One of the strongest fears of 'white' Australians was that 'undesirable' immigrants would flood into Australia and 'pollute' the 'superior' white population by 'lowering' all kinds of standards from working conditions to morals, to racial purity.

Focus question
RaQ6 What is one of the most compelling reasons for separate colonies to federate according to this writer?

PROTECTING AUSTRALIA AGAINST THE INFLUX OF ALIENS

I regard as second only to the necessity of protecting our shores against actual invasion, the necessity of protecting Australia against the influx of aliens, Asiatics, criminals, paupers, and other undesirable classes. In the legislation which we have been already compelled to adopt on these subjects, we know that there has been a striving after uniformity; but that uniformity has seldom been obtained.

It is idle for one state, unless it erects a hostile barrier on its intercolonial boundaries, to attempt to pass useful legislation prohibiting or restricting an influx of that character, if there is no community of action on the part of the rest of the colonies; and when the doors of Australia are thrown open by the omission of one state to do its duty, the undesirable class which any colony wishes to guard against may come in, not at the front door, but at the back – not at her seaports, but through the territory of her neighbours. It would be well, for this reason, to specify as one of the chief objects of the adoption of a federal constitution the uniformity of legislation in the direction to which I have referred.

Charles Kingston, Official Report of the National Australasian Convention Debates, Sydney, 2 March to 9 April 1891, Sydney: Government Printer, 1891, p. 157, cited in Raymond Evans et al., 1901 Our Future's Past, Macmillan, Sydney, 1997, p. 207.