Australians, Volume 2

by Thomas Keneally

  Indeed, Deakin, Kingston and Barton were told that at home they were getting only tepid support, while the London press could not understand why they were holding out on such a small matter. So they decided to take on public opinion themselves and preach ‘the gospel of the Bill without amendment’. When members of the Tory government, arguing with them in conference, also invited them to visit the palaces, country estates and clubs of London privilege, the three hard-core delegates, instead of being overwhelmed by their lush surroundings, began to lobby people. On any evening or weekend they could be found arguing their case at the residences of Lord Landsdowne, Lord James of Hereford, Lord Hopetoun (the future first governor-general of the coming Commonwealth), Lord Windsor and Lord Rosebery, as well as those of Sir Charles Dilke and other leading Liberals. Quite a number of Chamberlain’s colleagues now became convinced of the rightness of the Australian case. Even Chamberlain’s seniors, Arthur Balfour and the Duke of Devonshire, began to ask him whether his stubbornness was wise.

  In London one night that spring the British Empire League brought the Prince of Wales and his son, the Duke of York, to hear Mr Barton speak. The National Liberal Club, the City Liberal Club, the Constitutional Senior and Junior Clubs, the Press Clubs, the Anglo-Saxon Colonial Clubs, the Fishmongers’ Guild, the National Conservative Union and the London Chamber of Commerce, along with many others, served as venues for the three. Sir Julian Salomons, Agent-General for New South Wales, had undermined Barton and his friends by arguing against Clause 74, and at the City Liberal Club Barton and Sir Julian had an angry exchange of opinions. But the overall effect was that Chamberlain, in making the delegates so welcome as promising colonial vassals, had given them platforms from which they could attack him.

  At last Chamberlain told the delegation that the final conference was to be held on 8 May 1900, before the bill was introduced to the House of Commons on 14 May. The meeting began. ‘Coldly, with impassive demeanour and sententious deliberation, Chamberlain stated his case.’ The argument was still the Colonial Laws Validity Act matter, which of course the delegates saw as an intrusion on Australian sovereignty, and the right of appeal to the Privy Council. Chamberlain accused the delegates, in a voice that vibrated, of not having given proper attention to the amendments. He declared that he was ‘disappointed and pained at the tone of the last memo’. No British parliament could be coerced in this fashion, he said.

  The three companions had already decided that if Chamberlain did not move they would threaten to leave London since their presence there could no longer serve any purpose. But Barton spoke and forgot to say so, sitting down prematurely to prevent himself completely losing his temper. As for Kingston, he was almost ‘inarticulate with suppressed vexation’. Dickson, said Deakin, ‘was brief and triumphant’. When Deakin’s turn came, he accused Chamberlain and the Colonial Office of having omitted to take notice earlier of the draft constitution which had been extant in various forms since 1891. The only way he could see out of the dilemma was to create the federation and leave it to the federal government to alter the parts of the bill the British wanted altered, but even so he believed the Colonial Laws Validity Act should not apply at all. But, he said, for the British government to insist on the amendments at the expense of the Commonwealth bill ‘was a fatal mistake likely to be fruitful of ill will’. The bill was dear to them all, said Deakin, not only because they were amongst its begetters but because it had been so dearly bought. ‘The pride in it and the love of it which the Australian people cherished were sentiments to be studied and not ignored, and to be satisfied, not offended, and might be rendered a motive power of perpetual gratitude.’ If Chamberlain and the British cabinet would just accept it!

  The announcement of the disagreement with the delegates, and the determination of the British government to insist upon changing Section 74, created little press interest or sympathy. Chamberlain invited the delegates to dine with him that night. For the three great Federalists it was a wistful, half-amiable dinner. Deakin left early. Barton, Deakin and Kingston met the next day to look at a proposed Section 74 as it was now reframed by the law officers of the Crown. The accepted new Section 74 declared in layman’s terms that no appeal should be made to the Privy Council (‘the Queen in Council’) upon any question which challenged the powers of the Commonwealth, or on any conflict concerning the constitutional powers of states, unless the High Court certified that it should happen. The constitution would not intrude on the Queen’s prerogative to give special leave of appeal from the High Court to the council, but the Australian Parliament had the power to limit the matters in which leave could be asked. In other words, the whiphand belonged to the Australian High Court and to the Australian Parliament. They realised at once that they had won. The new clause suggested appeals to the Privy Council on constitutional matters and those involving British interests be allowed only by the consent of the respective governments of Australia and Great Britain. And it left Australian laws immune from imperial revision. This gave Australia the effective sovereignty it sought.

  The delegates were delighted, while Chamberlain himself pretended to have prevailed. After the meeting with Chamberlain had ended and ‘the door closed upon them [the delegates] and left them alone, they seized each other’s hands and danced hand in hand in a ring around the centre of the room to express their jubilation’. It was easier to imagine Kingston dancing better than Deakin, but it seems to have been the truth: two whiskered men and a clean-shaven one doing the Federation waltz. The proposed amendment was wired to the premiers and when no reply came the delegates signed a short note accepting the new arrangement and taking entire responsibility for it on their shoulders. The settlement was announced to the crowded House of Commons by Chamberlain. Chamberlain’s speech was, Deakin admitted, masterful. The passage of the bill was assured.

  Yet Dickson’s wrath and mortification at what had happened was, according to Deakin, undisguised. Dickson, Griffith and the Queensland government attacked the compromise Section 74 which put the control of judgments on the constitution back in Australian hands. It was now the preserve of the Australian Parliament to permit appeals to the Privy Council if it chose. The Australian Natives Association applauded the delegates as did the South Australian politicians Symon and Downer and the New South Welshman Dick O’Connor, but the rest of Australia, said Deakin, ‘shrieked censure upon the daring delegates’. The influential classes of the Australian colonies and the press were determined to strike out the new Clause 74 and leave an unrestricted right of appeal to the Privy Council on all matters. But when the bill passed through the British Parliament, the argument was all at once over, and the naysayers accepted it.

  Deakin left London and travelled on the Continent, suffering from a rash of carbuncles, no doubt brought on by the stress of the experience he had been through. He said he was still pelted with telegrams every day, but some of them were from Kingston denouncing the Chief Justices around Australia who were all attacking the new Section 74.

  Australia would federate, and the founding documents of the Australian community were signed in Sydney on 1 January 1901. It was time to reach for the bunting and the protocol books.

  THE BIRTHDAY

  The first Governor-General of the new Commonwealth, part of his task being the exercise of the reserve powers under the Constitution (the giving of royal assent to the bill, the ceremonial headship of armed forces, the invitation to the leader of an electorally successful party to try to form a government, and so on), was a trim little fellow of more charm than charisma, the Earl of Hopetoun. In his care also was put the duty of seeing that Australian legislation did not damage imperial interests. Though the British government did not expect this to be likely to happen, there was after all a Labor Party, better developed than that of the United Kingdom, some of whose members espoused classic socialist aims.

  Hopetoun had been born in 1860, a Scot educated at Eton and Sandhurst on the ba
sis of an enormous family estate on the Firth of Forth. Its management had absorbed him until he became Conservative Whip in the House of Lords in 1883. He was a known quantity to at least some Australians. He had been Governor of Victoria during the 1890s depression and, in that hard-up age, had entertained extravagantly in Melbourne’s Government House, a matter of admiration to some and shock to others. But he went on impromptu rides around Melbourne and made friends easily with citizens he encountered. The Bulletin claimed he had more broken bones from riding horses than any man in Australia.

  In 1898 he declined the post of Governor-General of Canada and became Lord Chamberlain, but in 1900, for whatever reason, he accepted the governor-generalship of the Commonwealth of Australia. On the journey to Australia he became ill with typhoid fever, and Lady Ethelred Hopetoun, a more imperious being than her husband, fell ill to malaria.

  Tall, robust Premier William Lyne of New South Wales, a Tasmanian originally but a dubious Federalist who had, in alliance with Labor, passed an impressive list of reform bills regarding arbitration, work hours, and factory reform, had begun to charm Hopetoun as soon as his ship, the Royal Arthur, reached Jervis Bay. Like Lord Hopetoun, Lyne loved thoroughbred horses and was a cheery fellow with an infectious laugh. For the ship’s arrival in Sydney on 15 December 1900, Lyne organised a great harbour spectacular. On 18 December Lord Hopetoun asked the advice of a number of men, including the Chief Justice and George Reid, about who should be invited to form a cabinet and, if successful, become prime minister. He did not seem to consult any Federalists. But Lyne was native born, premier of the senior colony, and so was eligible in Hopetoun’s eyes, and he issued a commission to Lyne to form a government. There was outrage amongst Federationists but a narky feeling from others that it served men like Barton right for being such zealots.

  Deakin wrote to Barton from the Australian Club in Melbourne on 20 December, telling him that the Age had accepted Lyne, and the political advisers to the Victorian government were settling down to accepting him too. ‘The whole business makes me sick with disgust.’ Deakin’s opinion of Lyne was not informed by Christian charity either: ‘A smooth, sleek, suspicious, blundering, short-sighted backblocks politician,’ was Deakin’s assessment. But Lyne now seemed an inevitability, and by 21 December Deakin was admitting to himself that his objections to Lyne were personal. Accepting him for now would give Barton greater moral and political power, Deakin thought. ‘I wrote last night in bitterness,’ he told Barton. ‘I write this morning in sorrow. I have braced Turner [the premier] up and will try . . . in an hour or two to secure you the leadership, but even failing that in my judgement it is your duty to join Lyne . . . Australia will suffer if you refuse to crucify yourself.’ Richard O’Connor, in a letter to Barton, declared, ‘Hopetoun’s surroundings have obviously been too much for him, they have been all Lyne and his government.’

  Lyne now consulted the premiers of three other states—Queensland (Robert Philp of the famous shipping, trading and blackbirding company Burns Philp), South Australia (Frederick Holder) and George Turner of Victoria, all in Sydney for the celebrations. Forrest of Western Australia, an admirer of Barton’s, was still in transit. The three premiers told Lyne they believed that Alfred Deakin and a number of leading Federalists would never agree to serve in a Lyne cabinet. Therefore, they said, Lyne could not form a credible government, and so he should advise Lord Hopetoun to send for Barton, who could. When Deakin’s and Barton’s friends O’Connor, Bernhard Ringrose Wise and Charlie Kingston refused to accept cabinet positions under him, Lyne rode to Government House, returned his commission to Hopetoun, and suggested Barton be immediately called on.

  Barton had no trouble in finding a cabinet (always allowing that each of them managed to win a federal seat in coming elections). He wanted a largely Protectionist cabinet, raising its revenues from tariffs and protecting its people with them. But he sought one which represented all the states. He invited each premier to take a cabinet position. Philp did not want to leave Queensland, and so the sick and soon-to-die Dickson had to serve. Lyne had to be invited in and, to his credit, never became viperous towards Barton. Though his ambitions to be prime minister remained, they would never be fulfilled. Turner of Victoria and Forrest of Western Australia accepted at once, but Holder of South Australia was away on a holiday and could not be reached. So the recent premier and congenial soul Kingston was invited in. Holder would be desolated, but was promised the post of first Speaker of the House. Likeable Neil Lewis, Premier of Tasmania, accepted but would resign in April before elections took place. And then Deakin and O’Connor, not premiers of the moment but great federal leaders, men dear to Barton, were offered cabinet posts.

  Gathered together in the Sydney Domain on the humid New Year’s Day of 1901 were mounted Australian troops who had returned from the Boer War, as well as Australasian lancers, infantry and cadets. The colonial troops were to march beneath ten arches between the Domain and the entrance to Centennial Park with detachments of British troops (no doubt pleased to be allotted to these duties rather than to the dreary, typhoid-ridden and deadly war in South Africa). Here in their highly coloured uniforms were representatives of the Royal Horse Artillery, squadrons of various lancers and hussar regiments, the Royal Field Artillery, the Coldstream Guards, the Royal Fusiliers and a detachment from the British army in India.

  Yet the procession did not have a predominantly military tone. Billy Hughes, Labor Party member of the New South Wales legislature, decided he would gather ‘a goodly bunch of shearers—all mounted, each man with a packhorse, carrying his swag’. The horses would be provided in Sydney, but were to be of the sort met in the back country of Queensland and New South Wales, which Hughes knew well from his early wanderings as a young immigrant looking for work. To gather this corps of horsemen Hughes got in touch with the Australian Workers’ Union, who selected the men, all union-card shearers. Hughes met them when they arrived by train at Central Station. Their mounts had been supplied by that boozy, landslide rigging member of parliament W.N. Willis, the member for Bourke, and at first meeting with the horses the shearers found them ‘pretty much uncontrollable’. As Billy Hughes related it, they bolted at full gallop, some towards Camperdown, some up Regent Street, and others for the Quay. Billy himself claimed that he narrowly avoided being thrown by one of them at the mortuary station near Redfern, from which the funeral trains departed for Rookwood cemetery. Ultimately Mr Hughes, having marshalled a band to train with the riders, got the horses used to noise and musical instruments. The shearers and their mounts became his contribution to the great federal nuptials.

  For the procession route there was an arch to welcome the Governor-General, there were American, French, German and other community arches, a Citizens’ Commonwealth arch, a Melbourne arch, a Chinese arch and so on. Miners wielding picks stood ready on the walls of the coal arch. Beneath these arches would travel the ‘allegorical cars’—floats, including ones representing the Canadians, Japanese and Italians.

  An Aboriginal arch was attended by sixty Aboriginal men, women and children. The Aborigines had no place in the Constitution except in Section 127, which read, ‘In reckoning the number of people of the Commonwealth, or of a state or other part of the Commonwealth, Aboriginal natives shall not be counted.’ While the clause might have been motivated by a desire to keep down the contribution per capita of population that the states with large Aboriginal populations, such as South Australia, contributed to initiating the Commonwealth, it would nonetheless continue as a noxious and ambiguous presence within the document.

  Two hundred policemen marched with the troops that day, as did silver miners wearing lamps and carrying picks, coal miners, gold miners and tin miners, all in white with sashes. They were joined by house painters, timber-getters, seamen and maritime engineers, bakers, furniture makers with miniature pieces of furniture on the end of sticks, and so on. Then came two carriages with presidents and secretaries o
f the Labor Leagues, the executives of major unions and the New South Wales Labor Council. After these came members of lodges and friendly societies. Fire fighters and church leaders preceded the politicians (including those who had opposed the bill), judges and senior academics. Cardinal Moran, who had spoken up for Federation at a Bathurst convention and thus secured many Irish-Catholic Yes votes, would not accept the idea that he should march in front of, and thus have lower precedence than, the Anglican Archbishop, William Saumarez Smith. A cardinal trumped an archbishop, Moran argued. The organisers asserted that their choice was in no way sectarian, but that the Anglican Archbishop represented the largest body of adherents in Australia. Wesleyan, Presbyterian and Methodist leaders also boycotted the procession over order of precedence, but other Christian and Jewish clergy did take part. Though Moran withdrew from the procession, he chose to stand alongside the choir of 2000 Catholic schoolchildren on the steps of St Mary’s to wave and chorale the procession on its way.

  Despite a stormy previous night, it was a characteristic hot and humid midsummer day. In fact, some soldiers collapsed from the heat—one newspaper declared that some of these were ‘sweating Tommies’ but others were Australians. A policeman was killed by a runaway horse and several horses were burned to death in a city police station when decorative Chinese lanterns set the building alight. But in Darlinghurst gaol a Mr Choice, awaiting execution for the murder of his wife, had been given back his life for Federation’s sake, his sentence being commuted to life imprisonment. Where people felt remote from the colonial capitals there were processions too, a large one at Rockhampton, even though the Chinese came close to destroying their decorations when they heard that they were excluded from a march to the Rockhampton football ground.