" Multiculturalism recognises that we live in a society made up of people from many different cultures and religions. It aims to promote tolerance and understanding of others and their right to retain their own culture. But, at the same time, it imposes on all of us on obligation to put Australia's interests first. ".
Australia is a land of migrants. The first group of migrants came to Australia over 40,000 years ago. This group of people were the Aborigines. In canoes and rafts they travelled across dangerous seas from their homes in Southeast Asia to the North of Australia. They favoured the areas around the coast, and along rivers for settlement, then they gradually moved inland across the continent. The Aborigines developed a good understanding of the land, and over a period of time grew to enhance a close bond with it. This link between the land and the Aborigines was unable to be understood by the second wave of migrants who came to Australia in 1788. .
It was in 1788 that England needed a place far from home where unwanted convicts could be dumped, that Europeans settled in Australia. The first Europeans to live in Australia were unwilling migrants and convicts who had been exiled from their own homeland as a punishment for breaking the law. Along with the migrants and convicts came soldiers, sailors, government officials and guards. .
Free migrants were attracted to Australia, as the colony grew larger. Only few people were migrating to Australia, until the gold rush in 1851 attracted a flood of migrants that made the long journey across the seas to Australia. Most of the people who settled in Australia in the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century came from England, Scotland and Ireland. Many of them paid their own fares to migrate to Australia. When Australia needed workers the government assisted migrants by paying part or all of their fares to travel. .
After the Second World War the third wave of migrants came to Australia.
