tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/australian-political-history-40213/articlesAustralian political history – The Conversation2024-02-08T19:17:44Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2221542024-02-08T19:17:44Z2024-02-08T19:17:44ZAustralians love to talk about a ‘fair go’. Here’s what it meant before we became a nation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573697/original/file-20240206-24-mn43my.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C8%2C989%2C785&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-148533449/view">National Library of Australia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Fair go” is an expression we hear a lot in Australia. Activists use it to demand social justice, companies use it to promise customers a good deal, and politicians invoke it to persuade us that they understand the plight of ordinary people. </p>
<p>Most political commentators and academics who write about the fair go associate the phrase with Australia’s famed <a href="https://www.dca.org.au/news/opinion-pieces/land-of-the-fair-go">egalitarian traditions</a>, including equality of economic opportunity, universal political rights and the provision of a safety net via minimum wages and welfare programs. </p>
<p>Yet the fair go expression is sometimes used in ways that are distinctly inegalitarian. Former prime minister Scott Morrison repeatedly declared his belief in “a fair go for those who have a go”, suggesting the concept only applies to hardworking, “deserving” Australians. Morrison’s comments <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/apr/17/the-meaning-of-morrisons-mantra-about-getting-a-fair-go-is-clear-its-conditional">drew the ire</a> of critics who argued he was subverting the original egalitarian meaning of the fair go phrase, along with the Australian culture of benevolence to the needy. </p>
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<p>So who is right about what a fair go means to Australians? Are some uses more faithful to our “fair go traditions” than others? </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-australia-land-of-the-fair-go-not-everyone-gets-an-equal-slice-of-the-pie-70480">In Australia, land of the 'fair go', not everyone gets an equal slice of the pie</a>
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<h2>Origins in the sports pages</h2>
<p>In our <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10361146.2023.2170211">research project</a>, we went back to the earliest recorded mentions of the fair go phrase in colonial-era newspapers to understand the original uses and meanings of this phrase, focusing on the period between 1860 and 1901. </p>
<p>We found the most common uses of the fair go expression did not refer to equality, benevolence and social justice. Instead, the phrase was mainly used to describe spirited efforts in competitive sports such as horse racing, boxing and sprinting. We found this in an <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/227936298">article</a> published in New South Wales in 1889:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>They were stripped of shoes and everything and had a fair go with the hurdles out about 18 yards.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In sport, a fair go could also mean trying your hardest, as opposed to “pulling” a race or “throwing” a match, such as in <a href="http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article120653023">this piece</a> from 1892: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>With a dishonest jockey aboard […] an owner never knows whether he is to get ‘a fair go’ or not.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A fair go could also refer to a thrilling, close match that entertained spectators, or a lucky win for gamblers, as in the expression “having a fair go for their money”. The fair go phrase was also used in politics in the context of closely
fought elections, such as in <a href="http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article155981003">Western Australia in 1900</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>[…] he can depend on a fair go for it, for it’s a dead certainty he won’t gain the seat unopposed.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>“Fair go” could also refer to violent power struggles. In an <a href="http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article3524500">1891 telegram</a> sent during the Shearers Strike in Queensland, a union leader advocated achieving a fair go by force: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>[…] if a little more devil was put into our actions the better it would be for us in the end. We have tried passive resistance and it appears to have failed. Let us try the other now, and have a fair go.</p>
</blockquote>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573908/original/file-20240206-28-4temqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photo of a group of men standing in a bush campsite." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573908/original/file-20240206-28-4temqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573908/original/file-20240206-28-4temqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573908/original/file-20240206-28-4temqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573908/original/file-20240206-28-4temqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573908/original/file-20240206-28-4temqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573908/original/file-20240206-28-4temqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573908/original/file-20240206-28-4temqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The term ‘fair go’ was used during the Queensland Shearer’s Strike in 1891.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://collections.slq.qld.gov.au/viewer/IE316889">State Library of Queensland</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>The expression was sometimes used to refer to fistfights in politics and beyond, such as <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/216692383">this piece</a> in 1897: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Fights between members of Parliament or city or municipal councillors are not of rare occurrence in Australia, but a fair “go” between lawyers with the “bare bones” is not often chronicled.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It was even used to describe violence in wartime, such as when an Australian soldier in the Boer war <a href="http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-page12085571">expressed a hope</a> to a reporter that the enemy would “let him have a fair go […] with the bayonet”. </p>
<h2>Different contexts, different meanings</h2>
<p>While the dominant meanings of the fair go in the 19th century referred to competition and power struggles, we also found uses that resonate more with egalitarianism, social justice and procedural rights. In an 1891 article about politics, a fair go could mean the right to speak:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You are a liar and the father of a liar. Why don’t you let me speak? This is my maiden speech and you might let me have a fair go.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The fair go phrase was also used to <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/216907224">advocate for</a> the principle of one person, one vote, as well as <a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-page7513252">ranked voting</a>. </p>
<p>In sport, a fair go was said to require <a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article19024103">impartial umpires</a> who didn’t favour one side over the other. In the legal system, a fair go required the right to <a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article114314382">due process</a>, such as the provision of warrants for arrests and adequate defence in the courtroom. </p>
<p>While these ideas resonate with contemporary concerns about equal rights, non-discrimination, and proper process in government, they represented the minority of uses of the fair go phrase in the 19th century. Uses of “fair go” to refer to benevolence to the poor and the need for a safety net were virtually absent in the period we studied. </p>
<p>These findings highlight that the fair go originally meant different things to different people, and in different contexts. In our <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8500.12624">recent research</a>, we show that 19th-century uses of the fair go can be organised into six distinct meanings. These reflect the fact that the words “fair” and “go” have multiple meanings associated with both “justice” and “strength”.</p>
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<p>These different interpretations are alive and well today, and can be used to critically <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8500.12624">assess public policies</a> on contentious issues such as housing affordability and immigration. </p>
<p>Who is right about the true historical and contemporary meaning of the fair go? Our research shows no political ideology or party has a monopoly on the fair go. How we talk about the fair go reveals the ideas that shaped us as a nation, and the values that influence our political debates.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222154/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cosmo Howard receives funding from the Australian Research Council. This article was funded under the ARC Discovery Project: DP220101911 – Understanding the Antipodean 'Fair Go'.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pandanus Petter receives funding from the Australian Research Council. This article was funded under ARC Discovery Project: DP220101911 – Understanding the Antipodean 'Fair Go'.</span></em></p>Politicians often wheel out the phrase, but what does it really mean? We examined newspaper articles from before Federation to track how it was used.Cosmo Howard, Associate Professor School of Government and International Relations, Griffith UniversityPandanus Petter, Research Fellow Centre for Governance and Public Policy, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2170902023-11-21T23:04:11Z2023-11-21T23:04:11ZJFK’s death 60 years on: what Australian condolence letters reveal about us<p>US President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas 60 years ago, on November 22 1963. Within hours, the news ricocheted around the world. </p>
<p>Perhaps we could imagine a substantial impact in Europe, where Kennedy had only recently, and somewhat famously, <a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/berlin-w-germany-rudolph-wilde-platz-19630626">declared</a> “Ich bin ein Berliner”. </p>
<p>But Kennedy’s death was also deeply felt in Australia, prompting many people to write personal letters to Jacqueline Kennedy. They paint a revealing portrait of life down under in the 1960s.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/jfk-conspiracy-theory-is-debunked-in-mexico-57-years-after-kennedy-assassination-148138">JFK conspiracy theory is debunked in Mexico 57 years after Kennedy assassination</a>
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<h2>Letters from ‘far flung corners’</h2>
<p>People from around the world felt compelled to write to the first lady. </p>
<p>Some <a href="https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/11/jfk-assassination-jacqueline-kennedy-mourned-in-public-with-grace-purpose-and-blood-on-her-suit.html">45,000 letters</a> arrived on one day alone. White House staff were still processing more than one million letters years later. </p>
<p>Sometimes they came with cards and gifts, including pieces of especially composed music. </p>
<p>Hundreds of letters came all the way from Australia, from what a Rockhampton woman described as “a far flung corner”.</p>
<p>At a time when the national sentiment under Menzies’ leadership was more in favour of the United Kingdom than the United States, it’s somewhat surprising Kennedy’s death prompted such an outpouring of grief.</p>
<p>Kennedy never visited the “far flung corner”. There was some talk that he would come to Australia as part of a wider visit to the Pacific, but diplomatic sensibilities and logistics proved difficult to overcome.</p>
<p>In any case, one of the proposed dates clashed with <a href="https://pmtranscripts.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/original/00000843.pdf">a visit</a> from the Queen Mother. </p>
<p>But some believed it was the assassination that ended the plans. A Sydney couple wrote to Jacqueline Kennedy:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I believe you were to honour us by a visit from you & the President this year […] but fate decided against it to our deepest disappointment […] and regret. We were all looking forward so eagerly to that great pleasure. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Interestingly, that same letter suggested that Robert Kennedy might have time in the future to bring Jacqueline and the children to Australia, revealing how restrictive gender roles were understood in 1963.</p>
<h2>Political figures as personal friends</h2>
<p>Many of the letter writers admitted they mourned Kennedy as if he was a family member or a close friend. </p>
<p>A lot of this intimacy came from watching Kennedy on television.</p>
<p>One man from Mt Kuring-gai explained after he began his letter with “Dear Jacki”: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I ask your pardon for using your Christian name, but I feel that both you and John Kennedy are my personal friends. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Similar sentiments were expressed by a Brisbane woman:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Television is a wonderful thing […] although you have never met me, yet by seeing you several times on the television screen, I feel that I have met you.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>During the Kennedy years, the quantity of TV time devoted to news in the US expanded considerably, meaning that mediated access to Kennedy also increased. </p>
<p>His youth, Hollywood good looks, and his glamorous wife became part of US and Australian cultural consumption. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/can-withering-public-trust-in-government-be-traced-back-to-the-jfk-assassination-87719">Can withering public trust in government be traced back to the JFK assassination?</a>
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<p>The <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/41860109?browse=ndp%3Abrowse%2Ftitle%2FA%2Ftitle%2F112%2F1962%2F10%2F10%2Fpage%2F4932576%2Farticle%2F41860109">Australian Women’s Weekly</a> also helped to popularise the Kennedy image. Readers were shown how to make their own Jackie pillbox hat and cultivate Jacqueline Kennedy’s intellectual style. The magazine instructed:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Start by reading the newspaper, go to art exhibitions, see a few historical film spectaculars, and learn to read a menu in French. Don’t chatter. </p>
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<h2>Seeing themselves in the Kennedys</h2>
<p>Widows and mothers especially identified with Jacqueline Kennedy. They wrote to her “as woman to woman”, relating their own grief experiences and offering to help mind the “kiddies”, if only she lived closer.</p>
<p>Catholics also wrote in large numbers. Kennedy was the great Catholic hero at a time of deep sectarianism in Australian society. They were proud of his political success. </p>
<p>It also helped that he had Irish roots, like much of the Catholic priesthood in Australia at the time. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-luck-of-the-irish-might-surface-on-st-patricks-day-but-it-evades-the-kennedy-family-americas-best-known-irish-dynasty-201445">The luck of the Irish might surface on St. Patrick's Day, but it evades the Kennedy family, America's best-known Irish dynasty</a>
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<p>During the Cold War, Kennedy offered a sense of security.</p>
<p>That proved important to Robert Menzies in his reelection campaign, given that Kennedy died only a week before polling day. Labor Party leader Arthur Calwell saw the writing on the wall. </p>
<p>When Menzies mentioned Kennedy while electioneering, Calwell <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20635464?seq=4">complained</a> that Menzies was trying to use the assassination for political purposes. </p>
<p>Calwell’s messaging didn’t cut through. Instead, voters wanted safety and familiarity in their leadership amid global upheaval.</p>
<p>One Strathfield woman who wrote to Jacqueline Kennedy explained that the idea of Menzies’ having “been in too long” disappeared with the assassination. She said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[…] there was a great swing to Liberals & they won with the amazing majority of 22 seats.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A unique mixture of television, religion and personality meant Kennedy’s death had cultural repercussions in “the far flung corner”. We would not see a grief response like this again until the death of the Princess of Wales, 34 years later. </p>
<p>But so great was the impact in Cold War-era Australia that the death of an overseas president also had some bearing on the formation of government back home.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217090/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Clark does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Hundreds of Australians wrote to Jackie Kennedy after her husband was killed. The letters paint a revealing portrait of who we were and who we wanted to be.Jennifer Clark, Professor of History, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2137562023-10-12T02:05:43Z2023-10-12T02:05:43Z3 key moments in Indigenous political history Victorian school students didn’t learn about<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552706/original/file-20231009-15-5i6241.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=385%2C0%2C4999%2C3039&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
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<p>I never learned about this in school!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is an all-too familiar response from those learning Indigenous histories in Australia. </p>
<p>The recent take-up of false claims – such as that a Voice to Parliament would result in “<a href="https://theconversation.com/there-are-two-sides-to-the-no-campaign-on-the-voice-who-are-they-and-why-are-they-opposed-to-it-212362">special privileges</a>” — suggests large gaps in public understanding of the Indigenous political movements that preceded the Voice.</p>
<p>Considering what children have learnt in our schools in the past, this should not surprise us.</p>
<p><a href="https://findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/scholarlywork/1815069-does-curriculum-fail-indigenous-political-aspirations%3F-sovereignty-and-australian-history-and-social-studies-curriculum">Our research</a>, soon to be published in the <a href="https://journals.ub.umu.se/index.php/njedh/index">Nordic Journal of Educational History</a>, shows that for over 100 years, the Victorian school curriculum has failed to give generations of students the chance to learn about Indigenous political movements.</p>
<h2>What we did</h2>
<p>Given Australia didn’t have a national curriculum until 2010, we looked at Victorian curriculum documents from the past 120 years to get a sense of what children have been taught over this time. We compared this with what Indigenous political campaigns were expressing at the time.</p>
<p>We found Indigenous political movements were largely missing from Victorian curriculum materials.</p>
<p>When they were included, it was in very limited ways that did not accurately reflect the diversity and depth of Indigenous standpoints, methods, and objectives. </p>
<p>We found the Victorian curriculum had routinely failed to grapple with Indigenous sovereignty.</p>
<p>In particular, we noticed there were three key moments in Indigenous political history that were missing.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-1881-maloga-petition-a-call-for-self-determination-and-a-key-moment-on-the-path-to-the-voice-197796">The 1881 Maloga petition: a call for self-determination and a key moment on the path to the Voice</a>
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<h2>1. 1880s Coranderrk Campaign</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.coranderrk.com/our-history">Coranderrk</a> was an Aboriginal reserve established by the colony of Port Philip in 1863 on Wurundjeri land.</p>
<p>The Wurundjeri community at Coranderrk, which also included people from other Kulin nations, cultivated a highly successful farm. Because this farm was coveted by settlers, they pressured the colonial government to shut down the reserve and sell the land. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Coranderrk Aboriginal Station sketch." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552468/original/file-20231006-29-8jj01t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C14%2C613%2C189&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552468/original/file-20231006-29-8jj01t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=192&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552468/original/file-20231006-29-8jj01t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=192&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552468/original/file-20231006-29-8jj01t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=192&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552468/original/file-20231006-29-8jj01t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=242&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552468/original/file-20231006-29-8jj01t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=242&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552468/original/file-20231006-29-8jj01t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=242&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Coranderrk Aboriginal Station, 1889 sketch. Wikimedia Commons.</span>
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<p>The Coranderrk community staged a sustained <a href="http://www.minutesofevidence.com.au/the-coranderrk-story/">public campaign</a> to protect their land. They wrote letters and petitions to ministers and newspapers and sent deputations to Melbourne. </p>
<p>Their efforts culminated in the <a href="http://www.minutesofevidence.com.au/the-coranderrk-story/#:%7E:text=The%201881%20Parliamentary%20Coranderrk%20Inquiry%20marked%20the%20only%20occasion%20in,to%20give%20evidence%20on%20matters">1881 Parliamentary Coranderrk Inquiry</a>.</p>
<p>The inquiry drew sustained attention to Aboriginal peoples’ aspirations for land and for the end of policies of “protection”. While ultimately unsuccessful, the inquiry and campaign created a lasting public record of Aboriginal activism and testimony. The Coranderrk campaign is crucial for understanding Aboriginal experiences of political processes.</p>
<p>Yet we found the Coranderrk campaign was not included at all in the historical Victorian curriculum documents we examined. </p>
<p>Instead, curriculum documents from this period tended to depict Aboriginal people as a “dying race”. They tended to justify settler violence as a “natural” response to adverse conditions on the colonial frontier.</p>
<h2>2. 1960s-ending assimilation</h2>
<p>The momentum of Aboriginal political movements grew in the post-war era. </p>
<p>There was the 1965 <a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/1965-freedom-ride">Freedom Ride</a> (modelled on those in the US) through New South Wales, and the fight to retain the sole remaining Aboriginal reserve at <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-12-21/lake-tyers-history-piece/5170896">Lake Tyers</a> in Victoria in the same year. These exposed how assimilation legislation that claimed to enable Aboriginal people’s access to economic and social “equality” in fact only denied them those rights. </p>
<p>The modern land rights movement was born when in 1966, <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/wave-hill-walk-off">Vincent Lingiari</a> – a Gurindji man upon whose lands the Wave Hill cattle station was located – led a strike in protest of the poor working conditions the Gurindji people endured. This came to be known as the Wave Hill Walkoff.</p>
<p>It became a struggle for control over the land. The Gurindji people who were strikers remained for seven years as illegal “occupiers” of their own Country.</p>
<p>We found these growing aspirations for rights and land were not reflected in the curriculum. Through the mid-20th century until the late 1960s, the curriculum focused mainly on British history. </p>
<p>We found celebratory narratives of figures like Captain Cook, William Dampier and Major Mitchell, and the growth of industry and the Australian “nation”.</p>
<p>Where Indigenous people were present in the curriculum, they were presented as relics of the past rather than political agents in their own right.</p>
<h2>3. 1988 Treaty campaign</h2>
<p>On January 26 1988, as Australia celebrated the 200th anniversary of the arrival of the first fleet into Kamay (now Botany Bay), over 40,000 people <a href="https://deadlystory.com/page/culture/history/The_1988_Bicentenary_Protest">marched</a> through the streets of Sydney with red, black and yellow protest banners and chants of “White Australia has a black history”.</p>
<p>A few months later, on Jawoyn country east of Katherine in the Northern Territory, the Northern and Central Land Councils presented the <a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/barunga-statement">Barunga Statement</a> to then-prime minister Bob Hawke. It called for a treaty between the Commonwealth and Indigenous nations, and for the recognition of sovereignty. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/before-the-barunga-declaration-there-was-the-barunga-statement-and-hawkes-promise-of-treaty-206613">Hawke committed</a> to work towards a treaty, but recognising prior Indigenous sovereignty proved a major stumbling block. </p>
<p>A later <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/7832149">Senate Standing Committee</a> tasked with investigating the feasibility of a treaty recommended focusing on education and attitudinal change first.</p>
<p>Unfortunately this history was not well represented in the curriculum material we studied. This history is crucial for understanding how national representation and treaty have long been a part of Indigenous demands for political change. After the bicentenary protests, <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/education/the-great-history-debate-20040209-gdx9x8.html">curriculum shifted</a> to include more Indigenous perspectives, but this was followed by backlash known as the “<a href="https://www.mup.com.au/books/the-history-wars-paperback-softback">history wars</a>” (a divisive public debate about whether or not acknowledging past violence against Aboriginal people represented a “black armband view” of history).</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1703764849979785586"}"></div></p>
<h2>Is Australia’s curriculum changing?</h2>
<p><a href="https://v9.australiancurriculum.edu.au/">A new version</a> of the Australian curriculum (which is used by the states to guide their own curricula), was released in 2022 and will be implemented in coming years. </p>
<p>It includes a focus on “truth-telling” within the broader history of Australia. This could signal an important shift from past practices. (Unfortunately, this shift will occur after the Voice referendum).</p>
<p>But it may address some of the failings our research identified.</p>
<p>The new Year 10 course in the national curriculum suggests class discussion of the <a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/day-of-mourning">Day of Mourning</a>, the <a href="https://pilbarastrike.org/">Pilbara strike</a>, the Wave Hill walk off, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-short-history-of-the-aboriginal-tent-embassy-an-indelible-reminder-of-unceded-sovereignty-174693">1972 Tent Embassy</a>, and more.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://v9.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/learning-areas/history-7-10/year-10/content-description?subject-identifier=HASHISY10&content-description-code=AC9HH10K10&detailed-content-descriptions=0&hide-ccp=0&hide-gc=0&side-by-side=1&strands-start-index=0&subjects-start-index=0&view=quick">revised content</a> also lists for discussion key historical individuals, organisations, and the <a href="https://v9.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/learning-areas/history-7-10/year-10/content-description?subject-identifier=HASHISY10&content-description-code=AC9HH10K11&detailed-content-descriptions=0&hide-ccp=0&hide-gc=0&side-by-side=1&strands-start-index=0&subjects-start-index=0&view=quick">methods used</a> to campaign for change.</p>
<p>While highlighting Indigenous political movements can help build understanding of Indigenous aspirations, the curriculum still does not directly grapple with Indigenous sovereignty as a concept. </p>
<p>This is why organisations such as the <a href="https://www.niyec.com/">National Indigenous Youth Education Coalition</a>, through the <a href="https://learnourtruth.com/">Learn Our Truth campaign</a>, have called for schools to reflect on what Indigenous sovereignty means and to teach the history of colonisation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213756/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mati Keynes receives funding from the Australian Centre.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Archie Thomas receives funding from the Australian Centre.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Beth Marsden receives funding from the Australian Centre.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Samara Hand receives funding from the Australian Centre and is also a co-founder and director at the National Indigenous Youth Education Coalition.</span></em></p>For over 100 years, the Victorian school curriculum has failed to give generations of students the chance to learn about Indigenous political movements.Mati Keynes, McKenzie Postdoctoral Research Fellow, The University of MelbourneArchie Thomas, Chancellor's Research Fellow, University of Technology SydneyBeth Marsden, Postdoctoral Research FellowSamara Hand, PhD Candidate - UNSW Law & Justice, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2106402023-08-03T20:03:11Z2023-08-03T20:03:11ZThe Voice is a simple and enduring idea with a past – and a promise<p><em>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised an image in this article contains antiquated language.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The Voice is a simple idea. The proposed <a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;db=LEGISLATION;id=legislation%2Fbills%2Fr7019_first-reps%2F0001;query=Id%3A%22legislation%2Fbills%2Fr7019_first-reps%2F0000%22;rec=0">amendment</a> to Australia’s Constitution is short and sweet.</p>
<p>Yet the referendum debate is at risk of inundation, and too often misses the point. While there are many things the Voice cannot do, there is one thing it can do. </p>
<p>It offers a permanent, public and culturally distinct way forward for Indigenous consensuses to develop and find their rightful place in national politics.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/solicitor-general-confirms-voice-model-is-legally-sound-will-not-fetter-or-impede-parliament-204266">Solicitor-general confirms Voice model is legally sound, will not 'fetter or impede' parliament</a>
</strong>
</em>
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<h2>The past as prologue to the present</h2>
<p>The Voice is rehearsed rather than radical. National Indigenous representative bodies have been on and off the agenda for 50 years. Australia has had three formalised national Indigenous representative bodies between 1973 and 2005. The history of this is significant.</p>
<p>Colonialism radically disrupted traditional governance. While country and culture remain a bedrock of Indigenous identities, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-voice-to-parliament-isnt-a-new-idea-indigenous-activists-called-for-it-nearly-a-century-ago-122272">from the 1920s</a> an Indigenous-led movement developed an agenda that favoured commonwealth over state power and lobbied for input at the national level. </p>
<p>This occurred alongside the Commonwealth’s increasing involvement in Indigenous affairs, a dynamic entrenched by the 1967 referendum. By 1967, the Commonwealth could not be seen to countenance the formulation of law and policy without Indigenous input. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540929/original/file-20230803-22531-koh01h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540929/original/file-20230803-22531-koh01h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540929/original/file-20230803-22531-koh01h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540929/original/file-20230803-22531-koh01h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540929/original/file-20230803-22531-koh01h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540929/original/file-20230803-22531-koh01h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540929/original/file-20230803-22531-koh01h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">By 1967, Australian governments could no longer be seen to make policy decisions without input from Indigenous peoples.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://museumofcaah.weebly.com/1967-referendum.html">Museum of Contemporary Aboriginal Australian History</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>National governments needed a way to obtain advice from Indigenous peoples. Liberal Prime Ministers Holt, Gorton and McMahon all acknowledged this. </p>
<p>But it was Gough Whitlam who established the first such representative body: the National Aboriginal Consultative Committee (1973–1977). Malcolm Fraser replaced this with the National Aboriginal Conference (1977–1985) and Bob Hawke legislated the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (1989–2005). </p>
<p>At their core, these bodies involved Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders choosing their own representatives to proffer advice to the Commonwealth. While the first two bodies were clipped, each collected Indigenous viewpoints and formulated national agendas. </p>
<p>A smattering of topics covered from the 1970s include land rights, treaty, recognition of colonisation without consent, police brutality, and the forced removal of children from their families. </p>
<p>Yet as much as government needed Indigenous input and advice, without constitutional entrenchment these bodies could be (and were) <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/before-the-voice-political-posturing-and-failed-ambition-20221213-p5c607.html">terminated</a> for political expediency. This insecurity was not just existential; it inhibited the potential of these bodies. </p>
<h2>The Voice as constructive</h2>
<p>Much debate about the Voice has focused on either party politics, or the desirability of the Voice in improving tangible outcomes. This has come at the expense of considering its potential to construct a “national” Indigenous politics, out of regional and sectoral voices. </p>
<p>Politics is protean. But, at its root, democratic politics is about governing society through representation and compromise. This means a representative Voice is also about constructing a system where mainstream government – executive and parliament – and wider society listens to Indigenous concerns. </p>
<p>John Howard’s <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/from-lucky-colonisation-to-misinformation-fears-former-pms-weigh-in-on-voice-debate/pemowjsrp">recent comments</a> against the Voice unwittingly highlight how it can be positively differentiated from previous representative bodies. He argued the Voice would not “produce anything other than regular stand-offs between what the Voice is asking for and what the government of the day is willing to do”.</p>
<p>Leaving aside disingenuous phrasing (the Voice we are voting on can only offer advice, there is no power to “stand off” against governments), the telling words are “what the government of the day is willing to do”. </p>
<p>Compromise is the essence of politics. If a government or parliament is not willing to accommodate reasonable positions of a representative Voice, then that is a failure of our politics. Not of the Voice. </p>
<h2>A core ‘no’ argument is a reason to vote ‘yes’</h2>
<p>The official <a href="https://www.aec.gov.au/referendums/files/pamphlet/your-official-yes-no-referendum-pamphlet.pdf">“no” case</a> also unwittingly highlights a key reason to support the referendum, come October. In a classic conservative move, the absence of detail about the internal structure of the Voice is taken to be a reason to be cautious and vote “no”. </p>
<p>But that detail is not important to the principle of a national representative Indigenous body. Excess detail at this point would contradict the principle of parliamentary supremacy, of which conservatives are most protective. </p>
<p>Worse, it would pre-empt the right of Indigenous peoples to hammer out the balance between regional and urban voices or established Indigenous structures and an elective principle. </p>
<p>That is significant, given the 1970s bodies mentioned above were very much constructs of executive governments. Each of the three earlier bodies became, if anything, unduly sensitive to regionalism. Such diversity is important; but a “national” Voice cannot be just a confederation of local concerns. </p>
<p>The Voice proposal does not undercut or establish a body to talk over local voices. These voices were <a href="https://theconversation.com/regional-communities-were-central-to-uluru-statement-and-they-must-also-be-for-the-voice-to-parliament-206288">central</a> to its drafting, through consultation processes. </p>
<p>On the contrary, the 2021 Indigenous Voice Co-Design <a href="https://voice.gov.au/resources/indigenous-voice-co-design-process-final-report">Report</a> (which consulted widely to assay aspirations and models) plumps for two-way interaction between local, state and territory, and the national Voices.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/regional-communities-were-central-to-uluru-statement-and-they-must-also-be-for-the-voice-to-parliament-206288">Regional communities were central to Uluru Statement, and they must also be for the Voice to Parliament</a>
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<h2>An enduring idea</h2>
<p>The Voice proposal is simple. There are a thousand things it cannot do, and one significant thing that it promises to be.</p>
<p>As an embedded but flexible institution, it would channel an evolving national Indigenous politics, as a representative conduit of many voices speaking up to the behemoth that is the Commonwealth of Australia. </p>
<p>Importantly, it would also put an end to a long political process that has always intended to constitutionally recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in a way that is meaningful to them – through a constitutionally enshrined Voice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210640/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Despite all the arguments flying around the Voice offers one simple thing: a long overdue way for Indigenous consensuses to develop and find their rightful place in national politics.Laurel Fox, PhD candidate, The University of QueenslandDani Linder, Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Queensland, The University of QueenslandGraeme Orr, Professor of Law, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2060922023-06-08T20:07:15Z2023-06-08T20:07:15ZVoice, treaty, truth: compared to other settler nations, Australia is the exception, not the rule<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529694/original/file-20230602-19-8wjczk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C7%2C1288%2C836&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/DetailsReports/PhotoDetail.aspx?Barcode=11447034">National Archives of Australia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and/or images of deceased people.</em></p>
<p>For many non-Indigenous Australians, it might seem the Voice to Parliament – the first step in the Uluru Statement’s process of “voice, treaty, truth” – is a recent idea. Conservative voices have framed it as a dangerously untested prospect. </p>
<p>But as First Nations have always known, voice, treaty and truth carry long histories. They’ve long been at the centre of Indigenous rights campaigns in Australia. They’ve also existed in other settler nations like New Zealand and Canada where treaties were forged at the point of colonisation. </p>
<p>These histories remind us how long First Nations people have waited for political recognition in this country – and that, compared to other former colonial sites, Australia is the exception, not the rule.</p>
<h2>The Larrakia petition</h2>
<p>Calls for voice as political representation have been part of First Nations activism in Australia for at least a century.</p>
<p>In the 1970s, Australian Aboriginal civil and lands rights movements harnessed long-running <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/1324869">campaigns</a> by Aboriginal activists calling for rights to treaty, land and political representation. </p>
<p>One famous example is the <a href="https://www.naa.gov.au/students-and-teachers/learning-resources/learning-resource-themes/first-australians/politics-and-advocacy/larrakia-petition-queen-land-rights">Larrakia petition to the queen</a>, organised in 1972 to coincide with Princess Margaret’s royal visit. It carried more than 1,000 signatures.</p>
<p>It drew the queen’s attention to the failure of the British Crown to sign treaties with Indigenous peoples in Australia, unlike in New Zealand and North America, and called for her assistance in achieving </p>
<blockquote>
<p>land rights and political representation, now. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Larrikia organisers waited patiently outside Government House in Darwin to hand the petition directly to Princess Margaret. When a police barricade prevented them and tore the petition, they taped it together and sent it directly to Buckingham Palace.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1568397945615306753"}"></div></p>
<h2>William Cooper’s petition</h2>
<p>Decades earlier, Yorta Yorta civil rights activist and co-founder of the Australian Aborigines’ League, <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/william-cooper-protests">William Cooper</a>, spent the mid-1930s collecting more than 1,800 signatures from Indigenous communities across Australia for a petition to the king.</p>
<p>It urged the Crown to safeguard the interests of Aboriginal people as the original heirs and successors of the land and called for Indigenous political representation in the federal parliament. </p>
<p>As with the Larrakia petition, Australian government officials prevented the delivery of Cooper’s petition.</p>
<p>Even so, it remains a powerful reminder of the longevity of First Nations campaigns for a parliamentary voice. It also reminds us how long Australia has resisted activating one.</p>
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<h2>In other countries, it has been different</h2>
<p>In Canada and New Zealand, the British Crown did make treaties with Indigenous peoples at the point of formal colonisation. In these countries, the right of political representation has not been contested in the same way.</p>
<p>That’s not to say these nations provide a direct model for Australia. Each country has its own history and political relationship between Indigenous peoples and government. And nobody’s suggesting treaties in other places fixed sovereignty disputes or guaranteed Indigenous rights.</p>
<p>But treaty rights dating back to the 1800s gave First Nations peoples in other settler colonial sites political leverage in a way Australia’s First Nations have been denied.</p>
<p>In Canada, First Nations treaty rights and rights of self-determination are enshrined in the Constitution. An elected <a href="https://www.afn.ca/">Assembly of First Nations</a> liaises with the federal government as the representative body.</p>
<p>In New Zealand, Māori have had dedicated parliamentary seats since the 1860s. Political representation is enshrined in the <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/zoomify/33905/maori-representation-act-1867">Māori Representation Act 1867</a>, which gave all Māori men the right to vote.</p>
<p>Colonial officials originally conceived the Māori Representation Act 1867 as a way to bring Māori into the <a href="https://nzhistory.govt.nz/politics/maori-and-the-vote/setting-up-seats">colonial political system</a> rather than as a vehicle for an independent political voice. </p>
<p>Despite its colonial underpinnings, it shows how a formal avenue of Indigenous political representation existed almost from the beginning of the colonial relationship in a setting where treaty existed.</p>
<p>This raises the longer history of treaty discussions in colonial Australia. </p>
<h2>Australia’s missed opportunities for treaty</h2>
<p>Australia was exceptional in Britain’s settler empire for having no formal history of treaty between Indigenous peoples and the Crown.</p>
<p>The doctrine of <a href="https://australian.museum/learn/first-nations/unsettled/recognising-invasions/terra-nullius/"><em>terra nullius</em></a>, or land belonging to no one, was how Britain claimed possession in 1788.</p>
<p>But that doctrine did not necessarily hold true in perpetuity, and the continuing absence of treaties in Australia was not inevitable. </p>
<p>By the 1800s, the mood of the Colonial Office (the British government department that managed colonies) had shifted. </p>
<p>In the early 1830s, Tasmania was coming through its devastating <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/the-black-line">land wars</a>. This experience motivated Tasmania’s Governor George Arthur to write to the Colonial Office in London. He suggested treaty arrangements should be made with Indigenous peoples in the territories of western and southern Australia to avoid a similar risk.</p>
<p>Arthur’s intervention dovetailed with a larger agenda for colonial reform after the abolition of slavery, and the British imperial government was receptive to his advice.</p>
<p>In 1835, the Colonial Office told South Australia’s colonisation commissioners that the Crown would not sanction British settlement there unless they could show they <a href="https://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/resources/transcripts/sa2_doc_1836.pdf">would</a> protect Aboriginal people’s</p>
<blockquote>
<p>earlier and preferable title.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The colonisation commissioners committed to purchase Aboriginal lands on those conditions. But because colonial authorities decided “earlier and preferable title” did not exist according to the law of possession, these purchases didn’t happen.</p>
<p>The year 1835, then, was a turning point. Treaties might have been forged with Indigenous peoples in the new colony of South Australia, but they <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/7127305">were not</a>. </p>
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<p>Instead, the Crown tried to mitigate problems of frontier warfare by claiming Aboriginal people as British subjects who would receive equal protection under the law. </p>
<p>This became settled colonial policy across Australia, although it was almost never realised in practice.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-the-1800s-colonisers-attempted-to-listen-to-first-nations-people-it-didnt-stop-the-massacres-204538">In the 1800s, colonisers attempted to listen to First Nations people. It didn't stop the massacres</a>
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<h2>Truth: resetting the relationship, not just the record</h2>
<p>This brings us to the question of truth. When we speak about remembering past injustices – especially the history of colonial land wars – it’s often presented as uncovering a hidden or secret history.</p>
<p>But in 19th century Australia, the frontier wars were far from secret. Colonial authorities constantly debated the problem. Until the end of the 19th century (and later in northern Australia), it was one of the most persistent topics in official correspondence and the colonial press.</p>
<p>What’s missing from the colonial records are the voices and perspectives of the Indigenous communities who experienced the frontier wars. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-series/the-australian-wars">These histories</a>, however, have always had a strong presence in Indigenous intergenerational knowledge, as well as the intergenerational knowledge of settler-descended communities where these events occurred. </p>
<p>Legal scholars Gabrielle Appleby and Megan Davis <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1031461X.2018.1523838?journalCode=rahs20">have emphasised</a> that the value of truth is not just in resetting the historical record but in constructively resetting the relationship between First Nations and the rest of the nation. </p>
<p>The longer histories of voice, treaty and truth tell us the time for politically constructive reform is well overdue.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-voice-isnt-apartheid-or-a-veto-over-parliament-this-misinformation-is-undermining-democratic-debate-205474">The Voice isn't apartheid or a veto over parliament – this misinformation is undermining democratic debate</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206092/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amanda Nettelbeck receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>These histories remind us how long First Nations people have waited for political recognition in this country – and that, compared to other former colonial sites, Australia is the exception, not the rule.Amanda Nettelbeck, Professor of History, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2036542023-04-30T20:03:03Z2023-04-30T20:03:03ZThe Liberals are the fifth iteration of Australia’s main centre-right party. Could the Voice campaign hasten a sixth?<p>Party stability on the progressive side of politics, and repeated party reconfiguration on the conservative side of politics, is a marked contrast in the history of Australia’s two-party political system.</p>
<p>That history is relevant now, as the Liberals find themselves in the electoral wilderness, and as a schism emerges over its stance on the referendum for an Indigenous Voice to the Australian parliament.</p>
<p>It raises a legitimate question about whether, as has happened several times in the past, the Liberal Party might be superseded by a new vehicle that better represents mainstream liberal and conservative voters’ interests and provides a viable electoral alternative to Labor.</p>
<h2>A party of many iterations</h2>
<p>In contrast to the Australian Labor Party, which predates Federation in 1901 and has existed continuously since, the Liberal Party was formed in 1944 and formally launched in 1945. It is the fifth iteration of the main vehicles through which the centre-right has sought federal parliamentary representation.</p>
<p>Federally, the Liberal Party’s genealogy is: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>Protectionist Party, Free Trade Party (1901-1909) </p></li>
<li><p>Commonwealth Liberal Party (1909-1917)</p></li>
<li><p>Nationalist Party (1917-1931)</p></li>
<li><p>United Australia Party (1931-1945)</p></li>
<li><p>Liberal Party (1945+).</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The earliest parliaments were dominated by, as Alfred Deakin <a href="https://electionspeeches.moadoph.gov.au/speeches/1903-alfred-deakin">famously dubbed them</a>, “the three elevens” – because it was like having three cricket teams play the same match. They were the Deakin-led Protectionist Party, the Free Trade Party (later renamed the Anti-Socialist Party) and the Labor Party. </p>
<p>In 1909 the Protectionist Party and Anti-Socialist Party united to create the Commonwealth Liberal Party to compete with Labor, ushering in the “two party” era.</p>
<p>The next two iterations saw the main anti-Labor party unite, from opposition, with Labor breakaways to form a new party.</p>
<p>In 1917, the opposition Commonwealth Liberals merged with Billy Hughes’ breakaway National Labor Party to form the Nationalist Party, which held office under the prime ministership of Hughes and later Stanley Melbourne Bruce. </p>
<p>In 1931, the Nationalist Party opposition and Labor defector Joseph Lyons and his allies joined to form the United Australia Party (UAP). This was the vehicle for Lyons’ prime ministership and, on his death, Robert Menzies’ first prime ministership. </p>
<p>The UAP became increasingly dysfunctional after Lyons’ death. Menzies proved a poor war-time prime minister, was unpopular with colleagues, and resigned as prime minister in 1941. The coalition UAP-Country Party government of Arthur Fadden fell several weeks later after losing a confidence motion on the floor of parliament, succeeded by the Curtin Labor government.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523371/original/file-20230428-14-txal0u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523371/original/file-20230428-14-txal0u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523371/original/file-20230428-14-txal0u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523371/original/file-20230428-14-txal0u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523371/original/file-20230428-14-txal0u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523371/original/file-20230428-14-txal0u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523371/original/file-20230428-14-txal0u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The United Australia Party became increasingly dysfunctional after the death, in office, of Prime Minister Joseph Lyons.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.stanleyheritagewalk.com.au/en/locations/3/">Stanley Heritage Walk</a></span>
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<p>Labor’s landslide 1943 election win finished the UAP as a political force. The party’s primary vote slumped to 21.9% and it won just 14 of the federal parliament’s then 74 seats. </p>
<p>Menzies drove the Liberal Party’s foundation as a fresh start for centre-right politics in Australia.</p>
<p>His insight that the UAP was terminal was partly driven by the large amount of political activity that sprang up from centre-right forces outside the party’s bounds. This included a large number of independent anti-Labor candidates running at the 1943 election. </p>
<p>The upsurge in centrist community independent candidates – notably the Teals ¬– running at the 2022 federal election is a striking parallel.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-liberal-party-is-in-a-dire-state-across-australia-right-now-that-should-worry-us-all-191851">The Liberal Party is in a dire state across Australia right now. That should worry us all</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Could the Liberal Party be reborn again?</h2>
<p>Forming a new political party is a drastic move. The calculus on whether an existing party is still viable and can be renewed, or whether, as Menzies judged with the UAP, it is too far gone and needs to replaced, is a delicate one.</p>
<p>Former prime minister and Liberal leader John Howard declared after the 2022 election that “<a href="https://youtu.be/S-JtjZTYN58">we have to hold ourselves together</a>”, arguing Peter Dutton was the right man for the job.</p>
<p>Holding the Liberal Party together has since become established as the benchmark for Dutton’s success or failure as opposition leader. This is either a low bar or it’s a sign that the Liberal Party is indeed at risk of breaking apart.</p>
<p>These tensions date from the early 1980s under Howard’s aegis, when the conservative push to crush moderate viewpoints began in earnest. </p>
<p>Howard and conservative Liberal leadership successors since demanded the selling out of principled centrist policy positions as the price of moderates’ inclusion in cabinet and shadow cabinet. </p>
<p>Liberal moderates persistently paid that price in exchange for ministerial advancement. This in turn hastened the Liberals’ lurch to the right. The party become less and less reflective of mainstream Australia even as some visible moderates survived and rose through the ministerial ranks. </p>
<p>Women especially feel unwelcome in the party. The bullying of MP Julia Banks and her subsequent resignation from the Liberals in 2018 became emblematic of the party’s toxic masculinity problem. </p>
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<p>Former prime minister Scott Morrison’s misogynistic handling of sexual violence allegations concerning Liberal Party figures followed. Female voters remember this in the ballot box.</p>
<p>The pervasiveness of evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics in the branch membership combined with, under the influence of Sky News “After Dark” programming, US Republican-style fringe interests and agendas, are alienating people who in other eras could or would have been branch members. There seems to be little space now for moderate Liberals.</p>
<p>People trying to improve things quietly from the inside are frustrated by the hardened factionalism and capture of key party organs by warring right-wing factions. There are too few mainstream people to coalesce with to drag the party back towards the centre.</p>
<p>Combined with the demographic changes noted by Redbridge analysts Kos Samaras and Tony Barry after the Liberals’ poor showing at the Victorian state election and federal Aston by-election, the picture for the party looks bleak.</p>
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<p>As well as losing support among women, the Liberals have lost it among young people, Samaras and Barry note. This is compounded, they say, by young people now not becoming conservative as they age: those who once would have developed into Liberal voters simply aren’t doing so.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/will-a-preoccupation-with-party-unity-destroy-the-liberal-party-203849">Will a preoccupation with party unity destroy the Liberal Party?</a>
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</em>
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<p>The Teals who won traditional blue riband Liberal seats in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth at the 2022 election are essentially moderate Liberals sitting on the crossbench, because sensible centrists are repellent to, and repelled by, the Liberal Party in its current state.</p>
<p>The entropy is gathering pace. </p>
<p>Less than a year ago, Indigenous MP Ken Wyatt was a Liberal cabinet minister before losing his seat at the 2022 election. In April this year, Wyatt resigned from the party in frustration over the Liberals’ opposition to the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, the co-design of which he himself commissioned and took to cabinet in the expectation of support. He was disappointed.</p>
<p>The resignation of the Dutton opposition’s Indigenous affairs spokesperson, Julian Leeser – a Voice supporter like Wyatt and a significant number of other Liberals – breaks the pattern of moderates selling their soul for career advancement. While admirable, there’s a lot less to lose taking a principled stand like this in opposition than government, but it’s a start.</p>
<p>Now <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/domino-effect-liberal-supporters-of-the-voice-preparing-formal-yes-campaign-20230414-p5d0f6.html?utm_content=top_stories&list_name=E2446F7A-1897-44FC-8EB8-B365900170E3&promote_channel=edmail&utm_campaign=am-smh-weekend&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=2023-04-16&mbnr=MzA2OTA1MDA&instance=2023-04-16-05-24-AEST&jobid=29605935">Voice-supporting Liberals are forming WhatsApp groups</a> to co-ordinate their actions in the “yes” campaign. This will likely bring them into campaigning contact with centrist Teals in those traditional blue riband seats the Liberals lost at the 2022 election.</p>
<p>Could that create a chemistry that spurs development of the Liberal Party’s next iteration? </p>
<p>Who knows? But remnant centrists inside the Liberals finding common cause with Teals and their allies outside it, campaigning if not together then at least in close proximity around a galvanising issue of national importance, does make it more rather than less likely.</p>
<p>Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s defensive posture of just appealing to “the base’” and trying to hold the Liberals together may prove the losing gambit in this fifth iteration of Australia’s main party of the centre-right. As Dutton would know from sport, purely playing defence rarely wins the game.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203654/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Wallace has received funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>Menzies created the Liberals from the rubble of its once successful but ultimately dysfunctional forebear, the UAP. It wasn’t the first time the centre-right reinvented itself. It could happen again.Chris Wallace, Professor, School of Politics Economics & Society, Faculty of Business Government & Law, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2041962023-04-27T02:01:46Z2023-04-27T02:01:46ZHell hath no fury like a former PM – but it wasn’t always so<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523109/original/file-20230427-28-2212o2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mick Tsikas/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5iCzCtPkxQ&t=269s">television interview</a> with Phillip Adams in 1999, Paul Keating remarked that he retained much influence on the international stage.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I still have most of the access […] throughout the world, in Asia in particular, that I had as prime minister.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This was a calm and contented Keating, barely three years out of office but comfortable in the knowledge his voice continued to be heard in the right quarters.</p>
<p>His <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2lQvFTmMxU">recent appearance</a> at the National Press Club to talk about the AUKUS pact between Australia, Britain and the United States (under the auspices of which Australia is purchasing up to five nuclear-powered submarines for the princely sum of $368 billion) was mostly devoid of that quality. </p>
<p>Keating called it the “worst deal in all history” and lampooned Prime Minister Anthony Albanese as the only “payer” of the pact. He was especially critical of Foreign Minister Penny Wong: “Running around the Pacific with a lei around your neck, handing out money, which is what Penny does, is not foreign policy”.</p>
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<p>There were important and sage policy points on offer, but there was something a little unseemly about the polemic, and even more so about his complaint the prime minister’s office <a href="https://theconversation.com/paul-keating-lashes-albanese-government-over-aukus-calling-it-labors-biggest-failure-since-ww1-201866">hadn’t heeded his advice</a>. Those cognisant of Labor’s history might have been reminded of former NSW Premier Jack Lang, at whose feet Keating learned much of his politics in the 1960s and 1970s, and whose trenchant criticism of the party earned him many enemies over the decades.</p>
<p>It is easy to assume this kind of intervention is the natural corollary of losing power, egotism and what former Foreign Minister Gareth Evans called “<a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-16/barnes-relevance-deprivation-syndrome-has-struck-politics/7250046">relevance deprivation syndrome</a>”. In fact, the spectre of a disgruntled former prime minister speaking out against their own party is a relatively recent one, a product of Australia’s modern, personalised political culture.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/paul-keating-lashes-albanese-government-over-aukus-calling-it-labors-biggest-failure-since-ww1-201866">Paul Keating lashes Albanese government over AUKUS, calling it Labor's biggest failure since WW1</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Death and duty</h2>
<p>In the 20th century, several of Australia’s leaders died before they could enjoy any kind of retirement in which to disrupt their successors. Alfred Deakin’s health declined rapidly in the years after he left office, preventing him from making significant contributions to public life in the years afterwards. Joe Lyons and John Curtin both died in office, as did Ben Chifley, while serving as opposition leader. Harold Holt disappeared at Cheviot Beach in December 1967.</p>
<p>The survivors, it has to be said, were put to <a href="https://theconversation.com/even-in-the-political-afterlife-morrison-departs-from-the-norm-187346">good public use</a> after leaving office. Edmund Barton served the remainder of his days on the High Court, while George Reid and Andrew Fisher both went to London to serve as Australian High Commissioner. The former even took a seat in the British House of Commons in the final years of his life.</p>
<p>Stanley Melbourne Bruce, who lost government and his own seat at the 1929 federal election, was returned to parliament in 1931 and served as a minister in Joe Lyons’ government, before emulating Reid and Fisher by serving as High Commissioner in London and going to the House of Lords. Depression-era prime minister James Scullin remained an MP for a further 18 years after losing power in 1931, reputedly offering much wise counsel to Curtin and Chifley throughout the 1940s.</p>
<p>Former prime ministers were once a little more reticent about sparring with their successors in public, especially when it came to sensitive policy matters. Fisher despaired when his successor, Billy Hughes, campaigned for military conscription in 1916. But the former prime minister used his office as High Commissioner to abstain from commenting on the referendum, which failed.</p>
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<p>Robert Menzies was so disappointed with his Liberal successors, according to <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/8040279">biographer Troy Bramston</a>, that he may not have even voted for the Liberal Party in 1972, preferring the Democratic Labor Party. </p>
<p>But he would never have admitted this publicly. Instead, he used his post-prime ministerial public appearances to wax lyrical about the British Commonwealth and bemoan its declining relevance. </p>
<p>Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser consulted Menzies periodically during the party elder’s final years.</p>
<h2>Statesmen on the loose?</h2>
<p>There is a longer history, though, of former prime ministerial interventions in debates about Australia’s strategic and defence policy. These were, after all, vital questions in the 20th century. </p>
<p>When Bruce proposed in 1924 to build two new Commonwealth naval cruisers in Britain rather than Australia, his Nationalist predecessor Hughes was irate, and said so from the backbench. “Are we such spineless anaemic creatures”, he asked, “as to be incapable of bearing the great responsibilities which free government imposes upon us?”</p>
<p>Hughes would play the role of provocateur again. In 1934, he published a short book called <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/1825072">The Price of Peace</a>, in which he called for a more urgent approach to preparation for conflict in the Pacific. An updated version was reissued the following year under the title Australia and the War Today, but it was highly controversial. Hughes was now a minister in a government whose foreign policy toward aggressors depended on economic sanctions, which he had described in the book as “<a href="https://www.naa.gov.au/explore-collection/australias-prime-ministers/william-hughes/after-office">either an empty gesture or war</a>”. His resignation promptly followed.</p>
<p>More recent interventions have taken defence policy and strategic complacency as their concern, too. A year before his death, Malcolm Fraser published a polemical book called Dangerous Allies (2014), in which he argued against Australia’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/book-review-dangerous-allies-by-malcolm-fraser-25995">bipartisan “strategic dependence”</a> on the United States.</p>
<p>Speaking on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sGk68dzsPU&t=15s">daytime television</a>, he warned that Australia’s partnership with the US could see it implicated in “major conflict” in the Pacific. He was, in this respect, equally critical of both major parties for what he perceived as subservience to American strategic interests.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/book-review-dangerous-allies-by-malcolm-fraser-25995">Book review: Dangerous Allies by Malcolm Fraser</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The AUKUS pact, in its short life, has served as the launching pad for ex-leaders other than Keating to launch powerful attacks on successors. When Scott Morrison announced the initial agreement in 2021, his predecessor Malcolm Turnbull used a <a href="https://www.malcolmturnbull.com.au/media/address-to-the-national-press-club-september-2021">press club broadcast</a> to argue Morrison had “not acted in good faith” in reneging on the existing submarine deal with France that he, Turnbull, had signed in 2016.</p>
<p>Morrison, Turnbull fulminated, had “deceived” France. Australian voters saw the French president and their own prime minister’s immediate predecessor calling the incumbent a liar.</p>
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<h2>Fights, feuds and frustrated men</h2>
<p>In recent decades, Australians have become inured to bitter and emotional feuds between their former leaders. There are several reasons for this trend, including the increasingly personalised nature of politics since the 1970s, high rates of leadership attrition, and the thirst of media providers for easy news stories that hinge on personal animosity and Shakespearean intrigue. </p>
<p>A former leader criticising their own party is deemed the height of newsworthiness. John Howard and Julia Gillard have uniquely resisted the temptation. Howard had some <a href="https://theconversation.com/john-howard-calls-for-a-sense-of-balance-but-can-he-help-the-liberal-party-find-it-189059">stern words for his Liberal successors</a> last year in a book called A Sense of Balance, but the book appeared after the Morrison government had been defeated. Gillard, for her part, has been almost unfailingly measured and dignified in her public pronouncements since 2013. </p>
<p>For those who did return to the fray of policy combat, the personal and the political were inseparable. For much of the 1980s, Gough Whitlam was anguished by the way Hawke government ministers treated his legacy. As Jenny Hocking has shown in her <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Gough_Whitlam.html?id=QhuSmQEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">biography of Whitlam</a>, Hawke and Whitlam clashed repeatedly as the Labor Party walked away from big 1970s initiatives such as free tertiary education, an ambitious Aboriginal land rights agenda and much else. When treasurer Keating joked about the “chasm” between Whitlam’s policy aspirations and his actual achievements, Whitlam returned serve by calling him a “<a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/122414425?searchTerm=Whitlam%20Hawke%20Keating">smart-arse</a>”.</p>
<p>Where race relations and national identity have been concerned, the fall-outs between Australian ex-PMs have been that much more embittered. A great defender of refugees and asylum seekers, <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/fraser-lambasts-howard-government-20040508-gdxt5o.html">Fraser spoke publicly</a> about his abhorrence of the Howard government’s approach to border protection and mandatory offshore detention. When Tony Abbott took the leadership of the Liberal Party in December 2009 promising to “stop the boats”, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-05-26/fraser-quits-liberal-party/841616">Fraser resigned his life membership</a> in protest.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523120/original/file-20230427-20-62qetl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523120/original/file-20230427-20-62qetl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523120/original/file-20230427-20-62qetl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523120/original/file-20230427-20-62qetl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523120/original/file-20230427-20-62qetl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523120/original/file-20230427-20-62qetl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523120/original/file-20230427-20-62qetl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser was a trenchant critic of the Howard and Abbott governments’ immigration policies.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Joel Carrett/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Keating’s attack on the Labor Party is not unprecedented for a former prime minister, but it isn’t historically commonplace either. There is no doubt his criticisms have been heard, but their influence remains to be seen.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204196/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joshua Black does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Paul Keating’s recent savage criticism of the Albanese government over the AUKUS deal is a reminder that former leaders have not always publicly disparaged their own parties.Joshua Black, PhD Candidate, School of History, National Centre of Biography, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1994952023-04-06T06:19:40Z2023-04-06T06:19:40ZStripped bare and born afresh: how biographies play a role in the building and rebuilding of political careers<p>After decades covering federal politics in Canberra, my embarrassment at not knowing Warren Denning’s <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/293126">Caucus Crisis: The Rise and Fall of the Scullin Government</a> (1937) was partly assuaged when an older colleague revealed the same.</p>
<p>Written by a lion of early political reporting in Canberra, it was the first of what would become a line of political books to emerge from the federal parliamentary press gallery.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Political Lives: Australian Prime Ministers and Their Biographers – Chris Wallace (UNSW Press).</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Denning’s book was also the first quasi-contemporary exposition of a dramatic political upheaval – in this case, how the Great Depression rocked politics and overwhelmed the new Scullin Labor government. That government’s defenestration in January 1932 earned it an enduring place in our electoral records. It is (still) the only single-term federal government since the two-party system settled into its current pattern.</p>
<p>“Before Denning, no Australian journalist had let readers in to the private interactions between them and the politicians they reported on in this way,” writes historian and biographer Chris Wallace in her engrossing book <a href="https://unsw.press/books/political-lives/">Political Lives: Australian Prime Ministers and Their Biographers</a>. Caucus Crisis, she argues optimistically, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>was something of a “wholesale” classic, notable in the political confines of Canberra because of its continuing reputation and availability to politicians and journalists through the Parliamentary Library, but not widely known to the public.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While acknowledging that Denning’s account was “contemporary history rather than contemporary biography”, Wallace, a professor at the University of Canberra, justifies its inclusion in her book by noting that it </p>
<blockquote>
<p>relies heavily […] on brief evocative portraits of key political players including Jack Lang, E.G. “Red Ted” Theodore, “Stabber Jack” Beasley, and Scullin himself.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In this sense, Caucus Crisis was a vanguard of journalism. It set out to humanise both political events and their reportage, while conforming to the standard devices used to temper excessive subjectivity.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518312/original/file-20230329-27-wu22mb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C2%2C925%2C561&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518312/original/file-20230329-27-wu22mb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C2%2C925%2C561&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518312/original/file-20230329-27-wu22mb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518312/original/file-20230329-27-wu22mb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518312/original/file-20230329-27-wu22mb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518312/original/file-20230329-27-wu22mb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518312/original/file-20230329-27-wu22mb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518312/original/file-20230329-27-wu22mb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The Scullin government ministry (1929).</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Practical fiction</h2>
<p>The admixture is familiar to Wallace as an academic historian and erstwhile parliamentary journalist, and it gives Political Lives its narrative momentum and scholarly heft. Her admiration for Denning’s boldness in both of these spheres shines through in simple passages like this: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Denning’s account is innovative in several ways, not least making the presence, role and anxieties of Depression-era political journalists explicit. Denning lets readers in too, on the behind the scenes interactions between journalists and politicians.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517586/original/file-20230327-21-vde8ev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517586/original/file-20230327-21-vde8ev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517586/original/file-20230327-21-vde8ev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517586/original/file-20230327-21-vde8ev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517586/original/file-20230327-21-vde8ev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517586/original/file-20230327-21-vde8ev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1151&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517586/original/file-20230327-21-vde8ev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1151&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517586/original/file-20230327-21-vde8ev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1151&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
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<p>For so long, the practice of “serious” political journalism has evinced a haughty conundrum – that of the scribe being simultaneously “in the room”, having selflessly pursued access for the reader, and yet also being invisible in that room, devoid of material form, like a camera in a movie. The diligent reporter exclusively reports, does not seek to shape things, and never, ever, uses the perpendicular pronoun “I”.</p>
<p>This state of feigned non-existence and perfect neutrality has always been a practical fiction. Journalists know their presence among political practitioners alters things. Politicians know it too. Paul Keating famously opposed televising parliament precisely because it would change behaviour during parliamentary combat. </p>
<p>Only recently have journalists begun to cast aside this theatrical conceit. Leading practitioners, such as the Guardian’s Political Editor Katharine Murphy, openly eschew what she has called “the absurd voice of God” narrator. For Murphy, the contextual dynamics of the relationship are integral to the story, inseparable and germane. </p>
<p>Reporting on a hard-won 2020 interview for Quarterly Essay with then prime minister Scott Morrison, Murphy began her account: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>He’ll tolerate this conversation, he might even enjoy bits of it if we both choose to be present and avoid lapsing into passive aggression. […] </p>
<p>His opening gambit as we take our seats is “I haven’t done a lot of this”. He means sit-down conversations during the pandemic, or indeed at all, during his prime ministership […] he’s not certain this interview should be happening. I’m not a media intimate of the prime minister, I don’t know the secret handshake of the “yes, mate” club […] periodically I irritate him, and we both know I’m not much use to him.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There’s a kind of revelatory completeness here. The reluctant granting of the interview is as much a news element as the content arising from it. The author is admitting to personal history, conveying the political friction, so as to be judged against it. Or not. And there is the unmissable implication that, as with an authorised biography, the politician has motives and plenty of skin in the game. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-plagued-journalists-have-traded-their-independence-for-access-resulting-in-a-kind-of-political-pornography-189124">In Plagued, journalists have traded their independence for access, resulting in a kind of political pornography</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Professional candour</h2>
<p>One suspects this is a professional candour Wallace would applaud and would say amounts to deception if omitted. Political Lives begins with an extraordinary explanatory note in this vein, in which Wallace gives her reasons for withholding a biography of Julia Gillard she had already researched and written, lest it be immediately weaponised: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Both Rudd and Abbott were coming for her. Gillard’s life story contained its share of lesser elements. Enemies in opposition, the government, and the media, were poised to cherry-pick my biography for exploitable stories.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the febrile atmosphere building around the nation’s first female prime minister, Wallace wondered whether aiding and abetting this misogynist frenzy was right:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Whatever one’s view of Gillard, her prime ministerial performance and her government, was this fair, was this what a biography should do? I flew home to Canberra and wrote to my publisher to say I had decided to put the biography aside and return my advance.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The story lays bare Wallace’s inspiration for Political Lives and a provides a useful context for the book’s dissection of power, public curiosity, and the particular reasons biographies get written about serving or aspiring prime ministers in the first place.</p>
<p>The ethos of Political Lives is the crucial relationship (where it lasts) between biographer and subject – “crucial” but generally unexplored, as mere scaffolding behind a stage set. Restricting her field to the 20th century, Wallace is particularly interested in the utility of the biography. This invariably means the intent of its subject politician. How did the proposal come about? Whose interests did it ultimately serve?</p>
<p>In this regard, the contemporaneous biography is of particular salience, because it alters public perceptions of a political figure in real-time. </p>
<p>The most celebrated modern case is Blanche d’Alpuget’s Robert J. Hawke: A Biography (1982). So many of the questions pertinent to contemporary biographies coalesce in this one case. D’Alpuget’s closeness to her subject is only the most obvious, given she subsequently married Hawke. Yet Wallace’s admiration for the rigour of d’Alpuget’s work is clear.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518310/original/file-20230329-29-t2x9hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518310/original/file-20230329-29-t2x9hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518310/original/file-20230329-29-t2x9hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518310/original/file-20230329-29-t2x9hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518310/original/file-20230329-29-t2x9hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518310/original/file-20230329-29-t2x9hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518310/original/file-20230329-29-t2x9hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518310/original/file-20230329-29-t2x9hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Blanche DAlpuget and Bob Hawke in 2012.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Eva Rinaldi/Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The charismatic Hawke was in his first term in federal parliament in 1980, but by 1982 he was pushing hard for the Labor leadership. His backers were convinced his relatable larrikin popularity and rapier wit could sweep the dour Malcolm Fraser from the Lodge in 1983.</p>
<p>That larrikin past came with skeletons: affairs, drunken excesses, family grievances, friendships bulldozed, tempers lost. In short, a rich seam of stories for journalists to mine, guaranteeing a drip-feed of difficult revelations.</p>
<p>But what if Hawke got there first via a warts and all confession? The politician stripped bare, then born afresh. Not for the first time, the biography became an instrument of strategy – a chrysalis leading to the final form.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-how-blanche-dalpugets-warts-and-all-biography-of-her-lover-bob-hawke-helped-make-him-prime-minister-197911">Friday essay: how Blanche d'Alpuget's 'warts and all' biography of her lover Bob Hawke helped make him prime minister</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Biograpy as intervention</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517587/original/file-20230327-22-7gazlo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517587/original/file-20230327-22-7gazlo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517587/original/file-20230327-22-7gazlo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517587/original/file-20230327-22-7gazlo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517587/original/file-20230327-22-7gazlo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517587/original/file-20230327-22-7gazlo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517587/original/file-20230327-22-7gazlo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517587/original/file-20230327-22-7gazlo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chris Wallace.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">UNSW Press</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Wallace’s final chapter, titled “The political biography as political intervention”, ties it all together. </p>
<p>We read that there have been seventeen such biographies overall, including some which, like Hawke’s, were penned prior to their subjects ascending to the highest office. We also learn that World War I prime minister Billy “The Rat” Hughes was the subject of two of three contemporaneous biographies written about Australian wartime prime ministers. (The third concerned John Curtin in 1943.) </p>
<p>Fascinatingly, Robert Menzies, Australia’s longest-serving prime minister, eschewed the political biography as a serious form. In the foreword of a 1948 treatment of Edmund Barton – Australia’s first prime minister – Menzies decried such works as </p>
<blockquote>
<p>usually extravagant and largely worthless. They are written, as a rule, by ardent admirers, and rarely possess any critical quality. They are, in short, propaganda documents to be discounted by the objective student.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Menzies preferred the “detached historian”, who could study a “statesman” after the fact, although even in the 1940s he was lamenting that sources were unreliable: ministers speeches were often not their own words; the practice of social letter writing had become utilitarian and “commercial”, thus ceasing to yield real insights into underlying views and character traits. What would he make of emails and selfies?</p>
<p>As for journalists, “heaven forbid” they should write such works. Menzies complained of “partisan writers” aiming to create a popular picture with legends that were “basically false”.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518311/original/file-20230329-21-t2x9hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518311/original/file-20230329-21-t2x9hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518311/original/file-20230329-21-t2x9hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518311/original/file-20230329-21-t2x9hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518311/original/file-20230329-21-t2x9hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518311/original/file-20230329-21-t2x9hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518311/original/file-20230329-21-t2x9hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518311/original/file-20230329-21-t2x9hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Robert Menzies (1950).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Public domain</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Menzies’s perspicacity about contemporary biographies and journalistic frailties is to be admired, bearing in mind that his previous stint as prime minister had ended in humiliating failure. His public standing as arrogant and elitist might well have benefited from the re-packaging a contemporaneous biography, as “intervention”, could have delivered. </p>
<p>As prime minister, Menzies did subsequently cooperate with a contemporary biographer, though the book never saw the light of day. Wallace takes the reader into that “contested” mystery too: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The case of the “Menzies Biography Mystery”, as the press tagged Allan Dawes’ abortive book, points to the likely role of shifting political fortunes in decisions about them: the atmospheric may change considerably as the project proceeds.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Here, as in so many places throughout her work, Wallace’s analysis benefits from its foundations in both academic and journalistic terrain. No mere anthology, Political Lives is a book about the politics of political books. It invites the prospect of a new field of historiography and political evaluation, with fresh metrics for understanding politics through its mediation, and through one of its most prevalent but opaque drivers: personal ambition.</p>
<p>On his program The Weekly, the political satirist Charlie Pickering proclaims “we’ve watched all the news, so you don’t have to”. Wallace has read all the biographies so you don’t have to. Yet somehow she makes you want to read them as well. One suspects the creative impetus of this book could only germinate in the mind of that rare category of person, the formally trained journalist-historian-biographer. From its first page, Political Lives entertains, but then it does something far more valuable, something only the best historical writing does: it lights up the present by illuminating the past. Who could want more?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199495/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Kenny does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Chris Wallace’s book Political Lives entertains, but also does something far more valuable: it lights up the present by illuminating the past.Mark Kenny, Professor, Australian Studies Institute, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2020492023-03-26T00:40:54Z2023-03-26T00:40:54ZAustralia is now almost entirely held by Labor – but that doesn’t necessarily make life easier for leaders<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517472/original/file-20230325-280-n8w4up.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tasmanian Premier Jeremy Rockliff (right) is now the only non-Labor leader at federal or state level.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mick Tsikas/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Dominic Perrottet gave a gracious concession speech after his defeat in the New South Wales election on Saturday night, it was hard to avoid favourable comparison with the United States. There was no sign of rancour or hyper-partisanship. He praised Labor’s Chris Minns for a clean campaign. He predicted Minns would be a “fine” premier, urging people to “get behind him”.</p>
<p>But in one respect, our politics do look more American: Australia now has “red” and “blue” states, although we reverse their political colour scheme. The maps have already begun to appear on social media. The Australian mainland, with its five states and two territories, is now “red”. Only little Tasmania remains “blue”, looking like an antipodean Taiwan, with the sole surviving Liberal government in the country.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1639623421142405121"}"></div></p>
<p>These look like good times for Labor. It is not quite there yet, but the last time – indeed, the only time – it has been in office in all nine of Australia’s jurisdictions was for a few months between late November 2007 and early September 2008, between Kevin Rudd’s federal victory and Alan Carpenter’s loss to Colin Barnett in Western Australia a little over nine months later. </p>
<p>The parties of the right have also only once, since 1910, held office everywhere: for just over a year, in 1969-70, between a win in Tasmania and a loss in South Australia. In those days, the bar was a little lower than today, for neither the Northern Territory nor Australian Capital Territory had gained self-government yet. Australia had six sub-national jurisdictions, not the eight of today.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/labor-is-odds-on-for-a-narrow-victory-in-nsw-election-but-it-is-far-from-a-sure-bet-201174">Labor is odds-on for a narrow victory in NSW election, but it is far from a sure bet</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>An obvious question to ask of these circumstances is whether they matter for the governments involved. Is it, for example, easier for a federal government if the states and territories are ruled by the same party? Is it better for a state or territory government if the government on the federal scene has the same complexion?</p>
<p>Like so many historical questions, the answer isn’t simple.</p>
<p>If government by one party is rare in Australia, a situation where one party has become preponderant nationally is not. The 1980s, for instance, was a Labor decade in ways that extended well beyond the ascendancy of the Hawke government. Labor was also in power in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia for much of the decade. </p>
<p>In the 1990s, there was something of a reversal. Beginning in New South Wales in 1988, all four of those states became Coalition or Liberal by 1993. To balance things a little, Labor won power in Tasmania (in an Accord with Greens Independents) and Queensland in 1989. But when the John Howard government came to office in March 1996, there was just one Labor government left in Australia, that of Bob Carr in New South Wales, which had returned to office the previous year.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517473/original/file-20230325-1922-77vz42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517473/original/file-20230325-1922-77vz42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517473/original/file-20230325-1922-77vz42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517473/original/file-20230325-1922-77vz42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517473/original/file-20230325-1922-77vz42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517473/original/file-20230325-1922-77vz42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517473/original/file-20230325-1922-77vz42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">When John Howard came to office following the 1996 federal election, only NSW had a Labor state government.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mark Graham/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These configurations very likely reverberated in federal electoral politics. In 1990, as Labor’s tide went out in Victoria, it was coming in for the party in Queensland. The early unpopularity of some hardline policies of the Kennett government in Victoria possibly helped Paul Keating in the 1993 election.</p>
<p>There was some irony here, since Keating’s relations with Kennett were healthy in a way they had not been with John Cain, Victorian Labor premier through much of the 1980s. Cain, who tried to steer his government on a Keynesian path in an era of economic rationalism, blamed Hawke government economic policy for many of the difficulties his state had faced during the decade.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-antony-green-professor-andy-marks-and-ashleigh-raper-on-the-nsw-election-201957">Politics with Michelle Grattan: Antony Green, Professor Andy Marks and Ashleigh Raper on the NSW election</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Here is a reminder there is no guarantee of sweetness and light simply because the same party holds office in a state and in Canberra. The history of strong disagreement between federal and state governments of the same complexion is almost as long as the history of the two-party system itself. </p>
<p>When the Fisher Labor government sought additional powers via a constitutional referendum in 1911, it was stymied by opposition from the New South Wales Labor government, and especially the attorney-general, William Holman, who saw in the proposals a dangerous trend towards centralisation of power. </p>
<p>The most spectacular clashes between federal and state government have arguably occurred when they have represented different sides of politics. Those over censorship and conscription during the first world war in 1917 between T.J. Ryan, the Queensland Labor premier, and Billy Hughes, who had split the Labor Party and formed the Nationalists, were legendary.</p>
<p>Gough Whitlam’s exasperation with Joh Bjelke-Petersen led him to call the Queensland premier a “bible-bashing bastard”. The latter’s actions in filling a casual vacancy with a Senator hostile to the Whitlam government, and a similar action by a Liberal premier of New South Wales, damaged Whitlam. But it should be recalled that there were also strains, over money, between Whitlam’s government and that of his Labor counterpart in South Australia, Don Dunstan. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1259732470255071232"}"></div></p>
<p>Conversely, there is little evidence until quite late in the day that the Howard Coalition government was greatly hampered by having to face a wall of Labor governments in the early 2000s. </p>
<p>There was a rather pointed walk-out from a Premiers’ Conference over health policy in 2003; one of the premiers involved was still chuckling about it years later when recounting the stunt to me. And the premiers, especially Victoria’s Steve Bracks, made difficulty over the Murray-Darling basin policy late in the life of Howard’s government.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, state and territory governments, whatever their stripe, have a strong incentive to cooperate, even if few are as simpatico as Labor prime minister Ben Chifley, and South Australian Liberal and Country League premier Tom Playford in the years following World War Two. Meanwhile, Scott Morrison’s relations with both Gladys Berejiklian and Dominic Perrottet disclose how unhappy political families can become.</p>
<p>Anthony Albanese will be taking nothing for granted in his relations with Labor state and territory governments. And the premiers and chief ministers will know better than to expect too many free kicks.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202049/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frank Bongiorno does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>History shows us there is no guarantee of sweetness and light simply because the same party holds office in a state and in Canberra.Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1988742023-02-16T19:16:11Z2023-02-16T19:16:11ZThe 1967 referendum was the most successful in Australia’s history. But what it can tell us about 2023 is complicated<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510464/original/file-20230216-26-shxihw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Gallery of Australia/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><strong>This article references antiquated language when referring to First Nations people. It also mentions names and has images of people who may have passed away.</strong></p>
<hr>
<p>Before the end of this year, Australians <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Voice_to_Parliament">will vote</a> on enshrining an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice in the nation’s constitution. Referendums are famously fraught, and both <a href="https://thewest.com.au/opinion/patrick-dodson-yes-to-the-voice-referendum-will-help-make-amends-c-9436639">advocates</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/nationals-declare-they-will-oppose-the-voice-referendum-195446">detractors</a> of the Voice have drawn comparisons to the 1967 referendum, the nation’s most successful to date.</p>
<p>Then, 90.77% of Australians endorsed two constitutional amendments. One removed Section 127, whereby “Aboriginal natives” were not counted when “reckoning the numbers of the people of the Commonwealth”. The second altered Section 51 (xxvi) – the race power – to allow the Commonwealth to make “special laws” concerning Aboriginal people.</p>
<p>Why was this campaign so successful? Today commentators largely put it down to unanimity: there wasn’t a “no” campaign in 1967. This is one of the reasons, no doubt, but as historians often say: “it’s complicated”. Deconstructing the mythology that surrounds the vote provides a fuller answer.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-history-of-referendums-in-australia-is-riddled-with-failure-albanese-has-much-at-risk-and-much-to-gain-198799">The history of referendums in Australia is riddled with failure. Albanese has much at risk – and much to gain</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The road to referendum</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-26/larissa-behrendt-mythbusting-the-1967-referendum/8349858">Indigenous</a> and <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/ielapa.200709280?download=true">settler</a> scholars have long questioned the accepted narrative around 1967. The Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Council_for_the_Advancement_of_Aborigines_and_Torres_Strait_Islanders">founded in</a> 1958 with the purpose of fighting for constitutional change, had a big role in shaping the referendum’s meaning. The council first fought a petition campaign in 1962-3, and the vote itself, on the basis that a “yes” victory would grant citizenship rights for Indigenous people.</p>
<p>This was only ever <a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/library/prspub/JTZM6/upload_binary/jtzm62.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf#search=%22library/prspub/JTZM6%22">partly true</a>. The same activists who led the council’s campaign, including feminist Jessie Street, communist and scientist Shirley Andrews, Quandamooka poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Kath Walker) and Faith Bandler, an activist of South Sea Island and Scottish-Indian heritage, had already fought for and won many of the trappings of citizenship. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1031461X.2017.1313875">Voting rights</a>, for instance, were secured federally in 1962, and in every state by 1965. And while various state acts continued to limit movement and alcohol consumption for the people under their so-called “protection”, constitutional alteration in itself would do little to change this. By giving the federal government powers to override state laws, it was hoped, pressure from within and without would lead to the end of official discrimination.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TaJdm4KGfls?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>The ‘wind of change’</h2>
<p>The long, conservative government of Robert Menzies had stone-walled moves to hold a referendum, at least partly owing to a desire to maintain Section 51 unamended. That the Commonwealth would make “special laws” for Indigenous people ran counter to the goal of assimilation. Menzies’ successor, Harold Holt, was more amenable.</p>
<p>Holt’s progressive agenda – as well as supporting the referendum, he removed discriminatory provisions from the Migration Act – signalled his difference from Menzies to a changing electorate. But he and his ministers were also looking internationally. British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s 1960 declaration that a “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_of_Change_(speech)#:%7E:text=Macmillan%20went%20to%20Africa%20to,consciousness%20is%20a%20political%20fact.">wind of change</a>” was sweeping away racial discrimination and colonial domination had an Australian echo. </p>
<p>The 1965 “<a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/1965-freedom-ride">Freedom Rides</a>” had done much to highlight continued apartheid-style practices in rural Australia. And during the Cold War, Australia’s overseas perception carried substantial weight. </p>
<p>Indigenous rights activists had <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/human-rights-in-twentiethcentury-australia/11327035CBFC43692CA18A2888DC9128#fndtn-metrics">long warned</a> that Australia needed to act on issues of discrimination, with anti-colonial sentiment widespread in Asia, and the quickly growing United Nations watching. Liberal parliamentarian Billy Snedden <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/692626/cabinet-submission-660.pdf">hoped that</a> removing mention of “Aborigines” from the constitution would also “remove a possible source of misconstruction in the international field”.</p>
<h2>Right wrongs, write yes!</h2>
<p>While reflective of international sensitivities, the 1967 referendum was hardly a rejection of assimilation policy. Indeed, the Federal Council’s slogan of “<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Black_and_White_Together_FCAATSI.html?id=xM5yAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">black and white together</a>” can be read as a reflection of integrationist ideology: the goal of “Aboriginal advancement” was to live on white terms. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510258/original/file-20230215-3929-mkag9u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510258/original/file-20230215-3929-mkag9u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510258/original/file-20230215-3929-mkag9u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510258/original/file-20230215-3929-mkag9u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510258/original/file-20230215-3929-mkag9u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1304&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510258/original/file-20230215-3929-mkag9u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1304&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510258/original/file-20230215-3929-mkag9u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1304&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of South Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The campaign materials used in support of the referendum, much of which was produced by the Federal Council and distributed via trade unions and community organisations, reflected a simple message of unity and national absolution. Perhaps the most famous leaflet of the campaign – “Right Wrongs, Write Yes!” in large lettering, alongside an image of an Indigenous child – elevated the message above politics. The wrongs of the past could be done away with at the stroke of a pen.</p>
<p>The resounding victory was indeed read as a vindication of the decency of Australians. As <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/pdf/10.3316/ielapa.8111425093?casa_token=NOqhQxHENsMAAAAA:6NxHy_KYw3FDsRsxlUcJj4j0yt0nT_nTM_UOs4xdP-OnaC8IyLm5X0wbFo3ZKbNObaJ_iAOAa80pXe8">one commentator</a> put it: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The politicians were proud, the priests popular, the promoters propitiated, the public pleased. Being party to the most overwhelming referendum victory in the history of the Commonwealth of Australia demanded self-congratulation and the bestowal of bouquets upon all.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Current Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was <a href="https://www.9news.com.au/national/pm-says-voice-to-parliament-critics-are-attempting-to-start-culture-war/00d7b9d3-89dd-4c41-ba89-b366de90b757">channelling</a> similar sentiments earlier this month, declaring the Voice referendum offered a chance for Australians to show their “best qualities”. It would, he said, “be a national achievement in which every Australian can share”. </p>
<p>1967 shows us the power that such unifying language can have, but also that unanimity can conceal inertia.</p>
<h2>‘Advocated by all thinking people’</h2>
<p>This sense of national duty and righting wrongs at least partly explains why opposition to the proposed changes in 1967 was muted. Adelaide’s Victor Harbour Times <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/187330397?searchTerm=referendum">captured</a> the tenor: “a Yes vote is advocated by all thinking people”. But this opinion, much like today, was not unanimous.</p>
<p>Despite the lack of a formal campaign, the West Australian newspaper ran a particularly hard “no” line. Fears of creeping Commonwealth power over “<a href="https://www.qhatlas.com.au/content/1967-referendum-%E2%80%93-state-comes-together">state rights</a>” were propounded, as was the referendum’s lack of detail. “It was a pity that this issue was not worked out in advance”, <a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-684049566/view?partId=nla.obj-684073384#page/n26/mode/1up">one article bemoaned</a>, for then “the people could have been presented with a firm, rational policy”. </p>
<p>Western Australia registered the highest “no” vote of any state at the referendum, at close to 22%. This reflects at least in part this editorialising. Post-referendum <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/pdf/10.3316/ielapa.8111425093?casa_token=NOqhQxHENsMAAAAA:6NxHy_KYw3FDsRsxlUcJj4j0yt0nT_nTM_UOs4xdP-OnaC8IyLm5X0wbFo3ZKbNObaJ_iAOAa80pXe8">analysis</a> also indicated that racist attitudes shaped voting patterns. The greater the proximity to an Aboriginal reserve or mission, the more likely a person was to vote “no”. </p>
<p>That the referendum was, in the language of the West Australian, “double-barrelled” – paired with another, defeated, proposal to expand membership in the House of Representatives – does not seem to have affected the result. Even hard-right Democratic Labor Party Senator Vince Gair’s “<a href="https://archives.anu.edu.au/exhibitions/vote-yes-equality/voting-27-may-1967">No More Politicians Committee</a>” advocated for a “yes” vote on “Aboriginal rights”. Left and right understood, if for sharply differing reasons, that formal discrimination needed to end. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510262/original/file-20230215-14-dpyygn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510262/original/file-20230215-14-dpyygn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=637&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510262/original/file-20230215-14-dpyygn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=637&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510262/original/file-20230215-14-dpyygn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=637&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510262/original/file-20230215-14-dpyygn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510262/original/file-20230215-14-dpyygn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510262/original/file-20230215-14-dpyygn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In 1967, there was widespread understanding that formal discrimination needed to end.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.centreofdemocracy.sa.gov.au/event/remembering-the-1967-referendum/">Centre of Democracy</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>After the referendum</h2>
<p>Today’s “no” campaign’s key talking point, that the Voice “lacks detail”, was made in 1967, but failed to sway many voters. A writer for the <a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-684049566/view?partId=nla.obj-684073384#page/n26/mode/1up">Bulletin magazine</a> commented that while the West Australian was </p>
<blockquote>
<p>right when it says there should be a policy […] the time for it is after the referendum.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What mattered wasn’t the specifics, but that policy could be developed at all.</p>
<p>The referendum’s aftermath also illuminates another point of difference between then and now: a lack of Indigenous opposition. Indigenous scholar Larissa Behrendt <a href="http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AUIndigLawRw/2007/96.html">argues</a> that an “unintended consequence” of the 1967 referendum, and the hopes it raised and subsequently dashed for many Indigenous peoples, was a “more radical rights movement” led by those “disillusioned by the lack of changes that followed”. The Commonwealth was slow to use its new powers, and reticent to override powerful premiers like Queensland’s Joh Bjelke-Petersen.</p>
<p>The land rights and sovereignty movements of today have their origins in this moment of radicalisation. The Referendum Council, whose 2017 <a href="https://ulurustatement.org/">Uluru Statement</a> from the Heart reads “in 1967, we were counted, [now] we seek to be heard”, represent the unifying spirit of that earlier referendum. <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/we-are-the-voice-sydney-invasion-day-speakers-reject-voice-to-parliament-20230126-p5cfpe.html">Indigenous critics</a> of the Voice such as Lidia Thorpe and Gary Foley, on the other hand, inherit the radical tradition it inadvertently birthed. In Foley’s words, a Voice to Parliament would be <a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/the-politics/rachel-withers/2023/01/26/whose-voice-it-anyway">akin to</a> putting “lipstick on a pig”. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1621307323921874944"}"></div></p>
<p>Does all this mean the vote will fall differently in 2023? Something Voice advocates have in their favour is that “no” supporters, while loud, appear to be in a minority. State, territory and federal leaders have <a href="https://twitter.com/AnnastaciaMP/status/1621746325766414336">unanimously</a> pledged to support the “yes” case, leaving the federal opposition isolated, while <a href="https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/indigenous-support-for-voice-at-80pc-despite-protests-by-noisy-few-20230127-p5cfwj">80% of</a> Indigenous peoples support it. </p>
<p>One thing though is certain. If the 2023 referendum fails, it will at least in part be due to the shortcomings and spoiled hopes of 1967.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198874/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jon Piccini does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>If the 2023 referendum fails, it will at least in part be due to the shortcomings and spoiled hopes of 1967.Jon Piccini, Senior Lecturer in History, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1987992023-02-13T19:14:56Z2023-02-13T19:14:56ZThe history of referendums in Australia is riddled with failure. Albanese has much at risk – and much to gain<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509302/original/file-20230209-14-w2n1zt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mick Tsikas/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Australian summer has not been kind to the proposal for a First Nations Voice to Parliament. A recent <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/indigenous-voice-earns-support-of-quiet-majority-newspoll/news-story/112730f98673caf6b106ac3b52da70a2">Newspoll</a> shows a majority in favour – at 56% – but with half of those only partly in favour and 37% opposed. There is plenty of material for opponents to work with.</p>
<p>That they have been assiduously doing. Some calls for “more detail” are probably a genuine desire for just that – more detail. Others are very likely a cover for outright opposition, or for the holding operation currently being conducted by Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/albaneses-newspoll-ratings-drop-but-labor-maintains-big-lead-198584">Albanese's Newspoll ratings drop but Labor maintains big lead</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>He knows there is much at stake for him and the opposition in how it responds to this issue. A Liberal Party already seen as out of tune with the increasingly progressive social opinions found among voters in metropolitan seats might yet suffer more damage. </p>
<p>First Nations opinion is said to be overwhelmingly in favour. However, the minority of Aboriginal voices already heard against the proposal – some from the left, others from the right – have ensured the proposal will likely be unable to carry the same amount of moral force as the 1967 referendum.</p>
<p>The “yes” case in that year, which attracted almost 91% of the vote, not only had bipartisan support; it was overwhelmingly understood as the right way to vote if you didn’t want Australia to become another South Africa. You had to vote “yes” if you wanted a decent future for the Aboriginal children whose images featured prominently in the publicity. There was a moral clarity, as well as a sense of mission among supporters, on a question that offered white voters a kind of national redemption.</p>
<p>Supporters of the Voice would like a similar kind of clarity, but it is probably now already out of reach. That means that the “yes” case will need to counter the sowing of fear and doubt, the suspicion of a hidden agenda, that has been the enemy of referendum proposals since the earliest years of the Federation. </p>
<p>The numbers are fairly well known in a society that is usually a bit hazy about the details of its political history. Eight out of 44 – that’s how many referendum proposals have succeeded since 1901. Bipartisanship has come to be seen as essential in getting a proposal accepted, but some bipartisan proposals have also failed. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1622043649998733312"}"></div></p>
<p>It is often said the constitutional requirement of a double majority – more than 50% of voters as well as at least four out of six states – makes changing the constitution exceptionally difficult. There is evidence to support this contention. </p>
<p>On five occasions, a proposal achieved a majority of voters but went down because it lacked the requisite majority of states. In 1977, simultaneous elections of the House and Senate achieved over 62% support but fell over because voters in only three states backed it. All the same, proposals have more commonly failed because they gained the support of less than half the national electorate – indeed, sometimes less than a third.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/changing-the-australian-constitution-is-not-easy-but-we-need-to-stop-thinking-its-impossible-183626">Changing the Australian Constitution is not easy. But we need to stop thinking it's impossible</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Both sides of politics have benefited from negativity. In 1951, a time of great tension in the Cold War, Labor leader Herbert Vere Evatt managed between July 9 and September 22 to help turn an 80% majority in favour of banning the Communist Party into a narrow “no” majority. There was also a 3-3 split between the states. He presented the proposal as the thin edge of the wedge, arguing the Menzies government would use the power arbitrarily against people and institutions who were not communists.</p>
<p>In 1988, Hawke government proposals for mostly modest changes achieved embarrassingly poor support. They included a provision for freedom of religion and extension to the states of the right to trial by jury and compensation for compulsory acquisition of property. The Coalition’s “no” campaign, led by Peter Reith, mobilised opposition with great success. </p>
<p>Only a provision for fair and democratic elections received more than about a third of the vote – and that was just 37.6%. The proposal for simultaneous four-year terms for the two houses of parliament – perhaps the most substantial of the proposals in terms of systemic change – managed less than a third of the vote. Not a single state voted in favour of any proposal. (The Australian Capital Territory voted narrowly in favour of fair elections.)</p>
<p>“Anyone who got up in the next 20 years at a Labor Party conference and suggested another referendum would have a very short future,” concluded Bob Hogg, the ALP national secretary. That said, the party under Hawke’s successor, Paul Keating, did champion a republic in the 1990s. A 1999 referendum held after it lost office produced another disappointing result for constitutional reformers. </p>
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</figure>
<p>A “no” vote would be a great blow to the Albanese government. And in light of this history, it is in some respects odd that it has chosen to hitch its wagon so tightly to the cause of constitutional change. It is true they do not usually destroy governments – Menzies survived the 1951 defeat to rule for another decade and a half, and after the 1988 debacle, Labor would win elections in 1990 and 1993. But they do have the potential to undermine leaders and governments. Some commentary, for instance, suggested after the 1951 result that Menzies might leave politics.</p>
<p>The Voice referendum is not lost, but there is sufficient confusion and contention around the proposal to worry supporters. To suggest a good deal of that confusion has been cynically manufactured for political advantage does not much alter the level of danger. </p>
<p>Anthony Albanese’s recent speech at the National Press Club indicates he is seeking to strike a delicate balance. He wants to facilitate debate and consultation – especially with First Nations peoples – without leaving a vacuum to be filled by opponents with misinformation. </p>
<p>That task is likely to test fully the political skills the prime minister has developed over decades in the business.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198799/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frank Bongiorno does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It is true failed referendums do not usually destroy governments, but they do have the potential to undermine leaders and governments.Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1963602023-01-03T19:16:43Z2023-01-03T19:16:43ZThe ‘forgettables’: 5 Australian prime ministers you may not know much about<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501818/original/file-20221219-24-fhygs7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.moadoph.gov.au/exhibitions/democracy-dna-the-people-the-prime-ministers-and-the-world/">Museum of Australian Democracy</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The idea of a “forgotten prime minister” may seem laughable. For Australian historians, it is the governed rather than the governors who need rescuing “from the enormous condescension of posterity” as the English historian E. P. Thompson famously put it. </p>
<p>Our First Nations histories especially were for too long silenced and concealed in what the anthropologist Bill Stanner called a “cult of forgetfulness practised on a national scale”.</p>
<p>Prime ministers, on the other hand, are stitched into the tapestry of national history thanks to extensive newspaper coverage, the dogged pursuits of political biographers, and the quest of archivists and librarians to collect their personal papers. Deceased leaders’ names adorn buildings and streets, federal electorates, and dedicated research centres, and in Harold Holt’s case, a memorial swimming pool.</p>
<p>But some, of course, are better known than others. So which prime ministers, if any, can be considered “forgotten” by contemporary Australia? And what does that act of forgetting reveal about our political culture? Commemorative rituals and <a href="https://essentialvision.com.au/tag/john-curtin">opinion surveys</a> suggest that some have very much receded from memory.</p>
<p>Here are a few prime ministers who deserve to be a little better known. </p>
<h2>Edmund Barton 1901-03</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501811/original/file-20221219-16-gd6rzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501811/original/file-20221219-16-gd6rzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501811/original/file-20221219-16-gd6rzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501811/original/file-20221219-16-gd6rzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501811/original/file-20221219-16-gd6rzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501811/original/file-20221219-16-gd6rzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501811/original/file-20221219-16-gd6rzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Edmund Barton, Australia’s first prime minister.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Archives of Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Barton was a hugely significant figure in his day. A leading advocate of federation, he was summoned by the <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/hopetoun-seventh-earl-of-6730">Governor-General Lord Hopetoun</a> (after a false start) to form the first Commonwealth government. </p>
<p>Between 1901 and 1903, Barton’s government, with the dynamic Alfred Deakin as its attorney-general, established some of the national institutions we now take for granted, such as the public service and the High Court. Barton and Deakin’s deeply racial vision of a White Australia was also enacted in legislation in these years.</p>
<p>Australia’s first prime minister (known to detractors as Tosspot Toby) helped to establish the machinery of federal government out of nothing. But this earned him no special place in Australian collective memory. Resigning in 1903, he spent the remainder of his life as a reticent statesman and High Court judge.</p>
<h2>George Reid 1904-05</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501812/original/file-20221219-12-k2osuc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501812/original/file-20221219-12-k2osuc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=779&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501812/original/file-20221219-12-k2osuc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=779&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501812/original/file-20221219-12-k2osuc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=779&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501812/original/file-20221219-12-k2osuc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=979&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501812/original/file-20221219-12-k2osuc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=979&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501812/original/file-20221219-12-k2osuc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=979&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">George Reid, a political enemy of Barton’s, held office from 1904-05.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Museum of Australian Democracy</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Reid was a political opponent of Barton’s. The defining issue of the early Commonwealth was tariff policy, and all other matters – industrial development, employment, and individual liberty – were refracted through the “tariff question”. Reid, a former New South Wales premier who had earned the moniker “Yes-No Reid” for his prevarications during the earlier federation debates, was a devout advocate for and leader of the Free Trade movement.</p>
<p>Reid was summoned to form a government in August 1904. Hamstrung by his lack of a parliamentary majority, he remarkably passed the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/education/australias-prime-ministers-george-reid/13856906">Conciliation and Arbitration Bill</a>. This was core business for the early Commonwealth, and two previous ministries had failed to secure it. But Reid’s attempts to settle the tariff question with Deakin’s Protectionists failed, and his ministry was defeated in parliament in July 1905.</p>
<h2>Joseph Cook 1913-14</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501813/original/file-20221219-16-k4lphv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501813/original/file-20221219-16-k4lphv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501813/original/file-20221219-16-k4lphv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501813/original/file-20221219-16-k4lphv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501813/original/file-20221219-16-k4lphv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501813/original/file-20221219-16-k4lphv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501813/original/file-20221219-16-k4lphv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Joseph Cook, together with Reid, was instrumental in establishing the two-party system that continues today.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Archives of Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Out of office, Reid and his Free Trade colleague Joseph Cook played a crucial role in making the two-party system that endures today. Whatever their differences with Deakin and the protectionists, Reid and Cook (himself a former Labor MP in New South Wales) saw the rising Australian Labor Party as the real enemy. </p>
<p>Reid travelled the country establishing anti-socialist leagues and building the groundwork for a united anti-Labor Party. When the tariff schedule was finally settled in 1908, and the mutual animosity between Deakin and Reid seemed the only barrier to a Liberal fusion, the latter sacrificed himself and resigned so that the former could join forces with Cook on his own terms.</p>
<p>In 1913, Cook led the new Commonwealth Liberal Party to a federal election, winning by the narrowest of margins. He oversaw the opening weeks of the Great War the following year, committing 20,000 Australian troops and the Australian Navy to Britain, but soon lost power in <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/House_of_Representatives/Powers_practice_and_procedure/Practice7/HTML/Chapter13/Double_dissolutions#:%7E:text=The%201914%20double%20dissolution&text=Elections%20were%20held%20on%205,in%20question%20was%20not%20reintroduced.">Australia’s first double dissolution election</a>.</p>
<h2>Stanley Melbourne Bruce 1923-29</h2>
<p>After the war, the task of national leadership fell to Stanley Bruce, a young businessman and ex-serviceman from Melbourne. In 1923, as leader of the non-Labor forces (now reconstituted as the Nationalist Party), Bruce formed government with Earle Page’s Country Party (forerunner of today’s rural National Party). In doing so, Frank Bongiorno has recently explained, Bruce and Page ‘inaugurated the Coalition tradition on the conservative side of Australian federal politics’.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501814/original/file-20221219-12-fzk3nw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501814/original/file-20221219-12-fzk3nw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501814/original/file-20221219-12-fzk3nw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501814/original/file-20221219-12-fzk3nw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501814/original/file-20221219-12-fzk3nw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501814/original/file-20221219-12-fzk3nw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501814/original/file-20221219-12-fzk3nw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stanley Melbourne Bruce (pictured with his wife Ethel) had the task of leading the country after the first world war.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Archives of Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Bruce’s government was ambitious for Australia in the “roaring ‘20s”. He envisioned a future underscored by British migrants, British money and imperial markets. In power for six years, he presided over the creation of the Loans Council and the federal parliament’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Parliament_House,_Canberra">move from Melbourne</a> to Canberra in 1927. </p>
<p>But like others before him, he came unstuck on the issue of centralised arbitration. His attempt to abolish the federal arbitration court (with a view to restraining wage growth) saw his government defeated and his own seat lost in the 1929 election.</p>
<h2>Arthur Fadden 1941</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501815/original/file-20221219-22-gd6rzd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501815/original/file-20221219-22-gd6rzd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=785&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501815/original/file-20221219-22-gd6rzd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=785&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501815/original/file-20221219-22-gd6rzd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=785&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501815/original/file-20221219-22-gd6rzd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=986&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501815/original/file-20221219-22-gd6rzd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=986&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501815/original/file-20221219-22-gd6rzd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=986&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Arthur Fadden was chosen to lead his party after Robert Menzies resigned.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Archives of Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the early 1930s, conservatives once again reorganised in the form of the United Australia Party, and dominated politics for the ensuing decade. But by 1941, after two years of wartime leadership, the young leader Robert Menzies appeared to falter. His colleagues disliked his brisk manner and the public lacked confidence in his government’s war efforts. A hung parliament after the 1940 election, in which two Independents held the balance, confirmed this. With his position untenable, <a href="https://www.naa.gov.au/explore-collection/australias-prime-ministers/robert-menzies/during-office">Menzies resigned in August 1941</a> and the coalition unanimously chose Fadden, the Country Party leader, to replace him.</p>
<p>“Affable Artie” was a widely respected figure and apparently the only one who could hold together a decade-old government too consumed by infighting to meet the demands of the moment. His premiership lasted just 40 days, at which point the Independents offered John Curtin and Labor their support. The sole Country Party leader to become prime minister on a non-caretaker basis, Fadden was one of a small handful of men to lead the nation in a global war.</p>
<h2>Australia and Its Forgettables</h2>
<p>Why is it that these five prime ministers are largely absent from national memory? Four factors seem particularly significant.</p>
<p>First, contemporary Australian political discourse offers only a shallow sense of history. Political reporting rarely reaches for historical depth, and when it does, the second world war tends to be the outer limit. </p>
<p>Moreover, when Australians are asked to <a href="https://essentialvision.com.au/tag/john-curtin">rank their prime ministers</a> and select a “best PM”, they rarely reach beyond living memory.</p>
<p>The federation generation, overshadowed by the first world war, fare especially poorly. In the 1990s, with the centenary of federation fast approaching, <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practice_n_procedures/pops/Papers_on_Parliament_67/The_Australian_Prime_Ministership">surveys</a> revealed that Australians knew less about its federal founders than they did about America’s 'founding fathers’. What kind of country, the civics experts implored, could <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6niKTWMx4_c">forget the name of its first prime minister</a>? Tosspot Toby was no match for Simpson and his donkey.</p>
<p>Second, Australians prefer to think of their political history in terms of heroes and villains (often embodied by the same individuals). Those binary roles require gregariousness, dynamism, some controversy, and the occasional serving of larrikinism. “Tall poppy syndrome” notwithstanding, partisan heroes like Menzies and Gough Whitlam, or infamous rats such as Billy Hughes, make for easy storytelling.</p>
<p>The forgettables are more often reserved, restrained or even polite characters. The Primitive Methodist Joseph Cook was “<a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cook-sir-joseph-5763">[s]olemn and humourless</a>”. The patrician Bruce was judged “<a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bruce-stanley-melbourne-5400">too aloof and reserved to be an Australian</a>”. And Frank Forde, in his old age, maintained that all of his colleagues and opponents had been <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2239262?lookfor=Francis%20Forde%20%7bformat:Audio%7d&offset=1&max=1">“outstanding” and “capable men”</a> for whom he had only “friendly feeling”. This is not exactly the stuff of masculine political legend.</p>
<p>Alfred Deakin has tended to absorb the historical limelight and cast long shadows over his contemporaries, not least because he furnished historians and biographers with rich personal papers. (Barton scrupulously destroyed most of his). But as <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/4704220">Sean Scalmer has argued</a>, we ought not to overlook the influence of Deakin’s contemporaries in the making of Australian politics as we know it.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501817/original/file-20221219-20-9hooph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501817/original/file-20221219-20-9hooph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501817/original/file-20221219-20-9hooph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501817/original/file-20221219-20-9hooph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501817/original/file-20221219-20-9hooph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501817/original/file-20221219-20-9hooph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501817/original/file-20221219-20-9hooph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alfred Deakin (front row, second from right) has tended to cast a long shadow over his contemporaries.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://deakinslettersmorningpost.parliamentarylibrary.gov.au/letters/1903?page=1">Australian Parliamentary Library</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Third, prime ministers are rendered immemorable if they were judged to be temporary, or presiding over some kind of interregnum. Australians have valorised the longevity and stability of Menzies and Howard, or the sense of epochal change that accompanied Whitlam and Hawke. Men like Reid, Cook and Fadden seem transitory in comparison.</p>
<p>Fourth, public memory has often depended on the sponsorship of major parties and their affiliated scribes and institutes. The corollary is that those who preceded the two-party system are harder to commemorate. Labor has been excellent at proselytising its great leaders and their great reforms, and demonising the rats and renegades. The Liberal Party, on the other hand, has struggled to memorialise its antecedents and influences (Deakin perhaps excepted). Menzies and Howard predominate in the collective Liberal psyche, and Liberal forerunners from Barton to Bruce rarely get a look-in.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196360/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joshua Black is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.</span></em></p>While some prime ministers loom large in the public imagination, others are largely forgotten. Why were they so unremarkable- and is that fair?Joshua Black, PhD Candidate, School of History, National Centre of Biography, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1937142022-12-25T20:41:57Z2022-12-25T20:41:57ZIs there a ‘right to disobey’? From the Vietnam War to today’s climate protests<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499733/original/file-20221208-20-hhz31u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A rally to free John Zarb, December 1968.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Search Foundation and the State Library of New South Wales</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>One of the first moves of the newly elected Whitlam Labour government in December 1972 was to free seven men <a href="https://www.whitlam.org/whitlam-legacy-human-rights#:%7E:text=The%20first%20act%20of%20the,to%20Australia%20within%20three%20weeks.">imprisoned for their beliefs</a>. Their crime had been refusal to comply with the National Service Act, a so-called “lottery of death” that sent some 15,300 young Australians to fight in Vietnam. Two hundred of them <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/encyclopedia/vietnam/statistics">never came home</a>. </p>
<p>The issue of national service – often dubbed “the draft” following American vernacular – was perhaps the most powerful in the anti-war movement’s arsenal. “Draft resisters” mobilised public sentiment with their heroic stands, respectable mothers campaigned to “<a href="https://publishing.monash.edu/product/save-our-sons/">Save our Sons</a>” and, as I explore in a newly published <a href="https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526159557/">book chapter</a>, the Australian wing of Amnesty International classed these men as “prisoners of conscience”.</p>
<p>Today, Australia grapples again with the question of criminalising conscience. Laws in <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/06/22/australia-climate-protesters-rights-violated">several Australian states</a> impose harsh penalties on the use of “direct action” by climate change activists. Fifty years ago, similar questions of a right to disobey sparked fierce debates: where should the legal limits of conscience lie?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499705/original/file-20221208-17-h93l7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499705/original/file-20221208-17-h93l7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499705/original/file-20221208-17-h93l7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499705/original/file-20221208-17-h93l7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499705/original/file-20221208-17-h93l7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499705/original/file-20221208-17-h93l7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499705/original/file-20221208-17-h93l7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">University students protest the National Service Act outside the Anzac Memorial in Hyde Park, Sydney.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the Search Foundation and State Library of New South Wales</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>In Australia, it is a crime not to kill</h2>
<p>National service was re-introduced in Australia in 1964, with a previous scheme having quietly ended in 1959. The first “nashos” were committed to Vietnam in 1966. The scheme was <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ajph.12720">highly selective</a> – by its end some 800,000 20-year-olds had registered and less than 10% had been “called up”. </p>
<p>Opposition to national service emerged almost immediately, through such groups as the Youth Campaign Against Conscription. In November 1966, Sydney schoolteacher <a href="https://commonslibrary.org/brave-enough-to-say-no-william-white/">Bill White</a> became the first person imprisoned for failure to comply with the act. He had applied for conscientious objector status almost a year earlier, but been denied because he did not fit the strict criteria.</p>
<p>Public outrage played a part in White’s early release in December 1966, but over time penalties became more harsh. <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/ARTV03070">John Zarb</a>, a part-time postman, received a two-year sentence in October 1968 for refusing to comply with his call-up notice. His opposition to the Vietnam war only, rather than war in general, made him ineligible for objector status.</p>
<p>These moral-political stances encouraged further opposition. As well as releasing jailed objectors, Whitlam’s incoming government threw out cases against 350 individuals. For the anti-war movement, these cases demonstrated the conflict’s contradictions. As one <a href="https://digital.collections.slsa.sa.gov.au/nodes/view/4004">activist leaflet</a> put it: “In Australia, it is a crime not to kill.” </p>
<h2>The politics of conscience</h2>
<p>To a nascent human rights movement, however, the issue was not as clear-cut. Amnesty International, founded by the British lawyer <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/who-we-are/">Peter Benenson</a> in 1961, established an early foothold in Australia. A Victorian section was founded in March 1962, and groups in other states soon followed. </p>
<p>One of the group’s appeals was its rejection of “Cold War” politics. By adopting “prisoners of consciences” from the first, second and third worlds, they could claim impartiality, while the use of letter writing as a tactic invoked the power of global opinion. </p>
<p>Yet the definition of a prisoner of conscience in the group’s early years proved controversial. To meet Amnesty’s definition, a prisoner needed to have been jailed for crimes of opinion and have not advocated violence. Infamously, this definition excluded <a href="https://academic.oup.com/minnesota-scholarship-online/book/16223/chapter-abstract/171292057?redirectedFrom=fulltext">Nelson Mandela</a>. For Amnesty, the question of whether objectors like White or Zarb should be considered prisoners of conscience divided the Victorian and New South Wales sections. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499717/original/file-20221208-23-k8glwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499717/original/file-20221208-23-k8glwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499717/original/file-20221208-23-k8glwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499717/original/file-20221208-23-k8glwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499717/original/file-20221208-23-k8glwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499717/original/file-20221208-23-k8glwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499717/original/file-20221208-23-k8glwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Draft Resisters Union meeting, 1972.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the Search Foundation and State Library of New South Wales</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Victorians believed those who “register for national service and apply for exemption”, but whose “applications fail either through some apparent miscarriage of justice or because the law does not presently encompass their objections […] are prima facie eligible for adoption”. However, those who “basically refuse to co-operate with the National Service Act” merely “maintain a right to disobey a law which they believe to be immoral” – and adopting them would “seriously damage […] our high repute”. </p>
<p>The New South Wales section condemned this “legalistic interpretation”. Instead, it insisted “the Non-Complier in gaol for conscientiously held […] views suffers no less than one who has tried in vain to act ‘according to the law’ ”. The Victorians’ belief that Amnesty should accept some degree of compulsion in democratic societies was also challenged: conscription was in fact a universal problem that occurred on both sides of the “Iron Curtain”. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1599881226789486592"}"></div></p>
<h2>Is it right to resist?</h2>
<p>In the end, the views of the New South Wales section won out. Amnesty sections around the world adopted Australian non-compliers. </p>
<p>This clash of principles reminds us that human rights have never been straightforward. Rather, these ideas have long been open to contest and reinterpretation. From today’s vantage point, it also seems the Victorian section’s belief that the right to disobey could be limited was wildly optimistic. </p>
<p>Indeed, the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/dec/13/climate-activist-deanna-violet-coco-freed-from-prison-while-she-appeals-15-month-jail-sentence">sentencing of climate protester</a> Deanna “Violet” Coco to 15 months in jail for the crime of disrupting traffic in New South Wales shows that the questions posed by Amnesty in the 1960s are very much still with us. The climate emergency is in many ways the Vietnam of today’s young people. The 50th anniversary of the release of resisters to that conflict should give today’s decision-makers pause for thought.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193714/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jon Piccini does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The climate emergency is in many ways the Vietnam of today’s young people. The 50th anniversary of the release of resisters to that conflict should give today’s decision-makers pause for thought.Jon Piccini, Lecturer in History, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1958062022-12-02T05:12:55Z2022-12-02T05:12:55ZThe government will not send out Yes and No case pamphlets ahead of the Voice to Parliament referendum. Does this matter?<p>The Albanese government <a href="https://ministers.ag.gov.au/media-centre/next-steps-towards-voice-referendum-01-12-2022">proposes</a> to ditch the “Yes/No” case pamphlets that are ordinarily posted to voters before a referendum. Is this a good idea, and what, if anything, should replace it?</p>
<h2>What changes are proposed?</h2>
<p>Under the <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/consol_act/rpa1984353/s11.html">existing law</a>, after a proposed constitutional amendment is passed by parliament, a majority of MPs who voted for it may prepare a written Yes case of up to 2,000 words. If any members voted against it in parliament, they can prepare the official No case. </p>
<p>Before the referendum, the electoral commissioner sends a pamphlet in the mail to every voter. This includes the Yes case and the No case (if one has been provided) as well as a copy of the proposed changes to be made to the Constitution. This is the only official information given to voters to help them decide how to vote in the referendum.</p>
<p>The Commonwealth government is currently prohibited from otherwise spending money on the presentation of arguments for or against a referendum proposal. </p>
<p>In its <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=r6965">Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Amendment Bill 2022</a>, the Albanese government intends to “disapply” the relevant section so it ceases to operate until the next general election. The effect would be that there would be no official Yes/No case distributed to voters for any referendum held in this term of parliament, and no legal restriction on government spending on the referendum campaign.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/creating-a-constitutional-voice-the-words-that-could-change-australia-187972">Creating a constitutional Voice – the words that could change Australia</a>
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<h2>What is the point of the Yes/No case?</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498645/original/file-20221202-19-xmkv40.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498645/original/file-20221202-19-xmkv40.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=809&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498645/original/file-20221202-19-xmkv40.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=809&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498645/original/file-20221202-19-xmkv40.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=809&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498645/original/file-20221202-19-xmkv40.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1017&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498645/original/file-20221202-19-xmkv40.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1017&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498645/original/file-20221202-19-xmkv40.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1017&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Attorney-General Billy Hughes had a rather naive idea of how the Yes/No case pamphlets might be used.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Australian War Memorial</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>The Yes/No case pamphlet was first required by a law enacted <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C1912A00035">in 1912</a>. It was introduced due to a concern that the previous referendum had failed because the voters were inadequately informed. </p>
<p>Opposition Leader Alfred Deakin, who had opposed the previous referendum, was nonetheless supportive of introducing better public education on referendums. He <a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;adv=yes;db=HANSARD80;id=hansard80%2Fhansardr80%2F1912-12-16%2F0057;orderBy=_fragment_number,doc_date-rev;query=Dataset%3Ahansardr,hansardr80%20Decade%3A%221910s%22%20Year%3A%221912%22%20Month%3A%2212%22%20Day%3A%2216%22;rec=0;resCount=Default">argued</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is our duty, when we ask the electors to vote for or against momentous proposals of this kind, to give them the best material we have in order that they may form an independent judgment.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The attorney-general of the day, Billy Hughes, had a rather naïve expectation of how the Yes/No case would be used. He <a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;adv=yes;db=HANSARD80;id=hansard80%2Fhansardr80%2F1912-12-16%2F0055;orderBy=_fragment_number,doc_date-rev;query=Dataset%3Ahansardr,hansardr80%20Decade%3A%221910s%22%20Year%3A%221912%22%20Month%3A%2212%22%20Day%3A%2216%22;rec=0;resCount=Default">said</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Honourable Members may put their case before the public, provided that it is put in an impersonal, reasonable, and judicial way. There is to be no imputation of motives. In short, the argument is to be one which appeals to the reason rather than to the emotions and party sentiments.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is not how things have turned out. In fact, the Yes/No case, because it is prepared by political partisans, is often misleading and emotive, particularly on the No side. </p>
<h2>The No case and the aviation referendum</h2>
<p>A good example is the 1937 referendum on giving the Commonwealth parliament power to legislate on aviation. When the Constitution was first being written, the Wright brothers had not yet flown a plane. So there was nothing in it about making laws to govern aviation in Australia. </p>
<p>The consequence was that federal laws applied to flights in and out of Australia and some interstate flights, but not to planes flying within a state. This was inefficient and potentially dangerous, so a referendum was held to give the Commonwealth full power over aviation in 1937. Despite it logically being the type of thing that should be dealt with on a national basis, the referendum was lost. </p>
<p>The No case had <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/230795282">argued</a> the expansion of aviation would compete with and ruin the state railway systems. It would make railway workers unemployed and bankrupt country towns. The price of food would sky-rocket, because the cost of freight would be higher and the finances of every state government would be endangered. </p>
<p>These claims were highly exaggerated and had nothing to do with whether the Commonwealth or the states should regulate aviation. But it was enough to make some people worried and so vote No. </p>
<p>It is, of course, difficult to attribute referendum outcomes to the inflammatory and misleading content of the Yes/No cases, as most people don’t read them. But some will, and the official nature of the document will give its contents greater credence than they deserve. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/changing-the-australian-constitution-is-not-easy-but-we-need-to-stop-thinking-its-impossible-183626">Changing the Australian Constitution is not easy. But we need to stop thinking it's impossible</a>
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<h2>Referendum pamphlets in New South Wales</h2>
<p>In contrast, in New South Wales the practice has been to have public servants, not politicians, write the pamphlet that is sent to voters prior to a referendum. The public servants are required to do so in a factually accurate and impartial manner. Before publishing the pamphlet, they send it to acknowledged experts for vetting to ensure it is accurate and a fair explanation of the issues. </p>
<p>The success rate of New South Wales referendums is much higher than that at the Commonwealth level. If you count state-wide referendums to amend the New South Wales Constitution where voters were given a binary Yes/No choice, then the <a href="https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/The_Constitution_of_New_South_Wales/KayCZfZwafwC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Twomey+Constitution+New+South+Wales+success+rate+constitutional+referenda&pg=PA320&printsec=frontcover">success rate is 85%</a>. This can be compared with the Commonwealth success rate of 18%. While other factors will also have been in play, providing voters with informative and accurate material rather than inflammatory and misleading material is likely to have helped at the state level.</p>
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<h2>What replaces the Yes/No case?</h2>
<p>While the Yes/No case in its current form has not proved the reasonable and informative tool that was intended by Hughes, a question remains as to what should replace it. If there is no officially sanctioned information, then this just leaves open a free-for-all on social media with even more misleading material circulating. There surely needs to be at least one source of authoritative information to which people can turn.</p>
<p>The government has said it proposes to fund educational campaigns to promote voters’ understanding of referendums and the referendum proposal. Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus <a href="https://ministers.ag.gov.au/media-centre/next-steps-towards-voice-referendum-01-12-2022">has stated</a> the bill will “enable funding of educational initiatives to counter misinformation”. </p>
<p>The difficulty facing the government will be working out how this can be done in a way that maintains public confidence and is not seen to be partisan in nature. </p>
<p>The intention behind this change is a worthy one. The Yes/No case has long been recognised as a failed experiment. But the successful execution of the government’s educative proposals will be difficult and need great care.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195806/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anne Twomey has received funding from the Australian Research Council and been a consultant to Parliaments, Governments and inter-governmental bodies. She is a director of Constitution Education Fund Australia (CEFA) which engages in constitutional education initiatives. It is possible that CEFA or its materials might be used in any education campaign. Anne Twomey also has her own constitutional education YouTube channel, Constitutional Clarion.</span></em></p>The Yes/No case has long been flawed and the government is right to dispense with it. But it will need to replace it with something else to counter misinformation – and do so with great care.Anne Twomey, Professor of Constitutional Law, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1947182022-12-01T19:03:31Z2022-12-01T19:03:31ZFifty years ago, the new Whitlam government removed the luxury sales tax on the pill. It changed Australian women’s lives<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498211/original/file-20221130-22-pr7fvm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.broadagenda.com.au/2020/do-fourth-wave-feminists-get-their-second-wave-foremothers/">Broad Agenda</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Amid the scale and sweep of the list of decisions made by the Whitlam government in their first week in office, most people remember the big changes: freeing all draft resisters from prison, or official recognition of Communist China. </p>
<p>The removal of the sales tax on the contraceptive pill, and adding it to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, which came into effect on December 9 1972, is easily overlooked. Yet this reform was both symbolic and materially important. It signalled to Australian women that their new government would be much more responsive to their demands for reproductive rights and freedoms, and ushered in a wave of feminist reforms under the Whitlam government.</p>
<h2>The popularity of the pill</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/the-pill#:%7E:text=The%20release%20of%20the%20oral,unwanted%20pregnancies%20and%20plan%20parenthood.">introduction of the contraceptive pill</a> in January 1961 had brought the topic of contraception into the open in Australia. It was hailed as a reliable and convenient way for married couples to plan their families. </p>
<p>The pill also made an important contribution to the changing sexual climate of the late 1960s. By removing the fear of pregnancy, the pill helped to change women’s attitude towards sex. Concerns about side-effects, cost and availability deterred some women from taking it, but by the early 1970s, one in every four Australian women had a prescription.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-relation-between-politics-and-culture-is-clear-and-real-how-gough-whitlam-centred-artists-in-his-1972-campaign-181243">'The relation between politics and culture is clear and real': how Gough Whitlam centred artists in his 1972 campaign</a>
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<p>However, many doctors refused to prescribe the pill to single women, and it remained out of reach to many working class women due to its cost. At the time, Australia had banned the advertising of contraceptives, and the sales taxes and tariffs applied to contraceptives added to their expense. As the Women’s Electoral Lobby liked to point out, the 27% sales tax on the pill was the same as that applied to mink coats. </p>
<h2>Growing calls for reproductive rights</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498212/original/file-20221130-26-8w1kao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498212/original/file-20221130-26-8w1kao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1340&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498212/original/file-20221130-26-8w1kao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1340&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498212/original/file-20221130-26-8w1kao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1340&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498212/original/file-20221130-26-8w1kao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1684&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498212/original/file-20221130-26-8w1kao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1684&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498212/original/file-20221130-26-8w1kao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1684&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">An early contraceptive pill from about 1963. The introduction of the pill changed Australian women’s lives.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/the-pill#:~:text=The%20release%20of%20the%20oral,unwanted%20pregnancies%20and%20plan%20parenthood.">National Museum of Australia</a></span>
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<p>Given many women’s difficulties obtaining the pill, it is unsurprising that access to abortion became a significant political issue in the 1960s. The Abortion Law Reform Association (ALRA) was formed in 1967, and by 1971 it had branches across Australia. </p>
<p>The laws criminalising abortion were state-based, and these <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/about_parliament/parliamentary_departments/parliamentary_library/pubs/rp/rp9899/99rp01">laws were liberalised</a> in Victoria in 1969 and NSW in 1971. This liberalisation did not grant women the “right” to abortion, but clarified the conditions under which a doctor could perform an abortion lawfully. </p>
<p>Under the liberalised law, a doctor could perform an abortion legally when they believed that it was “necessary to preserve a woman from serious danger to her life or to her physical or mental health”. </p>
<p>These reforms were focused on doctors’ rights, rather than women’s. But at the same time, the women’s liberation movement was demanding bodily autonomy and reproductive freedom for women. They wanted abortion on request, free birth control, and free childcare, arguing that women could only fully participate in society as equal citizens if they had control over their fertility. Contraception was a fundamental feminist issue.</p>
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<h2>Whitlam, WEL and reproductive rights</h2>
<p>As part of his reshaping of the Labor party to make it electable and modern, Whitlam extended the ALP’s language of equal opportunity beyond class to encompass migrants, women and Indigenous Australians. </p>
<p>While Labor’s 1972 election platform only addressed women’s specific needs in relation to childcare, Whitlam was a vocal supporter of women’s access to affordable contraception and abortion, as was his wife, Margaret.</p>
<p>Yet it was the <a href="https://welvic.org.au/about-wel/">Women’s Electoral Lobby</a> that was perhaps most crucial in reshaping Labor policy on women’s issues. Formed in March 1972 by abortion law reform campaigner Beatrice Faust, WEL wanted to place women’s concerns on the political agenda by surveying all candidates in the 1972 election on issues women believed were important. One-third of those questions were on contraception and sex education. </p>
<p>Apart from the candidate survey, which generated huge publicity in the lead up to the 1972 election, WEL also engaged in lobbying, and made a submission to a 1972 tariff inquiry calling for a reduction in tariffs on contraceptives. As Marian Sawer notes in her <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Making_Women_Count.html?id=DrlkaO61h74C&redir_esc=y">history of WEL</a>, this put family planning issues on the ALP’s agenda. Within a week of WEL’s submission, the shadow health minister, Bill Hayden, said a Labor government would remove the sales tax on contraceptives and support the development of a network of family planning clinics. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1500978114364833794"}"></div></p>
<p>This early action made the contraceptive pill cheaper; the Whitlam government’s subsequent actions made contraception more widely available. The government made numerous grants to family planning organisations, and between 1973 and 1974, around 100 family planning clinics opened throughout Australia. </p>
<p>These clinics were important for several reasons: they took away some of the stigma of having to approach your doctor for a prescription for the pill, especially for young single women, and the location of clinics in working class areas helped increase uptake of the pill among working class women. </p>
<p>This early decision on the pill was the first of the Whitlam government’s reforms on reproductive rights. The government made an unsuccessful attempt to reform the law on abortion in the ACT. However, while it failed to change the law, it did create the Royal Commission on Human Relationships, a far-reaching inquiry into sexuality, gender and family life. In the words of Elizabeth Reid, the Whitlam government’s advisor to women’s affairs (the first position of that kind in the world), the commission helped foster a “<a href="https://hercanberra.com.au/life/the-revolutionary-in-whitlams-government-who-fought-for-women/">revolutionary consciousness</a>” that she saw as vital to driving structural and cultural change. </p>
<p>It inquired into why women had abortions and planned their families, recommending new laws and practices to respond to changing times. The government also funded women’s refuges and women’s health centres, which helped share new knowledge about contraception. It expanded the provision of childcare, and, through Reid, started the long, slow process of making Australian governments more responsive to women’s needs. It is an ongoing journey.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WpuJJ4qDcp0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>In his book The Whitlam Government, Whitlam remarked that </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the many and diverse achievements of the Government did much to correct an alarming history within the Labor Party of ignorance and inactivity on women’s issues.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>His government recognised women as independent political subjects with roles to play beyond motherhood. It also recognised the central principle of second wave feminism: namely, that women needed bodily autonomy and control over their fertility before they could participate in society on their own terms. </p>
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<p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/damned-whores-and-gods-police-is-still-relevant-to-australia-40-years-on-mores-the-pity-47753">Damned Whores and God’s Police is still relevant to Australia 40 years on – more's the pity</a>
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<p>The decision was also an important signal to the women’s movement: an assurance that they took women’s concerns seriously, and that the rights of women were important to the Labor party as they built an expanded coalition of voters. </p>
<p>The removal of sales tax on the pill was fitting recognition of women’s new political engagement, and the beginning of a productive relationship between the government and the women’s movement. </p>
<p>On the 50th anniversary of this symbolic and important decision, it’s worth remembering what governments and activists can achieve when they work together to improve the lives of Australian women.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/194718/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Arrow receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She has worked as a campaign volunteer for the Australian Labor Party. </span></em></p>The Whitlam government’s removal of the sales tax may seem small, but it increased access to the pill for many women and in doing so, changed their lives.Michelle Arrow, Professor of History, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1955522022-11-30T02:59:29Z2022-11-30T02:59:29ZCould the Nationals’ refusal to support a Voice to Parliament derail the referendum?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498158/original/file-20221130-18-lp2hst.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mick Tsikas/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Nationals have declared they will support the No case for the Voice referendum. This position has not been endorsed by all the Nationals, with the Western Australian Nationals and federal MP Andrew Gee confirming their support for the Voice.</p>
<p>The Nationals’ move is unusual, as we do not know yet know what specific constitutional changes will be proposed by the referendum. It seems to be an “in principle” opposition to the general idea of the Voice, and it would appear to be largely driven by Northern Territory Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.</p>
<p>What is the significance of this early decision? And what does it say about the National Party and its relationship to the Liberal Party, which has yet to declare its position on this matter?</p>
<p>The National Party is an independent party that forms a coalition with the Liberal Party. When the two parties are in government together, they would normally agree on policy matters.</p>
<p>In opposition, the Nationals are much freer to diverge from the Liberals on policy. This would seem to be an issue on which they are seeking to assert their independence.</p>
<p>Of course, support by a major political party for a particular case in a referendum matters, because so few referendums have been successful (8 out of 44). It is generally acknowledged that a referendum requires bipartisan support if it is to succeed. This move could be seen as a sort of preemptive strike to bury the referendum.</p>
<p>The reason why it is extremely difficult for a referendum to be successful is because of the double majority; this means both an overall majority of voters and a majority of voters in a majority of states (that is, at least four).</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/albanese-insists-voice-will-help-close-the-gap-as-divisions-flare-in-nationals-195564">Albanese insists Voice will help 'close the gap', as divisions flare in Nationals</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>There have been <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendums_in_Australia">cases in the past</a> where a constitutional amendment received a majority of the votes but majorities in only three, and in one case two, states. This meant it failed. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1597706567658639360"}"></div></p>
<p>Referendums are more likely to succeed if they do not have a major impact on the majority of the people voting for them. The major exception to this rule was the <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/about_parliament/parliamentary_departments/parliamentary_library/pubs/rp/rp9900/2000rp02">1946 social services referendum</a> that has had an enormous impact, allowing, for example, Commonwealth intervention in educational matters.</p>
<p>The 1967 referendum, when Australians voted 90% in favour of changing the Constitution to allow Aboriginal people to be counted in the census and the government to make decisions for them, falls into this pattern. It did not directly affect most Australians, but was overwhelmingly successful because most people believe it to be the right thing to do.</p>
<p>The referendum that attracted the next highest approval rating was the <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/bd/bd1977/1976bd082">1977 referendum</a> that made High Court judges retire at 70. It attracted 80% of the popular vote, thereby embedding a form of age discrimination into the Constitution.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practice_n_procedures/pops/Papers_on_Parliament_68/The_Defeated_1967_Nexus_Referendum">1967 parliament referendum</a> on breaking the “nexus” between the size of the House of Representatives and the Senate indicates how difficult getting a referendum up is, even with bipartisan support. The Constitution states that the size of the Senate should be half that of the House of Representatives.</p>
<p>It had been mooted by Robert Menzies in the early 1960s, but ended up being put to the people by the Holt government in 1967. By this stage, the Country Party (which later changed its name to the National Party) Federal Council had decided the referendum was unnecessary. But as a member of the ruling coalition, the Country Party <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311983.2018.1517591">fell into line</a> supporting the Yes case, with perhaps diminished enthusiasm.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/changing-the-australian-constitution-is-not-easy-but-we-need-to-stop-thinking-its-impossible-183626">Changing the Australian Constitution is not easy. But we need to stop thinking it's impossible</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Despite massive support from both the government and the opposition, there was a campaign against the change led largely by the Democratic Labor Party and several dissident Liberal and Country Party members. This small group ran an effective populist campaign based on the need to contain costs and stop an increase in the number of politicians.</p>
<p>The referendum failed miserably, only achieving a majority in New South Wales.</p>
<p>The 1967 Parliament referendum indicates the effect that even a small amount of dissidence in the political class can have on the outcome of a referendum. Initially, the Country Party had supported this referendum, then changed its mind as political circumstances changed.</p>
<p>Moreover, the outcome of the referendum indicates how vulnerable any Yes case is to a strongly argued and populist No case.</p>
<p>All referendums in Australia face considerable obstacles because of the double majority. Significant opposition, especially if it can appeal to populist instincts in the Australian population, can easily derail a Yes case.</p>
<p>The crucial factor in the Voice referendum may not be so much that the National Party has come out in opposition to it, but that that opposition has found a passionate voice in Jacinta Nampijinpa Price. She will no doubt run a strong a No case campaign. </p>
<p>Will this cause problems for the Liberal-Nationals relationship? As they are in opposition the relationship is not as close as it would be if they were in government. Certainly, there are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/02/indigenous-voice-to-parliament-how-will-the-constitution-change-and-what-will-australians-be-asked-to-vote-on">strong supporters</a> of the Voice in the Liberal Party such as Julian Leeser. But he may well have his work cut out countering Price.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195552/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gregory Melleuish receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>It is hard to say how big an influence the Nationals’ stance may have – but history shows us the Yes case in referendums is easily defeated.Gregory Melleuish, Professor, School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1920042022-11-15T19:08:25Z2022-11-15T19:08:25ZFrank Bongiorno’s political history of Australia is a grand synthesis, but takes a narrow view of its subject<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495204/original/file-20221114-20-u2a3rv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C32%2C4363%2C2915&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A 'drastic shift to the left': Greens candidate Max Chandler-Mather celebrates his win in the Brisbane seat of Griffith in the May federal election. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Darren England/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/dreamers-and-schemers">Dreamers and Schemers: A Political History of Australia</a> by Frank Bongiorno is a comprehensive account of the history of Australian parliamentary politics. It examines political parties and their leaders, factional divides and national elections. </p>
<p>Encompassing federal, state and sometimes municipal politics, it will be a useful reference for any journalist wanting to check a fact, and an invaluable text on many a survey course. A large volume of nearly 500 pages, the book is based on very wide reading and years of university teaching. It represents a prodigious effort and Bongiorno is to be congratulated on his grand synthesis.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Dreamers and Schemers – Frank Bongiorno (La Trobe University Press).</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The book takes a long view, beginning with some speculative discussion of the political arrangements among some First Nations peoples prior to invasion. It goes on to provide detailed accounts of the colonial transition from autocracy to democracy, the creation of the Commonwealth of Australia, the consolidation and re-shaping of the two-party system in the 20th century, the impact of war and reconstruction, and the consequences of neoliberal economic reform. </p>
<p>It ends with the surprising outcome of the May 2022 elections – “arguably the most drastic electoral shift to the left since the elections of 1969 and 1972” – which might perhaps be characterised as the revenge of the dreamers on the schemers.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495207/original/file-20221114-19-m8meub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495207/original/file-20221114-19-m8meub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495207/original/file-20221114-19-m8meub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495207/original/file-20221114-19-m8meub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495207/original/file-20221114-19-m8meub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495207/original/file-20221114-19-m8meub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495207/original/file-20221114-19-m8meub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495207/original/file-20221114-19-m8meub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The ‘teal independents’ in Canberra in August.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mick Tsikas/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/book-extract-dreamers-and-schemers-and-the-election-that-changed-us-192733">Book extract: Dreamers and schemers and the election that changed us</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Narrative history</h2>
<p>Bongiorno documents a long history of dreaming and scheming, but it would seem that the schemers have lately come to dominate the Australian political story. </p>
<p>Recent revelations about the breathtaking Medicare rorts have followed fast on the heels of scandals concerning community, carpark and sports rorts, widespread wage theft, the systematic exploitation of workers and burgeoning economic inequalities. The striking lack of integrity in 21st-century Australian politics was one reason for Greens, “Teal” candidates, and other independents surging into parliament at the recent federal election. </p>
<p>But how did the schemers come to predominate? Bongiorno offers little explanation. This is narrative history, not a work of thematic analysis.</p>
<p>The narrative really comes to life when Bongiorno writes about the political machinations of men seeking high office – “tests of manhood”, as he characterises their political striving. He writes vividly of colonial governors dealing with ambitious emancipists and pastoralists, the contest in colonial politics between free traders and protectionists, World War I leader Billy Hughes trying to introduce conscription for overseas service, and the post-World War II conflict over bank nationalisation. </p>
<p>Then there is Gough Whitlam’s impatience to bring about federal intervention in the Victorian branch of the ALP – to clear the way for his party’s election to national office – and the plotting of Governor General John Kerr, who, with the apparent connivance of the British Crown, sacked Prime Minister Whitlam and paved the way for the rise of the paradoxically progressive Malcolm Fraser. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/m8Tr7PFKb6U?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>Bongiorno’s previous books on <a href="https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/sex-lives-australians">The Sex Lives of Australians</a> and <a href="https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/eighties-0">The Eighties</a> flavour his racy account of the 1970s and 1980s, where the mistresses of leading politicians seem to get as much attention as the radicals who formed the Women’s Liberation Movement. </p>
<p>In Bongiorno’s lively account, male politicians are sexualised in an admiring way. Andrew Peacock is “stylish”; Jim Cairns and Harold Holt are “handsome”. </p>
<p>It was a sexualised culture. Labor’s 1972 election campaign was helped to victory by “nubile young women” wearing “It’s Time” T-shirts. Although the Labor conference at Terrigal, New South Wales, in 1975 was important in policy terms, “it was sex rather than money that is most recalled about Terrigal”. Bob Hawke, who led Labor into government in 1983 had, we are told, “a large sexual appetite”, all the while exuding “sexiness and charisma”. Paul Keating’s eloquence and wit left some journalists “nearly besotted”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-relation-between-politics-and-culture-is-clear-and-real-how-gough-whitlam-centred-artists-in-his-1972-campaign-181243">'The relation between politics and culture is clear and real': how Gough Whitlam centred artists in his 1972 campaign</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Narrow focus</h2>
<p>The qualifier in the book’s subtitle – it is a <em>political</em> history of Australia – warns of a restricted focus. But Bongiorno’s conception of what counts as “political” is surprisingly narrow. </p>
<p>There is no sustained discussion of the philosophical basis of the challenges to mainstream parliamentary politics posed by the environmental movement or the women’s movement, or by First Nations’ calls for collective land rights, truth-telling and a treaty. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495203/original/file-20221114-15-m8meub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495203/original/file-20221114-15-m8meub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495203/original/file-20221114-15-m8meub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495203/original/file-20221114-15-m8meub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495203/original/file-20221114-15-m8meub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495203/original/file-20221114-15-m8meub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495203/original/file-20221114-15-m8meub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495203/original/file-20221114-15-m8meub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People attend an event marking the 50th anniversary of the The Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra in January.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lukas Coch/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nor does Bongiorno reflect on the impact of internationalism on national politics – for example, the influence of the International Labour Organisation’s conventions on <a href="https://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO::P12100_Ilo_Code:C100">Equal Remuneration</a> in 1951 and <a href="https://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO::P12100_ILO_CODE:C107">Indigenous and Tribal Populations</a> in 1957. The latter was crucial for activists in conceptualising land rights.</p>
<p>Bongiorno is attentive to the “marginal status” of Chinese men, white women and Aboriginal people in the self-governing 19th-century Australian colonies, and the subsequent under-representation of First Nations peoples, migrants and women in state and federal parliaments. But he does not see the challenge posed by “difference” in a white man’s democracy in conceptual terms, as discussed by political theorists such as <a href="https://www.lse.ac.uk/about-lse/lse-leading-women/biographies/anne-phillips">Anne Phillips</a> and <a href="https://politicalscience.yale.edu/people/seyla-benhabib">Seyla Benhabib</a>. </p>
<p>A history of the dreams that sustained different political activists in Australia might have included the Chinese Australian vision of “cosmopolitan friendship and sympathy” and their pioneering calls for recognition of “common human rights” in the 1880s. It should certainly include the founding feminist vision of (in the words of <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/scott-rose-8370">Rose Scott</a>) a “mother-woman’s world with loving heart and sheltering arms” and Aboriginal calls from the 1920s for a common citizenship based in recognition of their difference as the original owners of the country with a right to self-determination. </p>
<p>And should not we expect to read more about environmentalist claims in support of the radical idea that land, water, flora and fauna represent political interests in their own right?</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/plenty-of-resilience-but-little-resistance-in-a-new-account-of-australias-great-depression-178417">Plenty of resilience, but little resistance in a new account of Australia's Great Depression</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Differing interests</h2>
<p>Drawing on the work of British political theorist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Crick">Bernard Crick</a>, Bongiorno tells us that politics is </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the activity by which differing interests within a given unit of rule are conciliated by giving them a share of power in proportion to their importance to the welfare and survival of the whole community. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This represents an invitation, surely, to think more broadly about the “differing interests” that constitute the national polity – the majority of whose members are not white men – and which groups might be most important to the “welfare and survival” of the whole community. Perhaps we now think about care workers in these terms – “the heroes of the pandemic” – as Prime Minister Albanese recently hailed them. Do they have power in proportion to their importance?</p>
<p>Australian political history tells us that care workers have long demanded more from the national political economy. When Queensland feminist, <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/longman-irene-maud-7228">Irene Maud Longman</a>, told a federal Royal Commission in the late 1920s that mothers, as paradigmatic care workers, should be paid a regular wage by the state that allowed them to be free of economic dependence on men and the vulnerabilities that entailed, her male interlocutor was puzzled: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Women could live apart from their husbands? That is an alteration of the existing conditions?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Longman replied: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Yes, absolutely, it is revolutionary and that is what we wish. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494980/original/file-20221113-24-tz15mw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494980/original/file-20221113-24-tz15mw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494980/original/file-20221113-24-tz15mw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494980/original/file-20221113-24-tz15mw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494980/original/file-20221113-24-tz15mw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494980/original/file-20221113-24-tz15mw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=615&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494980/original/file-20221113-24-tz15mw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=615&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494980/original/file-20221113-24-tz15mw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=615&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jessie Street representing Australia at the United Nations, 1945.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Library of Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This revolutionary dream was carried forward by feminist leader <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/street-lady-jessie-mary-11789">Jessie Street</a>, who founded the <a href="https://www.womenaustralia.info/biogs/AWE1023b.htm">United Associations of Women</a> in 1929. Its members produced radio broadcasts and published booklets making the case for the economic independence of care workers. Referring to mothers’ work as “the most indispensable and most important work done anywhere by anyone”, Street called for “adequate remuneration by the State” for this work. Their proposals caused “great hilarity” among men in positions of power. </p>
<p>Street also helped organise the large “Women’s Charter” conferences in 1943 and 1946 and co-authored the petition, launched in 1957, calling for the referendum on Aboriginal citizenship that would be held ten years later. </p>
<p>Yet for all this, Street (“the wife of a leading judge”) only gets a single mention in Dreamers and Schemers, as an ALP election candidate. She is a good example of the way in which casting national political history as the story of state and federal parliamentary politics narrows our conception of politics.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494302/original/file-20221108-24-4vtu0t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494302/original/file-20221108-24-4vtu0t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494302/original/file-20221108-24-4vtu0t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494302/original/file-20221108-24-4vtu0t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494302/original/file-20221108-24-4vtu0t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494302/original/file-20221108-24-4vtu0t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494302/original/file-20221108-24-4vtu0t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494302/original/file-20221108-24-4vtu0t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To discuss the radical diversity of dreams that have animated different political groups in Australia – dreams arising from different life experiences, perspectives, values and priorities – would require a political history less focused on male political elites and more attuned to the politics of difference. </p>
<p>Bongiorno is aware of the questions posed by political “marginalisation”, but seems unable to fully explore them within his chosen genre. While saluting his major achievement – his grand synthesis – I also look forward to reading new kinds of national political history better able to fully address the conceptual, historical and political implications of difference and the radical challenges posed by alternative dreams.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192004/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marilyn Lake does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In Dreamers and Schemers, the activities of male political elites take precedence over other social movements.Marilyn Lake, Professorial Fellow in History, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1927332022-10-31T00:59:12Z2022-10-31T00:59:12ZBook extract: Dreamers and schemers and the election that changed us<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491557/original/file-20221025-14-fhvb7x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rick Rycroft/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This is an edited extract from Dreamers and Schemers: A Political History of Australia by Frank Bongiorno, La Trobe University Press, 2022.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The term “democracy sausage” first appeared in Australia in 2012. It literally referred to the practice of voluntary organisations running fundraising barbecues at polling booths during Australian elections. Symbolically, though, the term expressed the spirit in which Australian elections are held, perhaps even saying something broader about the political culture.</p>
<p>Australians, it seemed to suggest, do not take their politics so seriously that they cannot have a laugh. Contention and disagreement are necessary ingredients of democracy, but a smoking barbecue and a cake stall speak to a deeper sense of community, a more meaningful civic belonging than can be expressed by the political system itself.</p>
<p>There is, of course, a sleight of hand in the rise of the democracy sausage, which occurred during the very same time political trust plunged to very low levels. A peaceful election day came about through historical development. Early elections were often far from gentle occasions. It is the bureaucratic administration of elections that permits organisations to go about the business of fundraising on election day. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491556/original/file-20221025-18-rhpacm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491556/original/file-20221025-18-rhpacm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491556/original/file-20221025-18-rhpacm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491556/original/file-20221025-18-rhpacm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491556/original/file-20221025-18-rhpacm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491556/original/file-20221025-18-rhpacm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491556/original/file-20221025-18-rhpacm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>In recent years, we have seen intense debate about corruption, bullying and misogyny that hints at a darker side to the country’s politics. The Machiavellian behaviour of factional operatives and branch-stackers is sometimes the squalid backdrop to a pristine election day overseen by smiling and helpful officials and peopled by cheery volunteers handing out how-to-vote cards for the candidates. </p>
<p>Sexual harassment and assault have received unprecedented attention as a major problem in that citadel of the country’s democracy, Canberra’s Parliament House. For many of the women who sought to practise politics within its walls, it was neither a safe nor a peaceful endeavour.</p>
<p>Australians have been creative in their politics, often drawing on forms and practices from elsewhere but also developing a distinctive culture of their own. What was distinctive about it? </p>
<p>In 1930, the historian W.K. Hancock famously presented Australian democracy as having “come to look upon the State as a vast public utility, whose duty it is to provide the greatest happiness for the greatest number”. The citizen, Hancock explained, claimed not “natural rights” but rights received “from the State and through the State”. Collective power was in the service of individual rights, so that Australians saw “no opposition between […] individualism and […] reliance upon Government”.</p>
<p>These strains were evident during the COVID-19 pandemic, reminding us of their deep embeddedness. Many Australians longed for greater freedom; most were also willing to agree there is individual responsibility for the collective welfare. There was a broad acceptance, stronger among some than others, that government should play the predominant role in defining where the boundaries between individual rights and the common good lie. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491564/original/file-20221025-20-letjy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491564/original/file-20221025-20-letjy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491564/original/file-20221025-20-letjy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491564/original/file-20221025-20-letjy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491564/original/file-20221025-20-letjy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491564/original/file-20221025-20-letjy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491564/original/file-20221025-20-letjy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Australians have developed their own distinctive – and peaceful – polling day. Historically, this was not always the case.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mark Baker/AP/AAP</span></span>
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<p>Outside extreme libertarianism, a minority taste in Australia, there tends to be only mild political disagreement. Otherwise, most people get on with their lives, expecting the state to set reasonable parameters for individual behaviour while allowing people a wide scope to pursue their private interests as individuals and families. As Hancock said, “collective power at the service of ‘individualistic’ rights”.</p>
<p>Yet is this sufficient? Australian political history has had its dreamers and visionaries alongside the pragmatists and schemers. </p>
<p>Big change of the kind that occurred in Australia in the 1850s, 1890s, 1940s and 1980s would have been impossible without the idealists and thinkers: that is, without political leaders, activists, intellectuals and movements who refused to be merely “practical”. Change depended on people willing to resist complacent utilitarian appeals to majority interests and consensus opinion, on refusing to accept injunctions merely to tinker rather than transform. In the end, it depended on a vision, however modest, of the good life.</p>
<p>It remains too easy in a political culture based on the vague notion that everyone should be treated “equally”, and that nurtures a value as contested as “fairness”, to marginalise those who have historically been left out or left behind. </p>
<p>Their claims are sometimes dismissed as “special treatment”, their needs as no more compelling or urgent than the better-off – “battlers”, “aspirationals”, “working families” – whom politicians flatter as the most deserving of their constituents.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, a political culture that lays so much stress on the practical and material can shun the creativity and imagination invariably required to master the complexities of intractable problems.</p>
<p>There are, in our own times, plenty of these. On issues as diverse as constitutional recognition for First Nations people, the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy and management of the rise of China, Australia’s political system has often appeared stodgy and ineffective. </p>
<p>New forms of online politics have evolved, yet political parties with rapidly declining membership bases, whose practices persistently fail to conform to reasonable democratic norms, still play the central role in the system. An adversarial parliament too closely resembles an arena for a sporting contest, with citizens as spectators rather than players, if indeed they engage at all.</p>
<p>As Australians faced a federal election that Scott Morrison called for May 21 2022, it was hard to discern among the major parties a political vision that might engage the imaginations and ideals of masses of people. The aspirations that attached to democratic self-government in the 19th century, to the social laboratories of the federation era, to postwar reconstruction in the 1940s, and to progressive reform in the late 20th century were now apparently beyond either the consciousness or memory of many Australians. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/book-extract-from-secret-ballot-to-democracy-sausage-112695">Book extract: From secret ballot to democracy sausage</a>
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</p>
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<p>The 2022 election, however, produced a result that was potentially transformative for the nation’s politics. A government that had served three terms without establishing much that could be called a legacy trailed in the polls. Morrison’s personal standing, revived in the early months of the pandemic, now collapsed, the marketing man’s habit of denying responsibility for failure while owning every success having eroded respect for his leadership.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491582/original/file-20221025-14-seyy2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491582/original/file-20221025-14-seyy2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491582/original/file-20221025-14-seyy2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491582/original/file-20221025-14-seyy2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491582/original/file-20221025-14-seyy2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491582/original/file-20221025-14-seyy2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491582/original/file-20221025-14-seyy2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The success of the ‘teal’ independents, who snatched several previously safe Liberal seats, was one of the big stories of the 2022 federal election.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mick Tsikas/AAP</span></span>
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<p>While the parties tussled in their usual way, a political revolution was brewing in parts of the country that usually received little attention in elections. In electorates normally regarded as safe for the Liberals – predominantly in the leafy, affluent suburbs of Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth, but also in a few regional areas – independent candidates came forward. Most were women already successful in business or the professions. They were known as the “voices of” movement, “community independents” or “teals”. </p>
<p>They received a bitter opposition from the Liberal Party and its friends in the Murdoch media, who saw in this unwelcome outbreak of grassroots politics a clear and present danger to good government and stable democracy. The teals, they said, were really fake independents advancing the Labor cause. Coalition partisans made it plain they felt their own enterprise was being deprived of property that was rightly its own.</p>
<p>While often insulting their values and lifestyles as those of the fashionable inner-city elite, the Coalition did little to draw women into its ranks, protect the planet or promote clean politics. Two of the eventual teal victors – Allegra Spender in Wentworth, Sydney, and Kate Chaney in Curtin, Perth – belonged to multi-generational Liberal parliamentary dynasties. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1519106118391197696"}"></div></p>
<p>Each teal, moreover, received financial and strategic support from Climate 200, a political action committee on the US model founded and led by businessman and clean-energy advocate Simon Holmes à Court. Predictably, right-wing commentators depicted Holmes à Court as a puppeteer, which only confirmed the prevailing impression among women of the way that conservative male politicians and their media mouthpieces demeaned them.</p>
<p>The 2022 election disclosed the resilience and adaptability of the country’s distinctive democracy. Independent candidates had successfully challenged well-resourced party machines and had raised the profile of issues that mattered to voters but which had been handled badly by the major parties, especially by the incumbent government. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/did-australia-just-make-a-move-to-the-left-183611">Did Australia just make a move to the left?</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>There was an increase in the number of women elected, of Indigenous parliamentarians and of members from non-English-speaking backgrounds; the parliament would at last begin to reflect the notable diversity of the country. Chinese-Australians acted on their disaffection with the increasingly aggressive posturing towards China among senior Coalition politicians. </p>
<p>Millions of voters ignored the urgings of News Corp to shun Labor, the Greens and the teal independents, and they seemed to pay little attention to right-leaning media that often appeared more interested in testing the memory of the Labor Party leader than in impartially assessing the offerings of parties and candidates, or in holding a three-term government to account for its record. </p>
<p>Rather, the result arguably saw the most drastic electoral shift to the left since the elections of 1969 and 1972 that had brought Gough Whitlam to power. Dreamers imagined that a new era of political creativity might be just around the corner, even as the schemers manoeuvred in their familiar patterns. While the challenges faced by the new government were formidable, for a moment it seemed possible that the nation’s imaginative energies might not yet be completely exhausted.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192733/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frank Bongiorno does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Australia has a long history of imaginative, even transformative, electoral politics – and a new book argues the 2022 federal election shows that spirit is still alive and well.Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1873462022-07-22T00:20:18Z2022-07-22T00:20:18ZEven in the political afterlife, Morrison departs from the norm<p>In the past fortnight, former prime minister Scott Morrison has reemerged as a subject of public discussion. First, there was rumour about <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-08/scott-morrison-interest-in-joining-rugby-league-commission/101219152">his interest in</a> securing work with the Australian Rugby League Commission, which he promptly dismissed as “pub talk”. </p>
<p>Second, Morrison made his debut on the international lecture circuit with <a href="https://www.scottmorrisonmp.com.au/news/asian-leadership-conference/">an address</a> to the Asian Leadership Conference in Seoul. He seized that opportunity to criticise China and defend his own government’s pandemic legacy, suggesting “history would treat his government more kindly” than contemporaries have done.</p>
<p>Then the former prime minister went to Perth to deliver a sermon at the Victory Life Centre, the Pentecostal Church led by conservative former tennis star Margaret Court. In his 50-minute address, he stressed that Australians should put their trust in God rather than in governments or the United Nations. He also warned that prevailing feelings of anxiety – about the ongoing pandemic, the climate crisis or the cost of living – were part of “Satan’s plan”.</p>
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<p>With that performance, Morrison has signalled that he will likely depart from the established conventions of post-prime ministerial life in Australia.</p>
<p>The leadership instability of recent years in both major parties has generated a relatively high number of ex-PMs. Their behaviour, and the reactions they receive, tell us much about our political culture. </p>
<p>Australia has never had more than eight former prime ministers alive at one time, and in the mid-20th century, three of them died in office. Today there are seven of them still with us, all of whom have seen their reputations rise and fall.</p>
<p>Australia’s most successful former leaders have been those who deliberately try to embody generosity, magnanimity and a degree of bipartisanship. The first former prime minister, Edmund Barton, set that standard in 1903 when he resigned from the top job to continue his public service on the newly created High Court. His biographer Geoffrey Bolton suggested Barton enjoyed his transformation in public opinion from “Tosspot Toby” to that of a “well-regarded elder statesman”.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/book-review-sean-kellys-the-game-a-portrait-of-scott-morrison-171489">Book review: Sean Kelly's The Game: A Portrait of Scott Morrison</a>
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<p>Several of Australia’s postwar leaders have emulated that model. Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser left the bitter politics of the dismissal behind them and dedicated themselves to humanitarian causes. Whitlam was Australia’s ambassador to UNESCO in Brussels, while Fraser campaigned against apartheid in South Africa before joining humanitarian group CARE Australia. Both were highly critical of their successors. </p>
<p>Kevin Rudd has spent the past decade immersing himself in the challenge of US-China bilateral relations, and campaigning against the impact of News Corp on Australian politics. In 2016, he unsuccessfully sought Australia’s nomination for the post of secretary-general of the United Nations.</p>
<p>In the recent past, Julia Gillard has similarly committed herself to causes such as the promotion of girls’ education in Africa, chairing mental health support service Beyond Blue, and helming the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London. Her erstwhile critics at The Australian newspaper admitted that this was no “miserable ghost”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475269/original/file-20220720-25-hchz62.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475269/original/file-20220720-25-hchz62.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475269/original/file-20220720-25-hchz62.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475269/original/file-20220720-25-hchz62.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475269/original/file-20220720-25-hchz62.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475269/original/file-20220720-25-hchz62.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475269/original/file-20220720-25-hchz62.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and Paul Keating are three of the seven Australian ex-PMs still alive.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Conservatives have enjoyed their political afterlives too, albeit often in distinctly partisan ways. Earlier prime ministers such as George Reid and Stanley Melbourne Bruce were sent to London as Australia’s High Commissioner, working the British establishment. The aged Robert Menzies used his 12 years of retirement to write reminiscences, defend the British Empire from its inexorable decline, and enjoy the cricket. John Howard has studiously emulated Menzies (to the point of writing a book about him), although he remains a vigorous partisan campaigner during elections. </p>
<p>Even a highly unpopular leader can be rehabilitated in public opinion. Paul Keating’s “big picture” vision for Australia, which voters rejected heavily in 1996, looked more attractive after a decade of cultural division under the Howard government. By the same token, despite having lost his own seat in the landslide of 2007, Howard seemed a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPx9rcuIKKM&t=33s">“byword for stability”</a> during the leadership turmoil of the 2010s, and there was much nostalgia about him. </p>
<p>Under Gillard, Labor sank to new lows in the polls, but in the years since her removal in June 2013 her reputation recovered significantly, judged by some scholars to be the <a href="https://theconversation.com/who-were-australias-best-prime-ministers-we-asked-the-experts-165302">best prime minister post-Howard</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475271/original/file-20220720-16-jnc7u6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475271/original/file-20220720-16-jnc7u6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475271/original/file-20220720-16-jnc7u6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475271/original/file-20220720-16-jnc7u6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475271/original/file-20220720-16-jnc7u6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475271/original/file-20220720-16-jnc7u6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475271/original/file-20220720-16-jnc7u6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Despite losing his seat at the 2007 election, John Howard became a byword for stability in his post-parliamentary life.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Mick Tsikas</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>The public have had a little less tolerance for leaders who seem to be chasing money. John Gorton “raised a few eyebrows” with his whiskey advertisements, although Whitlam managed to get away with advertising spaghetti sauce because of his self-deprecating performance. </p>
<p>The popular Bob Hawke faced a fierce backlash in the 1990s following his explosive memoirs, his very public business investments, and his attempts to make money from short media appearances. It took time, some rewriting of history, and footage of beer consumption at the footy, to rekindle his love affair with the public. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/vale-bob-hawke-a-giant-of-australian-political-and-industrial-history-93719">Vale Bob Hawke, a giant of Australian political and industrial history</a>
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<p>Since Hawke, Australian politicians have followed their British and US counterparts by publishing memoirs in great volumes, but the lucrative international lecture circuit has been slightly less open to them.</p>
<p>It has been even more unseemly to be seen to act out of vengeance or bitterness. In the 1920s and 1930s, former prime minister Billy Hughes stayed in parliament and often caused significant headaches for his fellow non-Labor MPs, even voting to turf them out of office in 1929. Some felt him a “great statesman and patriot”, others a “renegade”. </p>
<p>Billy McMahon remained in parliament for ten years after his defeat in 1972, apparently with no aspiration to leadership. In the more recent past, Rudd and Tony Abbott both stayed in parliament after initially losing the confidence of their parties, yearning to retake the highest office. </p>
<p>Malcolm Turnbull left parliament immediately on being removed in August 2018, and as <a href="https://www.2gb.com/new-book-exposes-turnbulls-role-in-liberal-party-destruction/">Aaron Patrick has recently argued</a>, he was outwardly bitter at his removal and passionately critical of his successor at every turn. Bitterness is a public emotion that alienates former leaders from their supporters.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475272/original/file-20220720-19-pc9lbv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475272/original/file-20220720-19-pc9lbv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475272/original/file-20220720-19-pc9lbv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475272/original/file-20220720-19-pc9lbv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475272/original/file-20220720-19-pc9lbv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475272/original/file-20220720-19-pc9lbv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475272/original/file-20220720-19-pc9lbv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Malcolm Turnbull left parliament immediately after being deposed as leader, and has been highly critical of his successor since.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Mick Tsikas</span></span>
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<p>The job of a former prime minister is awkward, defined by the past rather than the future, and by the absence of formal power. It is a role without a script. The awkwardness is embodied in Shaun Micallef’s The Ex-PM, an ABC satire about a former prime minister who hires a writer to draft his memoirs, but finds he has no real story to tell. </p>
<p>But former leaders still have a meaningful role to play if they wish. They enjoy private offices, staff, and travel privileges subsidised by the public. They retain their extensive high-level contacts and enjoy an enormous public platform from which to speak. Parting shots at colleagues and embittered book tours reflect a fractious political culture, but can be forgiven if the offender makes peace, finds a new calling, or develops a stately persona above the partisan din. In time, if they appear magnanimous, generous and “above” daily politics, they can become a reassuring and encouraging presence within their partisan community.</p>
<p>By urging his audience not to trust in the institution of government itself, and by taking his Pentecostal rhetoric to such heights, Morrison is parting with former prime ministerial convention. The congregation may have approved, but his fellow Liberal MPs appeared less enthused. </p>
<p>Such indulgences are unlikely to re-cultivate the respect of the electorate.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187346/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joshua Black does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ex-prime ministers have been a varied bunch - some committing themselves to public service; others firing shots from the sidelines. Scott Morrison appears to be taking an altogether different path.Joshua Black, PhD Candidate, School of History, National Centre of Biography, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1848452022-06-15T20:01:25Z2022-06-15T20:01:25ZGovernments usually win a second term. But could the new Labor government be an exception?<p>Addressing the first meeting of Labor’s new caucus, Anthony Albanese held out the prospect of “back-to-back premierships”. But a second-term in government isn’t a given, he implied – it is something Labor will have to earn. Does he really believe Labor might not be re-elected?</p>
<p>Not since 1931 has any government failed to win a second term. So predictable has the victory become that political commentators routinely refer to the “reluctance” of voters to despatch a government after just one term. Given the historical record, one journalist has even <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/why-albanese-should-focus-on-his-third-term-promises-20220605-p5ar6t.html">argued</a> Albanese’s focus should be on a third term.</p>
<p>Predictably, Peter Dutton was having none of it. His plan, he told his troops, was to limit Labor to just one term. To anyone looking at the Coalition’s numbers, this may have sounded fanciful. Yet, some observed, this may not have been a bad election for the Coalition to lose. Labor has often won office only to be buffeted by economic forces beyond its control – after 1929, obviously; but also after its 1972 and 2007 wins. With declining economic growth in the United States and China, perhaps 2022 will prove to be no different. </p>
<h2>Governments seeking a second term lose votes</h2>
<p>What happens to electoral support for governments seeking a second term is rather different from what we might imagine if all we knew was that they almost always win. </p>
<p>Since the war, seven governments have sought a second term. Three were led by Labor prime ministers (Gough Whitlam, 1974; Bob Hawke, 1984; Julia Gillard, 2010), and four by Liberal prime ministers (Robert Menzies, 1951; Malcolm Fraser, 1977; John Howard, 1998; Malcolm Turnbull, 2016).</p>
<p>On every occasion, the government’s two-party vote went backwards. In the 1950s and in the 1970s and 1980s this loss of votes wasn’t particularly large: 0.3 percentage points (1951), 1.0 (1974), 0.9 (1977) and 1.4 (1984) – an average of 0.9. But since the late 1990s, the loss of votes has been greater: 4.6 percentage points (1998), 2.6 (2010) and 3.1 (2016) – an average of 3.4. </p>
<p>The contrast between the two periods is even sharper if we think of prime ministers rather than parties seeking second terms. In 2013, when Gillard sought a second term, Labor’s two-party vote declined by 3.6 points. In 2022, when Morrison sought a second term, the Coalition’s two-party vote declined by 3.3 points. In all the other elections, the prime minister seeking a second term was the same prime minister who had secured a first term.</p>
<h2>It’s governments seeking third or fourth terms that have sometimes gained votes</h2>
<p>Why might postwar governments have always been returned on their first attempt? Is it because the swings against them have been more muted at the end of their first term than at the end of their second or third terms? </p>
<p>For Labor, yes. Labor governments have shed 1.7 percentage points, on average, after their first term; after their second, the average figure is 4.0 points.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/confused-polling-distorts-the-debate-on-an-indigenous-voice-to-parliament-175525">Confused polling distorts the debate on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament</a>
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<p>However, for the Coalition, the contrary is true. At the end of their first terms, Coalition governments have shed an average of 2.2 percentage points. But at the end of their second terms, having increased their vote on two occasions, their average loss has been just 0.7 points. And at the end of their third terms – again, having twice increased their vote – they have actually gained a point.</p>
<p>On this evidence, the idea that voters are reluctant to throw out first term governments is mistaken. </p>
<h2>So why do governments win second terms?</h2>
<p>Governments fail to fall at the end of their first term because of the margins by which they are elected in the first place.</p>
<p>Elected in 1996 with a 40-seat majority, the Howard government hung on in 1998 despite a swing of 4.6 points that should have seen it lose. In 2010, Gillard survived because of the size of Rudd’s 2007 win, though she now headed a minority government. In 2016, Turnbull survived by the narrowest of majorities, saved by the size of Abbott’s win.</p>
<p>The idea that close results reflect voters’ “ambivalence” is a category mistake: electorates aren’t “ambivalent” even if some voters are. The view that close elections show that voters think neither side “deserves” to govern is another category mistake. Very likely, most voters think one side or the other deserves to govern. It’s just that those who think the Coalition deserves to govern are matched, more or less, by those who think Labor deserves to do so.</p>
<h2>Labor get a second term?</h2>
<p>If the swings endured by first term governments in 2010 or 2016 – or the swing endured by a first term Morrison government – are any guide, the chances of an Albanese government being returned as a majority government are low. </p>
<p>Although Labor won 51.9% of the two-party vote, it would take only small swings – 0.2 percentage points in Gilmore (New South Wales) and 0.8 in Lyons (Tasmania) – for it to lose its majority. </p>
<p>How many other seats could it afford to lose and still govern in minority? A two-party swing of 3.1 percentage points – the smallest swing suffered by any of the last three first-term governments – could see the government lose eight seats to the Coalition, leaving Labor with 69 seats and the Coalition with 66. A swing of 4.6 points – the biggest swing suffered by any of these three governments – could see it lose another four: Labor 65, the Coalition 70. Because the electoral pendulum is not a perfect predictor, these are estimates.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/its-been-called-the-worst-job-in-politics-can-peter-dutton-buck-the-trend-184564">It’s been called the worst job in politics. Can Peter Dutton buck the trend?</a>
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<p>Were the Coalition to win back a few of the seats won narrowly by the “teal” independents, then Labor’s position would become even more precarious. It might be able to count on the four Greens plus Andrew Wilkie to claim the support of 70 MPs. But if the Coalition won 72 or 73 seats and a bigger vote share (primary and two-party) than Labor, it might be better placed than Labor to strike an agreement with the remaining independents. Where Labor would need almost all eight or nine independents to form a minority government, the Coalition might need only three or four.</p>
<p>Other possibilities could weaken Labor’s position even further: a loss of a seat or two to the teals or to the Greens; or the Coalition’s winning back a seat or two from the Greens. If either of these things happened, Labor’s hold on government might be beyond saving.</p>
<p>The last one-term Labor government was a casualty of the Great Depression. Having secured 48.8% of the first preference vote and 46 of the 75 seats in the House in 1929, Labor managed only 37.7% of the vote and 18 seats in 1931 – even if we include the breakaway party, Lang Labor. </p>
<p>Will economic circumstances come to the aid of the non-Labor parties again?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184845/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Murray Goot does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There’s a good reason why first-term governments are re-elected – but Labor’s victory last month may not fit the mould.Murray Goot, Emeritus Professor of Politics and International Relations, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1836262022-05-27T02:11:17Z2022-05-27T02:11:17ZChanging the Australian Constitution is not easy. But we need to stop thinking it’s impossible<p>Supporters of an Indigenous Voice to Parliament have celebrated the commitment of the new Albanese government to put the issue to a referendum. But is government support enough? </p>
<p>It’s a start, but the road to referendum success is a hard one, as it was always meant to be.</p>
<h2>The Constitution was meant to be hard to change</h2>
<p>When the Constitution was being written in the 1890s, the initial expectation was that it would be enacted by the British and they would control the enactment of any changes to it, just as they did for Canada. </p>
<p>But the drafters of the Commonwealth Constitution bucked the system by insisting they wanted the power to change the Constitution themselves. They chose the then quite radical method of a referendum, which they borrowed from the Swiss. </p>
<p>While it was radical, because it let the people decide, it was also seen as a <a href="https://adc.library.usyd.edu.au/view?docId=ozlit/xml-main-texts/fed0043.xml&chunk.id=&toc.id=&database=&collection=&brand=default">conservative mechanism</a>. British constitutional theorist A.V. Dicey described the referendum as “the <a href="https://archive.org/details/nationalreview2318unse/page/64/mode/2up">people’s veto</a>”, because it allowed the “weight of the nation’s common sense” and inertia to block “the fanaticism of reformers”. </p>
<p>The drafters of the Commonwealth Constitution were divided on the issue. Some supported the referendum because it would operate to defeat over-hasty, partisan or ill-considered changes. Others were concerned that change was hard enough already, and voters would have a natural tendency to vote “No” in a referendum because there are always objections and risks that can be raised about any proposal. Fear of the new almost always trumps dissatisfaction with the current system, because people do not want to risk making things worse. </p>
<p>In this sense, the referendum is conservative – not in a party-political sense, but because it favours conserving the status quo.</p>
<p>Another concern, raised by Sir Samuel Griffith, was that constitutions are complex, and a large proportion of voters would not be sufficiently acquainted with the Australian Constitution to vote for its change in an informed way. He favoured using a United States-style of constitutional convention to make changes. </p>
<p>The democrats eventually won and the referendum was chosen. But to satisfy their opponents, they added extra hurdles. To succeed, a referendum has to be <a href="https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/consol_act/coacac627/s128.html">approved</a> not only by a majority of voters overall, but also by majorities in a majority of states (currently four out of six states). </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/an-indigenous-voice-must-be-enshrined-in-our-constitution-heres-why-153635">An Indigenous 'Voice' must be enshrined in our Constitution. Here's why</a>
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<h2>A Constitution frozen in time</h2>
<p>The predictions were right. The referendum at the federal level has indeed turned out to be the “people’s veto”. Of 44 referendum questions put to the people, only <a href="https://www.aec.gov.au/elections/referendums/referendum_dates_and_results.htm">eight have passed</a>. No successful Commonwealth referendum has been held since 1977. We have not held a Commonwealth referendum at all since 1999. </p>
<p>There are many <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/binaries/library/pubs/rp/2002-03/03rp11.pdf">suggested reasons</a> for this. Some argue that the people have correctly exercised their veto against reforms that were proposed for party-political advantage or to unbalance the federal system by expanding Commonwealth power. If reforms are put because they are in the interests of the politicians, rather than the people, they will fail. </p>
<p>Questions asked in referendums have been poorly formulated and often load too many issues into the one proposed reform. If a voter objects to just one aspect of a proposal, they then vote down the entire reform.</p>
<p>Another argument is that, as Griffith anticipated, the people know little about the Constitution and are not willing to approve changes to it if they are unsure. The mantra “<a href="https://www.aec.gov.au/elections/referendums/1999_referendum_reports_statistics/yes_no_pamphlet.pdf">Don’t know – Vote No</a>” was extremely effective during the republic campaign in 1999. </p>
<p>Of course, if you don’t know, you should find out. But the failure to provide proper civics education in schools means most people don’t feel they have an adequate grounding to embark on making that assessment. </p>
<p>Decades of <a href="https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/better-civic-education-will-help-australians-respond-in-challenging-times/">neglect of civics</a> has left us with a population that is insufficiently equipped to fulfil its constitutional role of updating the Constitution.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465242/original/file-20220525-20-1ebbwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465242/original/file-20220525-20-1ebbwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465242/original/file-20220525-20-1ebbwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465242/original/file-20220525-20-1ebbwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465242/original/file-20220525-20-1ebbwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465242/original/file-20220525-20-1ebbwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465242/original/file-20220525-20-1ebbwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">If people have the slightest uncertainty about what they are saying ‘yes’ to, they will inevitably say ‘no’ – something the republic referendum suffered from in 1999.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rob Griffith/AAP</span></span>
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<h2>Vulnerability to scare campaigns</h2>
<p>The biggest threat to a successful referendum is the running of a “No” campaign by a major political party, or one or more states, or even a well-funded business or community group. </p>
<p>Scare campaigns are effective even if there is little or no truth behind them. It is enough to plant doubt in the minds of voters to get them to vote “No”. Voters are reluctant to entrench changes in the Constitution if they might have unintended consequences or be interpreted differently in the future, because they know how hard it will be to fix any mistake.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465249/original/file-20220525-22-a5fyt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465249/original/file-20220525-22-a5fyt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465249/original/file-20220525-22-a5fyt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465249/original/file-20220525-22-a5fyt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465249/original/file-20220525-22-a5fyt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1061&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465249/original/file-20220525-22-a5fyt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1061&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465249/original/file-20220525-22-a5fyt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1061&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The 1967 referendum was one of the few that were successful.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Gallery of Australia</span></span>
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<p>If a referendum campaign ends up focused on technical issues about the future operation or interpretation of particular amendments, then it is likely lost. </p>
<p>Campaigns tend to be more successful if they focus on principles or outcomes, such as the 1967 referendum concerning Aboriginal people. That referendum had the advantage of not being opposed in the Commonwealth parliament. The consequence was that there was only a <a href="https://www.naa.gov.au/learn/learning-resources/learning-resource-themes/first-australians/rights-and-freedoms/argument-favour-proposed-constitution-alteration-aboriginals-1967#:%7E:text=In%20the%201967%20referendum%2C%20no,recorded%20in%20a%20federal%20referendum.">“Yes” case</a> distributed to voters, as a “No” case can only be produced by MPs who oppose the referendum bill in parliament. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/right-wrongs-write-yes-what-was-the-1967-referendum-all-about-76512">‘Right wrongs, write Yes’: what was the 1967 referendum all about?</a>
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<h2>Overcoming the malaise</h2>
<p>While recognising these difficulties, perhaps the greatest risk is becoming <a href="https://www.auspublaw.org/2018/12/getting-to-yes-why-our-approach-to-winning-referendums-needs-a-rethink/">hostage</a> to the belief the Constitution cannot be changed and referendums will always fail. It will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. </p>
<p>Instead, we need to face constitutional reform as being difficult but achievable and worthwhile. The Constitution should always serve the needs of today’s Australians, rather than the people of the 1890s. </p>
<p>The key elements for success include a widespread will for change, the drive and persistence of proponents, good leadership, sound well-considered proposals and building a broad cross-party consensus. Not every element is necessary, but all are helpful.</p>
<p>As incoming Indigenous Affairs Minister <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/7.30/linda-burney:-%E2%80%9Cwe-need-consensus-on-a-referendum/13895144">Linda Burney</a> recently noted, there is still a lot of work to be done in building that consensus in relation to Indigenous constitutional recognition, but the work has commenced.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183626/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anne Twomey has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council and sometimes does consultancy work for governments and inter-governmental bodies. She is also a Director of Constitution Education Fund Australia which is concerned with trying to improve civics teaching in schools. </span></em></p>Of 44 referendums put to the Australian people since federation, only eight have passed – but those championing a First Nations Voice to Parliament need not be deterred.Anne Twomey, Professor of Constitutional Law, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1825212022-05-21T12:37:36Z2022-05-21T12:37:36ZAlbanese wins with a modest program – but the times may well suit him<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464591/original/file-20220521-25530-8d91nu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=131%2C0%2C3742%2C1994&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wes Mountain/The Conversation</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Labor’s successful bid for government – only its fifth victory from opposition since the first world war – was based on an experiment that no one could have known would work. </p>
<p>It was a small-target strategy of a kind that has never seen Labor come from opposition to government at an election in the federal sphere. It offered a low-key campaign, led by a man with 25 years of parliamentary experience. But no one would see Anthony Albanese as a charismatic figure in the mould of Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke or Kevin Rudd.</p>
<p>That might offer Albanese and Labor opportunities. It has raised the expectations of voters as any opposition seeking government must do, but it has not raised them too far. It has been circumspect about what it is likely to be able to achieve in a first term. </p>
<p>Especially in recent days, Albanese laid more emphasis on the magnitude of the task to be faced by a new government, given the size of Australia’s debt. We can expect some further lowering of expectations in the days, weeks and months ahead, as the constraints of budget deficits, ballooning debt and increasing inflation do their work on the new government.</p>
<p>The campaign received its political and moral ballast from Albanese’s support for minimum wage increases in line with inflation. Most of the media pack proclaimed this another of Albanese’s gaffes. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-albanese-and-morrison-caught-on-fly-papers-of-wages-gender-182781">View from The Hill: Albanese and Morrison caught on fly-papers of wages, gender</a>
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<p>But many of this country’s journalists display little feel for public sentiment – as they showed when they famously misread the import of Julia Gillard’s misogyny speech – and on this occasion they failed to see that Albanese had for the first time established his campaign’s central thread. </p>
<p>It was a rather modest claim: that low-paid workers should not suffer a further decline in their living standards. That large sections of the media saw this as dangerous adventurism tells us as much as we need to know about who the present system is working for and who it is working against.</p>
<p>The story Albanese told was not just about himself (although there was a lot about his late mum), but about what he would stand for in government. From this point, Albanese began to connect more directly with the traditional values of his party and provided a clearer indication of what he would do if presented with the reins of power. He began to talk more cogently and persuasively about universal provision, with childcare especially in his sights. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464600/original/file-20220521-16-r4cazq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464600/original/file-20220521-16-r4cazq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464600/original/file-20220521-16-r4cazq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464600/original/file-20220521-16-r4cazq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464600/original/file-20220521-16-r4cazq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464600/original/file-20220521-16-r4cazq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464600/original/file-20220521-16-r4cazq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Anthony Albanese’s small-target strategy might just offer Labor opportunities.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lukas Coch/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Why should people earning over half a million get support?, the media pack asked this one-time socialist firebrand. Because Labor believes in universalism, he replied, as it had shown over so many years with Medicare. And because it recognised in childcare provision a public good that would boost the economy, was just to women and was good for society.</p>
<p>Yes, this was the language of Whitlamite social democracy – always a risk for Labor, which many electors suspect of being profligate with taxpayers’ money. But it was also an idea rooted in Labor’s long-standing approach to welfare. </p>
<p>Alongside its support for targeted, means-tested support, Labor has long supported certain types of universal provision – going right back to its maternity allowance of 1912. Medicare was another example. Albanese started to sound like a leader capable of showing that his party had a Labor soul.</p>
<p>The messages about wages and childcare were increasingly part of a broader narrative about a caring economy and society that also informed his commitments to improving the provision of aged care. </p>
<p>In the COVID era, this was a message rather more potent than most commentators imagined it might be. Its potency was increased in rough proportion to the sincerity, authenticity and conviction that Albanese displayed in delivering it. </p>
<p>Yes, Albanese also spoke about clean energy and climate change, but his messages have been carefully calibrated to avoid the problems that Labor experienced in electorates where such messages remain unwelcome to many voters – the so-called coal seats. And he was willing to discuss national security and foreign policy, too, as well as his commitment to the Uluru Statement from the Heart.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-story-of-us-theres-a-great-tale-labor-could-tell-about-how-it-would-govern-it-just-needs-to-start-telling-it-181147">The story of 'us': there's a great tale Labor could tell about how it would govern - it just needs to start telling it</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>But the stress was on bread-and-butter issues. He often sounded like a state Labor leader making a bid to become premier. I do not intend this observation as a criticism, because I am convinced this was a deliberate and sensible approach. After all, Labor has frequently won government from opposition in the states and territories over the past half-century. It has rarely done so federally.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/elect-me-and-ill-govern-like-bob-hawke-albanese-178780">Elect me and I'll govern like Bob Hawke: Albanese</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>Albanese emphasises co-operation, collaboration and teamwork. He will not make the same mistakes as Rudd, in imagining that he has received some magical mandate from “the people” that allows him to bypass the party that he leads, with its various claims and demands on anyone who leads it. He will work with a team of ministers that looks unusually capable. He talks of holding an employment summit: a nod in the direction of the Hawke government’s consensus politics. </p>
<p>He is a textbook case of what the late Graham Little, the political psychologist, would have called a group leader. “Group leaders pay attention to the many ways people need and depend on each other,” Judith Brett explains, “specialising in the politics of sympathy and compassion and taking care not to put themselves too far ahead of the people they lead.” This is a traditional Labor leadership style: pre-Whitlam, and certainly anti-Rudd.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464608/original/file-20220521-29403-8d91nu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464608/original/file-20220521-29403-8d91nu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464608/original/file-20220521-29403-8d91nu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464608/original/file-20220521-29403-8d91nu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464608/original/file-20220521-29403-8d91nu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464608/original/file-20220521-29403-8d91nu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464608/original/file-20220521-29403-8d91nu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Albanese has said that if elected, he will govern like Bob Hawke.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mick Tsikas/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is also likely to affect Albanese’s relations with the crossbench. If he scrapes a majority, he would do well to govern as if he doesn’t. A third of the electorate has voted in the House of Representatives for minor parties and independents; at the last election, it was just under one in four.</p>
<p>He cannot afford to ignore the constituencies to which the Greens and teal independents in particular have so successfully appealed in this campaign. He will need minor party and independent support in the Senate. He may well need their goodwill and numbers in the House of Representatives in a second term.</p>
<p>These might be considered constraints on the government, but they need not be: it is easy to imagine Albanese, who did so much to keep the parliamentary show on the road during the Gillard years, tackling this task of forging productive relations with the minor parties and independents with an aplomb that would almost certainly have been beyond Morrison. </p>
<p>In that respect at least, the times may well suit him.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182521/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frank Bongiorno is a member of Kim For Canberra (Senate election) and has donated to Climate 200.</span></em></p>He is only the fifth Labor leader to win government from opposition since the first world war, and there’s every indication he will be a consensus prime minister.Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1818682022-04-26T19:56:19Z2022-04-26T19:56:19ZMorrison, Dutton go hard on national security - but will it have any effect on the election?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459677/original/file-20220426-14-4550kz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Mick Tsikas</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Elections held in the shadow of war or overarching national security concerns tend to favour incumbents.</p>
<p>In the three elections since the second world war that have been directly affected by security worries, incumbent governments have prevailed.</p>
<p>In 1951, Robert Menzies fought an election on his determination to ban the Communist party. This was an effort to wedge the Labor party on divisions within its own ranks between a Soviet Union-sympathetic left and an anti-communist right.</p>
<p>Menzies’ <a href="https://electionspeeches.moadoph.gov.au/speeches/1951-robert-menzies">election speech of April 28, 1951</a>, delivered in his own electorate of Kooyong, makes interesting reading in light of debates now about surging Chinese influence in the region. He said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I need not tell you that every way the Communists are delighted with the Labor Opposition.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This speech was delivered against the backdrop of the Korean war, in which Mao Zedong’s forces fought on the side of North Korea and against Australian soldiers defending the south.</p>
<p>Menzies’ Coalition went on to win the election against Ben Chifley’s Labor Party. While the Coalition lost five seats, it was a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1951_Australian_federal_election">status quo result</a> in the 121-member House of Representatives, with the Liberal and Country parties maintaining a comfortable majority 69-52. Labor lost control of the Senate.</p>
<p>Menzies subsequently <a href="https://www.robertmenziesinstitute.org.au/on-this-day/communism-referendum">failed to ban the Communist Party</a> at a referendum.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459665/original/file-20220426-24-aplnmh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459665/original/file-20220426-24-aplnmh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=814&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459665/original/file-20220426-24-aplnmh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=814&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459665/original/file-20220426-24-aplnmh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=814&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459665/original/file-20220426-24-aplnmh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1023&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459665/original/file-20220426-24-aplnmh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1023&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459665/original/file-20220426-24-aplnmh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1023&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Harold Holt won the 1966 election largely on his position on the Vietnam War.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Museum of Australian Democracy</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1966, Harold Holt, as newly-anointed leader of the Liberal Party and prime minister, won a <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/from-the-archives-1966-holt-sweeps-back-20201113-p56eiv.html">landslide victory</a> against Arthur Calwell’s Labor largely on the issue of Australia’s commitment to Vietnam.</p>
<p>This was a popular cause at a time of significant community concern about communist influence in the region accompanied by the spectre of dominos falling towards Australia.</p>
<p>Calwell, who had given one of the <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/vietnam-the-other-war-we-need-to-remember-20150413-1mjqq6.html">great parliamentary speeches</a> in 1965 in which he opposed Australia’s commitment to Vietnam, presided over a catastrophic loss for Labor. It was reduced to 41 seats in the 124-member House of Representatives against the Coalition’s 82, with one independent.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/issues-that-swung-elections-labors-anti-war-message-falls-flat-in-landslide-loss-in-1966-114745">Issues that swung elections: Labor's anti-war message falls flat in landslide loss in 1966</a>
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<p>In the third example of incumbency proving to be an important element in an election victory, <a href="https://theconversation.com/issues-that-swung-elections-tampa-and-the-national-security-election-of-2001-115143">John Howard in 2001</a> parlayed anxiety about boat arrivals and a terrorist attack on American soil to propel him to victory.</p>
<p>The Coalition had been faltering in the polls.</p>
<p>Howard’s win over Kim Beazley’s Labor in the shadow of the commitment of Australian troops to Afghanistan to root out al Qaeda underscored the advantages of tenure in uncertain times.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-politics-explainer-the-mv-tampa-and-the-transformation-of-asylum-seeker-policy-74078">Tampa episode</a> on the eve of the 2001 poll, in which a Norwegian vessel with stranded boat people on board was refused entry to Australia, prompted one of the more telling interventions in an Australian political debate. Howard responded with:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459666/original/file-20220426-22-xotxmb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459666/original/file-20220426-22-xotxmb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459666/original/file-20220426-22-xotxmb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459666/original/file-20220426-22-xotxmb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459666/original/file-20220426-22-xotxmb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459666/original/file-20220426-22-xotxmb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459666/original/file-20220426-22-xotxmb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">At the 2001 election, John Howard capitalised on national security fears - highlighted by the Tampa incident and the September 11 attacks - to win the election.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Dean Lewins</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This brings us to the election of 2022 in which Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Defence Minister Peter Dutton are seeking to use legitimate concerns about a Chinese presence in the Pacific as election fodder.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-04-19/china-and-solomon-islands-sign-security-pact-says-chinese-foreig/101000530">Solomon Islands security pact</a> with China has provided a pretext for wedge-politics electioneering, aimed at Labor.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-04-25/peter-dutton-anzac-day-china-russia-nazi-germany/101013116">remarks on Anzac Day,</a> Dutton returned a familiar theme in which he likened China’s rise to that of Third Reich in Nazi Germany, and compared Russian President Vladimir Putin with Adolf Hitler in his efforts to subjugate Ukraine.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We’re in a period very similar to the 1930s. And I think there are a lot of people in the 1930s that wish they would have spoken up much earlier in the decade.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure>
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<p>In his own efforts to exploit security concerns arising from China’s growing presence in the Pacific, Morrison warned of a <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-04-24/scott-morrison-china-naval-base-solomon-islands-red-line/101011710">“red line”</a> should Beijing seek to establish base facilities in the Solomon Islands.</p>
<p>With its long history of having paid the price politically on national security, Labor has been skittish on the China issue in its efforts to minimise differences with the government.</p>
<p>Morrison and Dutton have sought to make capital out of Labor’s attempts to argue for a more constructive relationship with Beijing. This has caused discomfort among Labor frontbenchers, notably its deputy leader Richard Marles.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/labor-urges-closer-defence-ties-with-china-20190920-p52ta1">speech to Beijing’s Foreign Studies University</a> in September 2019, Marles described talk of a new Cold War as “silly and ignorant”. He went on to say, “to define China as an enemy is a profound mistake”.</p>
<p>These words have been seized on by the government and its friends in the media to portray Marles, who may well become defence minister in an Albanese government, as <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-04-22/scott-morrison-criticises-richard-marles-china-solomon-islands/101007786">“soft” on China.</a></p>
<p>Marles has pushed back against these slurs, but it is unlikely he would deliver a similar speech today given China’s further encroachment into the region.</p>
<p>His Beijing speech is absent from his website.</p>
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<p>In his efforts to exert pressure on his opponent over Labor’s more nuanced approach to China, Morrison used a peoples’ forum debate to claim Anthony Albanese had taken <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-04-20/morrison-albanese-clash-during-leaders-debate-in-brisbane/101000332">“China’s side”</a> in debates over the pandemic and border closures.</p>
<p>Albanese responded “that’s an outrageous slur by the prime minister”.</p>
<p>This matters because if a Coalition is re-elected, the prospects of an improvement in relations with China would remain poor. Morrison’s and Dutton’s interventions have hardened the edges of Australia’s relationship with its largest trading partner.</p>
<p>All this is a <a href="https://pmtranscripts.pmc.gov.au/release/transcript-23977">very long way</a> from the agreement between then Prime Minister Tony Abbott and visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping in Canberra in 2014, to upgrade relations to a “comprehensive strategic partnership”.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202204/1260302.shtml">Beijing’s mouthpiece, the Global Times</a>, commented:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When Morrison made the ‘red line’ statement, he jeopardised the red line of the Solomon Islands, an independent country, by failing to recognise the latter’s diplomatic sovereignty.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This year, unlike 1951, 1966 and 2001, Australians are going to the polls not when lives might be lost in foreign conflicts, but at a time when voter concerns are domestically-focused.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-morrison-government-wants-a-khaki-election-how-do-the-two-major-parties-stack-up-on-national-security-179472">The Morrison government wants a 'khaki' election. How do the two major parties stack up on national security?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>A <a href="https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/cost-of-living-top-of-mind-for-voters-as-pandemic-concern-wanes-20220318-p5a5qp">“True Issues” survey by JWS Research</a> in the Australian Financail Review in March found that cost of living and healthcare trumped concerns about defence, security and terrorism.</p>
<p>An <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-04-22/vote-compass-federal-election-issues-data-climate-change-economy/101002116">ABC Compass poll</a> this month found that climate change was top of mind, followed by cost of living and affordability. Defence and public security rated a lowly eighth in the ABC poll, as it did in the JWS Research poll.</p>
<p>In other words, there is no clear indication a “China threat” will prove significant in an election dominated by bread and butter issues.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181868/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tony Walker is a member of The Conversation board.</span></em></p>Elections where a national security threat have been a major talking point have historically played well for incumbent governments. But this time is different.Tony Walker, Vice-chancellor's fellow, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1781452022-03-08T19:02:54Z2022-03-08T19:02:54ZLetting the people decide: should Australia hold more referendums?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449956/original/file-20220304-13-r1d35g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Darren Pateman</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last month the mayors of Queensland’s two biggest cities <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/queensland/pressure-mounts-for-daylight-saving-referendum-30-years-on-from-last-poll-20220222-p59ym7.html">proposed</a> a referendum on reintroducing daylight saving in the Sunshine State. </p>
<p>South Australians, meanwhile, have recently heard calls for popular votes on <a href="https://indaily.com.au/news/2021/08/27/parliament-leaves-shopping-hours-referendum-on-shelf/">retail trading hours</a> and <a href="https://www.skynews.com.au/opinion/hanson-endorses-possible-sa-plebiscite-for-recreational-cannabis-use/video/6926d8a3b0f6e3150a12c5380ceda76f">recreational cannabis</a>.</p>
<p>In our system, politicians pass laws and make decisions, but sometimes they first gauge public opinion by holding an advisory policy referendum or “plebiscite”. Most people think of these as rare events. The 2017 same-sex marriage survey was just the <a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;db=HANDBOOK;id=handbook%2Fnewhandbook%2F2017-06-21%2F0045;query=Id%3A%22handbook%2Fnewhandbook%2F2017-06-21%2F0045%22">fourth</a> national policy referendum in more than a century, compared to over 40 referendums on constitutional amendments. </p>
<p>But <a href="https://www.sydney.edu.au/content/dam/corporate/documents/sydney-law-school/research/publications/slrv44n1mar2022kildeaadvance.pdf">new research</a> shows policy referendums have been far more frequent at the state and territory level. This rich and largely forgotten history fills out our understanding of Australian democracy. It also demonstrates the enduring appeal of giving the public a direct say on contentious issues. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-same-sex-marriage-plebiscite-65218">Explainer: the same-sex marriage plebiscite</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Alcohol, daylight saving and other controversies</h2>
<p>Australia’s states and two mainland territories have together held 56 referendums since 1901. About a dozen of these have put forward proposals for constitutional amendment. The remainder have concerned policy questions.</p>
<p>New South Wales has made most use of the referendum, having put 16 proposals, followed by Western Australia with 12. The Northern Territory’s 1998 poll on statehood remains its only one. Victoria has been least enthusiastic in recent times – its last referendum, on hotel closing hours, was in 1956.</p>
<p>About a third of all state and territory referendums have been about alcohol policy. The topic of hotel closing hours appeared frequently on ballot papers in the early 20th century. During the first world war, voters in three states backed 6pm closing at licensed premises. This choice proved consequential, giving rise to the infamous “six o’clock swill”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449736/original/file-20220303-19-1m4z1a7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449736/original/file-20220303-19-1m4z1a7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449736/original/file-20220303-19-1m4z1a7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449736/original/file-20220303-19-1m4z1a7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449736/original/file-20220303-19-1m4z1a7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449736/original/file-20220303-19-1m4z1a7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449736/original/file-20220303-19-1m4z1a7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The move to close pubs at 6pm gave rise to the ‘six o'clock swill’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.museumoflost.com/six-oclock-swill/">Museum of Lost Things</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some governments have asked voters about prohibition. In 1928, residents of the Federal Capital Territory (now the ACT) were asked if they wanted to allow the private sale of alcohol. The territory had been “dry” since its creation in 1911, prompting many to dash across the border to Queanbeyan to quench their thirst. </p>
<p>On polling day, a majority of electors voted to end prohibition. The timing could not have been better for the nation’s federal politicians, who just a year earlier had begun sitting in Canberra. </p>
<p>In more recent times, daylight saving has been put to voters more than any other issue. By the 1970s, many states had experience with daylight saving but the question was whether people wanted to keep it. Around 70% of electors voted ‘Yes’ to this in New South Wales (1976) and South Australia (1982). </p>
<p>Public support was never tested in Victoria and Tasmania. These states opted to keep daylight saving without holding a referendum.</p>
<p>But daylight saving has proved hugely divisive elsewhere. A 1992 Queensland referendum revealed a stark urban-rural divide on the issue. More than 60% of residents in the south-east of the state voted “Yes”, but opposition in regional and rural areas was enough to defeat it. </p>
<p>On the other side of the continent, Western Australian governments have asked voters about daylight saving four times, most recently in 2009. On each occasion the answer has been a decisive “No”. </p>
<p>State and territory electors have also voted on the teaching of scripture in schools, the location of a hydro-electricity dam on Tasmania’s Gordon River, and self-government for the ACT. More often than not, these polls have attracted significant media attention and been fiercely contested. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449739/original/file-20220303-4451-1uju433.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449739/original/file-20220303-4451-1uju433.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449739/original/file-20220303-4451-1uju433.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449739/original/file-20220303-4451-1uju433.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449739/original/file-20220303-4451-1uju433.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449739/original/file-20220303-4451-1uju433.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449739/original/file-20220303-4451-1uju433.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This year marks the 30th anniversary of Queensland’s failed 1992 referendum on daylight saving.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dan Peled/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>High success rate</h2>
<p>In Australia, a lot of commentary on federal referendums is about how difficult it is to pass them. Voter have approved just eight of 44 proposals (or 18%) for constitutional amendment. This has led <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/735383">some</a> <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2526530">commentators</a> to say Australians are naturally inclined to vote “No”.</p>
<p>The history of state and territory referendums challenges this notion. Referendums held by state and territory governments enjoy a much higher success rate. </p>
<p>Of the 41 state/territory referendums that have asked voters a Yes/No question, 19 (or 46%) have been carried. The success rate varies across policy and constitutional polls. About a third of policy referendums have passed, while voters have approved an impressive three-quarters of constitutional proposals.</p>
<p>The reasons for the different federal and state/territory success rates are complex and remain to be fully explored. But the sub-national referendum record bucks the conventional wisdom, showing that Australians are indeed willing to vote “Yes”.</p>
<p>This is worth keeping in mind as we consider the prospects of future federal referendums, including a possible vote on a First Nations Voice.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-australia-ready-for-another-republic-referendum-these-consensus-models-could-work-142646">Is Australia ready for another republic referendum? These consensus models could work</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>When should we hold policy referendums?</h2>
<p>Given Australia’s long track record of using policy referendums, should we be holding more of them? </p>
<p>Australians are generally in favour of the idea. In <a href="https://academic.oup.com/pa/article-abstract/74/4/911/5890700">research</a> conducted for the Australian Constitutional Values Survey (<a href="https://news.griffith.edu.au/topics/australian-constitutional-values-survey/">ACVS</a>) in 2017, <a href="https://www.griffith.edu.au/griffith-business-school/departments/government-international-relations/contact-us/aj-brown">my</a> <a href="https://staff-profiles.cqu.edu.au/home/view/24803">colleagues</a> and I found more than 80% of respondents gave “in principle” support for direct democracy.</p>
<p>And referendums, when run well, can strengthen our democracy. They can provide opportunities for public deliberation on tough issues, give people a sense of contribution, and build trust and engagement.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449740/original/file-20220303-17-4dyscx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449740/original/file-20220303-17-4dyscx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449740/original/file-20220303-17-4dyscx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449740/original/file-20220303-17-4dyscx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449740/original/file-20220303-17-4dyscx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449740/original/file-20220303-17-4dyscx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449740/original/file-20220303-17-4dyscx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Popular wisdom has it that Australians mostly vote ‘no’ on referendums. But research shows many have succeeded, including, most recently, the vote on marriage equality.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Joe Castro/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But referendums are not suitable for all issues. The question is where we should draw the line. Four years after the marriage survey, this is a big philosophical question that remains unresolved.</p>
<p>Governments have held advisory polls on alcohol, daylight saving and same-sex marriage, so why not also on COVID rules, the date of Australia Day or – as Pauline Hanson has <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=s1138">proposed</a> – on immigration levels?</p>
<p>The case for a policy referendum is arguably stronger when the proposal concerns basic governing arrangements – think statehood or some electoral laws – or contentious social issues. It will be weaker when the proposal is highly technical or could endanger minority rights. </p>
<p>The ACVS suggests people’s attitudes towards direct democracy align with this approach to some degree. Respondents favoured a popular vote on some social issues (such as voluntary euthanasia) but preferred to leave more technical matters (such as emissions targets) to parliament.</p>
<p>We might also reason that policy referendums are best reserved for those issues that genuinely divide the parliament, or the parties, to the point of stalemate. This was arguably the case with same-sex marriage.</p>
<p>Basic principles are helpful, but it is not possible to be definitive about the circumstances in which policy referendums should or should not be held. It will always be a case-by-case judgment.</p>
<p>With that in mind, we could do more to promote debate about when policy referendums should be held. Currently the decision rests entirely with politicians, who tend to favour them only in narrow circumstances. </p>
<p>Parliaments in all jurisdictions could establish processes for individuals and groups to propose referendums on certain issues. Special committees could be tasked with considering these proposals and reporting back. A more radical idea would be to enable citizens to directly initiate referendums by gathering a certain number of signatures from voters.</p>
<p>In any event, there is scope for us to think more creatively about how we integrate policy referendums into our representative politics. And, as the state and territory record shows, this would build on a rich democratic practice that stretches back more than a century.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/178145/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Kildea has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>The federal government rarely holds policy referendums. But research shows they are more common in the states and territories, and voters are more amenable to them than politicians might believe.Paul Kildea, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law & Justice, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1409412020-07-02T04:11:59Z2020-07-02T04:11:59ZBorder closures, identity and political tensions: how Australia’s past pandemics shape our COVID-19 response<p>Tensions over border closures are in the news again, now states are gradually lifting travel restrictions <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-30/sa-delays-victorian-border-reopening-amid-coronavirus/12405632">to all</a> <a href="https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/coronavirus/2020/06/30/queensland-border-victoria/">except Victorians</a>.</p>
<p>Prime Minister Scott Morrison says singling out Victorians is an overreaction to Melbourne’s coronavirus spike, <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/get-some-perspective-pm-calls-out-premiers-for-closing-borders-to-victoria-20200630-p557q4.html">urging</a> the states “to get some perspective”.</p>
<p>Federal-state tensions over border closures and other pandemic quarantine measures are not new, and not limited to the COVID-19 pandemic.</p>
<p>Our new <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/puar.13224">research</a> shows such measures are entwined in our history and tied to Australia’s identity as a nation. We also show how our experiences during past pandemics guide the plans we now use, and alter, to control the coronavirus.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/national-and-state-leaders-may-not-always-agree-but-this-hasnt-hindered-our-coronavirus-response-136152">National and state leaders may not always agree, but this hasn't hindered our coronavirus response</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Bubonic plague, federation and national identity</h2>
<p>In early 1900, <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/bubonic-plague">bubonic plague</a> broke out just months before federation, introduced by infected rats on ships.</p>
<p>When a new vaccine was available, the New South Wales government planned to inoculate just front-line workers. </p>
<p>Journalists called for a broader inoculation campaign and the government soon faced a “melee” <a href="https://www.griffithreview.com/articles/learning-from-forgotten-epidemics/">in which</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>…men fought, women fainted and the offices [of the Board of Health] were damaged. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Patients and contacts were quarantined at the <a href="https://www.qstation.com.au/our-story.html">North Head Quarantine Station</a>. Affected suburbs were quarantined and sanitation commenced.</p>
<p>The health board <a href="https://hekint.org/2017/02/01/plague-sydney-1900/">openly criticised</a> the government for its handling of the quarantine measures, laying the groundwork for quarantine policy in the newly independent Australia.</p>
<p>Quarantine then became essential to a vision of Australia as an island nation where “island” stood for immunity and where non-Australians were viewed as “diseased”. </p>
<p>Public health is mentioned twice in the Australian constitution. <a href="http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/coaca430/s51.html">Section 51(ix)</a> gives parliament the power to quarantine, and <a href="http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/coaca430/s69.html">section 69</a> requires states and territories to transfer quarantine services to the Commonwealth.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2016C00597">Quarantine Act</a> was <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40111469?seq=1">later merged</a> to form the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C1901A00017">Immigration Restriction Act</a>, with quarantine influencing immigration policy. </p>
<p>Ports then became centres of immigration, trade, biopolitics and biosecurity.</p>
<h2>Spanish flu sparked border disputes too</h2>
<p>In 1918, at the onset of the Spanish flu, quarantine policy included border closures, quarantine camps (for people stuck at borders) and school closures. These measures initially controlled widespread outbreaks in Australia.</p>
<p>However, Victoria quibbled over whether NSW had accurately diagnosed this as an influenza pandemic. Queensland closed its borders, despite only the Commonwealth having the legal powers to do so.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/this-isnt-the-first-global-pandemic-and-it-wont-be-the-last-heres-what-weve-learned-from-4-others-throughout-history-136231">This isn't the first global pandemic, and it won't be the last. Here's what we've learned from 4 others throughout history</a>
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</p>
<hr>
<p>When World War I ended, many returning soldiers broke quarantine. Quarantine measures were not coordinated at the Commonwealth level; states and territories each went their own way.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344957/original/file-20200701-54182-1xi9yxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344957/original/file-20200701-54182-1xi9yxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344957/original/file-20200701-54182-1xi9yxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344957/original/file-20200701-54182-1xi9yxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344957/original/file-20200701-54182-1xi9yxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344957/original/file-20200701-54182-1xi9yxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344957/original/file-20200701-54182-1xi9yxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344957/original/file-20200701-54182-1xi9yxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Quarantine camps, like this one at Wallangarra in Queensland, were set up during the Spanish flu pandemic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/hwmobs/33951814795/in/photolist-TJcVFa-YhgcRx-atsaix-XTKch7-UaKNVR-V9MpKW-UP7JCA-MLhyLw-LRP6K1-MLhndw-HCnkAZ-HzYnQ7-HCmst8-GP2158-HCn2kF-Hjh81L-HCn4qH-GP1U5H-HFEyxo-GNWKdo-GNWpWY-bYHyHs-VzVoWC-WS74kD-MPhwS2-MFUxbv-azS5yy-aWj2ht-2eHp2Cd-iK4YSS-iK6XWw-js1RoA-2iRKFBT-2iErL2N-do1pQW-2iPBTMC-2iPxv95-dJogXQ-dJhQ6D-gaEtvV-wZtUUa-gYh1Qz-gaDNYg-gaDNsr-cN1cWE-cN1bV9-cN1cQS-cN1c6h-cN1d6C-gaDVZw">Aussie~mobs/Public Domain/Flickr</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There were different policies about state border closures, quarantine camps, mask wearing, school closures and public gatherings. Infection spread and hospitals were overwhelmed.</p>
<p>The legacy? The states and territories ceded quarantine control to the Commonwealth. And <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-8500.1952.tb01591.x">in 1921</a>, the Commonwealth created its own health department.</p>
<h2>The 1990s brought new threats</h2>
<p>Over the next seven decades, Australia linked quarantine surveillance to national survival. It shifted from prioritising human health to biosecurity and protection of Australia’s flora, fauna and agriculture. </p>
<p>In the 1990s, new human threats emerged. <a href="https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/5/2/99-0202_article">Avian influenza in 1997</a> led the federal government to recognise Australia may be ill-prepared to face a pandemic. <a href="https://www1.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/cda-cditech-influenza.htm">By 1999</a> Australia had its first <a href="https://www1.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/cda-cditech-influenza.htm/$FILE/influenza.pdf">influenza pandemic plan</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/todays-disease-names-are-less-catchy-but-also-less-likely-to-cause-stigma-131465">Today's disease names are less catchy, but also less likely to cause stigma</a>
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<p><a href="https://www.cdc.gov/sars/about/fs-sars.html">In 2003</a>, severe acute respiratory syndrome (or SARS) emerged in China and Hong Kong. Australia responded by discouraging nonessential travel and started health screening incoming passengers.</p>
<p>The next threat, <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5305a1.htm">2004 H5N1 Avian influenza</a>, was a dry run for future responses. This resulted <a href="https://www1.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/ohp-ahmppi.htm">in the 2008</a> Australian Health Management Plan for Pandemic Influenza, which included border control and social isolation measures.</p>
<h2>Which brings us to today</h2>
<p>While lessons learned from past pandemics are with us today, we’ve seen changes to policy mid-pandemic. March saw the formation of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-the-national-cabinet-and-is-it-democratic-135036">National Cabinet</a> to endorse and coordinate actions across the nation. </p>
<p>Uncertainty over border control continues, especially surrounding the potential for <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/australia-covid-19-death-toll-reaches-100-20200519-p54uhb.html">cruise</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/may/26/wa-premier-fears-more-covid-19-infections-after-six-test-positive-on-live-export-ship-in-fremantle">live-export ships</a> to import coronavirus infections.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-has-seriously-tested-our-border-security-have-we-learned-from-our-mistakes-134794">Coronavirus has seriously tested our border security. Have we learned from our mistakes?</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Then there are border closures between states and territories, creating tensions and a potential <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/may/28/clive-palmer-launches-high-court-challenge-to-queensland-coronavirus-border-closure">high court challenge</a>.</p>
<p>Border quibbles between states and territories will likely continue in this and future pandemics due to geographical, epidemiological and political differences.</p>
<p>Australia’s success during COVID-19 as a nation, is in part due to Australian quarantine policy being so closely tied to its island nature and learnings from previous pandemics.</p>
<p>Lessons learnt from handling COVID-19 will also strengthen future pandemic responses and hopefully will make them more coordinated.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/4-ways-australias-coronavirus-response-was-a-triumph-and-4-ways-it-fell-short-139845">4 ways Australia's coronavirus response was a triumph, and 4 ways it fell short</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140941/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Susan Moloney is Past President, Paediatrics & Child Health Division, The Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kim Moloney does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Australia’s island identity and attitude to border security was forged from handling pandemics since the time of federation. Here’s what we’ve learned along the way.Susan Moloney, Associate Professor, Paediatrics, Griffith UniversityKim Moloney, Senior Lecturer in Global Public Administration and Public Policy, Murdoch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.