Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act by Richard Cavendish

July 9th, 1900

The period between 1850 and 1900 was crucial for Australia's development. It was no longer a penal colony. After the sensational gold discoveries of 1851 there was a steady influx of middle-class professional immigrants and skilled workers. Industry and agriculture developed until the country was practically self-sufficient, modern transport and communications systems were introduced, cities, universities and formidable trade unions appeared and the main political parties took shape - Liberal, Conservative and Labour. With this went a rising sense of nationhood and a demand for greater self-government. The individual states had their own elected legislatures and executives, with London-appointed governors who were mainly figureheads, but Westminster was still responsible for their defence and foreign policy. The need was growing for a central government and parliament to create, as one Australian politician said, 'a great and glorious nation under the Southern Cross'.

A federal government was first discussed as early as the 1860s, but the decisive moves came in the 1890s. The case was urged by the veteran Sir Henry Parkes, five times premier of New South Wales. A draft constitution was accepted at a conference in Melbourne in 1898 and after a succession of referenda six states - New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia - agreed to federate. Western Australia almost stayed out, but joined; New Zealand could have joined but stayed out.

The text of the new constitution was essentially the work of a Welshman by origin, Samuel Walker Griffith, born in Merthyr Tydfil and taken to Australia by his father as a boy. A brilliant lawyer and translator of Dante, he was a former premier of Queensland. Devised to blend the best features of Britain and the United States, it established two houses of parliament - the Senate and the House of Representatives - and a federal authority called the Commonwealth, drawn from, and responsible to, parliament for national defence, foreign policy, immigration and other nationwide matters. A High Court was to be established, similar to the US Supreme Court (Griffith would be the first chief justice, as it turned out), and a governor-general appointed by Westminster represented the monarch and acted as guardian of the constitution. Both houses were elected by universal suffrage from 1902, when Australian women were all given the vote.

A delegation went to London to sort out minor difficulties with the Secretary of State in the Salisbury government, Joseph Chamberlain. It was led by Edmund Barton of New South Wales, a lawyer and leading politician who was said to have made 300 pro-federal speeches in three years. The Act 'to constitute the Commonwealth of Australia' passed easily through the Westminster parliament and was given the royal assent by Queen Victoria in July. It took effect at the start of the new century on January 1st, 1901, when Edmund Barton became Australia's first prime minister. The first federal parliament, elected in March, assembled in May in Melbourne; it was formally opened by the future George V to cheering by a crowd of 12,000 people. The first governor-general was a Scottish aristocrat, the Earl of Hopetoun and future first Marquess of Linlithgow. A product of Eton and Sandhurst, he had already been governor of Victoria and was well liked down under. He resigned as governor-general in 1902 because his salary of £10,000 a year (equivalent to £500,000 or more now) was not adequate to his duties.

Before that he had signed one of the Australian parliament's first measures. This was the Immigration Restriction Act, which established the White Australia policy that lasted until the 1960s. For all their independence in their 'great and glorious new nation' of some 4 million people, most Australians still considered themselves British and the strength of their ties with the old country was demonstrated in their response to the First World War.

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