User:Aemilius Adolphin/Autonomy to federation draft

From autonomy to federation

Colonial self-government and the gold rushes

Main article: History of Australia (1851–1900)

See also: Australian gold rushes

Towards representative government

Imperial legislation in 1823 had provided for a Legislative Council nominated by the governor of New South Wales, and a new Supreme Court, providing additional limits to the power of governors. A number of prominent colonial figures, including William Wentworth. campaigned for a greater degree of self-government, although there were divisions over the extent to which a future legislative body should be popularly elected. Other major issues in the public debate over colonial self-government were traditional British political rights, land policy, transportation and whether colonies with a large population of convicts and former convicts could be trusted with self-government. The Australian Patriotic Association was formed in 1835 to promote representative government for New South Wales.

The British government abolished transportation to New South Wales in 1840, and in 1842 granted limited representative government to the colony by establishing a reformed Legislative Council with one-third of its members appointed by the governor and two-thirds elected by male voters who met a property qualification. The property qualification meant that only 20 per cent of males were eligible to vote in the first Legislative Council elections in 1843.

The increasing immigration of free settlers, the declining number of convicts, and the growing middle class and working class population led to further agitation for liberal and democratic reforms. Public meetings in Adelaide in 1844 called for more representative government for South Australia. The Constitutional Association, formed in Sydney in 1848, called for manhood suffrage. The Anti-Transportation League, founded in Van Diemen's Land in 1849, also demanded more representative government. In the Port Phillip District, agitation for representative government was closely linked to demands for independence from New South Wales.

In 1850 the imperial parliament passed the Australian Colonies Government Act, granting Van Diemen's Land, South Australia and the newly-created colony of Victoria semi-elected Legislative Councils on the New South Wales model. The Act also reduced the property requirement for voting. Government officials were to be responsible to the governor rather than the Legislative Council, so the imperial legislation provided for limited representative government rather than responsible government.

The gold rushes of the 1850s

Although gold had been found in Australia as early as 1823 by surveyor James McBrien, a gold rush began when Edward Hargraves widely publicised his discovery of gold near Bathurst, New South Wales, in February 1851. Further discoveries were made later that year in Victoria, where the richest gold fields were found. By British law all minerals belonged to the Crown, and the governors of New South Wales and Victoria quickly introduced laws aimed at avoiding the disorder associated with the California gold rush of 1848. Both colonies introduced a gold mining licence with a monthly fee, the revenue being used to offset the cost of providing infrastructure, administration and policing of the gold fields. As the size of allowable claims was small (6.1 metres square), and much of the gold was near the surface, the licensing system favoured small prospectors over large enterprises.

The gold rush initially caused some economic disruption including wage and price inflation and labour shortages as male workers moved to the goldfields. In 1852 the male population of South Australia fell by three per cent and that of Tasmania by 17 per cent. Immigrants from the United Kingdom, continental Europe, the United States and China also poured into Victoria and New South Wales. The Australian population increased from 430,000 in 1851 to 1,170,000 in 1861. Victoria became the most populous colony and Melbourne the largest city.

Chinese migration was a particular concern for colonial officials. There were 20,000 Chinese miners on the Victorian goldfields by 1855 and 13,000 on the New South Wales diggings. There was a widespread belief that they represented a danger to white Australian living standards and morality, and colonial governments responded by imposing a range of taxes, charges and restrictions on Chinese migrants and residents. Anti-Chinese riots erupted on the Victorian goldfields in 1856 and in New South Wales in 1860. According to Stuart Macintyre, "The goldfields were the migrant reception centres of the nineteenth century, the crucibles of nationalism and xenophobia[.]”

The Eureka stockade

As more men moved to the gold fields and the quantity of easily-accessible gold diminished, the average income of miners fell. Victorian miners increasingly saw the flat monthly licence fee as a regressive tax and complained of official corruption, heavy-handed administration and the lack of voting rights for itinerant miners. Protests intensified in October 1854 when three miners were arrested following a riot at Ballarat. Protesters formed the Ballarat Reform League to support the arrested men and demanded manhood suffrage, reform of the mining licence and administration, and land reform to promote small farms. Further protests followed and protesters built a stockade on the Eureka Field at Ballarat. On 3 December troops overran the stockade, killing about 20 protesters. Five troops were killed and 12 seriously wounded.

Following a Royal Commission, the monthly licence was replaced with an annual miner's right at a lower cost which also gave holders the right to vote and build a dwelling on the gold fields. The administration of the Victorian goldfields was also reformed. Stuart Macintyre states, "The Eureka rebellion was a formative event in the national mythology, the Southern Cross [on the Eureka flag] a symbol of freedom and independence.” However, according to A. G. L. Shaw, the Eureka affair "is often painted as a great fight for Australian liberty and the rights of the working man, but it was not that. Its leaders were themselves small capitalists...and even after universal suffrage was introduced...only about a fifth of the miners bothered to vote."

Self-government and democracy

Main article: Suffrage in Australia

Elections for the semi-representative Legislative Councils, held in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Van Diemen's Land in 1851, produced a greater number of liberal members. That year, the New South Wales Legislative Council petitioned the British Government requesting self-government for the colony. The Anti-Transportation League also saw the convict system as a barrier to the achievement of self-government. In 1852 the British Government announced that convict transportation to Van Diemen's Land would cease and invited the eastern colonies to draft constitutions enabling responsible self-government. The Secretary of State cited the social and economic transformation of the colonies following the discoveries of gold as one of the factors making self-government feasible.

The constitutions for New South Wales, Victoria and Van Diemen's Land (renamed Tasmania in 1856) gained Royal Assent in 1855, that for South Australia in 1856. The constitutions varied, but each created a lower house elected on a broad male franchise and an upper house which was either appointed for life (New South Wales) or elected on a more restricted property franchise. Britain retained its right of veto over legislation regarding matters of imperial interest. When Queensland became a separate colony in 1859 it immediately became self-governing, adopting the constitution of New South Wales. Western Australia was granted self-government in 1890.

The secret ballot was adopted in Tasmania, Victoria and South Australia in 1856, followed by New South Wales (1858), Queensland (1859) and Western Australia (1877). South Australia introduced universal male suffrage for its lower house in 1856, followed by Victoria in 1857, New South Wales (1858), Queensland (1872), Western Australia (1893) and Tasmania (1900). Queensland excluded Aboriginal Australians from voting in 1885. In Western Australia, a property qualification for voting remained for Aboriginal Australians, Asians, Africans and people of mixed descent.

Societies to promote women's suffrage were formed in Victoria in 1884, South Australia in 1888 and New South Wales in 1891. The Women's Christian Temperance Union also established branches in most Australian colonies in the 1880s, promoting votes for women and a range of social causes. Female suffrage, and the right to stand for office, was first won in South Australia in 1895. Women won the vote in Western Australia in 1900, with some restrictions based on race. Women in the remainder of Australia only won full rights to vote and to stand for elected office in the decade after Federation, although there were some racial restrictions.

The long boom (1860 to 1890)

Land reform

In the 1860s New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia introduced Selection Acts intended to promote family farms and mixed farming and grazing. Legislation typically allowed individual "selectors" to select small parcels of unused crown land or leased pastoral land for purchase on credit. The reforms initially had little impact on the concentration of land ownership as large landowners used loopholes in the laws to buy more land. However, refinements to the legislation, improvements in farming technology and the introduction of crops adapted to Australian conditions eventually led to the diversification of rural land use. The expansion of the railways from the 1860s allowed wheat to be cheaply transported in bulk, stimulating the development of a wheat belt from South Australia to Queensland. Land under cultivation increased from 200,000 hectares to 2 million hectares from 1850 to 1890.

Bushrangers

The period 1850 to 1880 saw a revival in bushranging. The first bushrangers had been escaped convicts or former convicts in the early years of British settlement who lived independently in the bush, often supporting themselves by criminal activity. The early association of the bush with freedom was the beginning of an enduring myth. The resurgence of bushranging from the 1850s drew on the grievances of the rural poor (several members of the Kelly gang, the most famous bushrangers, were the sons of impoverished small farmers). The exploits of Ned Kelly and his gang garnered considerable local community support and extensive national press coverage at the time. After Kelly's capture and execution for murder in 1880 his story inspired numerous works of art, literature and popular culture and continuing debate about the extent to which he was a rebel fighting social injustice and oppressive police, or a murderous criminal.

Economic growth and race

From the 1850s to 1871 gold was Australia's largest export and allowed the colony to import a range of consumer and capital goods. More importantly, the increase in population in the decades following the gold rush stimulated demand for housing, consumer goods, services and urban infrastructure. By the 1880s half the Australian population lived in towns, making Australia more urbanised that the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada. Between 1870 and 1890 average income per person in Australia was more than 50 per cent higher than that of the United States, giving Australia one of the highest living standards in the world.

The size of the government sector almost doubled from 10 per cent of national expenditure in 1850 to 19 per cent in 1890. Colonial governments spent heavily on infrastructure such as railways, ports, telegraph, schools and urban services. Much of the money for this infrastructure was borrowed on the London financial markets, but land-rich governments also sold land to finance expenditure and keep taxes low.

In 1856 building workers in Sydney and Melbourne were the first in the world to win the eight hour working day. The 1880s saw trade unions grow and spread to lower skilled workers and also across colonial boundaries. By 1890 about 20 per cent of male workers belonged to a union, one of the highest rates in the world.

Economic growth was accompanied by expansion into northern Australia. Gold was discovered in northern Queensland in the 1860s and 1870s, and in the Kimberley and Pilbara regions of Western Australia in the 1880s. Sheep and cattle runs spread to northern Queensland and on to the Gulf Country of the Northern Territory and the Kimberley region of Western Australia in the 1870s and 1880s. Sugar plantations also expanded in northern Queensland over the same period.

The gold discoveries in northern Australia attracted a new wave of Chinese immigrants. The Queensland sugar cane industry also relied heavily on indentured South Sea Island workers, whose low wages and poor working conditions became a national controversy and led to government regulation of the industry. Additionally, a significant population of Japanese, Filipinos and Malays were working in pearling and fishing. In 1890 the population of northern Australia is estimated at about 70,000 Europeans and 20,000 Asians and Pacific Islanders. Indigenous Australians probably outnumbered these groups, leaving white Australians a minority north of the Tropic of Capricorn.

From the late 1870s trade unions, Anti-Chinese Leagues and other community groups campaigned against Chinese immigration and low-wage Chinese labour. Following intercolonial conferences on the issue in 1880-81 and 1888, colonial governments responded with a series of laws which progressively restricted Chinese immigration and citizenship rights.

1890s depression

Falling wool prices and the collapse of a speculative property bubble in Melbourne heralded the end of the long boom. When British banks cut back lending to Australia, the heavily indebted Australian economy fell into economic depression. A number of major banks suspended business and the economy contracted by 20 per cent from 1891 to 1895. Unemployment rose to almost a third of the workforce. The depression was followed by the "Federation Drought" from 1895 to 1903.

In 1890 a strike in the shipping industry spread to wharves, railways, mines and shearing sheds. Employers responded by locking out workers and employing non-union labour, and colonial governments intervened with police and troops. The strike failed, as did subsequent strikes of shearers in 1891 and 1894, and miners in 1892 and 1896. By 1896, the depression and employer resistance to trade unions saw union membership fall to only about five per cent of the workforce.

The defeat of the 1890 Maritime Strike led trade unions to form political parties. In New South Wales, the Labor Electoral League won a quarter of seats in the elections of 1891 and held the balance of power between the Free Trade Party and the Protectionist Party. Labor parties also won seats in the South Australian and Queensland elections of 1893. The world's first Labor government was formed in Queensland in 1899, but it lasted only a week.

From the mid-1890s colonial governments, often with Labor support, passed acts regulating wages, working conditions and "coloured" labour in a number of industries.

At an Intercolonial Conference in 1896 the colonies agreed to extend restrictions on Chinese immigration to "all coloured races". Labor supported the Reid government of New South Wales in passing the Coloured Races Restriction and Regulation Act, a forerunner of the White Australia Policy. However, following objections to the legislation from Britain and Japan, New South Wales, Tasmania and Western Australia introduced European language tests to restrict "undesirable" immigrants.

Growth of nationalism

By the late 1880s, a majority of people living in the Australian colonies were native born, although over 90 per cent were of British and Irish heritage. The Australian Natives Association, a friendly society open to Australian-born males, flourished in the 1880s. It campaigned for an Australian federation within the British Empire, promoted Australian literature and history, and successfully lobbied for the 26 January to be Australia’s national day.

Australian nationalists often claimed that unification of the colonies was Australia's destiny. Australians lived on a single continent, and the vast majority shared a British heritage and spoke English. Many nationalists spoke of Australians sharing common blood as members of the British "race". Henry Parkes stated in 1890, "The crimson thread of kinship runs through us all....we must unite as one great Australian people."

A minority of nationalists saw a distinctive Australian identity rather than shared "Britishness" as the basis for a unified Australia. Some, such as the radical magazine the Bulletin and the Tasmanian Attorney-General Andrew Inglis Clark, were republicans, while others were prepared to accept a fully independent Australia with only a ceremonial role for the British monarch. In 1887 poet Henry Lawson wrote of a choice between, "The Old Dead Tree and the Young Tree Green/ The Land that belongs to the lord and the Queen,/And the land that belongs to you."

A unified Australia was typically associated with a white Australia. In 1887, the Bulletin declared that all white men who left the religious and class divisions of the old world behind were Australians. The 1880s and 1890s saw a proliferation of books and articles depicting Australia as a sparsely populated white nation threatened by populous Asian neighbours. A white Australia also meant the exclusion of cheap Asian labour, an idea strongly promoted by the labour movement. According to historian John Hirst, "Federation was not needed to make the White Australia policy, but that policy was the most popular expression of the national ideal that inspired federation.”

The growing nationalist sentiment in the 1880s and 1890s was associated with the development of a distinctively Australian art and literature. Artists of the Heidelberg School such as Arthur Streeton, Frederick McCubbin and Tom Roberts followed the example of the European Impressionists by painting in the open air. They applied themselves to capturing the light and colour of the Australian landscape and exploring the distinctive and the universal in the "mixed life of the city and the characteristic life of the station and the bush".

In the 1890s Henry Lawson, Banjo Paterson and other writers associated with the Bulletin magazine produced poetry and prose exploring the nature of bush life and themes of independence, stoicism, masculine labour, egalitarianism, anti-authoritarianism and mateship. Protagonists were often shearers, boundary riders and itinerant bush workers. In the following decade Lawson, Paterson and other writers such as Steele Rudd, Miles Franklin, and Joseph Furphy helped forge a distinctive national literature. Paterson's ballad "The Man from Snowy River" (1890) achieved popularity, and his lyrics to the song "Waltzing Matilda" (c. 1895) helped make it the unofficial national anthem for many Australians. According to Macintyre, however, even in the 1890s the "bush legend was just that, a myth that enshrined lost possibilities[.]"

Federation movement

Main article: Federation of Australia

Growing nationalist sentiment coincided with business concerns about the economic inefficiency of customs barriers between the colonies, the duplication of services by colonial governments and the lack of a single national market for goods and services. Colonial concerns about German and French ambitions in the region also led to British pressure for a federated Australian defence force and a unified, single-gauge railway network for defence purposes.

A Federal Council of Australasia was formed in 1885 but it had few powers and New South Wales and South Australia declined to join.

An obstacle to federation was the fear of the smaller colonies that they would be dominated by New South Wales and Victoria. Queensland, in particular, although generally favouring a white Australia policy, wished to maintain an exception for South Sea Islander workers in the sugar cane industry.

Another major barrier was the free trade policies of New South Wales which conflicted with the protectionist policies dominant in Victoria and most of the other colonies. Nevertheless, the NSW premier Henry Parkes was a strong advocate of federation and his Tenterfield Oration in 1889 was pivotal in gathering support for the cause. Parkes also struck a deal with Edmund Barton, leader of the NSW Protectionist Party, whereby they would work together for federation and leave the question of a protective tariff for a future Australian government to decide.

In 1890 representatives of the six colonies and New Zealand met in Melbourne and agreed in principle to a federation of the colonies and for the colonial legislatures to nominate representatives to attend a constitutional convention. The following year, the National Australasian Convention was held in Sydney, with all the future states and New Zealand represented. A draft constitutional Bill was adopted and transmitted to the colonial parliaments for approval by the people. The worsening economic depression and parliamentary opposition, however, delayed progress.

In early 1893 the first citizens' Federation League was established in the Riverina region of New South Wales and many other leagues were soon formed in the colonies. The leagues organised a conference in Corowa in July 1893 which developed a new plan for federation involving a constitutional convention with directly elected delegates and a referendum in each colony to endorse the proposed constitution. The new NSW premier, George Reid, endorsed the "Corowa plan" and in 1895 convinced the majority of other premiers to adopt it.

Most of the colonies sent directly elected representatives to the constitutional convention, although those of Western Australia were chosen by its parliament. Queensland did not send delegates. The convention held sessions in 1897 and 1898 which resulted in a proposed constitution for a Commonwealth of federated states under the British Crown.

Referendums held in 1898 resulted in solid majorities for the constitution in Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania. However, the referendum failed to gain the required majority in New South Wales after that colony's Labor Party campaigned against it and premier Reid gave it such qualified support that he earned the nickname "yes-no Reid".

The premiers of the other colonies agreed to a number of concessions to New South Wales (particularly that the future Commonwealth capital would be located in that state), and in 1899 further referendums were held in all the colonies except Western Australia. All resulted in yes votes.

In March 1900, delegates were dispatched to London, including Barton and the Victorian parliamentarian Alfred Deakin, who had been a leading advocate for federation. Following intense negotiations with the British government, the federation Bill was passed by the imperial government on 5 July 1900 and gained Royal Assent on 9 July. Western Australia subsequently voted to join the new federation.

Federation

Main articles: History of Australia (1901–1945) and Federation of Australia

White Australia, protectionism and rise of Labor

The Commonwealth of Australia was proclaimed by the Governor-General, Lord Hopetoun on 1 January 1901, and Barton was sworn in as Australia's first prime minister. The first Federal elections were held in March 1901 and resulted in a narrow plurality for the Protectionist Party over the Free Trade Party with the Australian Labor Party (ALP) polling third. Labor declared it would support the party which offered concessions to its program, and Barton's Protectionists formed a government, with Deakin as Attorney-General.

The Immigration Restriction Act 1901 was one of the first laws passed by the new Australian parliament. This centrepiece of the White Australia policy aimed to extend the restrictions on the immigration of Asians that had previously been enacted by the colonies. Like the colonial legislation, the Immigration Restriction Act used a dictation test in a European language to exclude Asian migrants, who were considered a threat to Australia's living standards and majority British culture. The government also ended to use of indentured South Sea Islander labour in the Queensland sugar cane industry and announced that the workers would be repatriated to their islands by 1906. Deakin stated that White Australia, "is not a surface, but a reasoned policy which goes to the roots of national life, and by which the whole of our social, industrial and political organisation is governed."

In 1902 the government introduced female suffrage in the Commonwealth jurisdiction, but at the same time excluded Aboriginal Australians from the franchise, unless they already had the vote in a state jurisdiction.

The Barton government also introduced a tariff on imports designed to raise revenue and protect Australian industry. However, the tariff was lower and less extensive than many protectionists wanted due to the need to attract sufficient support from Labor parliamentarians, who had a free vote on the issue and many of whom favoured free trade.

The three major parties all supported a system of Commonwealth conciliation and arbitration to settle industrial disputes extending across state borders, but Labor insisted that railway workers should be included in the system and preference be given to unionised labour. Disagreements over the legislation were instrumental in the fall of Deakin's Protectionist government in April 1904 and the appointment of the first national Labor government under prime minister Chris Watson. The Watson government itself fell in April and a Free Trade government under prime minister Reid successfully introduced legislation for a Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Court.

In July 1905 Deakin withdrew his support for the Reid government and again formed a Protectionist government with the support of Labor. The new government embarked on a series of social reforms and a program dubbed "new protection" under which tariff protection for Australian industries would be linked to their provision of "fair and reasonable" wages. In the Harvester case of 1907, H. B. Higgins of the Conciliation and Arbitration Court set a fair and reasonable wage based on the needs of a male breadwinner supporting a wife and three children. In 1908 the High Court of Australia struck down the New Protection legislation as unconstitutional. However, the Harvester case set a standard for a basic wage which was subsequently used by the Conciliation and Arbitration Court when settling industrial disputes. By 1914 the Commonwealth, New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia used arbitration courts to settle industrial disputes and fix wages and conditions, while Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania used wage boards to achieve the same goals.

Labor and anti-Labor

The base of the Labor Party was the Australian Trade Union movement which grew from under 100,000 members in 1901 to more than half a million in 1914. The party also drew considerable support from clerical workers, Catholics and small farmers. In 1905 the Labor party adopted objectives at the federal level which included the "cultivation of an Australian sentiment based upon the maintenance of racial purity" and "the collective ownership of monopolies". In the same year, the Queensland branch of the party adopted an overtly socialist objective.

In 1906 the federal Free Trade Party changed its name to the Anti-Socialist party and in the December 1906 elections became the largest party with 38 per cent of the vote (compared with 37 per cent for Labor and 21 per cent for the Protectionists). Deakin's Protectionist government remained in power, but following the passage of legislation for old age pensions and a new protective tariff in 1908, Labor withdrew its support for the government and in November Andrew Fisher became the second Labor prime minister. In response, the Liberal-Protectionists, Anti-Socialists and conservative "Corner" group entered into a coalition known as the Fusion which formed a government under prime minister Deakin in June 1909. Reid stated that the question was whether Australia should follow a course of free enterprise or state control.

In the elections of May 1910, Labor won a majority in both houses of parliament and Fisher again became prime minister. The Labor government introduced a series of reforms including a progressive land tax (1910), invalid pensions (1910) and a maternity allowance (1912). The government established the Commonwealth Bank (1911) but referendums to nationalise monopolies and extend Commonwealth trade and commerce powers were defeated in 1911 and 1913. The Commonwealth took over responsibility for the Northern Territory from South Australia in 1911.

The anti-Labor parliamentary fusion was formalised as the Commonwealth Liberal Party under the former New South Wales Labor Party leader Joseph Cook. The Liberal Party narrowly won the May 1913 elections but the Labor Party still controlled the Senate. The Cook government's attempt to pass legislation abolishing preferential treatment for union members in the Commonwealth Public Service triggered a double dissolution of parliament. The Labor Party comfortably won the September 1914 elections and Fisher resumed office.

External affairs and defence

With Federation, the Commonwealth inherited the small defence forces of the six former Australian colonies. By 1901, units of soldiers from all six Australian colonies had been active as part of British forces in the Boer War. When the British government asked for more troops from Australia in early 1902, the Australian government obliged with a national contingent. Some 16,500 men had volunteered for service by the war's end in June 1902.

In 1884, Britain and Germany had agreed to partition the eastern half of New Guinea. In 1902, British New Guinea was placed under the authority of Australia which saw the territory as vital for the protection of shipping lanes. With the passage of the Papua Act of 1905 British New Guinea became the Australian Territory of Papua. Formal Australian administration of the territory began in 1906.

Under a 1902 agreement, Australia contributed to the cost of a Royal Navy Pacific fleet to provide for the nation's defence, but Britain reserved the right to deploy the fleet outside Australian waters. Following Japan's defeat of Russia in the 1904-05 war, concern over Japanese naval power led to calls for an Australian fleet. Deakin proposed the purchase of destroyers in 1906 and his government's Surplus Revenue Act of 1908 provided £250,000 for naval expenditure. The Fisher Labor government increased the naval budget and in 1911 established the Royal Australian Navy. In October 1913, the navy's first battle cruiser, Australia, arrived in Sydney harbour, accompanied by the new light cruisers Sydney and Melbourne.

In 1907 Deakin proposed compulsory military training for home defence, a measure that was supported by Watson and Hughes of the Labor party. The Labor party adopted the measure at its 1908 annual conference and in 1911 the Fisher government expanded the system of compulsory military training which had been introduced by the Deakin government the previous year. Defence expenditure increased from £1 million in 1908-09 to £4.3 million in 1913-14, when it accounted for a third of the Commonwealth budget.

Economy and population

The breaking of the Federation Drought in 1903 heralded a period of strong economic growth. The economy grew by 75 per cent in the fourteen years to the outbreak of the First World War, with pastoralism, construction, manufacturing and government services leading the way. Rural industries were still the major employer (accounting for a quarter of all jobs) but manufacturing was fast catching up. While employment grew by 30 per cent over the period, employment in manufacturing increased by almost 70 per cent.

The Australian population also grew strongly, driven by a fall in infant mortality, increasing adult life expectancy, and a revival in state-subsidised immigration. The population increased from four million in 1901 to five million in 1914. From 1910 to 1914 just under 300,000 migrants arrived, all white, and mostly from Britain.

First World War

Main articles: Military history of Australia during World War I, Home front during World War I § Australia, and Economic history of World War I § Australia

Further information: World War I conscription in Australia

Australia at war 1914–18

When the United Kingdom declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914, the declaration automatically involved all of Britain's colonies and dominions. The outbreak of war came in the middle of the 1914 federal election campaign during which Labor leader Andrew Fisher promised to defend Britain "to the last man and the last shilling." Both major parties offered Britain 20,000 Australian troops. As the Defence Act 1903 precluded sending conscripts overseas, a new volunteer force, the Australian Imperial Force (AIF), was raised to meet this commitment.

Public enthusiasm for the war was high, and the initial quota for the AIF was quickly filled. The troops left for Egypt on 1 November 1914, one of the escort ships, HMAS Sydney, sinking the German cruiser Emden along the way. Meanwhile, in September, a separate Australian expeditionary force had captured German New Guinea.

After arriving in Egypt, the AIF was incorporated into an Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) under the British general William Birdwood. The Anzacs formed part of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force with the task of opening the Dardanelles to allied battleships, threatening Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire which had entered the war on the side of the Central Powers.

The Anzacs, along with French, British and Indian troops, landed on the Gallipoli peninsula on 25 April 1915. The Australian and New Zealand position at Anzac Cove was vulnerable to attack and the troops suffered heavy losses in establishing a narrow beachhead. After it had become clear that the expeditionary force would be unable to achieve its objectives in the face of determined Turkish resistance, the Anzacs were evacuated in December, followed by the British and French in early January.

The Australians suffered about 8,000 deaths in the campaign. Australian war correspondents variously emphasised the bravery and fighting qualities of the Australians and the errors of their British commanders. By 1916, Australian servicemen were commemorating 25 April, and the date soon became an Australian national holiday known as Anzac Day, centring on themes of "nationhood, brotherhood and sacrifice".

In 1916 five infantry divisions of the AIF were sent to the Western Front. In July 1916, at Fromelles, in a diversionary attack during the Battle of the Somme, the AIF suffered 5,533 casualties in 24 hours, the most costly single encounter in Australian military history. Elsewhere on the Somme, 23,000 Australians were killed or wounded in seven weeks of attacks on German positions. In Spring 1917, as the Germans retreated to the Hindenburg Line, pursuing Australian troops engaged them at the First Battle of Bullecourt and the Second Battle of Bullecourt, suffering 10,000 casualties. In the summer and autumn of 1917, Australian troops also sustained heavy losses during the British offensive around Ypres. Overall, almost 22,000 Australian troops were killed in 1917.

In November 1917 the five Australian divisions were united in the Australian Corps, and in May 1918 the Australian general John Monash took over command. The Australian Corps was heavily involved in halting the German Spring Offensive of 1918 and in the allied counter-offensive of August that year. Constituting about one tenth of the British and dominion soldiers on the Western Front, the Australian Corps was responsible for over 20 per cent of the territory reconquered, prisoners captured and field guns taken in the counter offensive.

In the Middle East, the Australian Light Horse brigades were prominent in halting the Ottoman and German threat to the Suez Canal at Romani in August 1916. In 1917 they participated in the allied advance through the Sinai into Palestine. This included a light horse mounted charge at Beersheba in October which helped win the Third Battle of Gaza. In 1918 they pressed on through Palestine and into Syria in an advance that led to the Ottoman surrender on 31 October.

By the time the war ended on 11 November 1918, 324,000 Australians had served overseas. Casualties included 60,000 dead and 150,000 wounded—the highest casualty rate of any allied force. Australian troops also had higher rates of unauthorised absence, crime and imprisonment than other allied forces.

The home front

Few Australians publicly opposed the war in 1914, and volunteers for the AIF outstripped the capacity to enlist and train them. There was also a surge in female participation in voluntary organisations such as the Red Cross and patriotic groups such as the One Woman, One Recruit League. Anti-German leagues were formed and 7,000 Germans and other "enemy aliens" were sent to internment camps during the war.

Prime Minister W. M. Hughes in 1919

In October 1914, the Fisher Labor government introduced the War Precautions Act which gave it the power to make regulations "for securing the public safety and defence of the Commonwealth". After Billy Hughes replaced Fisher as prime minister in October 1915, regulations under the act were increasingly used to censor publications, penalise public speech and suppress organisations that the government considered detrimental to the war effort.

Business uncertainty, the enlistment of young male workers, and the disruption of shipping and export markets led to a decline in economic output. The economy contracted by 10 per cent over the course of hostilities. Inflation rose in the first two years of war and real wages fell. Soon after becoming prime minister, Hughes abandoned a promised referendum to give the Commonwealth the power to control prices, although the government later used its wartime powers to regulate the prices of some basic goods. Lower wages and perceptions of profiteering by some businesses led, in 1916, to a wave of strikes by miners, waterside workers and shearers.

Enlistments also declined, falling from 35,000 a month at its peak in 1915 to 6,000 a month in 1916. Hughes returned from a trip to England and the Western Front in July 1916 and narrowly won a Cabinet vote to hold a referendum on conscription for overseas service. In September the New South Wales Labor Party expelled Hughes over the issue. Following the narrow defeat of the October 1916 conscription referendum, the state branches of the Labor party began expelling other prominent pro-conscriptionists. In November, Hughes and 23 of his supporters left the parliamentary party, and in January 1917 they formed a new Nationalist government with the former opposition. The Nationalists comfortably won the May 1917 elections and Hughes continued as prime minister.

Political and industrial unrest intensified in 1917. From August to October there was a major strike of New South Wales railway, transport, waterside and coal workers which was defeated after the Commonwealth and New South Wales governments arrested strike leaders and organised special constables and non-union labour. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was declared an unlawful organisation and over 100 of its members were arrested. In September, protests by the Women's Peace Army in Melbourne resulted in extensive damage to shops and offices.

Following further falls in enlistments in 1917, Hughes announced a second referendum on conscription to be held in December. The referendum campaign proved divisive, with Hughes denouncing opponents of the measure as "the Germans of Australia, the Sinn Féin and the IWW." The Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, Daniel Mannix, and the Labor premier of Queensland T. J. Ryan were prominent campaigners against conscription. The referendum was defeated by a wider margin than in 1916. An April 1918 recruiting conference including representatives of the Commonwealth government, State governments, employers and labour leaders also failed to reach agreement on measures to increase troop numbers. Enlistments in 1918 were the lowest for the war, leading to the disbandment of 12 battalions and mutinies in the AIF.

Paris peace conference

Hughes attended the Imperial War Conference and Imperial War Cabinet in London from June 1918 where Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa won British support for their separate representation at the eventual peace conference. At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Hughes argued that Germany should pay the full cost of the war, but ultimately gained only £5 million in war reparations for Australia. Australia and the other self-governing British dominions won the right to become full members of the new League of Nations, and Australia obtained a special League of Nations mandate over German New Guinea allowing Australia to control trade and immigration. Australia also gained a 42 per cent share of the formerly German-ruled island of Nauru, giving access to its rich superphosphate reserves. Australia argued successfully against a Japanese proposal for a racial equality clause in the League of Nations covenant, as Hughes feared that it would jeopardise the White Australia policy. As a signatory to the Treaty of Versailles and a full member of the League of Nations, Australia took an important step towards international recognition as a sovereign nation.