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{{Use Australian English|date=May 2022}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=November 2017}}
{{Refimprove|date=December 2023}}
{{Infobox ethnic group
| group = Italian Australians
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| image = File:New Italy NSW.JPG
| caption = Memorial in [[New Italy, New South Wales|New Italy]], [[New South Wales]] (list of family names)
| population = '''1,108,364''' (by ancestry, [[2021 Australian census|2021]])<ref name="abs.gov.au">[https://www.abs.gov.au/census/find-census-data/community-profiles/2021/AUS/download/GCP_AUS.xlsx
'''171,520''' (by birth, [[2021 Australian census|2021]])<ref name="abs.gov.au"
| popplace = [[Melbourne]], [[Sydney]], [[Perth]], [[Adelaide]], [[Brisbane]], and other [[List of cities in Australia by population|urban areas]]<br>[[Griffith, New South Wales|Griffith]], [[Ingham, Queensland|Ingham]], [[New Italy, New South Wales|New Italy]]
| langs = [[Australian English]]{{·}}[[Italian language|Italian]] and [[Languages of Italy|Italian dialects]]{{·}}[[Italo-Australian dialect]]
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'''Italian Australians''' ({{lang-it|italo-australiani}}) are [[Australia]]n-born citizens who are fully or partially of [[Italy|Italian]] descent, whose ancestors were [[Italians]] who emigrated to Australia during the [[Italian diaspora]], or Italian-born people in Australia.
Italian Australians constitute the sixth largest ancestry group in Australia, and one of the largest groups in the global Italian diaspora. At the 2021 census, 1,108,364 Australian residents nominated Italian ancestry (whether alone or in combination with another ancestry),
In 2021, there were 228,042 Australian residents who spoke [[Italian language|Italian]] at home.<ref name="abs.gov.au"
==History==
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Italians have been arriving in Australia in a limited number since before the first fleet. Two individuals of Italian descent served on board the Endeavour when Captain James Cook arrived in Australia in 1770. Giuseppe Tuzi was among the convicts transported to Australia by the British in the First Fleet.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://museumvictoria.com.au/origins/history.aspx?pid=32|title=Origins: History of immigration from Italy - Immigration Museum, Melbourne Australia|date=30 July 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080730052005/http://museumvictoria.com.au/origins/history.aspx?pid=32 |archive-date=30 July 2008 }}</ref> Another early notable arrival, for his participation in Australian politics, was [[Raffaello Carboni]] who in 1853 participated with other miners in the uprising of [[Eureka Stockade]] and wrote the only complete eye-witness account of the uprising.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://gutenberg.net.au/pages/carboni.html|title=Raffaello Carboni|website=gutenberg.net.au}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |chapter-url=http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/carboni-raffaello-3163 |title=Australian Dictionary of Biography |chapter=Carboni, Raffaello (1817–1875) |publisher=National Centre of Biography, Australian National University}}</ref> This migration of northern Italian middle class professionals to Australia was spurred by the persecution from Austrian authorities – who controlled most of the northern regions of Italy until 1860 – especially after the failure of the [[Italian unification|revolts]] in many European cities in the 1840s and 1850s. As stated by D'Aprano in his work on the first Italian migrants in Victoria: <blockquote>We find some Italian artisans in [[Melbourne]] and other colonies already in the 1840s, and 1841s, many of whom had participated in the defeated revolts against the despotic rulers of [[Modena]], [[Naples]], Venice, [[Milan]], [[Bologna]], Rome and other cities. They came to Australia to seek a better and more efficient life.<ref>D'Aprano, C 1995, ''From Goldrush to Federation: Italian Pioneers in Victoria 1850–1900'', INT Press, Melbourne</ref></blockquote>
Through the 1840s and 1850s, the number of Italian migrants of peasant background who came for economic reasons increased.{{cn|date=December 2023}} Nevertheless, they did not come from the landless, poverty-stricken agricultural working class but from rural families with at least sufficient means to pay their fare to Australia. Furthermore, in the late 1850s, some 2,000 [[Swiss Italians of Australia]] from Northern Italy migrated to the Victorian goldfields.{{cn|date=December 2023}}
The number of Italians who arrived in Australia remained small during the whole of the nineteenth century. The voyage was costly and complex, as no direct shipping link existed between the two countries until the late 1890s.{{cn|date=December 2023}} The length of the voyage was over two months before the opening of the Suez Canal. Italian migrants who intended to leave for Australia had to use German shipping lines that called at the ports of [[Genoa]] and Naples no more than once a month.{{cn|date=December 2023}} Therefore, other overseas destinations such as the United States and the Latin American countries proved much more attractive, thus allowing the establishment of migration patterns more quickly and drawing far greater numbers.{{cn|date=December 2023}}
Nevertheless, the [[Victorian gold rush]] of the 1850s attracted thousands of Italians and Swiss Italians to Australia. The drain on the labour supply occasioned by the gold rush caused Australia to also seek workmen from Europe for land use and the development of cultivation, both in [[New South Wales]] and [[Queensland]].{{cn|date=December 2023}} Unfortunately, the number of Italians who joined the Victorian gold mines is obscure, and until 1871 Italians did not receive a special place in any Australian census figures. By 1881, the first year of census figures on Italian migrants in all States, there were 521 Italians (representing 0.066% of the total population) in [[New South Wales]], and 947 (0.10%) in Victoria, of whom one-third were in Melbourne and the rest were in the goldfields.{{cn|date=December 2023}} [[Queensland]] had 250 Italians, South Australia 141, [[Tasmania]] 11 and [[Western Australia]] just 10. Such figures, from Australian sources, correspond to similar figures from Italian sources.{{cn|date=December 2023}}
While Italians in Australia were less than 2,000, they tended to increase, because they were attracted by the easy possibility to settle in areas capable of intense agricultural exploitation.{{cn|date=December 2023}} In this regard, it must be borne in mind again that in the early 1880s Italy was facing a strong economic crisis, which was going to push a hundred thousand Italians to seek a better life abroad.{{cn|date=December 2023}}
In addition, even Australian travellers, like [[Randolph Bedford]], who visited Italy in the 1870s and 1880s, admitted the convenience of having a larger intake of Italian workers into Australia. Bedford stated that Italians would [[melanin|adjust to the Australian climate]] better than the "pale" English migrant. As the job opportunities attracted so many British people to the colonies to be employed in agriculture, certainly the Italian peasant, accustomed to be a hard-worker, "frugal and sober", would be a very good immigrant for the Australia soil. Many Italian immigrants had extensive knowledge of Mediterranean-style farming techniques, which were better suited to cultivating Australia's harsh interior than the Northern-European methods in use previous to their arrival.<ref>Pesman, R 1983, "Australian visitors to Italy in the nineteenth century", in G Cresciani (ed.), ''The Australians and Italian migration'', Franco Angeli, Milano.</ref>
Since the early 1880s, due to the socioeconomic situation in Italy and the abundant opportunities to settle in Australia as farmers, skilled or semi-skilled artisans and labourers, the number of Italians who left for Australia increased.{{cn|date=December 2023}}
[[File:Anthony Albanese portrait (cropped).jpg|thumb|[[Anthony Albanese]], [[Prime Minister of Australia]] since 2022]]
In 1881, over 200 foreign immigrants, of whom a considerable number were Italians from Northern Italy, arrived in Sydney.{{cn|date=December 2023}} They were the survivors from [[Marquis de Ray]]'s ill-fated attempt at [[de Rays Expedition|founding a colony]], Nouvelle France, in [[New Ireland (island)|New Ireland]], which later became part of Germany's [[German New Guinea|New Guinea]] Protectorate. Many of them took up a conditional purchase farm of {{convert|40|acre|ha|order=flip}} near [[Woodburn, New South Wales|Woodburn]] in the [[Northern Rivers|Northern Rivers District]] at what was subsequently known as [[New Italy, New South Wales|New Italy]]. By the mid-1880s, about 50 holdings of an aggregate area of more than {{convert|3000|acre|ha|order=flip}} were under occupation, and the Italian population of New Italy has increased to 250. In this respect, Lyng reported: "The land was very poor and heavily timbered and had been passed over by local settlers. However, the Italians set to work and by great industry and thrift succeeded in clearing some of the land and making it productive. ... Besides, working on their own properties the settlers were engaged in the sugar industry, in timber squaring, grass seed gathering, and other miscellaneous work".
In 1883, a commercial Treaty between the United Kingdom and Italy was signed, allowing Italian subjects freedom of entry, travel and residence, and the rights to acquire and own property and to carry on business activities. This Agreement certainly favoured the arrival in Australia of many more Italians.{{cn|date=December 2023}}
===In working society, 1890–1920===
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[[File:Natalie Imbruglia-paradiso.jpg|thumb|[[Natalie Imbruglia]]]]
Frictions between the established Australian working class and the newcomers suggest that, during periods of economic crisis and unemployment, immigration acted as a "tool of division and attack" by international capitalism to working class organisations.{{cn|date=December 2023}} There were Italians in occupations other than in the sugarcane industry and mining. In Western Australia, fishing was next in popularity, followed by the usual urban pursuits now associated with Italians of peasant origin, such as market gardening, the keeping of restaurants and wine shops and the sale of fruit and vegetables.{{cn|date=December 2023}}
As Cresciani has explained in his comprehensive study of Italian settlements in the early decades of the twentieth century, it was the small size and the type of the Italian settlement that also worked against a wider involvement of Italian migrants with organised labour.{{cn|date=December 2023}}
"Most Italians were scattered in the countryside, on the goldfields, in the mines. As agricultural workers, fruit pickers, farmers, tobacco growers, canecutters. The distance and the lack of communication prevented them from organising themselves. Those in the cities, mainly greengrocers, market gardeners and labourers, because of the sheer lack of interest and capacity to understand the advantages that a political organisation would bring, kept themselves aloof from any active role in politics and from the people who were advocating it. Also, many migrants were seasonal workers, never stopping for long at any one place, thus making it difficult for them to take part in social or political activities". By the early 1900s, there were over 5,000 Italians in Australia in a remarkable variety of occupations. According to the 1911 Census, there were 6,719 residents who had been born in Italy. Of these, 5,543 were males, while 2,683 had become naturalised. No less than 2,600 were in Western Australia.
One of the most significant policy matters that the new [[Parliament of Australia]] had to consider after it opened in 1901 was immigration. Later that year, the Attorney-General, [[Alfred Deakin]], introduced and passed into legislation the [[Immigration Restriction Act 1901]] and the allied Pacific Island Labourers Act. The goal was to ensure the White Australia policy by controlling entry into Australia and—by the latter—repatriating coloured labour from the [[Pacific Islands]]. The concept was meant to safeguard the social "white" purity and protect wage standards against cheap coloured labour.{{cn|date=December 2023}}
As the Restriction Act passed into legislation, there was some confusion as to whether Italians should be let into the country or kept out by means of the "Dictation test" provisions, as stated into the Act. The Act did not specify a translation but rather a dictation in a European language, the purpose of the test being to keep non-Europeans out of Australia, as a deterrent to unwanted immigrants. Although the test was initially to be administered in English, it was then changed to any European language, "mainly through Labour insistence". Such a firmly sustained system to select entries into Australia that it remained on the statute books until 1958, when it was replaced by a system of entry permits.
Nevertheless, in the early 1900s, some Italians calling at [[Fremantle, Western Australia|Fremantle]] and other Australian ports were refused admission under the provisions of the Act. These latter cases might be indicative of the fact that Western Australia shared the xenophobia of the rest of the world.{{cn|date=December 2023}} The reaction was certainly associated with the so-called "Awakening of Asia" and '[[Yellow Peril]]', which were not exclusively Australian terms. As reported: "Such concepts combined to produce in Europe a suspicion that the traditional European supremacy around the globe was coming to an end. In Australia that eventually was seen as, or made to appear, a more immediate threatening".
Fuelled both by the British-European feeling of loss of supremacy and the fears of the [[Australian Labor Party]] in working sectors where labourers were not exclusively Anglo-Celtic, anti-Italian sentiments gathered momentum in the United States in the early 1900s, in the wake of Italian mass migration. Such attitudes also flourished in Australia, as it has been reported with respect to the Queensland sugar-cane industry and Western Australian mines.{{cn|date=December 2023}}
Nevertheless, a new attempt to found an Italian colony in Western Australia took place in 1906, when the western state offered to host about 100 Italian peasant families to settle in the south-western rural corner of Western Australia. A delegation of a few northern Italian farmers led by [[Leopoldo Zunini]], an Italian career diplomat, visited most of these rural areas.{{cn|date=December 2023}} Although his report on soil fertility, quality of cattle to graze, transport and accommodation for the Italian farmers was extremely positive and enthusiastic, the settlement scheme was not carried out.{{cn|date=December 2023}} Again, Western Australia public opinion opposed the creation of an exclusively Italian settlement, possibly caused by a mounting anti-Italian sentiment fuelled by the outlined episodes of confrontation between the Labour movement and the cheap labour cost offered by Italian migrants.{{cn|date=December 2023}}
===Growth of the community, 1921–1945===
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At the end of 1947, only 21% of the Italians residing in Australia were not yet naturalised. Many of those becoming naturalised in the late 1940s did so to allay the suspicion caused by the war. Borrie wrote in his fundamental work on the assimilation of Italians in Australia:<blockquote>"Naturalisation was the obvious first step towards their rehabilitation. The war had also broken many of the links with Italy, and in addition it was still difficult to secure a shipping passage to return there. But while the act of naturalization may have been an irrevocable step which in turn provided an incentive to become socially and culturally assimilated, field investigations show clearly that Italians retained many traits, particularly within the circle of the home, which were not "Australian". And naturalized or not, they were still not fully accepted by Australians".<ref>Robert Pascoe (1987), ''Buongiorno Australia. Our Italian Heritage'', Greenhouse Publications, Richmond (Victoria), p.220</ref></blockquote>
[[File:Daniel Ricciardo, British GP 2022 (52382610448) (cropped).jpg|thumb|[[Daniel Ricciardo]]]]
Conversely, after the war experience, the Australian government embarked on the [[Post war immigration to Australia|'Populate or Perish' program]], aimed to increase the population of the country for strategically important economic and military reasons. The immigration debate in postwar Australia assumed new dimensions as official policy sought a significant increase in the number and the diversity of immigrants, and to find a place for those coming from a tired and torn Europe. The war had occasioned a shift in migration patterns, pressing the need to place a large number of people who could not return to their own countries for a wide range of reasons. This was the case of over ten million people from Central and North-eastern Europe, such as Poles, Germans, Greeks, Czechs, Yugoslavs and Slovaks. An important stage in this immigration program began with the Displaced Persons Scheme in 1947, which attracted over 170,000 displaced persons to Australia.
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At the [[2022 Australian federal election|2022 federal election]], [[Anthony Albanese]] was elected, becoming Australia's first Prime Minister of Italian descent.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2022-05-21 |title=Australian election 2022: Anthony Albanese due for speech; Scott Morrison concedes and stands down as Liberal leader – live updates |url=https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2022/may/21/australian-election-2022-live-news-today-australia-federal-anthony-albanese-scott-morrison-who-won-winning-opinion-polls-polling-vote-labor-coalition-liberals-greens-independents-candidates-seats-odds-results-politics-latest-updates |access-date=2022-05-21 |website=[[The Guardian]] |language=en}}</ref>
As of 2024 [[David Crisafulli]] is the Queensland state [[Leader of the Opposition (Queensland)|Opposition Leader]] (LNP) and [[Lia Finocchiaro]] is the Northern Territory [[Chief Minister of the Northern Territory|Chief Minister]] (CLP). Both are of Italian descent.
==Demographics==
[[File:Australian Census 2011 demographic map - Australia by SLA - BCP field 1126 Italian Total Responses.svg|thumb|right|300px|People with Italian ancestry as a percentage of the population in Australia divided geographically by statistical local area, as of the 2011 census]]
At the 2021 census, 1,108,364 people nominated Italian ancestry (whether alone or in combination with another ancestry),
According to 2006 census data released by the [[Australian Bureau of Statistics]], 95% of Italian born Australians recorded their religion as Christian.<ref name="Census Ethic Media Package">{{cite web|url=http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/subscriber.nsf/0/5618AB4511347DC2CA257306000D44C2/$File/2914055002_2006%20(Reissue).xls |format=Excel download| title=2914.0.55.002 2006 Census Ethnic Media Package |date=27 June 2007|access-date=14 July 2008|work=Census Dictionary, 2006 (cat.no 2901.0)|publisher=[[Australian Bureau of Statistics]]}}</ref>
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[[File:IT born Syd.png|300px|right|thumb|One dot denotes 100 Italy born Sydney residents.]]
[[File:IT born Mel.png|300px|right|thumb|One dot denotes 100 Italy born Melbourne residents.]]
Italians are well represented in every Australian state, territory, town and region. At the 2021 census, states with the largest numbers of persons nominating Italian ancestry were Victoria (384,688), New South Wales (301,829), Queensland (152,571), Western Australia (137,255) and South Australia (103,914).<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/people-and-communities/cultural-diversity-census/2021/Cultural%20diversity%20data%20summary.xlsx|website=abs.gov.au|title=2021
Most Australian residents born in Italy are now concentrated in Melbourne (73,799), Sydney (44,562), [[Adelaide]] (20,877) and [[Perth, Western Australia|Perth]] (18,815).<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/censushome.nsf/home/cowsredirect|title=Redirect to Census data page|first=c=AU; o=Commonwealth of Australia; ou=Australian Bureau of|last=Statistics|website=www.abs.gov.au}}</ref> Unlike other groups, the number of Italians residing in [[Brisbane]] is relatively few, with the exception of a notable distribution of Italians in Northern Queensland, as Hempel has described in her research on post-war settlement of Italian immigrants in this state. This circumstance is a consequence of the migration patterns followed by Italians in the earlier stage of their settlement in Queensland, during the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s, when the sugarcane industry and its related possibility of quick earnings attracted more "temporary" migrants in the countryside.
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===Return migration===
Italian Australians have a low rate of return migration to Italy. In December 2001, the [[Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Australia)|Department of Foreign Affairs]] estimated that there were 30,000 Australian citizens resident in Italy.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.southern-cross-group.org/archives/Statistics/Numbers_of_Australians_Overseas_in_2001_by_Region_Feb_2002.pdf|title=Estimates of Australian Citizens Living Overseas as at December 2001|date=14 February 2001|publisher=Southern Cross Group ([[Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Australia)|DFAT]] data)|access-date=15 July 2008|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080720101723/http://www.southern-cross-group.org/archives/Statistics/Numbers_of_Australians_Overseas_in_2001_by_Region_Feb_2002.pdf|archive-date=20 July 2008}}</ref> These are likely to be largely returned Italian emigrants with Australian citizenship, and their Italian-Australian children.
==Film on Italian immigration to Australia==
[[File:Sordi-Cardinale-BelloOnesto.jpg|thumb|A scene from the film ''[[A Girl in Australia]]'' (1971)]]
* ''[[A Girl in Australia]]'' (1971), directed by [[Luigi Zampa]]
* ''[[Love's Brother]]'' by [[Jan Sardi]] (2004)
* ''[[Underbelly (series 1)]]'' (2008)
==See also==
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{{Italian diaspora}}
{{Ancestry of Australians}}
{{Portal bar|Australia|Italy}}
[[Category:Australian people of Italian descent|
[[Category:Italian diaspora
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