Developments in Oceania after the Second World War (1945–2005)

The 1960s–70s movement campaigning for legal and social equality for women (equal pay, education, careers), following the earlier fight for the vote.

Laws from 1901 restricting non-European immigration to Australia; gradually relaxed from 1966 and formally ended in 1973 under Whitlam.

Immigration Minister Arthur Calwell, from 1945, under the slogan 'populate or perish'.

1974–1976 New Zealand police raids on the homes of visa overstayers that disproportionately targeted Pacific Islanders, despite most overstayers being British/European.

Ended the White Australia Policy, introduced free university education and Medibank (universal health insurance), and recognised Communist China.

The nickname for David Lange's New Zealand government's 1984 economic deregulation programme — floating the dollar, cutting subsidies and tariffs.

The Nuclear Free Zone Act (1987) made New Zealand nuclear-free, badly damaging relations with the USA under the ANZUS alliance.

Both led long, stable, conservative governments (Menzies in Australia 1949–1966; Holyoake in NZ 1957/1960–1972) focused on steady growth and caution on social reform.

Muldoon authorised the Springbok rugby tour despite South African apartheid, splitting public opinion and sparking major protests.

Continued economic reform, progress on Treaty of Waitangi settlements with Māori, and the shift to the MMP voting system (adopted 1993/1996).

Multiculturalism accepts and celebrates many cultures coexisting in one society; assimilation expects migrants to give up their own culture and adopt the majority culture.

As part of a broader shift toward a distinct Australian national identity, replacing 'God Save the Queen' and moving away from a purely British-focused self-image.

90.77% of voters agreed to remove constitutional clauses excluding Aboriginal people from the census and from federal law-making — a symbolic step toward equal citizenship, though it did not itself create land rights.

The legal recognition that indigenous groups have rights to land based on continuous traditional connection to it, established in Australia by the 1992 Mabo decision.

Terra nullius was the legal fiction that Australia was 'land belonging to no one' before European settlement, used to justify colonisation without treaties; Mabo rejected this doctrine and opened the way to native title claims.

A New Zealand body established in 1975 to investigate Maori grievances over Crown breaches of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi; its powers were extended back to 1840 itself in 1985.

A mutual defence pact between Australia, New Zealand and the United States, marking the shift of Pacific security reliance from Britain to the US after the Second World War.

From 1984 Lange's Labour government refused entry to nuclear-armed or nuclear-powered ships, an anti-nuclear stance that led the US to suspend its ANZUS defence obligations to New Zealand (1985–1987).

EEC membership meant Britain had to apply EEC tariffs and quotas to non-member trade, ending the guaranteed British market both countries had long relied on for meat, wool and dairy exports.

Floating the Australian dollar (1983), cutting tariffs, and deregulating banks — reforms that opened the economy to trade and investment with rising Asian economies.

Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, founded in 1989 on Australia's initiative, linking Pacific Rim economies — it symbolises Australia and New Zealand's reorientation from Britain toward Asia.

Western Samoa (1962), Fiji (1970), Papua New Guinea (1975) — the first wave of Pacific decolonisation after the Second World War.

Ethnic tension between indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians (descendants of indentured labourers brought under British rule), which destabilised Fijian politics for decades after 1970.

Australia's path ran mainly through the courts and land-rights legislation (1967 referendum, 1976 Land Rights Act, 1992 Mabo, native title); New Zealand's ran through a standing treaty mechanism, the Waitangi Tribunal, reinterpreting the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi.