The Bureaucratic Limits of a National Security Agenda: The Winding Road of Alien Registration in Interwar Australia

This article explores the use and disuse of alien registration in the interwar period in Australia and the discussion by government agencies over its usefulness for border and national security purposes, after being introduced during World War I. At the end of the war, the Hughes government decided to retain this measure on the statute books with the Aliens Registration Act in 1920, arguing that monitoring the location and movement of migrants was an integral part of Australia's national security. However disagreements between the federal government and the state police forces meant that enforcement of the Act was hindered and the Act fell into disuse by 1922. The next two decades saw a continued debate within government agencies over the purpose and value of alien registration, but it was only in the lead up to World War II that there was earnest talk about reintroducing these powers.