories of the Great Depression still fresh in the nation’s collective psyche, the Curtin government announced in 1943 that it would create a national system of welfare, including unemployment and sickness benefits.

The following year, the government passed the Unemployment and Sickness Benefits Act and in 1945 distribution of benefits got underway.

Australian Government Office For Women in the Department of Families

When the war ended, the government took an entirely new approach to migration. The near invasion of Australia by the Japanese caused a complete rethink of ideal population numbers. As Prime Minister Ben Chifley would later declare, ‘a powerful enemy looked hungrily toward Australia. In tomorrow’s gun flash that threat could come again. We must populate Australia as rapidly as we can before someone else decides to populate it for us.’ i In 1945, the Department of Immigration was established, headed up by Arthur Calwell. It resolved that Australia should have annual population growth of two per cent, of which only half could come from natural increase. 70,000 immigrants a year were needed to make up the difference.

The end of World War Two brought in its wake the largest population movements in European history. Millions of Germans fled or were expelled from eastern Europe. Hundreds of thousands of Jews, survivors of the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis, sought secure homes beyond their native lands. And other refugees from every country in eastern Europe rushed to escape from the newly installed Communist regimes.