This article is an instalment in a new series, “Peter Dutton is racist”, on Dutton’s history of racism and the role racism has played on both sides of politics since the 1970s.
When John Howard called for reductions in immigration from Asian countries in 1988 in the name of social cohesion, the backlash against the then opposition leader was intense. Howard had earlier called for an end to multiculturalism as part of a “One Australia” policy, but his remarks calling for lower Asian immigration unleashed what Nationals frontbencher John Stone called “four or five weeks of absolute turmoil” — turmoil happily exploited by the Hawke government.
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