How did Federation make Australia one country?

Six colonies, six sets of rules

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have lived on this continent for more than 60,000 years, with their own languages, laws and ways of governing. From 1788, Britain set up colonies on the land. By the 1890s there were six of them: New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania. They were all British, but they ran themselves almost like six little countries.

Each colony had its own parliament, its own laws and its own defence force. Each charged its own taxes, and that included taxes on goods that crossed a border from another colony. They also ran separate postal and railway systems, which made travel and communication harder than it needed to be. Many of the people living in the colonies had been born in Australia, and they were starting to think of themselves as Australians. They asked whether the colonies would work better as one nation, with a national government to look after things such as defence, trade and immigration.

In October 1889 the New South Wales Premier, Sir Henry Parkes, gave a speech in Tenterfield, near the Queensland border. It was a turning point because he was asking ordinary people, not just other politicians, to back Federation, which means joining the colonies together as one nation. He argued that a united country could have one army and better rail travel between the colonies.

Writing the rule book

A nation needs a set of rules for how it will be run. That set of rules is called a constitution. Leaders from the colonies met in Sydney in 1891 and wrote a first draft, but it did not get any further at the time. In 1893, Federation supporters from community groups, including the Australian Natives Association, met at Corowa, a town on the New South Wales and Victorian border. They came up with a plan. Voters would elect delegates to a new convention, which would write a draft. Then voters would get to say yes or no to the draft in a referendum, which is a vote on a single question.

The new convention met in 1897 and 1898 in Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne. Voters in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania elected the delegates. Queensland's parliament could not agree to hold an election, so no delegates were elected there, and Western Australia's parliament chose its own. One leader stood out: Edmund Barton, a Sydney lawyer who chaired the drafting committee. He spent years travelling around New South Wales giving speeches about Federation, about 300 in all. He declared that Australia could have 'a nation for a continent and a continent for a nation'.

Yes or no? The referendums

People who backed the draft were called 'Billites', after the Commonwealth Constitution Bill, and people against it were 'anti-Billites'. Supporters said Federation would end the taxes on trade between the colonies and give the country one voice on defence and immigration. Opponents worried about higher taxes and about whether every colony would have a fair say. Many people in New South Wales feared their colony would lose power. Some in the labour movement said the draft was not democratic enough. Some women who wanted the vote backed 'yes', hoping that a new nation would be more likely to give women the vote.

The first referendums were held in 1898 in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania. 'Yes' won in all four, but New South Wales had set itself a rule that it needed at least 80,000 'yes' votes. It got 71,595, so the vote failed there. Early in 1899 the colonies' premiers met in Melbourne for a 'secret' conference, held behind closed doors, and agreed on changes to the draft. This time New South Wales needed only a simple majority. In 1899 Queensland joined in, and every colony that voted said yes. In Victoria about 94 out of every 100 voters voted yes. In New South Wales it was about 56 out of every 100.

Western Australia was slower. It had not held a vote by 1900, and in protest, people on its Eastern Goldfields took steps to form a separate colony. When Western Australia finally voted on 31 July 1900, the result was a clear yes: 44,800 to 19,691.

1 January 1901

The colonies were still under British law, so the British Parliament had to approve the plan. A delegation led by Barton travelled to London in 1900 to explain it. The British Parliament passed the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, and Queen Victoria gave her royal assent, which means she signed it into law, on 9 July 1900. The new Commonwealth of Australia began on 1 January 1901.

On that day, tens of thousands of people gathered in Centennial Park in Sydney, in front of a pavilion that was built for the occasion. Estimates of the crowd range from about 60,000 to more than 100,000. Ten thousand school children sang. Lord Hopetoun, the first Governor-General, who represented the Queen, proclaimed the Commonwealth of Australia, and Edmund Barton was sworn in as the first Prime Minister. There were parades, street parties, picnics and fireworks across the country.

The six colonies became six states. The new national government took charge of matters that affect the whole country. The states kept the power to make laws on a much wider range of subjects, but if a valid national law and a state law clash, the national law wins. Australia stayed linked to Britain, and the Governor-General represented the monarch.

The first federal election was held on 29 and 30 March 1901. On 9 May 1901 the Duke of Cornwall and York, who later became King George V, opened the first Parliament in the Exhibition Building in Melbourne. Parliament met in Melbourne for 26 years, until its own Parliament House opened in Canberra in 1927. Barton stayed Prime Minister until September 1903, and then became one of the first judges of the High Court of Australia.

Who had a say, and who was left out?

The referendums were a big step, because ordinary voters got a vote on their country's rules. But they did not give everyone a say. Voting was not compulsory, and many people were not allowed to vote at all. Women could vote in the referendums only in South Australia and Western Australia. In Queensland and Western Australia, Aboriginal people and people from Asia, Africa and the Pacific Islands could not vote unless they owned property. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were not part of the talks that wrote the Constitution, and most did not vote on it. As the Australian Electoral Commission points out, a majority of voters said yes, but that was not a majority of the people living in the colonies.

The Constitution said very little about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Section 127 left Aboriginal people out of the count of the population, and the power to make laws about Aboriginal people stayed with the states. This meant that the laws affecting First Nations people were different from state to state, and they often led to unfair treatment. In 1967, more than 90 per cent of Australians voted yes to remove section 127 and to let the national Parliament make laws for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

The new Parliament passed its first voting law in 1902. It gave women across Australia the right to vote and to stand for Parliament in federal elections, which was a big step. But it also refused the federal vote to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and to people from Asia, Africa and the Pacific Islands (except New Zealand), because of their race, unless they already had a state vote. It was not until 1962 that all First Australians were given the right to enrol and vote in federal elections.

One of the first laws the new Parliament passed was the Immigration Restriction Act 1901, the start of what was called the White Australia policy. Its aim was to limit the number of non-white people, especially Asian people, who could migrate to Australia. A migrant could be given a dictation test in a language they might not know, and people who failed could be sent away. The test ended in 1958, and the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 made it illegal to treat migrants unfairly because of their race. Federation is a story of a nation made peacefully, by votes and by law. It is also a story about who was counted in and who was kept out. Good history tells both.

📚 Words to know

Federation

The joining of six British colonies to make one nation, the Commonwealth of Australia, on 1 January 1901.

Colony

A place ruled by another country. Before 1901, Australia was made up of six British colonies.

Constitution

The set of rules for how a country is run. It sets up the Parliament and the courts and says what each can do.

Referendum

A vote on a single question, where each voter answers yes or no. The Constitution can only be changed by a referendum.

Franchise

The right to vote. Who has the franchise has changed a lot since 1901.

🧪 Try this: hold a family referendum

1. Think of a yes or no question that is safe and fun, such as 'Should we have pancakes for dinner on Friday?' Write it on a piece of paper. In the 1890s, voters wrote 'yes' or 'no' in a box beside the question.
2. Before anyone votes, decide who is allowed to vote. Then ask yourselves if that is fair. In 1899 and 1900, many adults could not vote. How would you feel if you were left out of a decision about your own home?
3. Everyone who can vote writes 'yes' or 'no' on a slip of paper and folds it. Count the slips. Work out the percentage of yes votes: yes votes divided by all votes, times 100. For example, 5 yes votes out of 8 is 62.5 per cent.
4. Now try the New South Wales rule from 1898. Pretend the question needs a set number of yes votes, not just more yes than no. Would the result change? Why did New South Wales set that rule, and why did it drop it in 1899?
5. Challenge: use a calculator to check the 1899 results. Victoria had 152,653 yes votes and 9,805 no votes. What percentage voted yes? Do the same for New South Wales, with 107,420 yes votes and 82,741 no votes.