After World War II, Lionel Mead took up a career with the Department of Labour and
National Service before moving on to the Department of Immigration and taking up a post
in London.
Working with migration officers Ron Metcalfe and Harolt Grant along with Morris Finnes,
who was the first Advisor on Profession to be posted to London, I was called Executive
Officer Professions and my job was to set up this small unit within the immigration
administration in London to interview, counsel applicants who had professional
background.
Yes, indeed we had to relate that to the opportunities in Australia as to whether people
would be likely to succeed or not and this is important that both Morris and I, who would
be interviewing together... sometimes he might be visiting university, sometimes I might
be... but we'd both be carrying out interviews nearly every morning, of every day.
We made it plain we adopted a counseling approach that if we thought somebody would not
make it in Australia, we would tell them frankly.
We felt there was an obligation on us to be frank and upfront with them and that was
always appreciated.
Most cases you could be positive because some of the ...
a lot of these people might be seeking an opportunity in Australia within their own
profession directly, but quite often they had a second choice.
It might be an engineer, a production engineer, who might want to go to a particular part
of Australia where there was not a lot of production engineering but he could... might have
a second string where he'd be willing or have some capital to set up a business.
There are all sorts of variations on a theme.
In the first place, we were ...
part of our responsibility was to know what the criteria were in Australia and it was our
responsibility to convey that to the applicant in London.
In many cases it was very clear-cut because there was this common ground between
training, say, in Britain and Australia - it was almost automatic recognition.
But where there was any ambiguity or uncertainty we would point that out and make it
clear to the person concerned they would have to supply further documentation or submit
before they even took the matter any further.
If you look at the professions, of those that are registerable, they must be registered
or licensed by the official authority in Australia.
There are others were it would depend, or did depend essentially, on the professional
organisation.
It could make its own decision.
Then there was a third, sort of, not-so clear category where it might depend on a
person's work experience.
They might still be regarded as some sort of professional level and there'd be a
flexibility there.
In the registerable professions, the shining light I suppose at the time - the clear-cut
one - was the engineers, by virtue of an industrial decision in Australia, I think it was
1961, the Engineers' Award.
The engineers' role and qualification industry were very clearly defined but also their
responsibilities.
And they, as a professional body, accepted that responsibility very seriously.
And they very quickly would show that they were willing to consider persons from most
unusual backgrounds.
I'll give you an example.
We're talking now about the time of the Iron Curtain still there.
They could tell you, even then, if a person presented who was, say, Polish and had been
trained in a Polish engineering institution.
Generally, the institution, the engineers could tell you whether that was up to the
standard or not to be a profession in Australia.
So that was very positive.
It's quite well known that in those days the medical profession was the most conservative
and was limiting its automatic recognition to two or three countries.
Now, there were other groups such as the social workers, teachers, secondary school
teachers... if you had the university lecturers it might depend essentially on a particular
bit of research they'd done.
As you know, it could be very flexible, so it did vary from one profession to another.
But I suppose the two examples... the most conservative was medicine and the most
enlightened in my view, the most flexible and a good exemplar of the others were the
engineers.
I was Senior Migration Officer in Washington with just a secretary but all of my staff
were out-posted in New York, in San Francisco and while I was there, we opened Los
Angeles and Chicago which is not only immigration but it was trade as well.
But the immigration function developed in both... in all four of those places and the
Australian offices were based in those Consulates-General but they were under my
management.
It was fairly common knowledge that we'd been inhibited about operating in the United
States because of the White Australia policy.
But there was very clear evidence that the department had gathered that there was a great
interest amongst Americans in coming to Australia.
From what I saw subsequently, and I'm sure it was accurate, it was a troubled time in the
United States.
It was probably the first time when, in the land of migration, people were contemplating
migrating to another country.
It was probably the Vietnam War, the Moratorium, the urban violence problems in the
United States.
A mixture of all these things, I think, were troubling a lot of Americans and we knew
from prior to my time, we knew from the research that had been done that there was a lot
of interest in Australia and then, by the time that I went there, we got free of the
White Australia policy and - but until we did - we could not operate publicly in the
United States.
We'd have to just sit, principally, supply advice through the consular.
They couldn't countenance a country operating publicly, advertising and encouraging
migration yet knowing that if you were a black American you couldn't come, it was that
sort of, literally black and white problem.
But once it was clear to the American authorities that we were clear of that policy,
which we could see diminishing in Australia.. I could see diminishing in Australia and
within the department, then we were free to operate publicly.
By the time I joined immigration in '65 and went to London, one could see that the
problem was diminishing.
There were still limitations but I didn't meet any particular problems in London and
certainly none in Germany.
Nobody presented there but if they had presented I think the way the situation was
changing we may have been able to accommodate a lot of people but I personally did not
encounter any individual problem in relation to White Australia in London or in Germany.