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SEIS Academic Forum Series
Forum on Australian Studies(NO.31)
Heads-I-win-tails-you-lose:
The Dictation Test and the White Australia Policy
Speaker: Dr. Michael Williams(Western Sydney University)
Time: 3:00-4:30 p.m.
Date: 13 April, 2017 (Thursday)
Venue: Room 115, English Building, BFSU
题目：The Dictation Test and the White Australia Policy
讲座人简介：Dr Michael Williams (Adjunct Fellow, Western Sydney University) is an historian of the Chinese Diaspora and is a founding member of the Chinese Australian Historical Society. His dissertation at the University of Hong Kong employed oral history and archival research to examine the links of the villages of the Pearl River Delta with the Pacific Ports of Sydney, Hawaii and San Francisco. His current research involves a history of popular perceptions of the Dictation Test, and a comparative study of Australia’s pre-1949 Chinese-Australian history with its post-1989 history. His forthcoming book Returning Home with Glory will be published by Hong Kong University Press.
讲座摘要：The Dictation Test lay at the heart of the White Australia policy for much of its existence. Despite this long history and its largely being directed at Chinese people, confusion about just exactly what the dictation test was and how it was implemented also existed throughout this time and much confusion remains even today.
This confusion and ignorance is no coincidence, for the original administrators of the test and the Immigration Restriction Act of which it was a major instrument began by attempting to keep aspects of its operation a secret. In fact, throughout its more than 50 year history, beginning with its first administrators, police, magistrates, lawmakers, and journalists, as well as potential immigrants and even museum curators and historians today have continued to mistake the nature of this ‘test’.
This paper will illustrate the working practice of the test it was a crime to fail as well as explores the history of a form of immigration control that was unique to Australia.
