Australia's political establishment was quick to denounce the explosive first speech of Katter's Australian Party senator Fraser Anning and his call for a return to immigration policies that would discriminate against non-Europeans and Muslims.
Mr Wilson's claim is simplistic. The White Australia policy was dismantled, piece by piece, over decades spanning governments both Liberal and Labor. Experts told Fact Check the 1966-67 Holt government's reforms were critical steps in the process, constituting a significant break from past practice. Mr Holt's changes levelled the playing field between Europeans and non-Europeans applying for citizenship, setting a 5-year wait time for both groups, and eased the criteria for non-European migrants seeking permanent residence. But the process of relaxing Australia's discriminatory immigration policies quietly began before Mr Holt became prime minister — and policies of racial discrimination persisted beyond his term. So it is a stretch to say the Holt government "abolished" the White Australia policy. Responsibility for officially ending it fell to Gough Whitlam's Labor government, which in 1973 declared the policy dead. The Whitlam government then took steps to strip race as a factor from visa assessments and to equalise the criteria by which all people — whether British, European or otherwise — could become Australian citizens.
Fact check: Did former prime minister Harold Holt abolish the White Australia policy?
['Australia', 'Australian_Party']