the Philippine House of Representatives, which would have banned Australians from entering the country. His colleague Domingo Paguirigan put forward a motion calling on President Quirino to close the country's consulate in Sydney. In the ensuing debate, Cipriano Primicias called Australians "the biggest hypocrites in the world", and said that the Philippines should invade Australia to preserve its honour. Atienza's bill was passed by the House of Representatives on 27 April. The Senate added an amendment exempting Australian wives of Filipino citizens, but a sudden adjournment prevented a final vote on the bill. It had not been revived by the time Calwell's decision was overturned, and subsequently lapsed. Australian officials attempted to downplay the significance of the Gamboa case. Calwell claimed it had aroused "very little real interest" in the Philippines, while Waller dismissed it as a "trivial case". However, the Gamboa case remained a problem for bilateral relations for a number of decades. One Australian diplomat found that "all Filipinos from Manila to the most distant hinterlands knew of Gamboa and the White Australia Policy; in some cases these two items constituted their only knowledge of Australia". In 1957, Ambassador Mick Shann sent a communique to the Department of External Affairs recording his dismay at the number of times the Gamboa case had been raised with him, and emphasised the need to counteract the impressions given. Ambassadors Bill Cutts and Francis Stuart expressed similar sentiments in the 1960s. Later life Gamboa visited the Philippines in 1971 for the first time in 20 years, along with his wife, daughter, and son-in-law. In June 1973, Immigration Minister Al Grassby announced that he would allow Gamboa to become an Australian citizen. Gamboa rejected the offer, as it would have required him to renounce his U.S. citizenship, and said that government officials had approached him to take up citizenship on a number of previous occasions. In 1977, Gamboa and his wife retired to the Gold Coast, Queensland, building a home at Coombabah. Their two children predeceased them, but as of 2002 they had four grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. After their daughter's death from cancer in 1995, they raised their youngest granddaughter, who was 12 years old at the time. In 2001, the Filipino Communities Council of Australia awarded Gamboa the title of "Filipino-Australian of the Millennium". He died in September 2012, aged 93. References 1918 births 2012 deaths Filipino emigrants to the United