In March 1984, Blainey commented to a group of Rotarians in the Southern Victorian town of Warrnambool that public opinion would not support the rate of Asian immigration to Australia. Criticizing what he viewed as the disproportionately high levels of Asian immigration to Australia, he said: "Rarely in the history of the modern world has a nation given such preference to a tiny ethnic minority of its population as the Australian Government has done in the past few years, making that minority the favoured majority in its immigration policy."
Blainey elaborated on his concerns some days later in an article for
The Age, in which he introduced the term "Asianisation" into the Australian political lexicon, a phrase Blainey attributed to then Immigration Minister Stewart West.
In the article, Blainey wrote:
I do not accept the view, widely held in the Federal Cabinet, that some kind of slow Asian takeover of Australia is inevitable. I do not believe that we are powerless. I do believe that we can with good will and good sense control our destiny ... As a people, we seem to move from extreme to extreme. In the past 30 years the government of Australia has moved from the extreme of wanting a white Australia to the extreme of saying that we will have an Asian Australia and that the quicker we move towards it the better.
Blainey's views, later expanded upon in a book entitled
All for Australia, provoked much debate and controversy, and 24 historians from the University of Melbourne signed a public letter distancing themselves from his views. Many of Blainey's colleagues argued that his views were divisive and would inflame racism in Australia.
After a group of left-wing students at the University of Melbourne picketed Blainey’s lectures and demonstrated against him, Blainey was forced to cancel the rest of scheduled talks at the university for the rest of 1984 on security grounds. Blainey and his family were also subject to threats of violence, prompting Blainey to remove his name and address from the public telephone book and organise private security for his home.
According to fellow historian Keith Windschuttle:
The immediate consequence of all this was that Blainey, easily Australia’s best and most prolific living historian, was effectively silenced from speaking at his own university. He reverted to an administrative role as Dean of Arts and did not lecture again in the history department until 1987. This violation of academic freedom, clearly the worst in Australian history, provoked no protest at all from the university’s academic staff association, nor from the university council, let along his own departmental colleagues.
In 1988, Blainey resigned from the University of Melbourne because of the hostility from many of his colleagues following his speech in Warnambool.
More than two decades later, in 2005, the University of Melbourne named a Chair in Australian history in his honour.. Subsequently in December 2007 The University granted a Doctor of Laws to Professor Blainey which noted he was in Australia a probably unique professional historian, in that he had made his living by popular sales of his works quite separately from his academic positions, and that this created a greater interest in history in the broader public. The citation noted that his popularity as an author meant 'few graduates of this University have exerted greater influence on national life.'