The sentimental nation: the making of the Australian Commonwealth 9780195506204

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JOHN HIRST

* 1901-2001 @ ).

Centenary of Federation

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

UNIVERSITY PRESS

253 Normanby Road, South Melbourne, Victoria, Australia Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York

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Copyright © 2000 John Hirst First published 2000 This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission. Enquiries to be made to Oxford University Press.

Copying for educational purposes Where copies of part or the whole of the book are made under Part VB of the Copyright Act, the law requires that prescribed procedures be followed. For information, contact the Copyright Agency Limited. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-publication data: Hirst, John, 1942-. The sentimental nation: the making of the Australian Commonwealth Bibliography. Includes index. ISBN 0 19 550620 0.

1. Federal government—Australia—History. 2. Australia— Politics and government. 3.—History—20th century. I. Title. — 321.020994

Edited by Cathryn Game Indexed by Russell Brooks Text and cover designed by Polar Design Pty Ltd Typeset by Polar Design Pty Ltd Printed by Kyodo Printing Co. Singapore Pte Ltd

Published with the assistance of the National Council for the Centenary of Federation.

To the 422,788 Yes voters who have no other memorial

What is this movement based on but sentiment? When you see strongminded men—men of intelligence—being carried away by sentiment,

watch them. A strong-minded man governed by sentiment is more dangerous than a hysterical woman. J. H. Want, New South Wales Assembly, 1897

While not desiring to underrate the sentimental aspect, we are a practical people and our pockets are the first consideration in this great question. Richard Baker, Adelaide Town Hall, 1 August 1895 With regard to Australian federation ... the sentimental side will prove to be the practical, or the basis of the practical. Andrew Inglis Clark, Federation Conference, February 1890

e& Contents %

Illustrations Vill Acknowledgments XI

Introduction | l

1 Destiny 4 23 Barriers Identity 26 45

Cause

45 Confusion 64 Prophet 81

Movement

678 Convention Limbo 105 Revival 124 142

9 Constitution 160 10 No—Yes 178 11 Continental 201 12 Empire 223 13 Ways and Means 248

14 Beginning 274 15 Forgetting 297 16 Legacies 333

Afterwards

Notes 344 Sources 375 Index 378

Vu

8 Tllustrations %

Edmund Barton and Alfred Deakin 6 The nation begins with prayer: the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney

reads prayers, 1 January 1901 7

The Italian float in the federation procession, Sydney, 1 January 1901 8

E.W. Cole. 14

The Federation Conference, Melbourne, 1890 1] Medallion carrying the message of world federation by the bookseller,

William Gay, federation poet, on his deathbed 18 The unofficial coat of arms of the coming nation 20

The colonies had cooperated to exclude the Chinese 22

Samuel Griffith as Lieutenant-Governor 27

The coming race: a comment on the 1894—95 Test Matches 35 The coming race in its ugliest guise: a larrikin and larrikiness 37

Deakin welcomed home 4]

The Australian Natives Association displays its commitment to federation 42 _ Her Majesty’s Customs House at Wahgunyah on the Victorian side

of the River Murray 46

New South Wales trade 50 Sydney's nightmare: federation allows rival capitals to capture

The Victorian ‘cabbage garder’ fears the trade policy of its rival 54

Intercolonial travellers faced baggage searches until 1901 57 Benjamin Cowderoy of the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce 60 Annexation—carrying the benefits of civilisation into New Guinea 65

Imperial federation, a cartoon from the Bulletin 68

Mother and son: Louisa and Henry Lawson 71 The Sudan contingent departs from Sydney 75

Putting down republicans 82 The other Henry Parkes 85 ‘Federation’ in the air or G.O.M. Parkes on his high horse again 90

Vill

ILLUSTRATIONS 1X

Parkes’s first success: Barton from the Opposition agrees to support him 92 Parkes gets his way: moving the resolution for union at the

Federation Conference, Melbourne, 1890 95

The labour crisis 103 George Reid 106 ‘The Lion in the way of federation 100

Parkes being destroyed by the Frankenstein of his own creation 109

Barton as a bandit cloaking protection with federation 110 The Labor Party’s attempt to disrupt Barton’s Federation League 119

Corowa remembers its great moment 122

Sydney Punch depicts the degradation of parliament 125 One advantage to Reid of his embracing of federation 128

The federal child 130 The electoral battle of Parkes and Reid, 1895 133 Reid instructing Premier Nelson on the Brisbane River cruise 140

Federation asScott a Victorian 150 plot 145 Rose Maybanke Wolstenholme 151

David Syme controls the Convention election 143

Federation producing strange bedfellows in South Australia 153

The Convention in session in Melbourne 155 Paddle-steamer Bourke at Wilcannia on the Darling 164

Maritime Strike 166 Employers drive their own wool to Circular Quay during the

The Bulletin provides a coat of arms for the new nation 169 Two views of representation in the Federal Parliament 173

Reid killing federation 189 Federation as the enemy of democratic principles 190 Persuading democrats in Victoria that they could vote for the Bill 185

Barton sends Deakin code words for their telegrams 193 The Daily Telegraph presents Barton as a mugger 196 The Bulletin presents Barton as an avenging angel 197

The Queensland cabinet waited on by kanakas 206

The pre-condition of Queensland’s entry into federation 210

the government 212 Scandals over the Queensland National Bank severely damaged

The monster petition to the Queen from the Western Australian goldfields 216

Forrest, the wild man of the west, addresses the premiers 217

The menu at the 1891 Convention banquet 220

Chamberlain with the colonial premiers at the jubilee 226

Melbourne Punch gauges the interest in federation and cricket 230 Australia as a virginal young woman in white, Sydney, 1 January 1901 234

Boer War soldiers receive medals from the Duke of York 236

X ILLUSTRATIONS

The referendum in Western Australia: the appeal not to be left behind 240

War and blood as the unifying force of the British Empire 242 The invitation to the opening of the first Federal Parliament 245

Barton baptises the nation with blood 246 Fifty delegates at the Federal Convention, Adelaide, 1897 252

Adelaide, 1897 253 Civil society considers federation 254 Thirty-three press representatives at the Federal Convention,

Branches of the Federation League abided by the formal rules 258

How the federal capital could be carved out of Melbourne 263 The Daily Telegraph on the morning of the referendum 264

A record of the Tasmanian vote 266 A nationalist crusade: a torch-light procession at Summerhill 267 The federation flag about to be unveiled in the Sydney Town Hall 268

Deakin leading the circus of federal sentimentalists 270

Lyne undermining Barton with the new Governor-General 278

The landing pavilion built by Sir William Lyne 280 Barton defies the kanaka interest and cleans up Queensland 286

Australia as world leader in granting women’s suffrage 289

The first High Court as depicted by Low 292

The dove as symbol of the new nation 298 Parkes gets his reward 299 The Citizens’ or Commonwealth Arch 301 Imperial splendour: the Life-Guards 303

The royal relics of nation-making 305

Crowd swallowed by park: the inauguration 307

The press get the best view 308 Queensland Aborigines in Sydney for the inauguration 310

The memorial to Victorians who voted at the 1899 referendum 315

Tom Roberts at work on what he called ‘the Big Picture’ 318 A French architect's design for a Federation Monument 321 Federation means progress: two floats in Sydney’s 1951 jubilee procession 324

The medal issued to school children in the 1951 jubilee 325 The Polish community in the ‘pageant of progress, Adelaide 1951 327

The Federation pavilion as designed and as built 329

the federation pavilion 331

An unlikely federalist: the figure in Imants Tillers’ decoration of

8k Acknowledgments %

Archivists and librarians around the country have given me efficient and courteous service. I thank in particular the staff of the Mitchell and Dixson Libraries in Sydney, the La Trobe Library in Melbourne, and the Manuscripts Room in the National Library, Canberra. Bruce Davidson, the librarian of Parliament House, Melbourne, gave me access to the memorial to the Victorian voters in the federation referendum. Beryl Armstrong, the librarian at Australian Unity, which holds the records of the Australian Natives Association, was most welcoming and cooperative. When I was writing in Melbourne and needed information quickly from other cities, I received willing assistance from Peter Cochrane in Sydney, Mark Orford and Catherine Hirst in Canberra, Michael Connor in Hobart, and Alex McDermott in Adelaide. I have received advice and useful leads from my historian colleagues: Geoff Bolton, Graeme Davison, Ken Inglis, Bev Kingston, and John Williams. Allan Martin lent me a copy of his path-breaking MA thesis on George Reid and

the politics of New South Wales in the 1890s. George Winterton was my adviser on constitutional matters. Bob Birrell and Michael Roe read chapters on which I was keen to have their advice. Stuart Macintyre read it all and made numerous helpful suggestions.

xl

8 Introduction % It is sometimes forgotten that it is much easier to surrender than recall autonomous rights. The question for us now is whether we are prepared to allow any other Government than the one we are accustomed to, and can control, to interfere with our lives or interests. What is offered in exchange? Intercolonial free-trade? That may be obtained without federation. Security against invasion? A simple agreement would suffice to secure that ... Why Federate? by Democrat, Adelaide 1897!

Self-governing communities do not readily surrender their powers. The Australian federalists of the late nineteenth century were acutely aware that previous federations had been formed to meet an external threat. Sometimes they fantasised about how much easier their task would be if an enemy fleet appeared off Sydney Harbour or at Port Phillip Heads. The smart money said that until there was such a threat federation would never be accomplished. It took three attempts before the six self-governing colonies agreed to form a national government. In 1883 the Victorian Government launched a campaign for federation that produced only a very weak coordinating body, the Federal Council. New South Wales and South Australia did not join it. This was truly a Clayton’s union. None of its four members—Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania, and Western Australia—had a common border. In 1889 Sir Henry Parkes, the Premier of New South Wales, launched

a one-man campaign for federation. He was the grand old man of Australian politics, a survivor from the mid-century battles for selfgovernment and democracy. His campaign was initially remarkably suc-

cessful. Delegates appointed by the colonial parliaments attended a Convention in Sydney in 1891 and agreed on a constitution, which was drafted by Sir Samuel Griffith, the Premier of Queensland. But there was strong opposition to the constitution in Parkes’s own colony of New South Wales, and the scheme collapsed. 1

2 INTRODUCTION

A much broader federal movement appeared in 1893 proposing a novel procedure for nation-making. The people of the colonies, rather than the parliaments, would elect another convention, and the constitution it drew up would be put to the people at referendum for their acceptance or rejection. This unique mechanism was put in train in 1897. A new Convention met and, although it was meant to begin afresh, it kept Griffith’s draft and made modifications to it. This constitution was put to the people of the six colonies during 1898-1900 and eventually accepted by all. It was enacted by the British parliament in 1900 and came into force on 1 January 1901. The union was accomplished peacefully without external threat or internal coercion. Of course. After all, this is Australia. So because this is Australia, shouldn’t we understand federation as a natural process of evolution?

The colonies were founded separately, but from the 1880s intercolonial ties were strengthening. Big business was operating across the colonial borders. Working men moved from colony to colony depending on where the prospects for work were best. The railways were joined: Sydney—Melbourne in 1883; Melbourne—Adelaide in 1887; Sydney—Brisbane in 1889. Churches, trades unions, and professional bodies formed intercolonial associations. It is easy to think that federation was simply government catching up: a more unified society needed a national state. But these six separate governments were already operating on a national scale. They were running the intercolonial train service. Since the 1850s they

had run a national telegraph network and a national and international mail service. They had passed uniform legislation to keep out the Chinese. They combined to pay for the building of forts at strategic points on the coast. The gun batteries at Albany in Western Australia were constructed by the Victorian Government and manned at first by South Australian soldiers. The six governments standardised time across the continent into three zones in 1895. No progress had been made on a common tariff, but this too did not require federation. A customs union, the preferred option of business, would do the job. Of course there would be advantages in a national government. Things can always be done better. But self-governing communities will not yield up their powers merely for advantages. We have to find the force that was compelling them to do so.

9

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gk Destiny 28 Though Australians will federate in their own interests yet, from the point of view of world history, the chief importance of Federation will be in its being a necessary step in the progress of civilized man. William Gay to Alfred Deakin, 9 March 1895 Oh, fair Ideal, unto whom Through days of doubt and nights of gloom Brave hearts have clung, while lips of scorn Made mock of thee as but a dream J. Brunton Stephens, “The Dominion; 1883

God wanted Australia to be a nation. Among the thousands of federalists who believed this were the two men who worked hardest to achieve it. They received their due reward. Edmund Barton became the first prime minister of the new Commonwealth and Alfred Deakin the second. God and success: these may appear to make this an un-Australian story, but it became so in the end, for few Australians now know who Barton and Deakin were, and none believes God played any part in federation. Among historians it is a common view that the creation of the Commonwealth was not much more than a business transaction.! It is no surprise that Deakin believed he was doing God’s will in working for federation. To fathom the divine, to discover its purpose for the world

and his duty in it, were the preoccupations of his life.2 He discarded Christianity in his teens and turned to spiritualism and its seances. He saw through that too, but continued the struggle to reach the supernatural realm and receive guidance from it. As prime minister, he was still listening for voices, watching for signs, and pondering what fortune-tellers had told him. He wanted to be a poet, a prophet, a preacher, or a recluse, and half resented his political success for robbing him of his vocation. No matter what political office he held, he devoted hours of each week to his secret life of meditation and writing; he composed poems, reflections, prayers, and theo-

4

DESTINY 5

logical and philosophical treatises, all unseen by anyone, except the poems that he presented to his wife on her birthday and their wedding anniversary.

Until the moment he was nominated for a seat in the Victorian Parliament, Deakin had never thought of being a politician. He did not know the location of the electorate he was to contest and had never set foot inside it. But he could not help succeeding in politics. He was handsome, eloquent, personable, and quick-witted; he could read rapidly and remember every-

thing and do business quickly. He was a member of parliament at 22, a minister at 26, leader of the liberal party and deputy premier at 29. If God perversely wanted him in politics, there must be something God wanted him to do there. Deakin found his calling in federation. In his private writings, he marked the assembling of the conventions and the results of the referendums with prayer. For himself Deakin prayed that he might be obliterated, annihilated, humiliated, crucified—if that’s what his service required.’ In this he was to be disappointed; he was dogged by success. From 1891 Edmund Barton led the federation movement in New South

Wales. He and Deakin became friends through the bond of the federal cause. They were not alike. Deakin was a progressive liberal, but Barton was temperamentally a conservative. Deakin agonised over religion, while Barton remained a conventional, unenthusiastic Anglican. Deakin was a teetotaller and semi-recluse; Barton’s best hours were those spent drinking and conversing in his club. Deakin took no interest in sport; Barton has the

distinction of being the only prime minister to have been an umpire in first-class cricket. In his youth Barton had been a player, but he was soon much too portly for that. Deakin kept fit by skipping and bike-riding; he took his bike with him to the Adelaide Convention in 1897.

Barton had a fine presence, but he was not quite handsome. Deakin described him as possessing a fine head, good features, beautiful, glowing eyes, and then a falling away to a large jowl, which represented for Deakin some failing in character.* Barton did not overexert himself at politics or his business of law; he had the reputation of being lazy. The crises in his life arose from drinking too much alcohol and possessing too little cash. Yet he was transformed by the federal cause. He gave himself to it utterly, and in launching the campaign for a Yes vote at the 1898 referendum he declared ‘God means to give us this Federation.” What attracted God to Australian nationhood? He wanted Australia to put aside its divisions and be united because He was guiding humankind to a better future. For most people, God was still the all-powerful figure of Christian belief but now He was more benign following His commitment to the march of progress and the laws of social evolution. For Deakin and

6 CAUSE

—ie”dmlCc i i ‘i‘i‘“ i‘“‘i OT rC;?;DUlCUCUyYMUC

Edmund Barton and Alfred Deakin, probably taken when Barton was Prime Minister and Deakin his deputy.

others who were idealists in the German philosophical tradition, God was

not at all the figure of Christian belief. He was the Spirit or Force or Principle leading humankind to higher forms of life and deeper understanding. Evolutionary social thinking, with authority borrowed from Darwin’s biology, was strong among both orthodox and heterodox believers. God and evolution were an irresistible mix.

The Christian beliefs that nothing happened unless God willed it and nothing prospered without His blessing left their mark on the constitution. The churches bombarded the Constitutional Convention of 1897-98 with petitions requesting that God be acknowledged. More petitions with more signatures were received on this issue than any other. Federation occurred when the churches were at the peak of their influence, and the Protestant churches were looking to make Australia into a Christian Commonwealth. The Convention delegates would have preferred to stick to a strict sep-

aration between church and state, which was exactly what the Protestant churches were now contesting. No matter what their own views—and most were believers—the delegates knew that religion was always a hot potato. But on this occasion the usual source of contention did not exist. Catholics and Protestants were united in wanting God in the constitution. So rather than offend such a large constituency, the delegates made the constitution read that the people were ‘humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God’ when they decided to form the Commonwealth.°®

DESTINY 7

Nation-making had become a progressive cause well worthy of divine favour because in Europe it represented an escape from tyranny and foreign

domination. Liberals and democrats everywhere yearned for Hungary, Poland, and Italy to be free. Hungary and Poland produced martyrs and moments of hope, but they remained captive until the end of World War I. Italy’s liberation in the ten years after 1860 was the miraculous, inspiring success. Three powers had held her in thrall. Large parts of the north were

controlled by the Austrian empire; the south was ruled by a particularly cruel and vicious Bourbon king whose regime was described by Gladstone as ‘the negation of God erected into a system of government’; and the Pope, the declared enemy of liberalism and nationalism, was the temporal ruler of a large swathe of territory in the centre of the peninsula. The unification of Italy was achieved by the King of Piedmont in the north who employed, at arm's length, the free-wheeling soldier of fortune, Garibaldi. With his

band of red-shirts he conquered the whole of the south in a whirlwind campaign, sent the Bourbon King of Naples packing, handed over his conquest to his patron, and went into temporary retirement on his island in the Mediterranean. He wanted nothing for himself. Garibaldi was the model patriot of the age, admired all around the globe. In Melbourne money was raised by public subscription to present him with a ceremonial sword to mark his victory over the King of Naples. In Sydney on

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a coal i aoagaaege - SS , fe”Pe Oh) Chafo. ta a | The nation begins with prayer: the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney reads prayers in the pavilion, Centennial Park, Sydney, 1 January 1901.

8 CAUSE

his death in 1882 a crowd of 10,000 gathered in the Exhibition Building to mourn him. Both movements were organised by the local Italian community.’ When federation was achieved, Sydney’s Italian community contributed a float to the inaugural procession that featured a bust of Parkes surrounded by Italian soldiers, two of them dressed like Garibaldi’s red-shirts. The enthusiasm for Italian unification in Britain and Australia was partly because the most recalcitrant enemy of unification was the Pope. Protestants

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|

DESTINY 9

gained added satisfaction from hating the Pope when he placed himself so firmly against a progressive cause. Garibaldi was fiercely anti-clerical, and several times, with and without the support of his royal patron, he launched campaigns to free Rome from the Pope. He fought valiantly to defend the short-lived Roman republic proclaimed in 1848, the year of revolutions throughout Europe. He was defeated then by the Catholic powers of Austria and France, which came to the Pope's rescue. It was only in 1870, when France was preoccupied by its war with Prussia, that the King of Piedmont, now King of Italy, was finally able to take Rome. Garibaldi visited Australia briefly. Between revolutions and campaigns it was his habit to take ordinary work. After the collapse of the Roman republic, he passed through Australian waters as a ship’s captain but landed only

on a Bass Strait island where his ship took on water. He made more of an impact when he contributed to a debate in the New South Wales Parliament on state aid to church schools. His views were solicited by David Buchanan, a member opposed to aid to Catholic schools. He read to the parliament Garibaldi’s letter: “The principal obstacle to human progress is the priest ... I trust in God that you will not suffer the presence of this human reptile in your beautiful virgin country; and if anyone says there must be liberty to all, answer him that you will not give liberty to vipers, assassins and crocodiles, and the Romish priest is worse than all of these.® In Australia the liberal hope was that the new state schools would take children of all denominations and so put an end to old-world feuding. The refusal of the Catholic Church to support this project and its demand for state support for its own schools seemed to non-Catholics illiberal, unprogressive, and unpatriotic, the local equivalent of the Pope clinging to his Italian territories and imprisoning Italian patriots. Mazzini was the ideas man for Italian unification and the theoretician

who made nationalism into a worldwide progressive cause. He had a troubled relationship with Garibaldi. Mazzini wanted united Italy to be a republic created by popular risings of the people; Garibaldi, although he learnt his nationalism from Mazzini, was prepared to work for unity under the best prospect available, the King of Piedmont. Because he was always promoting risings and revolution, Mazzini could not safely live in Italy, and he spent most of his life in exile in London. He had his moment of glory on Italian soil as one of the rulers of the Roman republic. Mazzini reacted against the French Revolution’s stress on rights. He believed humankind would reach its best by accepting the bonds of living in associations, which were the God-given nations. God had allocated a

special mission to each nation; Germany’s was the development of thought; France’s was action; Italy’s was thought in unison with action. Once all the nations had been given the freedom to develop their mission,

10 CAUSE

they would then come together in a federation of nations, which would establish peace and carry humankind to a higher stage of development. Nationalism of this sort was not chauvinistic; every lover of mankind had an interest in the freedom and development of every nation. Garibaldi took this view and fought for France against Prussia in 1870. Deakin was a great admirer of Mazzini and defended him against the charges that he was an irreligious and irresponsible revolutionary promoting from his exile the overthrow of every form of government.’ As a young man Deakin distilled his thought into a catechism for use in the

Sunday School run by the Progressive Lyceum, the organisation of Melbourne spiritualists. Deakin was the Conductor who led the service; the children, divided into different circles, gave the responses:

CONDUCTOR: What does History disclose to us? AURORA CIRCLE: — Man’s trials

SUNBEAM CIRCLE: Man’s conquests MOUNTAIN CIRCLE: Man’s progression

ALL: The progress of civilisation CONDUCTOR: What are the ascending grades of organised life? AURORA CIRCLE: — The individual

SUNBEAM CIRCLE: The family MOuNTAIN CIRCLE: The nation

ALL: Nations are individuals in the family of Man. The questions then elicited the distinctive character of each nation. Mazzini had made Britain responsible for industry and colonies; Deakin, as was more common, made their contribution political freedom. CONDUCTOR: What will be the probable future of national existence?

ALL: Each nation will perfect itself harmoniously in its own sphere, until all are blended into a superb whole. CONDUCTOR: Does that perfection involve the loss of nationality?

ALL: Not in its true sense; they will be distinct in their offices, but united in their cooperation like the various limbs and organs of the body ConbuctTor: Is then Humanity in reality a Unity?

ALL: Yes, even as God is. Its many members mutually assist each other; they are governed by an intelligence and a sympathy, which the same in every race, blends the millions of mankind in one holy brotherhood, of aim and being.!°

DESTINY ll

Deakin was always the eclectic; these ideas remained part of his thinking— certainly the connection between nationality and social evolution and God as God of the nations—but he did not become a Mazzinian. His attachment to

entities that Mazzini did not recognise—the British race and the British Empire—was too strong. The Italian's true disciple in Australia was Andrew Inglis Clark, one of the two men who arrived at the 1891 Convention with a constitution already written.'! It was this constitution from which Samuel Griffith composed his draft. Had Clark drawn up a constitution according to

his heart’s desire, he would have provided for an independent republic because, true to Mazzini, he believed each nation had its character and mission and that Australia could not fully develop its potential while it was in any way subordinate. In a poem on a future Australian flag, which like all his other poems remained unpublished, he wrote: Australia, thou alone Our sovereign lord shall be No other land shall own or claim Thy children’s fealty.‘

Among the inner group of founding fathers he was the only republican.

ee lll lO | hCUCCCC ee Peers) l!lC( lL OO. Ul oe ae Ul a eC No tN

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an.) Lane See ee i a ee oF , _eeeee ee eeaialeamen es oD a hs a acsem aS Bi ha ate tai The Federation Conference, Melbourne, 1890. The best informed delegate was the smallest—Andrew Inglis Clark is at the left of the back row. Parkes is standing in the centre; Griffith is standing behind him to his right.

12 CAUSE

Andrew Clark was born in Hobart in 1848 when convicts were still being transported to Van Diemen’s Land. In his early twenties he gave up

both the Baptist religion of his mother and the career his father had marked out for him in his engineering workshop. He studied law and, like

Deakin, spent his life thinking through for himself the big questions of God, morality, and immortality, experimenting with spiritualism and theosophy on the way. He was philosophically an idealist, and his religion was the cause of humanity. Unlike Deakin, he was not a good performer before an audience. He was tiny, only five feet tall, a dwarf among the

giants of the Convention, and he did not speak well. When the 1891 Convention was settling the actual words of the constitution, he moved around the chamber collecting opinion from delegates and trying out options, and then reported the results to Griffith.'* He was at his best in a small circle, and his Hobart home became in effect the first university of Tasmania where young men met to hear and debate papers read by their

‘padre, as they called Clark. He and his circle were a new force in Tasmanian politics, introducing the liberal and democratic principles established much earlier in Australia (which being then solely a geographical entity did not embrace Tasmania). Clark served as Attorney-General

in reforming governments in the 1880s and 1890s, and introduced his modification of the proportional representation scheme developed by the Englishman Thomas Hare, the Hare—Clark electoral system.

From his adolescent years Clark had idolised the United States, the home of liberty, and Italy, which had been united by dashing and passionate patriots. Even in Hobart he found ways to put himself in touch with

these countries. When their warships called at the port, he befriended some of their officers. He kept in touch with Luigi Blotto of the Garibaldi by writing in Italian, a language he was still learning.'* Then just before the 1891 Convention assembled, he had the chance of a round-the-world trip, his first time away from Australia. As Attorney-General, Clark had to go to London to conduct a case in Her Majesty’s Privy Council, which enabled the Mazzinian republican to make a pilgrimage to Italy and the United States.

There are poems in honour of both countries in his papers. The poem on the United States is couched in general terms; the nation is hailed as the beacon of liberty: The light that leadeth onward The nations in their quest For an ampler, clearer vision Of freedom’s radiant face ...

DESTINY 123

The poem on Italy is a long, detailed account of his response to the places he visited. Clark was a most unusual Italian traveller. He did not want to see the ruins of ancient Rome, which was barbaric, or the treasures held by the Pope, who was an enemy of liberty, progress, and true religion. He wanted to stand where the heroes of unification had fought and bled. His poem conveys the thrill he still felt at such extravagant devotion and such willingness to die. One of the shrines he visited was the prison where the patriot Ruffini had died. Fearing he would be forced to betray his comrades, Ruffini had taken a nail from the cell wall and ‘pierced his throat and sealed his lips for evermore. Mazzini was for Clark still the Master; at his

tomb ‘every rod of earth is holy ground, and from it pilgrims bear away new faith for ‘the eternal war between the flesh and spirit, to obtain and hold possession of the world’. The poem ends with a salute to his heroes: Thus ever have the saviours of the world Behind the things that seemed to other men Eternal facts, seen truthful dreams That others would not see Until the facts in fragments at their feet Fell down, and in the face of all men stood Revealed the visions which the prophets saw And followed unto death.

This encapsulates the idealist philosophy. The material world—the world of fact—which seems so solid, actually takes its form from “dreams,

the Ideal as it is revealed to those who are attuned to its message, the prophets and the heroes. For Clark and for Deakin federation was a dream

that it was their business to make real. Deakin insisted that the cause would require men to go to the extremes that attracted Clark: ‘the devotion that will annihilate self ’ ‘suffering, valour and sacrifice’. The satisfactions the two men gained from their own work for federation were deeply hidden; they would never claim, even in the privacy of their notebooks and diaries, to be heroes. Deakin’s prayers insisted that he did not

want success for himself. The man who believed that he was playing the hero’s part and had no compunction in claiming it was Sir Henry Parkes.’© Clark and Deakin were unusual in having a fully worked philosophy to support federation, but federalists generally looked on it as a holy or noble

or sacred cause, which would carry the people to a higher form of life. When Barton was criticised over his tactics for advancing federation he refused to answer his critic in detail: ‘I decline’ he said, ‘to scuffle with you

14 CAUSE

on the steps of the Temple?!’ When federal parliamentarians first took

their place inside the temple, which was for the moment Parliament House, Melbourne, one member was immediately disappointed. Circulars had been issued extolling the virtues of candidates for the speakership of the House and presidency of the Senate. This crude canvassing was not the much-promised higher life.'® That rather metaphysical notion had meanings that were plain enough. Federation would supplant the mutual suspicion and hostility between the colonies with brotherhood, a widening of human sympathy, which was the hallmark of moral progress. The petty and provincial concerns of colonial politics—the struggle over roads and bridges; the endless deputations to ministers begging favours—would be replaced by a politics that dealt with a national life and the fate of a whole people. For the Tasmanian federal-

ists this was a particularly strong allure. Backward and most deeply marked by the convict stain, Tasmania would be cleansed and invigorated by its incorporation into a wider national life.!?

Federation itself—the means by which Australia was to become a nation—wore a progressive air. It represented so clearly a stage in social evolution from simple to complex forms. It was by federation that men envisaged that the British Empire, the Anglo-Saxon race, the Englishspeaking peoples, and finally the world would be united. Mazzini’s federation of nations was a widely held vision. Tennyson, the poet laureate, sang of ‘the parliament of man, the Federation of the world’.’° In Melbourne the eccentric bookseller E.W. Cole launched an active campaign in its support. The tokens he produced for advertising carried a variety of messages on the theme. He confronted Australians’ race prejudice and told them

Me ce. nSFFE Ee 2 ok RAS ieg ee neRN 2 ee Poe 2 aN _ PO ee ee tito ae a fx eee he = Jo a eee es i aCee Serer. eS OT FT eea.[fe eee 2

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Medallion carrying the message of world federation by the bookseller, E.W. Cole.

DESTINY 15

that black and white would have to be joined: “The people everywhere whom we do not know are as good as the people that we do know-?! In looking for the motives for Australian federation, historians usually are far too instrumental in their thinking. The Commonwealth Government was given power over various subjects, and the puzzle of why federation occurred is reduced to ranking these subjects in order of importance. Was federation chiefly to secure a customs union, or a united immigration

policy, or a national defence? To federalists none of these things was sacred; the whole forty-two powers given to the Commonwealth did not together make federation sacred. It was the making of the nation, apart from anything it might do, that was sacred. Of course various interests were to be advanced or, in some cases, threatened by federation, and the impact of federation would vary according to the form it took. That form became a matter of prolonged dispute, which sometimes appears fully to constitute the federal movement. But these interests did not create the desire to be a nation; they merely responded to it opportunistically. Because federation was a sacred cause, poetry was considered the most appropriate medium to express its rationale and purposes. It was poetry's role to deal with what was noble, profound, and elevating. There are innumerable federation poems by hundreds of different hands.** The nation was born in a festival of poetry. Historians have noticed the poems, but have not known quite what to do with them. Most of them are valueless as poetry. One leading scholar, introducing his bibliography of federation sources, declared: ‘It seemed kinder to spare us all any inventory of the

poems, “poems” and verse.’? He thus removed from consideration the best guide to the ideas and ideals that inspired the movement. Readers of this book are not to be spared, although a sample of the poems will be sufficient since their themes are very similar. The poets were great plagiarists; or to put it another way, they gave their variations on wellestablished themes.

The evidence offered by the poets that God or destiny intended Australia to be a nation was in the first place physical. They forgot Tasmania (which was inconsiderate since it was always keen about federation) and saw the nation-to-be as a single geographical unit, a whole continent with only natural boundaries. This was a special benediction. Other nations had artificial frontiers; Australia’s were the sea. A common word

for the sea in this role was ‘girdle’ and in its verbal form ‘girdled’ or ‘girdling’ or ‘girt’. ‘Advance Australia Fair, written by Peter McCormick in

1878 and now the national anthem, uses ‘girt’ and assumes the implications of the sea boundary do not have to be spelled out, recording merely: ‘our home is girt by sea.

16 CAUSE

The social uniformity within the continent also marked out Australia for nationhood. The people were of one blood or stock or race; they spoke the same language; they shared a glorious heritage (Britain’s), the most cel-

ebrated part of which was political freedom, which had been extended in Australia to all men so that the country was the freest on earth; the people

were also of the one religion (which ignored the Protestant/Catholic divide, although it was not regionally based as it was in the United Kingdom and in Canada). This unity was also put down to God or destiny, overlooking the British Government, their undoubted instrument, which

had claimed the whole continent and determined the composition of its population. The best federation poem, written very early (1877), does not argue that

Australia should be one, but assumes it and deals instead with the ideal becoming real. It is the most powerful expression of the idea that union was Australia’s destiny. The author was James Brunton Stephens, a headmaster at a Brisbane state school. He had taught in the bush, which he hated, and obtained a transfer to Brisbane with the approval of Samuel Griffith, then Minister of Education. He wanted to be close to a good library and other literary men. When Griffith became Premier in 1883 Stephens had a senior post in the Premier’s office, organised, it is said, by the Governor’s daughter, who admired his poetry.” His federation poem was called “The Dominion of Australia: A Forecast’:

She 1s not yet; but he whose ear , Thrills to that finer atmosphere Where footfalls of appointed things Reverberant of days to be, Are heard in forecast echoing Like wave-beats from a viewless sea, Hears in the voiceful tremors of the sky Auroral heralds whispering, ‘She is nigh.

The middle part of the poem develops an elaborate comparison between the silent force carrying Australia to its destiny and the underground rivers that some experts assumed must run under the parched lands of the outback and which one day might be released to make the desert bloom. So flows beneath our good and ill A viewless stream of Common Will, A gathering force, a present might, That from its silent depths of gloom

DESTINY 17

At Wisdom’s voice shall leap to light And hide our barren feuds in bloom, Till, all our sundering lines with love o’ergrown, Our bounds shall be the girdling seas alone.

When Parkes opened his campaign for federation in his famous speech

at Tenterfield, he quoted from this poem.” He did well to quote from Stephens’ poetry rather than his own. At the time he launched his campaign he was revising the proofs of his next book of poems, Fragmentary Thoughts. Unlike Clark and Deakin, he was quite willing for the public to see his efforts. In the preface to Fragmentary Thoughts, he said with his usual mock humility that he would be happy to be judged no great poet, but lest anyone dare to make that judgment he reproduced a letter from his friend Lord Tennyson that praised his efforts, how guardedly Parkes

probably did not notice. In Brisbane a few days before his Tenterfield speech, he had refused to disclose his federal plans to the Courier’s reporter but had been very willing to discuss poetry.~° He passed the proofs of his poems to the journalist for his opinion. Parkes declared Stephens to be the

best poet in Australia, a compliment Stephens returned in his review of Fragmentary Thoughts, which contrived to be favourable without pronouncing definitely on the quality of the poems.”’ In his new collection Parkes rehearsed a standard theme in “The Flag’: God girdled our majestic isle With seas far-reaching east and west, That man might live beneath this smile In peace and freedom ever blest.

He was a much better phrase-maker in his speeches. As federation became a firm proposal, it met opposition as well as the old indifference. The poets identified the forces that frustrated it as selfishness, greed, and faction, by which they meant a sinister political combination. Men were damaging the union already created by God. The symbols of this divisiveness were the customs houses on the colonial borders, which were hated not as a commercial inconvenience but as a moral outrage. So to reveal the Australian nation, men had to repent and return to God. In a Christian culture this was a powerful theme. It was best expressed by William Gay in his sonnet ‘Federation, written in the early 1890s: From all division let our land be free, For God has made her one: complete she lies

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58 CAUSE

became more reliant on Sydney’s market. If New South Wales went protectionist, Tasmania would be in dire straits. In 1885 Tasmania persuaded Victoria to sign a treaty. Tasmania would drop its duties on Victorian clothing, footwear, and harness in return for Victoria accepting its primary products. The flaw in this arrangement was that Victorians also grew hops, fruit, and oats and cut timber. They set up a clamour against the treaty. Its carriage through the parliament could not have been in better hands. The man to advocate the opening of a chink in Victoria's protective wall was Graham Berry, the old protectionist leader. He said Tasmania's production was tiny and would have little or no impact on the Victorian market; if there was an adverse effect it should be borne for the greater good of getting Victorian manufactures into other markets. To no avail. On this matter the government’s majority disappeared, and the treaty was dropped.?' Queensland with its tropical products looked a more likely partner for Victoria. Queensland sugar, in which much Victorian capital was invest-

ed, was facing competition from European beet sugar. In 1886 the Victorian Premier floated the idea that sugar might be let into Victoria free in return for Victorian products being accepted into Queensland. There was no point, he said, in asking Queensland to accept manufactured goods since it was moving to place a protective tariff on these, but it could take Victorian wheat, wine, and oats. The parliamentary representatives of the Darling Downs farmers moved quickly to scotch that

idea. They would not allow their constituents to be ruined by the Victorians in order to prop up the sugar planters. Even Queensland wine found a defender in the Queensland Parliament, although one member was prepared to say that the extinction of that industry would be no loss. Nothing more was heard of the treaty.”* There were numerous attempts at treaties. The only other one to move

beyond the preliminary stage was between New Zealand and South Australia in 1895. Its unravelling followed the usual pattern. The New Zealand parliament altered the treaty so that South Australian wine would pay half duty rather than none and refused any concession on fruit. The South Australian Parliament threw out the free admission of New Zealand oats and barley; the local growers of these products not being willing to sacrifice themselves to get South Australian wine into New Zealand. After the two parliaments had dealt so summarily with what their governments had negotiated, there was no treaty left.”° A step-by-step approach to a customs union would not work either. The colonies were not complementary in their production. They covered large areas and produced a similar variety of products. But more importantly,

BARRIERS 59

their governments were at the mercy of democratic parliaments. There was scarcely any grouping that could be called a party in the modern sense,

and the highly disciplined voting to which we are accustomed was unthinkable. Members then would not support governments that were attacking the livelihoods of their constituents. The governments that made the treaties were serving the general interest of their people, but when the

losers in these deals had such opportunity for disruption, governments could make no headway. Although the politicians had abandoned it, the Melbourne Chamber of

Commerce still pursued the customs union. If Australia had become a nation by first forming a customs union, the name of Benjamin Cowderoy

would be inscribed in our history books. He was the secretary of the Chamber of Commerce for twenty-five years and was responsible for the

customs-union campaign. He negotiated with chambers in the other colonies, organised conferences, and lobbied governments. Cowderoy was one of those stalwarts who come to embody the institution they serve; he was the Chamber of Commerce. When he retired as secretary in 1889 the council of the Chamber had his portrait painted 1n oils and presented it to the National Gallery. He stayed ~ . *s a member of the council since he was

a businessman in his own 11,:... an expert land-valuer and dealer. In 1893-94 he was the Chamber’s president.**

In 1883 Cowderoy produced a pamphlet detailing the unsuccessful efforts of the chambers of commerce and the colonial governments to achieve a customs union or n.ore limited commercial agreements.~° But this exercise did not dislodge from Cowderoy’s mind the notion that Australia would be united first by a customs union. Nothing would draw him away from this plan, not even his own demonstration of its failures. Nor did his own or his chamber’s failures in the next fifteen years have any effect. Defeated again and again, he would simply try harder. In the 1880s the Chamber of Commerce had a new ally, the Chamber of Manufactures.~° In the great battle over the tariff, merchants and manufacturers had been on opposite sides. But the Chamber of Commerce had had to reconcile itself to Victoria’s attachment to protection. It was still in principle in favour of free trade, and it campaigned for a customs union to

secure free trade within Australia. The Chamber of Manufactures also wanted intercolonial free trade and, in addition, protection against the world. That outcome of a customs union the Chamber of Commerce was prepared to wear.

The two chambers cooperated and in the late 1880s organised intercolonial conferences of chambers of commerce and manufactures that passed resolutions in favour of a customs union. These resolutions must

O60 CAUSE

oe . ge (2 Ff fC oe

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. ae .= .a.. .. JR . . . . pre A failed father of Australian union: the oil painting of Benjamin Cowderoy of the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce.

not be set down as resolutions in favour of federation. When these businessmen declared for a customs union, they meant a customs union.’ They were explicitly opposed to working for federation; that might be an ultimate goal, but a customs union must be established first.*° Benjamin

Cowderoy had an unhappy time as president of the Chamber of

Commerce because he failed to prevent a revival of interest in federation.°” The merchants and manufacturers were opposed to the federal move-

ment because they thought federation was too difficult. The politicians who talked of federation were wasting everyone’s time; they would not

BARRIERS 61

achieve it, and meanwhile the immediate benefits that could be secured by a customs union were being lost. These men were, as they boasted, practical men, and they wanted results. One can see why practical men were drawn to this approach. Everyone agreed that a customs union would be part of a federation. The poets quite

as much as the businessmen wanted to abolish the border customs houses. Since agreement on customs policy would have to be secured to achieve federation, why not reach agreement on that first? Reduce the size of the problem; don't write a constitution, negotiate a commercial treaty; move step by step. The merchants and manufacturers fantasised that they would themselves

reach agreement on a customs union and show the politicians the way.” This they were totally unable to do. Their resolutions in favour of a customs union papered over their differences and led to no detailed plan. When the manufacturers met in 1887, the Adelaide representatives dissented from the

Victorian plan for a customs union because they feared the Victorians.”! When the merchants met in 1888, the Sydney merchants registered their dis-

sent from its resolutions.°* They wanted no part of a customs union that would adopt a policy of protection against the world. That was not the wish of the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce, but Sydney knew that Melbourne merchants did not speak for Victoria. No progress was being made to resolve

this difficulty. The intercolonial conference of chambers of commerce in 1869, twenty years before, had ended in the same way: a resolution for a customs union from which Sydney delegates dissented.°” Dealing only in economic interest, the chambers could not reach agreement about the larger economic interest that union would serve. The prac-

tical men did not produce the customs union; it was the work of poets, politicians, and patriots, and came as a by-product of the creation of a nation, about which businessmen were not prone to dream.

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Parkes gets his way: moving the resolution for union at the Federation hisleft lefis Th Playford Conference, Melbourne, 1890; to his Thomas Play of South lian NNews, 1 March Australia, who took Parkes on and lost. (Illustrated Australian arc °

1890.)

96 MOVEMENT

Parkes’s own fervent wish was that the new nation be a union under the Crown. But by keeping the issue open, pressure might have been put on Britain to agree to his Empire Council scheme and the independent nationalists kept onside. Parkes in his initial letter to Gillies had wanted his convention to consider Australian federation ‘in relation to the other groups of

colonies and in relation to the central power of the empire’; that is, the scheme he had put to Salisbury. But the meeting place for the conference was loyalist Melbourne, and the Victorians did not want any debate. At the great public banquet that marked the opening of the Conference, the toast to a united Australasia was given by James Service, elder statesman of Victoria.*? Well informed, one might think, but he had not com-

Qo

prehended the Parkes strategy. He declared that the ‘lion in the way’ of federation was the fiscal problem. “The Conference must either kill the lion or the lion will kill it. When Parkes rose to reply he was greeted rapturously. This was a message

to the other delegates, some of whom were still very wary of Parkes—or were they too on their feet, waving handkerchiefs, cheering wildly? The man

who had been pilloried a few months before as charlatan and opportunist had made himself into the prophet of the nation. It is for this moment that the conclusion of Deakin’s unmatched pen portrait of Parkes is most apt: there was in him the substance of the man he dressed himself to appear.**

Deakin on Parkes

First and foremost of course in every eye was the commanding figure of Sir Henry Parkes, than whom no actor

ever more carefully posed for effect. His huge figure, slow step, deliberate glance and carefully brushed-out aureole of white hair combined to present the spectator with a pic-

turesque whole which was not detracted from on closer acquaintance. His voice, without being musical and in spite of a slight woolliness of tone and rather affected depth, was

pleasant and capable of reaching and controlling a large audience. His studied attitudes expressed either distinguished humility or imperious command. His manner was invariably dignified, his speech slow, and his pronunciation

precise, offending only by the occasional omission or misplacing of aspirates. He was fluent but not voluble,

PROPHET 97

his pauses skilfully varied, and in times of excitement he employed a whole gamut of tones ranging from a shrill falsetto to deep resounding chest notes. He had always in his mindss eye his own portrait as that of a great man, and constantly adjusted himself to it. A far-away expression of

the eyes, intended to convey his remoteness from the earthly sphere, and often associated with melancholy treble cadences of voice in which he implied a vast and inexpressible weariness, constituted his favourite and at last his almost invariable exterior. Movements, gestures, inflexions, attitudes harmonised, not simply because they were intentionally adopted but because there was in him the substance of the man he dressed himself to appear. The

real strength and depth of his capacity were such that it was always a problem with Parkes as with Disraeli where the actor posture-maker and would-be sphinx ended or where the actual man underneath began. He had both by nature and by art the manner of a sage and a statesman. His abilities were solid though general, as [were] his

reading and his knowledge. Fond of books, a steady reader and a constant writer, his education had been gained in the world and among men. A careful student of all with whom he came in contact, he was amiable, perSuasive and friendly by disposition. A life of struggle had found him self-reliant and left him hardened into resolute

masterfulness. Apart from his exterior, he was a born leader of men, dwelling by preference of natural choice upon the larger and bolder aspects of things. He had therefore the aptitude of statecraft of a high order, adding

to it the tastes of the man of letters, the lover of poetry and the arts, of rare editions and bric-a-brac, of autographs and memorials of the past. His nature, forged on the anvil of necessity, was egotistic though not stern and his career was that of the aspirant who looks to ends and is not too punctilious as to means. He was jealous of

c STF equals, bitter with rivals and remorseless with enemies ...

Deakin, The Federal Story, pp. 26-7.

98 MOVEMENT

In his speech Parkes praised the Queen and declared that there would be no separation from the empire. He spoke on this theme with a fulsomeness entirely absent from his previous federation speeches. To show that obstacles to federation could be overcome, he proclaimed most memorably: ‘The crimson thread of kinship runs through us all’? He then set out the tariff strategy, using the same word that had brought him so much trouble in his St Leonards speech: a ‘common tariff is a mere trifle compared with the great overshadowing question of a living and eternal national existence} but he made clear that he was still a fervent free-trader who would nevertheless trust the national parliament to settle the tariff problem. Now everyone who mattered understood the strategy. The biggest difficulty was not to be solved. Federation was to be reached not incrementally but by a leap of faith. It was to be achieved by trusting in the nation that it would create—or rather formalise, because, according to Parkes, the nation already existed. When the Conference began, some of the delegates objected to Parkes’s approach. Interests had to be considered and could not be swept aside by appeals to national sentiment. Victoria clearly had an interest in federation since she was looking for wider markets, but the South Australians were worried that their new industries were not ready to face Victorian competition, and the Western Australians could not afford to lose their customs revenue. Deakin conceded that Victoria had been and was self-interested.

What had to be done was to make other colonies see how their interests would be served by union. But fortunately interests were not the only force in play. National sentiment was strong and could be encouraged further,

and that would help them over their difficulties. Andrew Clark, the republican scholar from Tasmania, made the most profound contribution to the discussion. On the authority of the historian E. A. Freeman, he contested the dichotomy between sentimental and practical politics. The so-called practical politician often missed the heart of the matter because he was determined not to be sentimental. Freeman had written: ‘men’s feelings, their hopes, their memories, their loves, their hatreds, in a word, their sentiments, go for a great deal in human affairs. “With regard to Australian federation, said Clark, ‘the sentimental side will prove to be the practical, or the basis of the practical. This was the best defence of Parkes’s approach.

There was general agreement that the tariff ‘lion in the path’ was no longer so fearsome. A minority still doubted whether Parkes’s strategy would be acceptable, but thought federation was worth having even without a customs union. All were agreed that a constitution should now be drawn up, and since no one expected that the constitution would contain

PROPHET 99

a tariff, Parkes’s call to establish the nation first and settle the tariff afterwards was to be followed.

There was no dissent about the union being under the Crown. Only Parkes remained uncertain. The resolution for union that he moved included the words ‘under the Crown’ put there by Gillies and Deakin, but in a long speech he did not refer to them. Tom Playford, the bluff, earthy South Australian, noticed the omission and queried Parkes’s loyalty. He received a withering reply, but then Parkes, putting on his seer’s mantle, said that since quite trivial circumstances can sometimes cause great slippages, Australia might not always live under the English flag. He hastened

to say that he hoped this would not be so. He prayed it might not be so. But yet it might be otherwise. And maybe ‘as many very respectable and reputable citizens dream’, we might form a nation by ourselves.*” Since Parkes was such a consummate politician, one always does him the credit of looking for a political purpose in this constant desire to leave the matter open. He did still want something out of Salisbury. But could it

be that he simply could not help himself? One cannot know where the ambiguity of the politician ended and the ambiguity of the actual man underneath began. Playford made a more subtle attack on Parkes when he opined that the federal cause was handicapped because it was in the hands of leading statesmen whereas all great reforms sprang from the people. Parkes could not let that pass. In all he knew, in all that he had read, there was always ‘the people and their leaders’. Now for the first time he heard of “statesmen and their drivers. In fact there was not one movement for the benefit of mankind that did not at first arise ‘in some pregnant far-seeing human mind’.*® That was the justification for the role he took. He knew he was a great man; he knew also that lesser men always put barriers in the way of the farseeing. These were the certainties that powered his will. The Convention to write a constitution met in Sydney in March 1891 with Parkes in the chair. The meeting had to be held in Sydney because

Parkes had had a carriage accident and could scarcely walk. It was unthinkable that the Convention be held without him, so the seven delegates elected by the parliaments of each colony and the three delegates from New Zealand attended on him. The New Zealanders were present more as observers, although they took full part in the proceedings. For the

moment at least New Zealand was not interested in federating with Australia.

Parkes did not take a very active part in the proceedings. He exerted himself to secure the name ‘Commonwealth, and he gave the federal

100 MOVEMENT

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‘The Lion in the way of federation: a cartoon by Hop published on 22 February 1890. The Bulletin was still opposed to federation under the Crown.

movement one of its enduring slogans at the Convention banquet with his toast to “One People, One Destiny. In the space of five weeks, to their great surprise, the delegates were able to agree on a constitution. They debated general principles for two weeks and worked in committees for one; they gave Griffith and his assistants the

PROPHET 101

Easter break to finalise the draft, which they accepted with only minor alterations in the last week. In its fundamentals it is the constitution we have today: a House of Representatives representing the people (the men, that is, who possessed the vote in the colonies); a Senate in which the states had an equal number of representatives (to be elected by the state parlia-

ments); specified powers given to the federal parliament and the rest remaining with the states; and a High Court to interpret the constitution. All this was borrowed from the United States and readily agreed to. The problem with the copying was that the delegates had no use for the separate election of a president and an executive independent of the legislature. Most wanted to retain the British or Westminster system, to which they were accustomed, of ministers sitting in the parliament and being responsible to it. That system gave pre-eminence to the lower house of

parliament, to which ministers were responsible and where the purse strings were controlled. But the delegates from the small states did not want to see the Senate’s powers weakened to accommodate responsible government. The compromise on the Senate’s powers was that it could make suggestions on money Bills, not amendments. Griffith’s solution to the problem of marrying American federalism with responsible government was to leave options open to allow new practices to evolve. To the delegates who wanted British responsible govern-

ment enshrined in the constitution, he replied that the British constitutional tradition was evolutionary. Out of deference to him, the constitution said that ministers may sit in parliament, not that they had to. Parkes's strategy on the tariff was embodied in this constitution and in that of 1897-98. The constitution would establish the parliament, which would determine the tariff, at which point free trade between the colonies would commence. This was Parkes’s greatest contribution to federation: that he gave to all the federalists the strategy that brought success. He did play the hero's part. His historian detractors make their task easy by not discussing the strategy at all. It did not of course guarantee success. Both protectionists and free-traders would have to think that their policy had a chance of being adopted by the nation. The danger was that the confidence of one side might destroy that of the other. At the 1891 Convention, it was the Victorian protectionists, frequently thought of as the keenest nationalists, who were most reluctant to accept Parkes’s strategy of trusting the nation. Deakin made a strenuous effort to secure some guarantee that Victorian industries would not be harmed if the federal tariff should be lower than the Victorian. Of course this could not be granted.*

102 MOVEMENT

The 1891 Constitution was transmitted to the various parliaments with instructions to seek the approval of the people. How the people’s approval was to be gained was not specified: the options canvassed were a general election on the issue, a referendum, or the election of a special ratifying convention. Some members were worried that the parliaments were not to consider the constitution, but Griffith insisted they must not be given that chance or all their work, with its delicate compromises, would unravel. Between the holding of the Federal Conference in February 1890 and

the assembling of the Convention in March 1891, Australian society passed through a transforming experience. When Parkes had predicted that some crisis was at hand, he was thinking of relations with Britain. The crisis turned out to be a clash between capital and labour. In August 1890 a maritime strike snowballed into something like a general strike. Unions

had been growing rapidly in the 1880s, gaining easy victories in good times; as employers faced declining returns they wanted to call a halt to the

union advance. When the two sides clashed, the unions suffered a great loss. The workers, bitter in defeat, vented their anger on the governments

that had sided with the employers. Deakin in Melbourne, Parkes in Sydney, and Griffith in Brisbane had all organised special constables to cope with the crisis. While he was writing the constitution at the Sydney Convention in 1891, Griffith was directing troops by telegraph in an even more bitter shearers’ strike. These men were not unsympathetic to the workers, but they were determined to maintain law and order and to preserve the right of employers to hire non-union labour, which is what broke the strikes. The workers’ response was to create labour parties to ensure that in future they controlled governments. The crisis affected the fortunes of federation. The new labour parties were preoccupied with wages and working conditions and were suspicious of federation or outrightly hostile to it. Among the ranks of labour were

the radical republicans of the 1880s, who were opposed to any union under the Crown. On the other hand, the wider movement of independent nationalism lost its momentum. It had been buoyed by optimism about Australia’s prospects. A country with a depressed economy riven with class

warfare did not look so ready to claim its independence. Among the property-owning class there was a closing of ranks, most notable in Queensland where independent nationalism had been strongest. At the 1888 election Griffith and MclIlwraith were in dispute over relations with Britain; in 1890 they formed a grand coalition that crushed the unions and marginalised the Labor Party. MclIlwraith conceded that the naval subsidy

should be paid to Britain. Griffith decided that the needs of the sugar industry required that kanakas continue to be imported.

PROPHET 103

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THE LABOUR CRISIS. CAPITAL: ‘See here, my man, one of us must either go back,

or else lie down and let the other walk over him. Now, which of us shall it be? A cartoon from the Bulletin, 16 August 1890.

A union under the Crown would continue to have opponents but only from the margins of political life. Parkes no longer had to fear that he was

confronting a force that would make the existing empire connection untenable. The need for ambiguity had passed. After the 1890 Conference Parkes wrote to Salisbury a second time about his Empire Council scheme. After the 1891 Convention he wrote to the Queen to report that although

104. MOVEMENT

discussion of a constitution almost invited consideration of other forms of government, only one speech had been made that was inconsistent with the most ardent loyalty to Her Majesty’s throne and person.”

The exception came from Dibbs, the Leader of the Opposition to Parkes’s government in New South Wales. In a typical piece of mischiefmaking he said that limiting appeals to the Privy Council amounted to a declaration of independence, the course he favoured.”! The following year when he was in London he accepted a knighthood. On being chided for abandoning his republican principles, he explained that the Queen had offered the honour personally and he could not refuse a lady. C9

6 eR Lyimbo

2

Federation is as dead as Julius Caesar. Sir John Robertson, 1891

Parkes had conjured up a convention and got it to write a constitution. His federal plans were then wrecked by a backbencher 1n his own parliament and, what was worse, from his own party. George Reid had entered the New South Wales Assembly in 1880. He was briefly a successful minister of education, but then he held aloof from the battle of the ins and the outs. He devoted himself to his law practice and the good life. At 45 he was still unmarried. He was becoming grossly fat; he was always eating cakes and lollies, even during the sittings of parliament. He attended parliament irregularly, claiming that to listen to the drivel that passed tor debate would drive anyone mad. His own speeches were forceful, intelligent, and well considered. In the rough house of the Assembly he was one of the few who maintained gentlemanly standards. Outside, before his electors of East Sydney, he spoke in a colloquial, slangy style and was quite happy to be crude. ‘Who's the father, George?’ yelled an interjector as he rested his great

belly on the verandah rail of the pub from which he was addressing his constituents. ‘You must be) said Reid, ‘since it is all piss and wind. Deakin, who disliked him intensely, regarded him as the best platform speaker in Australia. Parkes scorned him as an uncultivated clown who did

not read books. Reid said he had told Parkes that he did not read in order

105

106 MOVEMENT

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to escape Parkes’s literary talk, which consisted of his boasting of the famous authors he knew. In 1891, when Reid decided to become more active in politics, he was not content with half measures. Just as the Constitutional Convention was assembling in Sydney he told a meeting of his constituents that he would

destroy Parkes. After Parkes’s Convention had finished its labours, he announced that he would destroy its constitution.’ He planned to destroy it in the parliament; he rejected absolutely the notion that parliament should merely pass on the constitution for the people’s verdict. Reid was, like Parkes, a free-trader. He had written a book of essays on

free trade that had been highly regarded in England. His objection to Parkes was that he was not free-trader enough. He still used the customs to raise too much revenue. Instead he should impose direct taxation on land and income and so be able to establish true free trade. If Parkes was not prepared to take the free-trade party in this direction, he would.

LIMBO 107

His chief objection to federation was that it would destroy free trade. Parkes was betraying the cause he claimed to support. With five of the six colonies protectionist, there could be only one outcome of his policy of trusting the nation. At the Convention New South Wales offered poetry and eloquence; the other colonies sent hard bargainers. While Parkes was proclaiming that he sought no guarantees for New South Wales, Deakin was

scheming to defend Victorian industries. For free-traders to trust the nation was like a teetotaller setting up house with five drunkards with the question of beverages to be decided later. Why did New South Wales have to yield to the protectionist colonies? She was young, beautiful, wealthy, and full of promise, whereas Parkes was treating her like a middle-aged, illtempered spinster whom he wanted to marry off at any price. How pleasing this sally must have been to old John Robertson, chief of the New South Wales patriots, who chaired the meeting where Reid made this attack. To the constitution itself Reid had abundant objections. He was the first of many who had an easy time attacking something so alien to the liberal and democratic tradition of a British community. The people had gained their liberty by fighting upper houses, and now a new, strong upper house was being created. And against all democratic principle, the tiny state of Western Australia would send to it the same number of representatives as New South Wales. Reid was not persuaded that the Senate’s being confined to suggestions on money Bills lessened its power. The two large states would provide the bulk of the revenue, and the four small states would decide how to spend it. Griffith made Reid’s task easier by refusing to insist on responsible government and giving in black-letter law so much power to the GovernorGeneral. Behind the entrenched upper house, Reid raised the spectre of a revitalised monarch. And worse. This all-powerful Governor-General was to receive his instructions from the Queen. The new nation would be ruled from Downing Street! This constitution was a travesty; not a charter for a free people but an attack on their liberties. Three weeks after Reid’s first attack, Barton spoke in defence of the constitution.“ He began the long grind of explaining the principles of a federal system—he would do this hundreds of times in the coming years. The Senate was not a conservative upper house of the sort liberals and democrats had fought against. It too represented the people but as they were grouped in states. The small states would never agree to federation unless they had equal representation in the Senate. The Convention unquestioningly recognised their equal sovereign status by allowing each to send the same number of delegates, and the constitution would have to follow the same principle for one of the houses.

108 MOVEMENT

As to the scare about the Governor-General, Reid was either a very poor lawyer or deliberately misleading. Everyone knew that the powers of the Governor-General would in practice be exercised on the advice of minis-

ters. Reid was raising the alarm because the conventions of responsible government were not written into the constitution, but they were not written into the colonial constitutions either. It was a very good speech. Parkes, who was on the platform, moved thanks for a magnificent address in support of the noblest of causes. Deakin and Griffith, reading the press reports, were delighted that Reid had been so completely refuted.’ The one weakness of the speech was that

it had to be delivered at Manly, well away from Sydney’s radicals and labourites, who would have shouted it down. They too were convinced that the federal constitution was an attack on the people’s liberties.

Reid replied to Barton where he had spoken before, in the heart of Sydney, and was cheered uproariously.* He retracted nothing, although he

was a little more cautious in dealing with constitutional questions. He insisted reasonably enough that the nation’s founding charter should embody the real principles of their government. It might be true that the colonial constitutions did not explicitly provide for responsible government, but they did not confer on governors the powers given to the Governor-General. Mostly he kept to the safer ground of speculating how their hard-nosed neighbours would use the constitution to plunder New South Wales. The real force of his speech was its immediate endorsement by Dibbs, the protectionist Leader of the Opposition. Speaking after Reid, he promised that as soon as parliament met he would combine with Reid to defeat Parkes and the constitution. Parkes’s cabinet now revolted against its leader. Ministers had borne Parkes launching the federation campaign without consulting them and in secret collusion with Barton, a leading figure of the Opposition; they had even accepted that neither they nor the parliament could amend the constitution on its way to the people's endorsement, but they were not going to let Parkes destroy them in the cause of federation. They insisted that he must yield in the face of this attack. The old magician was finally brought to earth.” When parliament met, Parkes tried to take the wind out of Reid’s sails by announcing that parliament could recommend changes to the constitution that would go to a second convention and then to the people. Reid still launched his attack. Parkes countered by announcing that federation would no longer be top priority in his program for the session. It was not enough. Reid and some other dissident free-traders crossed the floor to support a no-confidence motion moved by Dibbs. The government survived only on the casting vote of the speaker and went to the people.

Re a

LIMBO 109

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“"y a aoe ant? fix pet ze " re The electoral battle of Parkes and Reid. (Bulletin, 20 July 1895)

employed the repartee of a backstreet larrikin hold the premiership of New South Wales, the position he had held and in which he had done so much for the country? And as for entrusting Reid with the cause of Australian union, ‘we might as well expect a guinea pig to take a correct

134. MOVEMENT

survey of the stars.'® Parkes spent some time honing such insults and waiting for the moment to use them. One of his campaign jibes was that if Reid had laboured as hard in public life as he had it would be impossible for ‘his

small brain to be accompanied by such a huge belly.!”? But wit was a rarity in his abuse of Reid. There was mostly a tirade of wild insults and accusations climaxing with the demand that Reid be taken to a lunatic asylum.

In reply Reid was cool. There was no malice in him, and he never wanted politics to interfere with friendly personal relations. He criticised the old man more in sorrow than in anger and was prepared to praise him for his pluckiness. He had the best of it: “He is always saying that I am perfectly mad. In one sense he is right, because if he is sane, then mad I must be???

Reid had a great victory. He defeated Parkes in his own seat, and his free-trade followers made up a majority in the Assembly without Labor support. Before reintroducing his tax measures, he softened up the Legislative Council by getting the Governor to appoint nine new members, all supporters of his measures. However, this was far from a ‘swamping’: the majority was still against him. But they now did agree to pass the tax measures, although Reid had to lower the exemption levels. Then the new tariff went through. Only three items were to pay duty: alcohol, tobacco, and opium, the shortest tariff schedule in the world. It did not operate immediately. Some of the existing duties were to be phased out, and in the event, a few had to be retained. The Legislative Council rejected Reid’s measures to reform it, and having established free trade and direct taxation, he did not persist with them. Parkes would not give up. Reid had shown himself a much better freetrader than he had ever been and was at the peak of his power, but Parkes wanted to be back in parliament to take the leadership of federation from him. He also desperately needed the payment that membership of parlia-

ment would bring. He was selling his books and papers to survive. In February 1896 he ran at a by-election in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. There

were no large backers now. On the platform he appeared with his new wife, the third Lady Parkes, a woman of 23. He was 81. On the platform he

could not perform as he once did. At the 30-minute mark of his speech, he sat down for a five-minute rest. He gained only a handful of votes but, undeterred, said he would run again for the next vacancy. He died two months later. Reid visited him on his deathbed and they were reconciled. Parkes said with tears in his eyes, ‘I am glad I saw him; I have misunderstood him. On Reid’s initiative, parliament established a fund for the support of the third Lady Parkes and the children of the second Lady Parkes.

REVIVAL 135

Parkes had been a visionary about the nation, but his vanity would be satisfied by only the most obvious of rewards. He wanted to be first Prime Minister. He would not be the elder statesman, a role everyone was willing to grant him. He must remain at the centre of things to claim what was his due. As power slipped from him, there was no diminution of his will, which at the last became a crude, naked force butting against oblivion. He had to die before he could gain the name to which he was entitled, the

father of federation. ,

With free trade established, Reid at last introduced to parliament the

Bill to provide for the election of Convention delegates and the submission of the constitution to the people. The governments of Victoria, Tasmania, and South Australia, long waiting for this moment, followed suit. The government of Queensland was having second thoughts and delayed action. If Queensland were to attend, Nelson indicated that he wanted to renege on his agreement with the other premiers at Hobart and have parliament rather than the people elect the delegates. In a few months over the summer of 1895-96 the Bills enshrining the premiers agreement were passed in four colonies. The strength of opposi-

tion to the scheme was roughly in inverse proportion to the enthusiasm for federation: strongest in New South Wales; almost non-existent in Tasmania, which would agree to anything to achieve federation and intercolonial free trade. The objections were that parliaments were being bypassed, and the constitution drafted in 1891 by the best minds in the country was being abandoned in order to let the riff-raff thrown up by a popular election try their hand at constitution-making. A man would only have to stand up and say, ‘I am a candidate for the federal convention and I’m in favour of the minimum wage’ and he’d be elected.*! What helped to ensure that this would not happen was the single electorate. Attempts were

made in the three mainland colonies to replace it, urged chiefly so that country votes would not be swamped by urban. All these attempts were comfortably defeated.* Two conservative opponents of Reid’s scheme moved beyond particular objections to the broad ground that it was an attack on the British constitution. They were Sir John Downer, Leader of the Opposition in South Australia, and William McMillan, after Parkes the leading federalist free-trader in New South Wales. McMillan denied the relevance of the United States precedent. There in the 1770s and 1780s regular government had broken down and new institutions were necessary. In Australia responsible government had operated for forty years and was still in place, well tried in determining the will of the people. It was craven cowardice on the part of men who knew

the difficulties of government to hand over constitution-making to the

136 MOVEMENT

ill-informed and untrained. A single electorate was pure democracy, a defiance of the British practice that representatives should come from a particular place where representatives and electors were known to each other. To give power over constitution-making to the electors of the Assembly was to operate as if the Legislative Council did not exist. The British constitution required a review and a checking of the popular will.*’ Or, as Downer put it, the South Australian constitution divided the electorate in two; there was an Assembly electorate and a Council electorate. Reid’s plan upset the constitution by treating the electorate as one.”*

It was fitting that Reid gave the most fully developed defence of his scheme.*° He argued that the British constitution in practice had come to accept the sovereignty of the people, for any large issue in dispute was settled by appeal to the people at a general election, which was in effect a referendum. Once the people's will was clearly established, both houses must yield to their master. Admittedly at a general election other issues intruded, but this was a blemish on the system. Those who accepted an appeal to the people should welcome the referendum, which registered the people’s wish unambiguously. On the composition of a popularly elected convention, the conservatives, said Reid, were completely astray. Instead of being a body of ignoramuses, it would be far superior to existing parliaments, composed of

leading politicians with an enhanced authority. (Reid’s opponents entirely missed the conservative tendencies of the single electorate and of the referendum.) Although Reid criticised the federalists for being too emotional, he

could be as visionary as Deakin in speaking of his project: “Surely, he declared, ‘if ever there was a competent tribunal to frame a constitution for a nation, it should be a convention chosen by the future nation itself?7° Before Queen Victoria gave permission, Reid wanted to constitute the nation. Some of his critics said the body he created was illegal.*” It was established by statute, but none of the colonial parliaments had the power to legislate for a national body. Four colonies passed laws in similar terms,

establishing the Convention and determining its mode of working, and they hoped that that was good enough. The sober founding fathers might in truth have been law-breakers. What is notable about the passage of the enabling Bills through the par-

liaments is how little argument was needed to support this ultra-democratic procedure. This was partly because of the new force democracy had acquired in the 1880s and 1890s. Those who had difficulty arguing against it were now reduced to mocking it as a fad. Joseph Cook, a former Labor man and now minister in Reid’s government, used the language of the American

revolution to defend the convention: the people who created the parliaments have the right to withdraw so much of their powers as relate to

REVIVAL 137

federation and place them elsewhere.*® The other force that carried the enabling Bills through the parliaments was the desire for federation. If Reid, the Premier of that obdurate colony New South Wales and former opponent of federation, now wanted to proceed on this basis, he had to be humoured. So as these Bills embodying popular election, the referendum and one man, one vote passed through the Legislative Councils of Tasmania, Victoria, and South Australia, the members shut their eyes and thought of ... Australia. Downer, after declaring that the Bill turned the South Australian constitution upside down, voted for it to secure federation. Those who have seen federation as a reorganisation to defend capitalism against the rise of Labor have called the founding fathers ‘men of property.” These members of the legislative councils were the true men of property,

large landed and business property. They wanted federation, or more exactly intercolonial free trade, but they were not in charge of the process. To get what they wanted they had to sanction a democratic crusade.

A federal movement of this sort was deeply troubling to the government of Queensland. The ‘men of property’ here composed the government. The coalition of liberals and conservatives formed by Griffith and McIlwraith in 1890 survived throughout the decade long after its founders had left the scene. The Bulletin called it the Griffilwraith; the Brisbane Worker the Boodlewraith; historians the continuous ministry. Unlike the governments in the rest of eastern Australia, it was conservative, even reactionary. The government defended plural voting and wanted to extend the

principle further. The Premier, Hugh Nelson, a large squatter, thought every man who had saved a hundred pounds should have a second vote.” In Victoria, New South Wales, and South Australia liberal ministries operated with Labor support. In Queensland Labor was the opposition party, and the continuous ministry won elections by denouncing it as socialist and a threat to liberty and property. When Nelson indicated that he planned to have parliament rather than the people elect delegates to the Convention, the democrats in the south criticised him and insisted that they would treat only with elected delegates. Reid and Turner, the Victorian Premier, were ready to be accommo-

dating, but Kingston of South Australia insisted that direct democracy must be followed everywhere. He saw federation as the great democratic

opportunity. If the Commonwealth were established on a thoroughly democratic basis, then democracy must be accepted in the states. He would win his battle to reform the property-based upper house of South Australia. His plan required that the new constitution establish a federal franchise, rather than have federal representatives elected according to state rules. Then one man, one vote, or perhaps one adult, one vote, would

138 MOVEMENT

operate everywhere.”! If the Convention took up this plan, said Nelson, the Queensland delegates would come home.”? In June 1896 the government introduced a Bill for members of the Assembly to elect convention delegates, but Nelson was only going through the motions to keep faith with the other premiers. He made it quite clear that he would not be disappointed if the Bill were defeated.’? The Labor Party and a few Opposition liberals attempted to amend it to provide for direct election. They had no chance—and they complained that southern interference made their task more difficult. The occasion of the Bill’s defeat was the demand by the Legislative Council that its members should be voters as well. The government piously refused to agree to this and the Bill lapsed. Reid had delayed the calling of the new convention for a year in order to

carry free trade in his own colony; he had delayed another year for Queensland to make up its mind. During that time there was not much for the people to do. Federation leagues remained in existence and kept up their educational work, but the movement had no clear focus for its activities. Late in 1896 the Federation League at Bathurst demonstrated that the people did not merely have to await the chance to elect the official convention; it summoned its own People’s Federal Convention.** The solid

citizens of Bathurst supported the project, partly because Bathurst had aspirations to be the federal capital. They sent invitations across Australia to local government bodies, federation leagues, branches of the Australian Natives Association, trade unions, and democratic associations. Although

republicans and socialists were undoubtedly part of the people, the Bathurst organisation took care that its convention was not swamped by delegates with unhelpful views on federation.*° As it was, just enough of them turned up to give spice to the proceedings. The republican option was raised and overwhelmingly rejected.

Barton and the central Federation League in Sydney were nervous about this initiative. They did not like its claiming the word convention just before the official convention was to be summoned, but William Astley, its organising secretary, insisted on it. He was a radical journalist who wrote

stories for the Bulletin on the old convict system under the name Price Warung. Barton was also afraid that delegates might bind themselves to certain propositions, which would make it harder to reach agreement at the real convention.”*° By contrast, Reid, who was the sponsor of the official convention, was happy to support this one. His government provided free railway passes to delegates.

Most of the delegates came from New South Wales, but there were enough from the other colonies to give it a national character. They spent their week going through the 1891 draft clause by clause. They accepted

REVIVAL 139

most of it, which assisted in the process of its rehabilitation. The chief amendments they sought were a directly elected Senate and a different scheme for financial reimbursements to the states. The debates were widely reported and had the effect of showing that ordinary people could take an intelligent interest in a federal constitution. The convention was carried off with great éclat. Bathurst was almost in

festival mood with a round of entertainments and activities being provided for the delegates. Poets sent verses in honour of the convention; a

group of ladies from Bingara sent a banner; the Rev. Mr Gosman, a Congregationalist minister from Victoria, brought with him a federal hymn. The Convention adopted a specially prepared Latin motto: Foedere Pato Aequamur—By our union we are made equal to our destiny. The last day was given over to speeches from prominent people, among them Reid and Barton. Bathurst’s coup was to secure as key-note speaker Cardinal Moran, Catholic Archbishop of Sydney. He had only recently come out as a federalist, a development that the Sydney federalists had seized on and publicised widely.°’’ Hitherto it had only been Protestant clergy who were supporters. He gave a powerful address that breathed a national and ecumenical spirit. As leader of the Irish clan, he was very reassuring about the imperial connection, declaring that Australia must stay loyal to the mother country and that as a republic it could enjoy no more liberty than it did at present. He appeared to nurture no grievance

about the position of Catholics in colonial society. He praised its civil equality and opportunities open to all. To secure Australian union, he urged Catholics to work hand in hand with their Protestant fellow citizens. The audience loudly applauded, and the Anglican Dean of Bathurst pro-

posed a vote of thanks. Just for a moment it looked as if Catholics and Protestants could unite in the national cause.

Reid used the occasion to show that he had been right to trust the people: “This convention without the prestige of high government rank has created and will create infinitely more practical feeling in favour of union than its brilliant predecessor. He announced that he was going to Queensland to see if he could secure its participation in the convention. Barton was a little wary of this move, fearing that it might further delay the calling of the convention. The delegates welcomed it. They had sent a message to the Queensland Government urging it to attend. Reid very much wanted Queensland to be part of the federation. He saw it as similar to New South Wales, a large territory with ample resources, a

land of great potential, and if for the moment following a protectionist policy, more easily won from it than the other colonies.*® Furthermore, without Queensland, New South Wales would be located at the edge of the

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THE REFERENDUM AT WORK.

David Syme editor of ethe A trols election th Conv | in Vi > ge, CONtTOIS Convention in Victoria. s

144 MOVEMENT

its liberal ten and campaigned hard for them. Having taken the precaution of including in its list two conservatives who had the saving grace of being protectionists, the Age managed to have all ten of its candidates returned,” which was a terrifying demonstration of its power. David Syme, its editor, was only lukewarm at best about federation. He would not look favourably

on any constitutional settlement that did not guarantee protection as national policy and include his hobby-horse of the referendum as a means of solving deadlocks between the two Houses. In New South Wales the federal cause benefited enormously by being removed from normal politics. The local battle over free trade and protection, which had always disrupted federal deliberations, was more or less laid aside. This was Parkes’s truce, which he managed to impose to achieve the writing of a constitution in 1891 and which had eluded him thereafter. Six free-traders and four protectionists were elected. They were all federalists, although one, William Lyne, was opposed to equal representation in the Senate. He was a large-framed, dogged, country politician who had succeeded Dibbs as leader of the protectionist party. Voters in New South Wales had a real choice. The patriots, calling themselves prudent federalists, campaigned on a platform hostile to federation.

They would support cooperation between the colonies, but not much more than the existing arrangements under the Federal Council. The central body could have funds, but only by payments from the state governments; there was to be no central power to tax and no power to interfere with tariff policy. The patriot leader, Louis Heydon, a lawyer who had served in old John Robertson’s last ministry, opened his campaign with an illustrated lecture.

The illustrations were maps showing how under federation the colony would be carved up by its neighbours. Victoria was the chief of these brigands. It was turning on “federal gush’ and “brotherly love’ now that it was aware that it was falling behind the mother colony. Heydon was aware of the emotional appeal of federation. He answered it by boosting New South Wales as a future nation with Sydney as one of

the great cities of the world. If her sons wanted more than that, let them remember that they belonged to the British Empire, something much grander than an Australian federation, which on present plans would not include the whole continent.’ The Labor Party put forward candidates who supported a federation but one that would be run on unitary lines. Their allocation of powers between state and federal governments was of the usual sort. They were very definite that control of working conditions and public health must remain with the states. However, the central government was to consist of

CONVENTION 145

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War and blood as the unifying force of the British Empire: a commemorative federation plate showing (at top) Hopetoun, the first Governor-General, and Parkes; the Duke and Duchess of York (left and right); Australian and imperial troops (centre); and a message from Chamberlain (below).

EMPIRE 243

It took several days to settle the wording of the compromise. Deakin describes what happened when the delegates were left alone after the final meeting: ‘they seized each other’s hands and danced hand in hand in a ring

around the centre of the room. It was a rather childish victory dance. What were they celebrating? Not the victory of Australia over Britain. More the success of four Australians in getting something out of the mighty Chamberlain—and that was an Australian victory of sorts. The delegates went home to a heroes’ welcome, in which those who had publicly opposed them on Privy Council appeals joined.*’ Three weeks before he became Prime Minister Barton reflected on his English experiences when he lectured in Sydney on “The Unity of Empire’.*®

His thinking was very close to that of Chamberlain, from whom he quoted extensively. He bore no grudge against Chamberlain; on the contrary he praised him for dealing so fairly with the colonies and the delegates.*? With Chamberlain, he saw the federation of Australia as part of the larger project of empire unity. Unlike Chamberlain, he did not think unity required formal ties. The bonds were kinship, war, and the recognition of the principle of full self-government: what Barton had contended for in England. He confidently declared that equality of citizenship and respect within the empire had been established. The inferiority of colonial status had passed. It was more than that. He reached for a formulation that would completely allay colonial doubts: ‘In the United Kingdom from the highest statesman to the lowest citizen there was for Australians in the Commonwealth but one great voice of welcome and one great heart of love. This had been Barton’s first visit to England. Feted everywhere, he had no experience of the contempt and condescension met by Australian visitors, even of the highest standing, before and since. In London he corresponded with the editor of the Academy, who was running a competition to find a word to replace colonist, which Barton too was eager to bury. The winner was Englander.°° Colonist and Colonial, with their implication of inferiority, would survive for a long time yet.

Barton framed his lecture with the first and last verses of Kipling’s poem, ‘The Sea-Wife’: There dwells a wife by the Northern gate, And a wealthy wife is she; She breeds a breed of roving men And casts them over the sea.

After their roving, whether they have succeeded or failed, they come home again.

244 MOVEMENT

Home, they come home from all the ports, The living and the dead; The good wife's sons come home again For her blessing on their head!

The trajectory of the nation was no longer a line of escape from the old world but a circle returning to it. New returning to old was the theme of “The Young Queen, the poem Kipling wrote to honour the inauguration of the Commonwealth. It was published first in the London Times, where he placed poems about grand themes and great occasions in the life of the empire, looking for no payment and acting the part of the unofficial poet laureate. When copies of The Times reached Perth the poem was telegraphed to the east and run promi-

nently in the daily papers.°! The work was completely different from the local federation poems, which were heavy with piety and abstract nouns. Kipling’s work was a simple ballad with two characters: the Old Queen and the Young Queen, Britannia and Australia. The Young Queen comes to the court of the Old Queen to be crowned. What was arresting in this conception was that Australia is not Britannia’s daughter but her equal; she is a queen too. When she arrives in the Old Queen’s court, the Old Queen at first refuses to crown her: How can I crown thee further? I know whose standard flies Where the clean surge takes the Leeuwin or the coral barriers rise. Blood of our foes on thy bridle, and speech of our friends in thy mouth— How can I crown thee further, O Queen of the Sovereign South?

The Old Queen relents because the Young Queen urgently requests to be crowned by her hands. Kipling’s second innovation was the creation of a new female image of Australia, no longer a virginal girl but a young warrior sexually attractive in a different way. This is the first verse: Her hand was still on her sword-hilt, the spur was still on her heel, She had not cast her harness of grey, war-dinted steel; High on her red-splashed charger, beautiful, bold, and browned,

Bright-eyed out of the battle, the Young Queen rode to be crowned.

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iadeeA| Me Pa ii ig EhSa eG| Thirty-three press representatives at the Federal Convention, Adelaide, 1897.

to be mere messengers, carrying the constitution to the people.® He led the opposition that killed the Bill. A people can be involved in politics as no more than voting fodder, giving judgments when asked. Or they can be active citizens, informing themselves, debating issues, and creating public opinion. Between the failure of the 1891 constitution and the assembling of the Convention of 1897, two unofficial gatherings on federation were held: the Corowa conference of 1893 and the Bathurst Convention of 1896. From Corowa came the plan

for a new start, and the Bathurst Convention indicated the capacity of ordinary people outside formal and official channels to discuss a federal constitution. But citizens had been actively concerned with federation before 1893, which was meant to mark the origins of popular involvement in federation. The 1890 Conference on federation in Melbourne was preceded by an unofficial conference, which debated the same issues in the same city, organised by the Australian Natives Association and attended by delegates from all over the country. Over a long period before 1890 the Natives Association had done much to place and keep federation on the political agenda. In Sydney in 1889 it organised the Town Hall meeting

that brought Parkes and Barton together to outline the new strategy to achieve federation.” The Natives were one of many voluntary associations—the Mechanics Institutes, the Schools of Arts, and the literary and debating societies—that

254 MOVEMENT

were concerned with adult education, public speaking, and self-help. When Parkes or Barton wanted publicity for a speech or debates on federation, they arranged for copies to go to every school of arts.!” These bodies heard lectures and conducted their own debates on federation.'' In 1889 before

Parkes made his move, the Hobart Debating Society was considering whether imperial federation or independence was better for Australia. In June 1891, an intercolonial debating competition took the constitution

written by the first convention as one of its subjects. Before the 1898 referendum the Bathurst School of Arts, recognising that federation was the

‘most momentous issue ever placed before the people, resolved to give both sides free use of their hall except for the cost of gas lighting and the door-keeper.!? In Adelaide the literary and debating societies sent delegates to a model

parliament, which met weekly and mimicked the real parliament in the issues debated and in its procedure. There was a ministry, an opposition leader, backbenchers, and on special occasions a Governor, who might be a real politician, often a former member. In the 1880s and 1890s no subject received more attention than federation. The model parliament deb-

By Invitation of Crow’s Nest Literary and Debating Society,

J. F. Cullen WILL GIVE AN ADDRESS ON

AT

HOOPER’S HALL, Crow’s Nest. WEDNESDAY KVENING, MAY JJ,

Chair to be taken at 8 o'clock by the President.

ADVANCE AUSTRALIA! Civil society considers federation.

WAYS AND MEANS 255

ated every stage of its progress. In 1885 it was considering whether the colony should join the Federal Council and in 1897 the merits of the new Commonwealth Bill.'?

During the campaign for the election of delegates to the 1897 Convention, a young men’s church group at Redfern in Sydney organised a conference to discuss federal issues. Young men under 30 were invited from other churches, debating clubs, and friendly societies. More than two hundred attended. They threw out a chairman who had been chosen for them because he was older than 30 and installed Robert Garran, the young

lawyer and stalwart of the Federation League. Over three nights they debated the principles of a federal constitution, and Reid and Barton made guest appearances.“ This was an impressive involvement of civil society in the great ques-

tion, but the young intellectuals of the federal movement wanted something more: a public debate on federalism as sophisticated as had occurred

in the United States. They had in mind the Federalist Papers produced during America’s constitution-making in which three of the founding fathers gave a profound philosophical defence of the new constitution to promote its acceptance in the state of New York. In 1890 Bernhard Wise, educated at Oxford and well read in political philosophy, proposed to launch an Australian Federalist with the support of the Natives Association. He wanted a forum in which the questions involved in

federation could be explored in greater depth than in the newspapers.” Nothing came of this plan. In 1894 the young lawyers in Sydney’s Federation

League did launch such a journal, a monthly magazine called The Commonwealth. At first it maintained a high quality and took a general interest in Australian culture as well as federation. It reviewed Seven Little Australians and carried an article by Arthur Streeton on Australian art.'° On federation Garran contributed a learned piece on the position of the state governors in an Australian union and debated with Andrew Clark whether federal principles allowed for the setting of a national franchise.!’ But sales were poor and quality declined. It lasted only ten months, complaining that too many young men were more interested in sport than public affairs and that rich men, unlike their counterparts in the United States, were unwilling to support patriotic causes like The Commonwealth.'®

Australia did not have much need of a Federalist. The fundamental thinking about federalism had already been done by the Americans. Australia's constitutional debate was more concerned with marrying different elements taken from elsewhere: federalism from the United States, respon-

sible government from Westminster, the joint sitting from Norway, the referendum from Switzerland. The typical federation publication was

256 MOVEMENT

a guide to the federal constitutions of the world. There were difficult matters to be determined, more of detail than principle, and the daily press did carry quite long and learned articles on these questions. The monthly

journal, Review of Reviews, was strongly federalist and regularly published articles on the prospects and progress of the movement. The greater need was the education of ordinary citizens in the operations of a federal constitution. In Victoria in 1895 the poet William Gay attempted to raise the level of debate by producing a book of essays by leading federalists. He attracted a

very distinguished stable of contributors, but his book did not sell well. Instead of giving him some income, he had to sell ‘the last things I had left

to sell—my books’ to pay the printer.'? The collection is notable for a despairing piece by Deakin on the people’s lack of interest in federation. The movement was then at a low point. Reid had obtained the agreement of the premiers to the Quick plan, but nothing was being done while Reid pressed on with his domestic program. All Deakin could hope for was that the devoted federalists would remain in the field ready to take advantage of opportunities as they eventuated. He thought it would require a very favourable conjunction of the planets to achieve federation. Gay’s own contribution was a gentle riposte to Deakin’s from the idealist perspective, which they shared. The people’s indifference should not surprise or dishearten. “Every reform first appears as an idea in the mind of individuals ... Progress is the result of a gradual communication to the many of the ideals of the few. And this is not the arbitrary imposition of the will of the few on the many but a working out of Reason, which is the same in all and is gradually shaping human affairs to its own form.””

The federalists generally were insisting that once the people were involved in federation, the cause would be won. Here from the idealists was a more realistic account of ‘the people. Mostly they were not interested in or enthusiastic about federation. The informed and committed citizens were a thin layer on a mass of ignorance and indifference. The editor of The Commonwealth also acknowledged the lack of enthusiasm but was more hopeful: there was a deeply rooted national sentiment in favour of union, and ‘if the people do not clamour, they are none the less ready, and will welcome federation when it comes’.”! Part of the case for a popularly elected convention and the referendum did acknowledge the widespread lack of interest. The people would become enthused, it was said, as they were given the opportunity to be involved. The opponents of the plan to involve the people argued that the people were too ignorant for constitution-making, but mostly they were concerned that the people would elect inappropriate delegates to the Convention.

WAYS AND MEANS. 257

As it turned out, the Convention did not introduce a new element into public life. Reid was confident that leading politicians would be elected, and he was proved right. The claim that the people were to be involved had given the federal movement a fresh start and a democratic air, but the politicians were still in charge. After the Convention had concluded its labours, a real change did come. The people were asked to pass judgment on a constitution of 128 clauses. This was truly testing their political capacity. Deakin was aware of how great this challenge was because he had read in Bryce that the

American constitution would not have been carried had it been put directly to the people.*? The editor of Review of Reviews wondered whether it might not have been better to ask the people an in-principle question first and then come to the detail.” The Commonwealth had earlier warned that in Switzerland the referendum was a ‘deadly engine’: the slightest blemish in a proposal was used as an excuse to demolish the whole.*4 This unprecedented experiment in direct democracy has fortunately left behind a unique collection of records. Edward Dowling, the secretary of the Central Federation League in Sydney, kept everything. The Dowling Papers in the National Library hold the letters sent to his office from more than a hundred branches of the League in New South Wales. They report on the progress of the Yes campaign in their area and detail the assistance they need. For the second referendum of 1899 there are complete records of who gave money to the Yes campaign and how it was spent. These documents are our Federalist Papers. They are highly revealing about what was distinctive in our

constitution-making, which was not profound thought on the nature of federalism but the direct approval of the constitution by the people. The issues explored here are not whether a strong national goverment is a threat to liberty, but whether hotel balconies are better for meetings than halls; not whether a republic can operate over a large area, but how to operate on the minds of ordinary people in a referendum campaign. In every part of New South Wales the little knot of people who constituted themselves as a local federation league confronted plenty of apathy

and ignorance. They tried to convert No supporters, but they were preoccupied as much with would-be Yes supporters who had to be prodded into voting. Voting was then voluntary. Enrolment had been voluntary as well, but since 1893 the police had been made responsible for putting people’s names on the roll. The ‘electoral right, which the police issued, had to be taken by the voter to the poll. If you moved districts or lost your right, you had to secure a new one. Making sure voters had their ‘rights’ was part of the business of the federation branch. The Junee branch was pleased to discover that the drovers were not only keen on federation but also carried their ‘rights’ with them.”

258 MOVEMENT

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vo WwSDONED ANDONED ANS. ALUE D wn rT)7 ease ne a0 edb coLION / OF. ND My AH pos0:Nae bee, Apri Sa ’ Pili ane cainy A UT townNA EVERY WAGE Sapor areas, aieh

. Senate rin ‘STRAT ee MORE wanes luditent be at om toe tbe. rue. tro lj “ee Nhe EVheeAAN Sth2DU CUS’ ‘lea pou ween |tot t ae Treeen PROH ™ Ip r.a8YI sHovu TONMS aolf wme lines rect r 7 aweek Al “EMO ULD Airawot nd ha fatreet th t- tarai forsatan ainly my CAN {BIT . Y BE CRA asl VOT UTIE ty ect Me from matty, “Io inere i tow: sate aeety“.URN Al ION CLE TS gE"I HOU! S. hi NO" vonethle aa he aca hart any VA NIN EVE “VER Bi ba nein lonede tortrent ss wearely and toe Ne . ON, W NKR HY M NOFQ _ DVO “om fae ; Ir amte no te peep able one , ines LB °PL; sANnHO N( vat giin Itane ¢win of t the anasul? tain bsbe NRHAL OW TEon ONnd ment n tay tntimentat re % noac 1G ).° 3 ed a he aoef ebtectt td on bee laht CITE. ¥V LOY ne uTS Fling worker, ny orn oe silos oo er hod Th Case VE .YG ESHIS 7 S] ybubot’ . eythar bured Ycha (ro: of bretNour Ul A the ve ator Is

mre ‘ . sone ° , ., M c t } ,

‘ t(td ta 0he nik ae IOU4ma ite iar UonUN \ Rto tea"t

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e 194 ED N( ra pa cen an Wo nt ailyDE , It EQ cane enone MEIE EB" se ook theve tne comtersa fs STE ran tal ora aw tril tin we elNT Y W LED. *iD SEN id inpilin sit, Mimith wig tna ur Vete Con ouble hus LAY VILE E NO rea a:(as No" for ae the .° trvaon “ent real! €er ‘--Ti dice ne the that letur vent erot lo teat aBB Bb ME A {ion pot lan ton eon aph NAUI sewetaen AXD NT. .to wottan ne emt x1 O tfth A sree 8 ANL “ve ayee ae marke m oe patatly n-Y D h Fade Wervh all log on nave bear totids ° 2 n se gem . : t . tt . eRE A IL, AN UNT ee Kner eine ~e the a a ery tt morNi ND CON ING, bn tore they vvased wetion MPI ote ease: aaa ur the, a we ntendet Nis rheless n ofny ta) bheavy n0INU e8Toten f Ct tte (wa 18: ed aw aall fh utll th .it “7% war at bis, ‘6. unites 19; na wee eINI OW. |Hu gir the egal ae ).. ref _:nd Tabo ,imtes ‘>heard tled, evo neat e. re rier atla tea | vit: uach tating Pry AOE dom REME . ra pantuet th .ot rine . we aREN he0TEM REE o me ; a Daraein BoaRw " vas{ Tate vowfive aw

hit

WAYS AND MEANS 265

had two forces working for it: the economic benefit that would flow from intercolonial free trade, and national sentiment, both of which could sway

voters without their knowing the details of the constitution. Yes cam-

paigners interwove these economic and nationalist appeals in their speeches, although usually not as crudely as the Tasmanian campaigner who is reputed to have said: Gentlemen, if you vote for the Bill you will found a great and glorious nation under the bright Southern Cross, and meat will be cheaper; and you will live to see the Australian race dominate the Southern seas, and you will have a market for both potatoes and apples; and your sons shall reap the grand heritage of nationhood, and if Sir William Lyne does come back to power in Sydney he can never do you one pennyworth of harm.”

The economic interpretation of federation claims that people voted at the referendum according to whether the economy of their district was likely to gain or lose under intercolonial free trade.’ For instance, border

districts in New South Wales voted Yes to improve their access to Melbourne, Adelaide, and Brisbane, which were closer to them than Sydney, whereas manufacturing districts in Adelaide voted No for fear of

competition from Melbourne factories. This factor was clearly a very strong influence—it has been used earlier in this book to explain responses to federation—but it does not fully explain the vote. What is striking in

the four south-eastern colonies is that although many areas voted very strongly Yes, the No vote was never overwhelming. There were 265 elec-

torates in these four colonies. In 1898 in 105 of them the Yes vote exceeded 75 per cent. In only one electorate did the No vote exceed 75 per cent—and then only narrowly: in the Hawkesbury electorate in New South Wales 76 per cent voted No.** This voting pattern suggests that there was a solid base for the Yes vote that could be swollen when there was a clear economic gain from federation, and which could be cut back when danger threatened, but not so that it became insignificant. No Victorian town was more threatened by federation than Maffra, the centre of the beet-sugar industry, which would disappear if sugar from New South Wales and Queensland had free access to the

Victorian market. Maffra was much less enthusiastic for federation than Victoria generally, but still in 1898 it recorded a Yes vote—78 votes to 77.°° Yes gained its base vote because federation itself was generally seen as a good thing, even if the details of the constitution were in dispute. The good might be the making of a nation and a central government or the economic good of a colony. In Tasmania, Victoria, and South Australia there was a broad consensus that intercolonial free trade would bring great benefits.

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national would in my.”° As the campai ieeefall ch Campalg , which itwits 1 veut npcent: ; itarms identified

aning me nati ore heavi nalist ral rae t ederat Raver ! rand

sentiment. Its meeti roceeded the Yes 8 7 {more heavily on

sentiment veetings beca 7 s side reliedNoe m; nd "banners and rallies with singing of f ; nd badges m ne Patriotic a stop sbating debati ration songs. In the HobFederati n spouting the M obart ry poet and tthe th «aces y Me onsffecte the eague ting the of federat dec ecided to «

at orci eration Le: . Melbourne a f n the choi bands and on TaIn la a federal nd eration the tead. iJ

e ofchoir Barton’s final ormed to perfor The piec was form poctry read , centre

eral flag m yeney | nfurl rsement of thethe Bi staid ues , .

ing of the fed rally in a packed Syd at meetings. The c ofthe‘rst x campaign made bymeet the adies ladi own th “ana of the Hall federalwas movem gave a cautious endo cring George Turner ‘Premier oifi ee ) based of Victori ased onierTreasury y figures. At hissfifinal

ae |

268 MOVEMENT

ONG) cet ee ge aN ee ee ace

8 ee ees So oe SS //) ee Pun bed

on CB aQ Me La| Wa aS YW (ff Vee Be eg NY

| rn ee ee ee ee AL OH © CT oS See Barecg)fm oy Rncece ce neeee NeOB ae imea enGM MinitPA YF Prey ar

aN ra Ae TTL aaehliaalia Mlb LLCS fi ee we SC ea: |

aR re 0aie ee ee ee coe eS ig BT BTEC ES ee aa“ech ar PASS NTS ke ati Ba RARE Sg el at gear ie BIRD Oi JN oe a eas Gal OOD coat a8 +) Lg

Ge”. eejee Yee ae ee oS QRS A ee So aCHE eBre

- < ray ped 38 ae oe he ‘sy wai cS aaa 2h od, ae Sa Sy eee aes “a a eee
xf fF : ff § «ee a oe eee ee i T_

The standard themes of federation poetry were now being rendered as campaign songs. Here are the four verses of ‘United We Will Be’ as sung by

Fanny Lyndhurst to wild enthusiasm in the town halls of Melbourne and its suburbs:

Bb) . °

We're a land that claims no blood-stained roll of war on land and sea, But its name shines fair on History’s scroll as the Home of the Frank and Free! Its sons have proved, through fire and flood, Brave, Steadfast, Staunch and True;

e e e ° >)

WAYS AND MEANS 269

Right worthy they of their British blood and the Land of the Kangaroo. We’ve a land that laughs in sunshine strong, and ripples with harvest corn That has never felt a tyrant’s thong, nor suffered a despot’s scorn! We hold our own! We rule our own! shoulder to shoulder stand For Right and Might, by Britain’s Throne, and the dear old Motherland! We’ve a land that gleams with treasures vast of gold and silver store; But we proudly deem our wealth 1s cast in our sons and daughters more. But though our Austral Land 1s one, and one our tongue and lore, We’re barred apart, though one in heart, by the curse of the Customs’ door.

Say! shall Australians stand apart beneath the Austral Cross And let dividing rancours start the feuds of Strife and Loss? It cannot be! it shall not be! divided we

must fall! United shall Australia be, For Strength, and Peace, and all!

The No campaign mocked these displays and issued solemn warnings against allowing sentiment to override reason. The Melbourne Labor paper, the Tocsin, edited by Bernard O’Dowd, made a sustained attack on sentiment.’ It described the Australian Natives as empty-headed clowns ready to saddle Australia with an undemocratic constitution so long as they obtained some sort of federation. Knowing the power of the word federation, O'Dowd rendered it ‘fetteration. He published anti-sentimental verse: They daze us with ‘Our Destiny, With blare of ‘War’ and ‘Fame’: To part us, shriek out ‘Unity’ And drug us with a Name.

270 MOVEMENT

= ee Gee ee ee mn " My BE AR? a a 4 i + (FEDERATION® | cn an \. Kote) Ba

Be A ead Loe Been PG aN wort Tn

ot 4 OPEN BIN © YE Yea § ho moa

4 So Ne. Swe EC: di, 9 4

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eenos Se%Pas Og ROpier A TL Sos Ze tems i OY ONS Lo aieeO/4 a9 ML [AS Qi MG ak Ppl’ ie vir A TA ee |aaesaeeef ~¥* ie y

OPI TREN FE ReeN CS Saint ctBN ee NN CeeShaeMO a Caer ty Wh LAY Rhee ~S - el i

| SY pe CK EY FN Oe Lo GE yee yOa . WN ye: we, WON My ESb ¥UN S*/

Py YY Uf) Ae TT. .. Whe Y)

We / - ,' ™ Seyay\ :SL / Wel yj, BZ io i (| i ty, Sesh ae eS 1z|uel yyy >Hot . Oo hse “Me, iAN onl VT “Sy y x2 x~~>,Ey oe fj ff ZW \ f 2 QUEENSLAND mee wer \ \ | | | Cy) ‘t \ shh aa Wg ti if | \ 4» WS BANE ie | | Sty EOE Z eya ALON | Liabe4ehTF"MYA YJ \re PARLIAMENT (re AE ): j ea NU nl i \NE COMMONWEALTH Y . . ie ih

| | ps : iy VE |

i At fF “(i)% vA : | | g Yj YY i; Vz: ae. KANAKA INTEREST.

yy SOS CO) Vi N fant, yy ' re

nnn a, y ~

—Y,Qe. wT Wie AE! SH oS GR-R-R-RY Yyreget PO ne Wy, YiWe : ZB Pe Y YY Yj UY, Me tlif,| % eS

EE ft FEL -, wt WZ

f LYS Jb iy ‘

Barton defies the kanaka interest and cleans up PpQueensland. (Bulletin, 19 October 1901)

BEGINNING 287

tion!—but the majority of the state’s federal representatives supported the policy. Labor had done very well in Queensland’s first federal elections. Black labour had been an issue in Queensland politics for twenty years. Without federation the forces against it in Queensland would probably have prevailed, but only after a long struggle. The anger at the Commonwealth’s decision shows that for all the recognition among the planters that the old system would eventually have to go, they did not want to yield when it came to the point. But they had no chance of countering the new instrument for the voice of Australia, the Commonwealth, which ensured a quick and decisive end to an economic and social system that flouted Australian ideals. The Commonwealth was closely involved in the restructuring of the sugar industry. It kept out foreign competition by a tariff. It encouraged

the transition to white labour by imposing an excise on locally grown sugar. The excise was to be remitted on sugar produced by white labour. Barton thought the use of the excise power for this purpose was unconstitutional. In 1903 the scheme was changed to the payment of a bounty to white-grown sugar, and from 1905 the bounty went only to those farmers

who paid the going rate of wages, a matter in which a Commonwealth minister had to interest himself. When some of the kanakas protested at their deportation, the government allowed those who had strong attachments to Australia to remain, but they were no longer permitted to work in the sugar industry. A harmonious Australia was also the aim of the Commonwealth’s most

distinctive legislation, the establishment of compulsory arbitration in industrial disputes. The large-scale bitter strikes of the 1890s mocked the poets’ claim that Australia was free of old-world strife. Progressive liberals looked to arbitration as the means by which the state would force workers

and their employers to resolve their disputes peacefully. Some of the colonies already had schemes. Kingston in South Australia in 1890 had been the first to propose legislation. As one of the chief advocates at the conventions of giving the Commonwealth power over interstate disputes, it was fitting that he draw up the Commonwealth law.

There were disputes about how far the Commonwealth Act should reach. Deakin actually introduced the legislation because Kingston had resigned when Barton’s cabinet refused to include seamen. When the Labor

Party carried an amendment to include railway workers employed by the states, the government dropped the Bill. When he was Prime Minister, Deakin reintroduced it. Labor again carried its amendment, whereupon Deakin and his government resigned. The experience of governing briefly on its own without a majority taught Labor that it was better off for the

288 AFTERWARDS

moment supporting Deakin and the protectionists. A short-lived government led by Reid finally passed the Arbitration Act with railway workers included. Then Deakin and Labor came together again. The High Court declared that the inclusion of state workers in Commonwealth arbitration was unconstitutional. The High Court’s policing did not prevent the unions from transforming the Commonwealth Arbitration court, which was meant to deal with interstate disputes, into a body for regulating wages and conditions for whole industries, nation-wide. The court’s defining moment came when Justice Higgins had to declare what ‘fair and reasonable’ wages were. He said they must meet ‘the normal needs of an average employee regarded as a human being in a civilised country, an Australian act of defiance against the dictates of the market and an assertion that the country was to remain

a true new world. |

The constitution of the Commonwealth was claimed with some justice as the most democratic in the world (so long as equal representation in the Senate is overlooked). However, the framers had stopped short of giving

all women the vote. In 1902 the first parliament established a national franchise, and since the women of South Australia and Western Australia could not be deprived of their votes, the vote was given to all men and women. Barton had been an opponent of votes for women. He yielded to his colleagues on this matter, but insisted that women should not be eligible to sit in parliament. This part of his policy speech was cheered by an all-male audience, women having been excluded from the meeting.*? But he yielded again to his colleagues, and women were allowed to be candidates. Vida Goldstein ran for the Senate in 1903. The government intended that Aboriginal men and women, as British subjects, should qualify for the vote. Some members objected, especially those from Western Australia and Queensland, where there were many Aborigines and the state government had deprived them of the vote. Labor members were also worried that in the outback states employers would control the votes of the Aborigines. The government gave way. At a time when a white Australia was the national ideal, uniformity for Common-

wealth elections was reached by levelling down rather than up. The Aborigines lost the vote as women gained it.*° The establishment of a democratic Commonwealth gave added force to the democratic cause in the states. This process began in 1895—96 when the colonial parliaments agreed that at the elections for the Convention and at the referendum, the principle of one man, one vote should apply. That put the advocates of plural voting on the defensive, just as the advocates of a male electorate were undermined by the introduction of votes for women

BEGINNING 289

en aa a ee CNSEE MESES tay a . cpu RRR Stree iim eee @ _ ~OS

1 ze ot -_ a & s , — - 7 . en — — ge a oe eee * ‘ Eee oO 2 =| wpa 3aBa 2S« a EB TRS. &i== %& .ee & *q3 qeR LFsEsWek lade SSwes aBeeeSeiSe. re ee;OF ee oe |L 8& = *ee @ _— "5 ffAp pee «— \\ ©ii4 :isree | os 4.Ee a¥RE j

7 * x& = # SE a Be. a ee Fa Fl i Be Ss ;

ai a stall * ie a a ae: |

—_— . | oy | de he

_ Tn ae =: Boer ne a

_ oe Pe ie/Sotog Tee eete TFhd ,7 es ee sl; :oer feelCULee!hCUmGL a ae = po eB : ea “eee qq Cs -_ .. rT | aa.lUlUMMhLUmr - |

a wee a |. foes | hl 7

e ty . > e

Australia as world leader in granting women’s suffrage: a banner used in suffrage demonstrations in England.

290 AFTERWARDS

at the Commonwealth level. Both practices quickly disappeared from the states. Western Australia was the last to abolish plural voting in 1907, and Victoria the last to introduce votes for women in 1908.7! However, Kingston’s hope that a democratic Commonwealth would be a completely transforming force was not realised. In the states the legislative councils elected by property-holders remained. Kingston had used the weapon of the referendum against the South Australian chamber. On the same day in 1899 when the electors voted on the Commonwealth Bill, they

supported the introduction of household suffrage for the Council. The

Council was unmoved. Kingston vowed he would not leave South Australia for Commonwealth politics until he had reformed it. In 1900 Holder, his successor, introduced a Bill for a democratically elected convention to rewrite the state’s constitution. The new constitution would

come into force without having to be returned to parliament for the Council’s approval. There was no hope of the Council passing the Convention Bill, and Holder abandoned the attempt. The Assembly resolved to free Kingston from his pledge.°* Property-holding as a qualification for voting did not disappear in South Australia until 1974. The longest debate in the first Commonwealth Parliament was over the tariff, which was contested closely item by item, with Kingston the minister in charge. The Labor members were free of their caucus control, and the effect of their votes was sometimes to help the government protect industries and sometimes to help the free-traders protect consumers. Reid made great play of the government taxing bushmen’s tents and the mangles used

by poor washerwomen.*° In the Senate the free-traders proper and the Labor free-traders constituted a majority. The tariff ended up less protective and less likely to raise revenue than the government had planned. © Neither New South Wales nor Victoria would have agreed to this compromise tariff if it had been proposed as the tariff of a customs union. But as Parkes had planned, the nation was formed first and the customs union

second, with the authority of the nation being used to resolve the intractable customs dispute. On the day the new tariff was introduced into the Commonwealth Parliament, Tuesday, 8 October 1901, late in the afternoon, interstate free trade was established.** The tariff became decidedly protectionist only in 1908 in Deakin’s second government when he was ruling again with Labor support. Deakin persuaded all the Labor men to support protection by insisting that industries receiving protection must pay fair and reasonable wages. Deakin’s ‘new protection, as it was called, was a stroke of genius. It secured Labor support for protection and disarmed Reid’s criticism of protection as benefiting only employers.

BEGINNING 291

The device used to link protection and wages was the Commonwealth power to levy excise. Manufactured goods protected by tariff were to be liable to an excise of the same amount. The excise would be remitted to those manufacturers who paid fair and reasonable wages. The High Court upset the scheme by ruling that the excise power could not be perverted into a power over wages. Undeterred, Deakin and the Labor Party committed themselves to finding a constitutional defence for new protection. This never eventuated, but the rulings of the Commonwealth Arbitration Court and the equivalent state bodies did protect wages in manufacturing without the explicit connection between tariffs and wages. Labor’s support for protection held, and protection became a settled national policy.

Although given limited powers in the constitution, the Commonwealth’s acquisition of customs duties made it wealthy at the states expense. How to deal with this surplus had been a central dilemma at the conventions. The states seemed to have acquired a satisfactory solution

with the requirement that the Commonwealth distribute no less than three-quarters of its customs revenue to the states, but when Reid objected to the so-called Braddon blot its operation was limited to ten years. Deakin was one of the first to realise how the states would be placed after ten years. In 1902 he wrote that they would be ‘legally free, but financially bound to the chariot wheels of the central Government’.”’ Even before the ten years were up, Deakin found a way to short-change the states. To finance old age pensions, he channelled part of the Commonwealth's surplus into a special trust fund and so made it unavailable for distribution to the states. The High Court upheld him.

The High Court plainly played a key role in the Commonwealth's affairs. It came into operation in 1903. Deakin as Attorney-General had asked Griffith to draft the legislation that was to establish it. He was full of praise for his work, but suggested that the clauses dealing with salaries and pensions be put at the end to make them as ‘fire-proof’ as possible.*° The parliamentarians still noticed them. The number of judges was cut from

five to three and the pensions abolished. Even without the pension, Griffith agreed to be Chief Justice, once Deakin had responded to his concerns over travel allowance and precedence (‘the Chief Justice comes next

after Prime Minister and Privy Councillors’). There were objections to Griffith in the cabinet, probably on the grounds that no state judge should be put on the federal court, and that he had played a devious part over Privy Council appeals when the constitution was in London. Deakin had to threaten resignation before cabinet accepted him. With the reduction in the number of judges, Deakin could not offer a place to the Tasmanian Andrew Clark, whose draft Griffith had worked

292 AFTERWARDS

from in 1891. About Clark’s qualifications there was no doubt. Deakin had

earlier sounded him out and found he was interested; he was very bitter about being passed over. The other two places went to O’Connor, who had led for the government in the Senate, and to whom Barton was commit-

ted, and to Barton himself. The Prime Minister was briefly tempted to claim the chief justiceship, but he had always acknowledged that Griffith

was his superior in law. Still, not all former prime ministers would be happy to take second place. Barton now had the security of a large salary and much less demanding work. He was worried about whether it would be possible to make Griffith laugh. Lew

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The first High Court as depicted by Low: (from left) Barton, Griffith, O’Connor.

As Prime Minister, Barton is not known for any particular achievement;

he was continuously successful in keeping together a cabinet of heavyweights, all of whom had more ministerial experience than he had, and for giving a judicious and honourable face to the new government. A Commonwealth Government was bound to create resentments in the states as their territory was invaded; an active Commonwealth Government needed to provide all the reassurance that Barton could supply.*” The High Court, composed of three men who had worked so closely on writing the constitution, was committed to preserving its federal principle.

That is, the Commonwealth and the states must be supreme in their spheres and not interfere with each other. Hence their ruling that the Commonwealth Arbitration Court could not set wages and conditions for

BEGINNING 293

railway workers employed by the states. The principle worked both ways.

The court’s first major constitutional decision was that the Tasmanian Government could not make a post office worker pay a tax on his salary because the salary came from the Commonwealth. In 1906 the parliament agreed that the High Court should be increased to five judges. Deakin made very different appointments this time: Henry Higgins (who was also to head the Arbitration Court) and Isaac Isaacs. Both men had been at the 1897-98 Convention where they were best known as

critics of the work of the founding fathers. They had wanted a strong national government instead of a cautious federalism. For a long time the two

new judges were usually in a minority on the court. The Commonwealth's attempt to link tariff and wages was rejected three votes to two.

The politics of the early Commonwealth were complicated because there were three parties, and after the second election in 1903 they were of

roughly equal strength. Deakin likened it to playing cricket with three elevens in the field. He said that somehow the three had to be reduced to two. An understanding between Labor and his protectionists was his preferred solution. He found it easy to work with the Labor leadership in parliament, although he was alarmed by the Labor machine outside. As it became obvious that protection could not be undone, Reid and his following changed from being free-traders to a party warning about the

dangers of an expanding state. This was directed at Labor and its ally, Deakin. Reid himself had worked with Labor in New South Wales and had expanded the role of the state but, accepting the logic of the political situation, he turned himself into a crusader against socialism.

Forrest and some others of Deakin’s following were worried about Labor’s growing strength. They urged Deakin to break his alliance with them and create a grand anti-Labor coalition. That is what the Labor machine wanted. It was suspicious of alliances and was working for the day when Labor would govern alone. Deakin could never work with Reid nor adopt the view that the state was a dangerous force. Although aware of the threat from Labor, he would cooperate with them while he could do

useful work. At the third election in 1906 he campaigned against both anti-socialism and the Labor Party, had his following reduced to the smallest of the three groupings—and yet continued to rule.

His following was now composed chiefly of Victorians, a number of them like himself members or former members of the Australian Natives Association. It was from Deakin and this group that the early Commonwealth received its firmest impress. They wanted to develop a strong manufacturing sector and pride in local production and skill; to have the state ensure decent living conditions for all; and to see Australia shrugging off

294 AFTERWARDS

colonial status and becoming a self-reliant nation in the empire. Their views on the economy remained settled policy until the 1970s when the message preached by George Reid found an audience again. Deakin did not dare face the 1910 election alone. He finally agreed to

join the erstwhile free-traders, although he did not have to join Reid because he was to be the Commonwealth's first High Commissioner in London. Deakin became the leader of this new grouping, which called itself the Liberal Party, and for one parliamentary term was Prime Minister

with its support. Labor denounced him for his treachery in deserting them, but they were going through the motions. William Lyne, who had been an effective minister under both Barton and Deakin, did genuinely feel that Deakin had betrayed him. When Deakin first addressed the House in his new position Lyne yelled from his corner: ‘Judas! Judas! Judas!’ He might have been so angry because with the fusion of the parties he had lost his chance to succeed Deakin as leader of the protectionists and perhaps become Prime Minister.’® Labor won the 1910 election with majorities in both Houses. The foun-

dation years had passed. The Commonwealth was now controlled by a party that had opposed its formation. Labor’s own success belied its claim that the Commonwealth was to be an undemocratic arena controlled by conservatives and reactionaries. It already knew that, as far as its purposes were concerned, the fault in the Commonwealth was not what Labor had claimed in the 1890s but its limited powers over wages, working conditions, and the economy. In 1911 it put to the people an amendment proposal to give the Commonwealth power in these areas. Deakin made his last great political effort in the No campaign. The amendment was comfortably defeated with only one state, Western Australia, voting Yes. A few months before this campaign Deakin heard a voice speaking to him early one morning: ‘Finish your job and turn in. Before he went to breakfast he had filled seven pages analysing the source of this message and what it meant. He agonised over it for two weeks. He decided that the message was his higher self addressing his lower self and that the ‘job’ must be to protect the federation by defeating Labor’s amendment proposals. But when they were defeated the instruction to quit did not return. He stayed on as Liberal leader, conscious that his great mental powers were slipping rapidly away. He now needed notes when he spoke and had to follow them closely. He hid his decline so well that he had trouble persuading his party in January 1913 that he must resign. Before he was 60 his mind had gone.°? In 1913 Labor brought forward its amendments again. They did much better: a close defeat nationally and success in three states: Queensland, South Australia, and Western Australia. The party never came so close again

BEGINNING 295

to creating the sort of constitution it wanted. Nearly all its proposals (and those of others) to expand Commonwealth power have been defeated. Commonwealth power has expanded but chiefly by the High Court’s

interpretation of the constitution. The court’s foundation years lasted until Griffith’s retirement in 1919 and Barton’s death the following year. In 1920 it was composed of Isaacs and Higgins and three judges appointed by a Labor man, Billy Hughes. It considered again whether the Arbitration Court could deal with employees of a state instrumentality. It overturned

the doctrine of the founding judges and decided that the engineers employed in a state sawmill in Western Australia could be covered by a federal award. Isaacs wrote the leading judgment in the Engineers case, which declared

that the full meaning had to be given to the powers conferred on the Commonwealth without concern for the imagined principles of a federal constitution. If the engineers were involved in an interstate dispute, they could go to the Commonwealth court even if they were employees of a state. To give a literal interpretation of the document appears sensible and cautious; in fact it has subverted the intentions of the founders. Section 96 read literally is lethal for the states. Inserted at the last minute to reassure states worried about their finances, it allows the Commonwealth to make grants to the states on any terms and conditions. In 1926 the court held that the Commonwealth can make grants and stipulate how they will

be spent in areas reserved by the constitution to the states, such as roads,

education, and health. This power has grown as the Commonwealth became supreme in revenue-gathering. The court helped that process in 1942 by allowing the Commonwealth to make grants to the states out of its income tax on condition that the states abandon their right to tax income.

In 1983 the Commonwealth’s power over external affairs was interpreted in the same literal way. If the power covers all external affairs, then as the objects of international concern expand, the Commonwealth's powers expand. It can control state affairs on any matter on which it has signed an international treaty.

There is a strange mismatch between a people refusing to vote extra powers to the Commonwealth and acquiescing in the expansion of the Commonwealth powers at the hands of judges. It parallels the mismatch between a group of communities closely integrated socially and economically creating a weak national government. Since the colonies had no pressing need to federate and the process of union was open and consensual, existing interests and attachments had to be accommodated rather than overridden. There was no need to override

them since the uniformities and bonds of nationhood already existed. A

296 AFTERWARDS

weak central government immediately expanded its power by devious means, which was quietly accepted because social uniformity existed to support central direction and control. In the first decade of the Commonwealth one of its agencies controlled the routine of workplaces across the continent. There were and are still interests and attachments hostile to central power,

and these are mobilised to defeat any formal moves to increase it. These defeats are not followed by a retreat of central power but by its expansion by

new back-door means. The machinery of the state governments does not contract; rather it is penetrated and duplicated by the Commonwealth. The result is an ever-more complicated system of government for a remarkably uniform society. This is the paradox of the sentimental nation.

9

I5

sk Forgetting Now Mudgee planned to celebrate the Federal Jubilee But the only thought most people had was to do it with a spree. Yes—fun and games appealed to them as having most relation To the objects of the gala—the birthday of a nation. G.H.B., Mudgee, 1951!

At the time of its inauguration the Commonwealth had its myth: “Ours is not

the federation of fear, but the wise, solemn rational federation of a free people. These words appeared in one of the guidebooks to the celebrations, which also explained why the latest nation should be proud of its achievement of uniting without coercion from within or without: ‘Such a federation as ours has only become possible through the advance of intelligence and the development of a higher system of morality than the world ever saw before.”

This was a foundation myth with more truth to it than most. It was widely known and accepted. It appeared in the commemorative supplements in the newspapers as well as in the history by Quick and Garran, in the guidebooks as well as the formal speeches. The Advertiser in Adelaide

adapted President Lincoln’s words and put the myth in the form of an epigram: ‘The Commonwealth has come from the people by the people to the people.” The myth died—and with it all knowledge of federation. All the people, events, and places that federalists declared would be historic never became so. The names of the convention delegates, the electoral battles of Barton against Reid, the landing place of the first Governor-General and the site of his swearing-in, the name of the first Prime Minister—all are forgotten. Parkes alone, to the great annoyance of the historians, is remembered. The process of forgetting federation can be traced in the celebrations of its success. 297

298 AFTERWARDS

NV oftuslraltios \_ fo

The dove of peace as symbol of the new nation: a suggested design.

Sydney, January 1901 William Lyne, the Premier of New South Wales, had two thoughts that guided him in preparing the celebrations in Sydney: first, that the most exciting thing about the new nation was its membership of the British Empire; and second, that the whole community should be involved and have a good time. He did not think that the celebrations should honour those who had created the nation. If such a thought had occurred to him, he would quickly have suppressed it since he would then have had to exclude himself. At both referendums he had advocated a No vote. But that fact does not explain his approach. His preferences were widely shared and were evident in other celebrations, large and small, around the nation. All Australia admired the show he put on in Sydney. When new regimes are established by force or against determined resistance, their ceremonies are both instructive and coercive: “This is what is to prevail and youd better believe it’ Anyone who does not participate runs the risk of being branded—depending on the regime—a traitor, an aristocrat, a bourgeois, or an enemy of the people. The Australian federation was established by the democratic vote of its people. By the discipline of democracy, its opponents accepted this decision since they could not quarrel with the will of the majority. The Commonwealth ceremonies did not have to

justify the Commonwealth. The desire that everyone be included meant that the history of its making had to be overlooked, particularly in Sydney, where the city had been almost evenly divided on the issue.

FORGETTING 299

The procession on | January included civic, educational, and religious leaders and representatives of the leading community organisations, the friendly societies, and the trade unions. These were brought together according to a well-tried formula. Among them were supporters and opponents of federation. The leader of the No campaign paraded as the Chancellor of the University of Sydney in his robes of office. The foot soldiers of that campaign appeared as trade unionists marching behind the Eight Hours banner.

Those who had been devoted to the federal ideal had to honour themselves privately. The Federation League prepared a commemorative certificate, which it distributed to its supporters and campaign workers.* A plan

to write a history of the federal movement was abandoned because it would reopen divisions. The secretary, Edward Dowling, put together a book of documents—all the annual reports of the League—and lodged copies in libraries. Later his carefully preserved letters and papers went to the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library, the forerunner of the National Library.

Only one federalist received anything like public homage: Sir Henry Parkes, who was conveniently dead. His image and his federal slogans appeared in the decorations and on the memorabilia. The procession passed under a banner that declared him to be the father of federation.

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Parkes gets his reward; further down Bridge Street is one of his slogans, ‘One Destiny.

300 AFTERWARDS

This pre-eminent position was willingly given to Parkes by the federalists,

including Barton and Reid, who some historians think had the right to challenge it. Barton in particular was punctilious in acknowledging Parkes when the federal movement scored its successes.° The New South Wales Parliament provided special funds for the rehabilitation of Parkes’s grave and for honouring it on 1 January.’ Parkes as father of federation was a myth of a different sort, the heroic individual. Parkes himself had opposed the moves to include the people as electors of Convention delegates and judges of the constitution. Lyne was personally in charge of the celebrations, but they took shape in a very open way. The government appointed individual citizens and representatives of organisations to take charge of different aspects of the celebrations—procession, music, theatre, athletics, cycling, regatta, and so on—and they in turn appointed one delegate to the Organising Committee, which had oversight of the whole. This committee was a huge body and was often bypassed in decision-making, but more attention was given to democratic symbolism in the organisation of the celebrations than in the messages they conveyed.° Outside this official structure, there was a citizens committee appointed by a public meeting at the Town Hall. Initially worried that the mayor

and council were being overlooked, it took charge of the decorations,

| entertainment of visitors, and gifts to the poor, raising its own funds to do so. This committee managed to do what was thought impossible in a British community: get all the property-holders in a street to decorate their buildings harmoniously.’ The arches, which were a feature of the decorations on the procession route, had diverse origins. The government paid for some. The citizens committee designed and paid for the Commonwealth or Citizens Arch. Those associated with the coal, wool, and wheat trades put up the arches celebrating these products with some government assistance. The ethnic communities put up their arches, assisted by their consuls.'° The presence of German, French, and American arches and an Italian float in the procession might seem odd in what was a very British celebration, but it was the boast of Britons that they gave equal protection of their laws to foreigners, and a cele-

bration that sought community involvement welcomed their participation. At Kalgoorlie the chief float in the procession was a Japanese warship. In Melbourne in May the most suspect group of foreigners, the Chinese, were allowed to erect an arch and hold a Chinese procession."! The Commonwealth or Citizens Arch was the only place where there was a public display of the history of the federation movement. This was an arch in the classical style similar to the triumphal arches of Rome, which

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His memorial is a noble failure. He chose to express popular involvement by having all the voters’ names recorded, but it was hard for anyone then to

think of a public monument carrying thousands of names of ordinary people. Instead he had the names inscribed by hand in ten massive volumes, running alphabetically from ‘Aanenson, Bernt, 102 Dow Street, Port Melbourne, Labourer, to “Zwicker, Leo, Downshire Road, Elsternwick, Lmporter’ Two extra blank volumes were provided for the signatures of the voters.

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The Polish community has a place in the ‘pageant of progress, celebrating federation in Adelaide 1951.

The constitution was an object of attention at the jubilee and in the years before it, not to the people at large, but to state politicians and administrators, progressive academics, and defenders of freedom and free enterprise.*”

Their minds were focused by Labor’s attempts in government to secure much wider powers for the Commonwealth. The High Court had upheld its

uniform taxation legislation, which forced the states to abandon their income taxes, but it had ruled invalid Labor’s nationalisation of the banks. At referendums the people had rejected sweeping new economic and social powers for the Commonwealth but had given it power over social security.

328 AFTERWARDS

The spokesmen for the states insisted that they must regain their financial independence if Australia was to be a true federation. Menzies had promised to look into the matter. The supporters of free enterprise defended a federal

constitution as a protection against Labor tyranny. The progressive academics took Labor’s view that the federal constitution was a barrier to social reform and an artificial imposition on a unified country. Labor, not having been involved in making the constitution, always looked on it as a contrivance of the capitalist class. It was the party committed to the cultivation of an Australian sentiment but not to reverence for its constitution. The views of the progressive academics were not without consequence. When interest in Australian history burgeoned in the 1950s and 1960s, they set the tone for the treatment of federation. Finlay Crisp, a political scientist who had worked for Chifley, wrote an influential textbook, which claimed that the founding fathers were ‘men of property’ defending the status quo.°** He spent his retirement compiling a book entitled Federation Fathers, which honoured those who had opposed federation. His heroes were those who wanted a stronger and more democratic Commonwealth.

It was he who, when compiling his useful bibliography of federation, decided to omit all references to federation poetry.

Bicentennial 1988 | In 1988 there was no agreement on what multicultural Australia should celebrate. It was no longer a British society, and it had lost faith in progress. The organisers of the bicentennial festivities began with the theme ‘Living Together’ Malcolm Fraser’s Liberal Government made them change it to ‘the Australian Achievement’. Bob Hawke’s Labor Government reverted to ‘Living Together’. The anniversary was of the arrival of the First Fleet, but the organisers refused to support the re-enactment of its voyage since it would offend Aborigines.®°

As part of its honouring of the anniversary, the New South Wales Government decided to build a monument on the site of the inauguration of the Commonwealth in Centennial Park. It was not, of course, a special anniversary of federation, but it was a well-established tradition of Australian celebration that on a historical occasion any history would do. The site of the inauguration was marked. In 1904 the stone on which the Governor-General had stood when he took the oath was set into the ground with the legend: “On January Ist 1901 the Right Hon. the Earl of Hopetoun was sworn in as first Governor-General of the Australian Commonwealth on this hexagonal stone in the presence of the representatives of the six states.’ Rising from the stone was a small six-sided plinth with the names of the six states and the date of their formation.

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