Andrew Tink's superb book tells the story of Australia in the 20th century, from Federation to the Sydney 2000 Olympics. It was a century marked by the trauma of war and the despair of the depression, balanced by extraordinary achievements in sport, science, and the arts. Tink's story is driven by people, whether they be prime ministers, soldiers, shopkeepers, singers, footballers, or farmers; men or women, Australian-born, immigrant, or Aborigine. He brings the decades to life, writing with empathy, humor, and insight to create a narrative that is as entertaining as it is illuminating.
Andrew Tink's superb book tells the story of Australia in the 20th century, from Federation to the Sydney 2000 Olympics. It was a century marked by the trauma of war and the despair of the depression, balanced by extraordinary achievements in sport, science, and the arts. Tink's story is driven by people, whether they be prime ministers, soldiers, shopkeepers, singers, footballers, or farmers; men or women, Australian-born, immigrant, or Aborigine. He brings the decades to life, writing with empathy, humor, and insight to create a narrative that is as entertaining as it is illuminating.
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Overview
Andrew Tink's superb book tells the story of Australia in the 20th century, from Federation to the Sydney 2000 Olympics. It was a century marked by the trauma of war and the despair of the depression, balanced by extraordinary achievements in sport, science, and the arts. Tink's story is driven by people, whether they be prime ministers, soldiers, shopkeepers, singers, footballers, or farmers; men or women, Australian-born, immigrant, or Aborigine. He brings the decades to life, writing with empathy, humor, and insight to create a narrative that is as entertaining as it is illuminating.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781742241876 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | UNSW Press |
| Publication date: | 03/18/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 336 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
About the Author
Andrew Tink has served as shadow attorney general and shadow Liberal leader of the House in the New South Wales Parliament. He is the author of Air Disaster Canberra: The Plane Crash That Destroyed a Government; Lord Sydney: The Life and Times of Tommy Townshend; and William Charles Wentworth: Australia's Greatest Native Son, which won “The Nib” CAL Waverley Award for Literature. He is an adjunct professor at the Macquarie University Law School and Centre for Legal Governance was made a Member of the Order of Australia in January of 2014.
Read an Excerpt
Australia 1901â"2001
A narrative history
By Andrew Tink
University of New South Wales Press Ltd
Copyright © 2014 Andrew TinkAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-74224-712-0
CHAPTER 1
Hopetoun's blunder
So tightly packed were the crowds lining Sydney's streets on 1 January 1901 that they resembled a dense, well-tended hedge. Early morning showers had followed a thunderstorm the previous evening and many people carried umbrellas, just in case, as they waited for the procession to begin. While the planning for this New Year's Day had been going on in earnest for about three and a half months, after Queen Victoria had declared it to be the day upon which the Commonwealth of Australia would come into being, the most important decisions had only recently been made.
Just before 10.30 am, mounted police rode out from the Domain's open parkland near the Botanic Gardens, followed by a procession at the tail end of which was a carriage carrying the governor-general designate. This former British politician, the Earl of Hopetoun, was scheduled to arrive at Centennial Park around 1 pm. Among the marchers were military contingents from throughout the Empire and from each of the six Australian colonies, a large body of trade unionists, and firemen aboard their gleaming horse-drawn engines. But the loudest cheers were reserved for veterans of the South African War, which was now in its second year.
As Hopetoun approached the swearing-in pavilion, located in the hollow of a natural amphitheatre in Centennial Park, spectators in their tens of thousands looked on from the surrounding ridges. On the western rise, 15 000 singers awaited their cue while approximately 7000 official guests were seated in front. Immediately around the pavilion the most high-ranking invitees were arrayed, now distinctly uncomfortable in the sticky summer heat. Among them were judges in their scarlet robes and various colonial premiers and ministers, some of whom were decked out in diplomatic uniforms. The most elaborately dressed of all was Hopetoun, whose jacket was covered in dense gold braid topped off by three orders of knighthood. However, in the middle of all this official magnificence was a private citizen dressed in a plain frockcoat, who was about to become the most powerful of them all.
Ill with typhoid fever, Hopetoun had arrived in Sydney on 15 December 1900. This slightly built 40-year-old 'with a willowy stoop and cat like tread' was charged with selecting the country's first prime minister, who would in turn nominate Australia's first cabinet. Four days later, he chose the premier of New South Wales, Sir William Lyne. But Lyne soon ran into trouble when he asked Edmund Barton to be a minister. Although Barton had only limited ministerial experience, having been the NSW attorney-general for just over two years, he was the federation movement's leader and the man who had tirelessly pushed the 'Yes' case during the constitutional conventions and referendum campaigns of the 1890s. And Barton was furious that Lyne, who had strongly opposed federation, would now lead the new nation. Hopetoun's argument, that the leader of the largest colony was the obvious choice, left Barton unmoved. 'It would be a contradiction of my whole career', he said, 'if I served under a Prime Minister who ... opposed the adoption ... of the measure which he is now asked to be the first constitutional guardian'.
Angry, too, was Victoria's leading federalist and a future prime minister, Alfred Deakin. 'Who could have believed that Hopetoun would make such a blunder?' he demanded to know. Then Deakin and the Victorian premier, Sir George Turner, ambushed the governor-general. 'We indicated that ... Sir William should return the commission to Lord Hopetoun', they told the press, 'and advise His Excellency to send for Mr Barton'. This brought things to a head at 10 pm on Christmas Eve when, having been granted an extension of time by Hopetoun six hours earlier, Lyne was forced to advise 'that Mr Barton be sent for'. After receiving his commission, Barton finalised his ministry on 30 December. And so it came about that this private citizen in the plain frockcoat was sworn in as Australia's first prime minister two days later. Among those who took ministerial oaths immediately after him were Alfred Deakin as attorney-general, Sir William Lyne as minister for home affairs and Sir George Turner as treasurer. While the wives of those being sworn in were seated around the pavilion's dais, none was admitted to the inner circle where the oaths were administered and taken by men alone.
What had been created at this ceremony was unique in world history: 'a whole continent for a nation, and a nation for a continent', as Barton put it. Although others, including William Charles Wentworth in the 1850s and Sir Henry Parkes in the late 1880s and early 1890s, had worked towards this goal, it was Barton who had been behind the final push to achieve it. From the first British landing of some 1000 convicts and marines in 1788, the non-Aboriginal population of the continent had exploded to 3 800 000 by the time of federation. Of these, approximately 1 200 000 lived in the six capital cities, with Sydney and Melbourne having populations of about half a million each. Over that same period, however, the number of Aboriginal natives had shrunk from the hundreds of thousands to just 67 000. Even so, there were still large parts of Australia, like the Simpson Desert, yet to be explored by Europeans. And some Aboriginal people, such as the Pintupi, were not to have their first contact with 'white men' for another 60 years. Indeed it would not be until 1967 that 'Aboriginal natives' were officially counted as part of Australia's overall population.
As caretaker prime minister, Barton's top priority was to set up the machinery for the election of Australia's first Federal Parliament, which would be based in Melbourne until a new national capital was ready. Barton later recalled that in those early days he was able to carry all the federal government's files in his briefcase. With the election set for the end of March, the prime minister began campaigning in earnest. As leader of the middle-of-the-road protectionists, Barton was supported by manufacturers who wanted to keep overseas competitors at bay. To that extent, he had common cause on his left with the trade-union-backed Labor Party, while on his right was the Free Trade Party whose followers included chambers of commerce, importers and graziers. Barton's principal opponent was the former premier of New South Wales, George Reid, now leader of the Free Traders. A morbidly obese mountain of a man, Reid was a shrewd politician who had a reputation for vacillation; his nickname was 'yes/no Reid'. Despite being from the right, Reid's self-deprecating humour impressed working people. And when an opponent asked him what he would call his massive stomach, Reid shot back: 'it's all piss and wind. I'll call it after you'. Reid was not to be underestimated.
In his Hunter electorate at the West Maitland Town Hall on 17 January, Barton delivered his keynote speech promising legislation to deal with interstate industrial disputes, to extend the vote to women and to introduce a White Australia Policy. His big capital works promise was to build a transcontinental railway linking Perth and the eastern states. And after the ballots had been counted across the nation, Barton was ahead with 32 seats. When combined with Labor's 17, he had a comfortable working majority over Reid's 26. At the opening of Parliament on 9 May, the Duke of York officiated. The scene in Melbourne's Exhibition Hall was painted by Tom Roberts, a leading member of those Australian impressionist painters known as the Heidelberg School. What Roberts did not capture was the diminutive future king impatiently tapping his foot, as he was kept waiting for Barton who had been waylaid by a crowd of supporters. Among the new members of parliament captured by Roberts were six future prime ministers: Alfred Deakin, Chris Watson, George Reid, Andrew Fisher, Joseph Cook and Billy Hughes.
The newly sworn federal members soon reconvened in Victoria's Parliament House and the prime minister was allocated a small turret-like chamber into which was squeezed a writing room, bedroom and bathroom – a bachelor pad. From here, he planned the introduction of his Alien Immigration Bill, which provided for a dictation test to deter non-white migrants. A popular Australian merchant of Chinese origin, Quong Tart, proposed that the test be in English. But Barton preferred the British view that it should be in any European language 'because it upheld the equality of all white men'. It also favoured White Australia because the language would be chosen by the testing officer, not the migrant. Despite the difficulties such a test posed to applicants, Labor wanted to go still further, proposing a blanket ban on all Asians, Africans and Pacific Islanders. This led to Barton's first crisis when the Free Traders in the Senate supported Labor's plan. Faced with a standoff between the two Houses, which now imperilled his government, Barton threatened to resign, whereupon the opposition crumbled.
It is fitting that the fulfilment of Barton's next promise, to extend the vote to women, had been preceded by what has since come to be recognised as a signal literary event, the publication of My Brilliant Career. Although the author, Miles Franklin, had completed her manuscript in 1899, it was not until 1901, with help from established author Henry Lawson, that she finally found a publisher, not in Australia but in England. 'Franklin has sunlight dancing through the veins', a Bulletin review said. 'The author has an Australian mind, speaks Australian language, utters Australian thoughts and looks at things from an Australian point of view absolutely'. In April the following year, the government honoured its promise and women won the right to vote in Federal elections; England's suffragettes, for whom the vote was another 16 years away, were warm in their praise. It was otherwise for Aboriginal people who continued to be denied a federal vote unless they were allowed to vote in their home state. While Indigenous men and women in South Australia could cast a ballot, those resident in Queensland and Western Australia could not vote for another 60 years. One eccentric North American-born MP, King O'Malley, who maintained that he had been a bishop of the Redskin Temple of the Cayuse Nation, even claimed that 'there is no scientific evidence that the Aborigine is a human being at all'.
All the while, the South African War had continued. Although the battle of Diamond Hill in June 1900 marked the defeat of the main Boer army, a vicious guerrilla campaign followed. And on 12 June 1901, 18 members of the Victorian Mounted Rifles were killed when Boers attacked their camp. Plans were already afoot to replace such casualties with Commonwealth troops and on 19 February 1902, the first federal battalion of Australian soldiers departed for active service overseas. During the course of the 20th century, hundreds of thousands would follow in their footsteps. As for the Boer War, it came to an end on 31 May that year. Just over 16 000 Australians had served, of whom 589 died and 882 were wounded. Justifying this sacrifice, the Sydney Morning Herald's editor wrote: 'Had a ... foreign influence succeeded in establishing itself at Cape Town between Australia ... on the one side and the mother country ... on the other ... the Empire would have been in danger of being rent in twain'.
One of the financial obligations transferred to the new federal government was the yearly contribution of £106 000 towards the upkeep of the Royal Navy's Pacific squadron, which in 1902 was raised to £200 000. The rub was that these ships might be called to action thousands of miles away, leaving Australia defenceless. In the face of growing public pressure for an Australian navy, the Bulletin accused Barton of being subservient to Britain. However, official estimates put the price of a separate Australian navy at £2 500 000 to build, and £1 000 000 a year to maintain. Besides, there was no apparent threat. In June 1903, three Japanese warships, the Matsushima, Itsukushima and Hashidate visited Adelaide, Melbourne, Hobart and Sydney where the locals joined in the shout of 'Tenno Heika Banzai' (Long Live the Emperor). According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the Japanese were 'not strangers, but allies and friends'. Apart from that, Barton had little money to spare because the nation was still getting over a severe economic depression, which had devastated the country during the 1890s. Many banks had failed, ruining large and small investors alike. And this had been followed by another calamity, the so-called federation drought. So severe was the drought that the Darling River in New South Wales alongside Bourke's massive timber wharves all but dried up, making river transport impossible. On one property in western New South Wales, the number of sheep fell from 100 000 to 40 000. And although once a wheat exporter, Australia was reduced to importing American grain.
To fulfil his third election promise, Barton introduced a Conciliation and Arbitration Bill, which covered those private-sector industrial disputes that spread to more than one state. But this upset both employers who thought it went too far, and employees who thought it did not go far enough. When a Labor amendment was passed extending coverage to state railway workers, Barton withdrew the bill altogether. But in doing so he gave the impression that he no longer cared. 'Having done his greatest work', his private secretary later said, 'Barton was no longer very interested in the result'. The prime minister's most vicious critic was the proprietor of the Sydney Truth, John Norton. 'Of a high order intellect ... Barton is lazy and a laggard in public and private affairs', he wrote. 'This man who can drink like a fish, and eat like a hog ... is Australia's Noblest Son!'
Such offensive barbs deeply wounded Barton, who also missed his Sydney-based family during his long stays in Melbourne. And with a bill before Parliament to establish the High Court, he decided to resign and take up one of the three judicial positions on offer. But he declined the chief justiceship, astonishing his most senior colleagues, among them Sir John Forrest, who told him: 'you are fitted, you have earned it and you are worthy of it'. Barton, it seems, was no longer interested in any leadership role and on 23 September 1903, the new prime minister, Alfred Deakin, formally announced Barton's appointment, with Sir Samuel Griffith as chief justice. Seven years younger than Barton, the 47-year-old Deakin looked to the future, unlike his predecessor who still lingered over past triumphs. At the December general election Deakin was returned as prime minister with the continuing support of the Protectionist and Labor parties. Women, who were voting federally for the first time, did not upset this balance. In Victoria, a 34-year-old suffragette and prominent member of the Anti-Swearing League, Vida Goldstein, stood for the Senate, receiving 51 497 votes. Representing 5 per cent of the ballots cast, this was not nearly enough to see her elected. But Goldstein was the first woman in the British Empire to stand for a national Parliament.
At the top of Deakin's agenda was the Conciliation and Arbitration Bill, which within months would precipitate political turmoil. There would be three prime ministers during 1904, highlighting for the first time what has since become a truism in Australian politics – industrial relations can make and break prime ministers.
CHAPTER 2The Australian crawl
Of the prime minister's 1903 election campaign, the London Morning Post's Australian correspondent was scathing:
Mr Deakin may well view the position before him with rueful solicitude. His own party ... flung away half a dozen seats and imperilled many more. If his organisation had been half as effective as Mr Reid's he could almost have retained his numbers.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Australia 1901â"2001 by Andrew Tink. Copyright © 2014 Andrew Tink. Excerpted by permission of University of New South Wales Press Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Preface vii
1 Hopetoun's blunder 1
2 The Australian crawl 10
3 Sweat and chaff 18
4 Dogs' livers 26
5 My God! If only I had known 34
6 Bloody stalemate 42
7 Backs to the wall 50
8 Fini retreat - beaucoup Australiens ici 59
9 A land fit for heroes? 69
10 The diggers take over 78
11 Men, money and markets 86
12 Crash 94
13 To the brink 102
14 Depths of Depression 111
15 From Depression to appeasement 120
16 Australia is also at war 129
17 The sons of the First AIF 139
18 1942 - Australia's darkest year 148
19 To victory 157
20 Postwar blues 167
21 Australia's Cold War 176
22 The Queen and the Petrovs 186
23 From ice chests to Frigidaires 195
24 Indonesia looms large 204
25 36 faceless men 213
26 Confrontation with Indonesia 223
27 All the way with LBJ 232
28 Live from the Moon 242
29 It's time 252
30 Prima donna assoluta 262
31 We've been sacked 271
32 An ethical obligation 280
33 Defining Australia 289
34 Murray-Darling salt lick 299
35 Hundreds and thousands 309
36 O'Sullivan's WiFi revolution 318
37 Mabo 328
38 A bloody big rock 339
39 We're safe now, pumpkin 349
40 Weapons off! 358
Epilogue 368
Notes 371
Bibliography 410
Index 418