First Among Equals (3 page)

By the age of nineteen, Reid was made assistant accountant at the Colonial Treasury. He remained with the treasury for fourteen years, eventually being promoted to attorney-general at the Crown Law office in 1878. With a burgeoning interest in politics, Reid began to pursue a legal career and was admitted to the Bar in 1879. The following year he resigned so as to be eligible to nominate as a candidate for East Sydney. In November 1880, Reid thus entered the New South
Wales parliament, taking a seat in the Legislative Assembly. With the exception of a brief period from 1884 to 1885, when he was unseated in a by-election, Reid held this seat for the next twenty years.

Although Reid was a strong supporter of the Free Traders, when Sir Henry Parkes came into power in 1887, he twice declined a seat in his ministry. In 1891 when Parkes resigned, Reid, at the age of 46, took over the leadership of the Free Trade Party. Later that year Reid married 21-year-old Flora Brumby.

In 1894, Reid's Free Traders defeated Barton's Protectionists, winning the majority in the New South Wales State Parliament, and Reid became premier and treasurer. During his five-year term as premier, Reid reduced tariffs, introduced land and income tax and reformed the public system. In 1899, however, Labor shifted their support and brought down Reid's government.

While in principle Reid supported the movement towards Federation, because of his ambivalence he earned the nickname of ‘yes-no Reid'. With the interests of New South Wales his primary concern, he continually pressed for changes to the proposed Constitution. But once Federation was a certainty, he stood for a seat in the first election and in 1901 became the first federal opposition leader.

In 1905 Reid became prime minister after breaking
his alliance with John Watson's Labor Party. However, he did not have a secure majority and so was unable to hold power for long. His government's only substantial achievement was in industrial relations with the passage of the
Conciliation and Arbitration Act
in 1904. Reid was eventually defeated when the Labor Party and the Protectionists joined forces in 1905. In 1906 he gained the seats once more, but failed to win a majority.

When Deakin proposed the ‘fusion' of the two non-Labor parties in 1908, Reid resigned from the leadership of the Free Trade Party, handing over to his deputy Joseph Cook. After retiring from federal politics, Reid accepted a posting offered by Deakin, as the first high commissioner of Australia in London in 1910. He stayed in the post for six years, before taking up a position in the British House of Commons on 15 January 1916. He remained a member of the British Parliament until his death on 12 September 1918.

ANDREW FISHER

THE WORKING-CLASS PRIME MINISTER

TERMS

13 November 1908-2 June 1909
29 April 1910-24 June 1913
17 September 1914-27 October 1915

A
ustralia's fifth prime minister, Andrew Fisher, was the most successful of the early Labor Party leaders, taking out the country's top position three times in six years. A former Scottish miner and union leader, his rise from pit boy to prime minister was nothing short of remarkable.

Born on the coalfields of Ayrshire, Scotland, on 29 August 1862, Fisher had neither an elite academic record nor the upper-class upbringing of many of his political contemporaries. The second son of Robert and Jane Fisher, he began working in the coalmines at the age of ten. With limited formal schooling, Fisher educated himself by reading the books in the library of the co-operative his father helped establish, and attending night school. At the age of seventeen he was elected secretary of the local branch of the Ayrshire Miners' Union.

In 1885, he and his brother James migrated to Queensland where he soon became a mine manager with the Queensland Colliery Company on the Burrum coalfields at Torbanlea. Following a move to Gympie in 1888, Fisher became president of the local branches of the Amalgamated Miners' Union and the Workers' Political Organisation, the forerunner to Queensland's Labor Party.

In 1893 Fisher was elected to the Queensland Legislative Assembly, winning the seat of Gympie.
However, he lost the seat in 1896. Convinced the antisocialist
Gympie Times
had prejudiced the electorate against him, Fisher, along with journalist Henry Boote, founded a rival newspaper, the
Gympie Truth,
as a voice for Labor.

Despite the Labor Party's opposition to Federation, Fisher was a strong proponent of the movement. Thus, he stood for Australia's first national parliament, winning the seat of Wide Bay in Queensland in 1901. Later that year he married Margaret Irvine, the daughter of his landlady.

In 1904 Fisher served for four months as minister for trade and customs in Watson's Labor government. He was then elected deputy leader of Labor's opposition party in 1905, retaining this position until October 1907 when Watson resigned as leader. When Deakin's Protectionist government was forced to resign in 1908, following Labor's move to amend the
Conciliation and Arbitration Bill,
Fisher became prime minister. Lack of support, however, allowed Deakin to again seize power just seven months into Fisher's term. But in 1910 Labor's first secure national government came after an electoral landslide and Fisher once again became prime minister.

During Fisher's second term he focused on improving infrastructure and social services. His government introduced maternity allowances, workers'
compensation and invalid pensions and proposed stricter regulations for wages, working hours and employment conditions. Fisher also passed the
Defence Act
in 1910, which established the Royal Australian Navy, set up the Commonwealth Bank in 1912 and commenced building the nation's capital, Canberra, in 1913.

Fisher's final term, from 1914 to 1915, was served against the backdrop of World War I, during which time Fisher famously vowed to defend the ‘Mother Country' to the last shilling. Fisher, however, found the strain of leadership in wartime taxing. While he passed a number of precautionary wartime acts, including the
Trading with the Enemy Act,
he actively opposed the introduction of conscription which was fervently promoted by an ambitious William Morris Hughes. The most significant and devastating event, however, was Britain's bungled command of Australian troops at Gallipoli, Turkey, which saw more than 8000 of the country's young men killed and a further 18,000 wounded in action. While forging the legend of the ANZACs, it not only took its toll on Australian men, but also on Fisher as the country's leader.

Amid rumours of ill health, Fisher resigned as prime minister on 27 October 1915. Three days later Hughes was elected leader of the Labor Party and became prime minister. Fisher went on to replace
Reid as high commissioner of Australia in London, remaining in the post until 1921. Despite calls for him to re-enter politics in Australia, he stayed in London, eventually dying on 22 October 1928 in South Hill Park in Hampstead.

T
he years from 1913 to 1939 marked an era of great hardship and change for Australia. The five prime ministers who presided during this time — Cook, Hughes, Bruce, Scullin and Lyons — faced many challenges including World War I and the Great Depression.

The creation of the Fusion Party at the end of the first
decade of Federation, while strategically important, created a swing to Labor bringing Cook to power in 1913. However, with only a slim majority, he was eventually forced to call for the country's first double dissolution in 1914. Just one month before Fisher succeeded him on 4 August 1914, Britain declared war on Germany, and Australia thus found itself at war.

With so many young Australian lives lost at the landing at Anzac Cove in Gallipoli, and the country struggling to fulfil its commitment to the war effort, Hughes called two referendums on conscription, in 1916 and 1917. Both failed, causing Labor to split. Hughes then defected from the Labor Party in 1916, joining the newly created National Party and marking the rise of the conservatives which culminated with the formation of the Country Party in 1920.

After thirteen years out in the political wilderness, Labor again came to power under Scullin in 1929. Labor's victory, however, was short-lived with Wall Street collapsing on 24 October 1929, a few days after Scullin was sworn in, and the country sank into the depths of the Great Depression.

Despite the upheaval there were a number of major achievements: on 12 March 1913 the city of Canberra was founded as the nation's capital; Australia's first airline, the Queensland and Northern Territory Air Service (QANTAS), began regular services in 1922;
voting was made compulsory in 1925; and on 9 May 1927, Parliament House was officially opened. Moreover, during this period campaigning techniques changed significantly when radio became widely available in the 1930s.

SIR JOSEPH COOK

CROSSING THE GREAT DIVIDE

TERM

24 June 1913-17 September 1914

S
ir Joseph Cook was Australia's first prime minister to begin his political career in the socialist Labor Party and then defect to the anti-socialist conservatives. Dubbed ‘the most humourless' of Australia's prime ministers, Cook, like Andrew Fisher, made the extraordinary transition from pit boy in a coalmine to prime minister of Australia.

Cook was born on 7 December 1860 at Silverdale in Staffordshire, England. The eldest of five children, he left school at the age of nine to work in the coalmines. When his father, William, died three years later, Cook became the family's sole wage earner. With no formal schooling, he joined the local church and began educating himself through reading and public speaking. At the age of sixteen he became a lay preacher and became involved in trade union affairs.

In 1885 Cook married local schoolteacher Mary Turner. Later that year he emigrated to Lithgow in New South Wales where Mary's brother had already settled. Mary joined him in January 1887. Cook worked as a miner, learning shorthand, typing and bookkeeping part-time and eventually becoming the general-secretary of the union in 1888. He also joined the Land Nationalisation League and served on the Labor Defence Committee during the 1890 maritime strike.

In 1891 Cook was elected president of the Lithgow branch of the Labor Electoral League and won the seat
of Hartley in the Legislative Assembly of New South Wales. He was subsequently elected leader of the parliamentary Labor Party in 1893. In 1894 Cook left the Labor Party after refusing to sign their ‘solidarity' pledge. He then joined George Reid's Free Trade Party, serving as postmaster-general from 1894 to 1899.

Cook originally opposed the
Constitution Bill
for Federation, however, he campaigned for a ‘yes' vote in the second referendum after concessions were made. When Federation was inaugurated in 1901, Cook was elected to the first parliament as the member for Parramatta. He then moved his family to Marrickville and joined Reid on the opposition bench in the newly convened House of Representatives.

Re-elected in 1903, Cook was not included in the cabinet of Reid's short-lived coalition government of 1904-05. However, in July 1905 he was elected deputy leader of the Free Trade Party. When Reid retired from the party leadership in 1908, Cook took over and agreed to a merger with Deakin's Protectionists to form the Fusion Party.

During Deakin's third prime-ministership, Cook served as the minister of defence, helping to establish the Duntroon Military College and laying the foundations for the Royal Australian Navy. Following Deakin's resounding electoral defeat to Labor in 1910, the Fusion Party eventually transformed into
the Liberal Party. After Deakin resigned from the leadership in January 1913, Cook succeeded as leader. He then led the Liberal Party to victory in the May election and became Australia's sixth prime minister.

With only a one-seat majority, Cook's government lasted only fifteen months. Unable to govern effectively, Cook engineered a double dissolution by introducing a bill abolishing preferential employment for trade union members in the public service, knowing it would be rejected by the Senate. The parliament's first-ever double dissolution was thus granted by the governorgeneral on 4 June 1914. In the subsequent September poll, Labor easily regained control of both Houses and Andrew Fisher became prime minister.