Legal discriminations
Date Published
After Indigenous Australians people of Chinese heritage have been the most discriminated against in law.
This began with the new Colony of Victoria's poll tax and was followed by similar targeted laws in NSW and then Queensland. Victoria also introduced residents taxes aimed at "Chinese" people, the definition of which was challenged by those who claimed they were "British subjects" - unsuccessfully. Although repealed, these discriminations were renewed after 1881 until in 1888 all the Australian colonies agreed to enact anti-Chinese immigration laws that contained a mix of poll taxes and tonnage restrictions. It was not until the Commonweath of Australia's Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 that discrimination (hidden behind a fake Dictation Test) became general against other non-white people's.
These laws also denied people of Chinese origin the ability to become naturalised and this had consequences for their ability to buy land. In addition Queensland introduced a number of Dictation Tests designed to limit participation in the Sugar and other industries, though these were not limited to Chinese people.
Goldfields legislation in many colonies also barred Chinese miners from new fields for a period of time.
Laws targeting Chinese forms of gambling and banning opium can also be seen as discrimination against Chinese people.
See: Chronological list of laws specifically discriminating against Chinese people
‘I cannot but strike with strange again how the Chinese are only taxed and not other kinds of people —have they done anything better than the Chinese?’
Denied naturalisation and land - 1859
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/3717479
Chinese petition against poll tax in NSW
The Sydney Morning Herald, 12 March 1866, p.5.
See also:
Barry McGowan, “Transnational Lives: Colonial Immigration Restrictions and the White Australia Policy in the Riverina District of New South Wales”, Chinese Southern Diaspora Studies 6 (2013): 45–63.
