Andrew Fisher : An Underestimated Man [1 ed.] 9781742231822, 9781742230047

Citation preview

Andrew Fisher

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andrew

fisher An underestimated man

peter bastian

UNSW PRESS

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This book is dedicated to the memory of my father, Keith Bastian, who, like Fisher, maintained throughout his life a consistent belief in the ideals of Labor.

A UNSW Press book Published by University of New South Wales Press Ltd University of New South Wales Sydney NSW 2052 AUSTRALIA www.unswpress.com.au © Peter Bastian 2009 First published 2009 This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Author: Bastian, Peter Edward. Title: Andrew Fisher: an underestimated man/Peter Bastian. ISBN: 978 1 74223 004 7 (hbk.) Notes: Includes index.        Bibliography. Subjects: Fisher, Andrew, 1862–1928.           Australian Labor Party – History.           Prime ministers – Australia – History.           Politicians – Australia – History.           Australia – Politics and government – 1901–1945. Dewey Number: 994.041092 Design Josephine Pajor-Markus Cover Detail from Andrew Fisher and Keir Hardie (National Library of Australia) Printer Ligare This book is printed on paper using fibre supplied from plantation or sustainably managed forests.

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Contents

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Acknowledgments

vii

Abbreviations

viii

Introduction

1

1

Ayrshire beginnings

5

2

Mines, unions and politics

17

3

A new life in Queensland

29

4

Colonial politician

45

5

Hard times and recovery

61

6

A new Commonwealth and party

76

7

Marriage, England and cabinet minister

92

8

Leadership

110

9

Minority Prime Minister

127

10 A triumphant struggle

144

11 Portrait of a Prime Minister

158

12 Governing Australia

171

13 Defending Australia

185

14 Fisher and the world

200

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15 Finance and national development

218

16 Enhancing the Commonwealth

237

17 Defeats

249

18 Australia at war

266

19 Resignation

280

20 High Commissioner

295

21 Problems in London

310

22 A High Commissioner under attack

325

23 Final years

338

24 An underestimated man

353

Notes

365

Bibliography

401

Index

408

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Acknowledgments

There are various people I would like to thank for making this work possible. The staff of the National Library and National Archives in Canberra, as well as the Fryer Library (University of Queensland) and the Baillieu Library (University of Melbourne) were all extremely helpful. The Australian Catholic University provided me with time to draft the work and then finalise the manuscript. The University of New South Wales Press has been generous in agreeing to publish a manuscript somewhat longer than the usual length. My editor, Fiona Sim, did a wonderful job and saved me from many errors. My former student Victor Quayle first awakened an interest in Fisher and we have enjoyed many hours discussing him. My colleagues David Lewis and Malcolm Prentis have generously given of their time to read drafts of this work and their comments were always sensible and helpful. Neville Meaney provided encouragement and insights into the political issues of the early war years. Whatever errors or oversights that may be found in the book are the responsibility of the author and not those who provided such assistance. Finally, despite admiring Andrew Fisher, my wife and children over the past couple of years have probably heard too much about him.

vii

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Abbreviations

AEA

Australian Electoral Archives, located at: www. psephos.adam.carr.net/countries/a/Australia

AFP

Fisher, Andrew. Papers, Australian National Library, MSS 2919

ALF

Australian Labour Federation

ASAFI

AG Stephens interview with Andrew Fisher. State Library of New South Wales, MS A1494

AJP

Jose, Arthur. Papers, Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne

CPD

Commonwealth of Australia Parliamentary Debates

CPE

Central Political Executive (Qld)

CPP

Commonwealth of Australia Parliamentary Papers

Caucus Minutes

Weller, Patrick (ed.) (1975) Caucus Minutes, 1901−1949, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne

DMP

Denis Murphy Papers, Fryer Library, University of Queensland

Federated Australia La Nauze, JA (ed.) (1968) Federated Australia: Selections from Letters to the Morning Post, 1900−1910, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne viii

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abbreviations

FPLP

Federal Parliamentary Labour Party

HCR

Annual Reports of Australian High Commissioner (London), National Archives of Australia

MSP

Shepherd, Malcolm. Unpublished manuscript, National Archives of Australia, A 1632

PFM

Andrew Fisher at Home, Notebooks and Memoirs of Peggy Fisher, both held in AFP and in DMP

PFI

Fisher, Margaret (Peggy), interviewed by Catherine Santamaria, Australian National Library, ID 1740398

PLL

Political Labour League

PLP

Parliamentary Labour Party (Qld)

QPD

Debates of the Council and Legislature of the Colony of Queensland, 1893−1900

SDF

Social Democratic Federation

WMHP

William Morris Hughes Papers, Australian National Library, MSS 261, 950

WPO

Workers’ Political Organisation

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andrew fisher: an underestimated man

A note on spelling Officially, the spelling of ‘Labor’ in the ALP name was adopted by the Hobart federal conference in 1912. But this spelling was used before that time and for a variety of organisations. To add to the confusion, the alternative spelling of ‘Labour’ was sometimes used after 1912. I have chosen to use the spelling ‘Labour’ up to 1912 and ‘Labor’ after that time in regards to the ALP. In terms of the broader ‘Labour movement’, the spelling remains the same throughout the book unless used in a quote or name.

A note on Andrew Fisher In the first three chapters of the book, Andrew Fisher is referred to as ‘Andrew’ to distinguish him from the various members of the Fisher family. From chapter 4, as he embarked on his political career in Queensland, he was surrounded by other people who are referred to by their surnames and so it seemed logical to refer to him as ‘Fisher’. This remains the case for the rest of the book except in a few places involving aspects of his family life where it seemed appropriate that ‘Andrew’ should again be used in that context.

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Introduction

That man to man, the world o’er. Shall brither be for a’that. Robert Burns

It is impossible to overestimate just how much Andrew Fisher contributed to the national development of Australia and its political culture. Born into a Scottish mining family, Fisher migrated to Queensland in 1885. He held a cabinet post in the world’s first Labour ministry in that colony in 1899. Elected to the first Commonwealth Parliament in 1901, he participated in the creation of the Federal Parliamentary Labour Party, served in four ministries and was prime minister three times between 1908 and 1915. His record in leading his party into government on these occasions, and serving for 1758 days as prime minister, would not be bettered by another ALP leader until Robert J Hawke in the 1980s. After a period of considerable reform, Fisher voluntarily left office in October 1915. He returned to Great Britain and served as Australia’s second high commissioner during a controversial period when Australia and the ALP experienced the trauma of a major split over the issue of conscription. Suffering increasing health problems, Fisher retired from public life after 1921 and died in Hampstead in October 1928. Fisher’s contribution in transforming Australia was extensive. He was one of the few Australian prime ministers who seriously attempted during one term in office (1910−13) to enact the entire program he had promised the voters he would deliver. As a result, a large portion of the nation’s armed forces and their military training academies owe their

1

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existence to him. The funding arrangements of the federal government with the states, the creation of a national currency, uniform postal rates and Australia’s largest bank were largely due to his efforts, as was the linking of the continent, east to west, by rail. The establishment of the national capital, the development of coastal lighthouses, the modifications to the coat of arms and even the origins of the national library and art collections are part of his legacy. His government extended the industrial relations system, tried to defend New Protection policies, introduced maternity allowances and reformed the voting system. By the time Fisher left office in 1915, the Commonwealth government was a far more important and powerful body than five years earlier. During his time in London, he also oversaw the final construction of Australia House, while promoting, in various ways, the ANZAC image and heritage. Fisher was also at the forefront of reform in advocating the metric system and decimal currency, supporting women serving as parliamentarians, urging government medical support for the poor, wanting to foster greater ties with the United States (while still admiring the British Empire) and trying to extend federal powers in order to deal with what he perceived were real deficiencies arising out of Federation.1 Fisher believed that his party was the real voice of the Australian people and the best hope for the nation’s future. This was not surprising because the ALP, under his leadership, enjoyed stunning electoral success. In 1910, it transformed Australian political culture when it became the first party to control both houses of the Commonwealth parliament and entrenched its method of operating within the parliamentary system. Fisher also played a key role in fostering these methods by supporting collective decision making by caucus, enacting resolutions passed by the federal conferences and helping create an effective federal executive to administer the party structure. He was also the first ALP leader to openly advocate the party’s programs and policies being reflected in all of the institutions that make up the nation. Fisher’s leadership may have lacked the flair of some of his contemporaries or of several later prime ministers, but his kindness and common sense brought out the best in many of his colleagues and produced

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introduction

stable and effective government. On Fisher’s death, Billy Hughes, who in his long career straddled both sides of the political divide, fondly remembered Fisher’s decency and believed that he represented ‘the very incarnation of the ideal of Labor’.2 It was perhaps not surprising that when Fisher died in 1928, admiring Australians in London paid for a monument to be erected over his grave in Hampstead cemetery. Two years later the granite obelisk was unveiled, amid considerable publicity, by the British Prime Minister, Ramsay McDonald. The Times gave the event prominent coverage and it was shown on newsreels throughout Britain and Australia. Yet by the 1960s, ALP leader, Gough Whitlam, could only note that Fisher was now all but forgotten in his adopted country. In early 1987, the Melbourne Herald reported that the Hampstead gravesite was ‘overgrown with weeds’ and the monument worn and damaged ‘through years of neglect’. An appeal was made to the Australian government by British dancer, Clare de Robilant, who had come across the grave years earlier and had tried to maintain it. Eventually the monument was repaired but virtually none of the thousands of Australian tourists who pass through London every year either visit it or are even aware of its existence.3 Even during his lifetime, Fisher was often underestimated. From the time he stood for the seat of Gympie in the Queensland parliament to his early role in the FPLP and in his drive to lead his party into majority government, Fisher’s opponents frequently discounted him. Historians have also underestimated his performance as prime minister after 1910 and certainly have had little regard for his later roles as wartime leader or as high commissioner in London. So relatively unimportant has Fisher become that in an interview on the eve the 2007 Federal election, Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd, soon to be the first ALP prime minister from Queensland since Fisher, was asked where his policies stood in relation to previous Labor administrations. The list commenced with John Curtin in the 1940s and ended with Paul Keating’s government of the 1990s.4 If Fisher is now remembered it is more likely because of his election pledge in 1914 that should war come, Australia would defend Britain ‘to our last man and our last

3

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shilling’. Ironically, this phrase (or perhaps popular interpretations of it) has encouraged distortion of Fisher’s views about Australian interests and its wartime commitments to the Empire. There are a number of reasons for this neglect and underestimation of Fisher and explanations are offered throughout the following account and in the concluding chapter. Certainly Fisher was not without his faults. Among other things, his lack of formal schooling had its effects upon his outlook and he could be obstinate to an unreasonable degree. Nevertheless, he certainly deserves greater acknowledgement for his contributions to his adopted country. This is his story.

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1 Ayrshire beginnings

Andrew Fisher was a product of a nineteenth century Scottish Lowlands background, and much of his character and outlook was shaped by these experiences. Fisher was born in Crosshouse, Ayrshire, on 29 August 1862. This small village, less than 40 kilometres southwest of Glasgow, was located in a prosperous farming region, known for the quality of its dairy products. The shire also contained a number of coalmines and their supporting villages. In 1862, the population of Ayrshire was around 200 000 people but it had few towns of any substantial size. Crosshouse was merely a village of about 750 people, while nearby Kilmaurs had 1145 inhabitants.1 Andrew was the second son in a large family of six boys and two girls born to Robert and Jane Fisher (nee Garven). Their children, John, Andrew, Robert, James, Jane, Janet, David and William survived to adulthood except for Jane who died of consumption, aged ten, in 1879. According to family legend, the Fishers may have had some Irish ancestry and also been related to the Scottish patriot William Wallace, who was allegedly born at Ellerslie just to the south-east of Crosshouse. Whatever the truth of these claims, the reality was that recent generations of the Fisher family were Ayrshire coalminers. His grandfather, John, had been a miner and a well-known trade unionist in the region. He had once been blacklisted for these activities and he and his wife and five small children, including young Robert, were

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forced to wander the streets seeking shelter after eviction from their company-owned home.2

Parents Robert Fisher was well known for his work with other village men in establishing the local workers’ co-operative store. He had entered in the mines at an early age and listed his occupation as ‘coalminer’ on successive census forms. However he had a variety of other interests before eventually settling into life as a tenant farmer in the early 1880s. There were mixed views of Robert from those who knew him. Hugh Murdoch, a childhood friend of Andrew, thought him intelligent and honest but a little eccentric. His neighbours sometimes found him hard to put up with and he was probably too strict with his family. Andrew never complained about the strictness and preferred to emphasise his father’s fairness but Robert was an interesting mixture.3 His mother Janet (whose father was a gardener at a local estate) had been educated with the landowner’s daughter and was able to teach her son to read, but he had limited writing skills. He sometimes used a mark for his signature, such as on Andrew’s birth certificate, and his rather shaky signature on John’s birth certificate in 1860 suggests someone unused to holding a pen. He may have improved his writing skills later while keeping the accounts for the co-op. Andrew certainly inherited his father’s head for figures and later thought of himself as possessing a Scottish sense for finance.4 Robert seems to have placed less value on formal schooling than on self-education for his children. He read widely in radical literature, which he encouraged among his sons, and also supported them acquiring technical qualifications. He was a strict teetotaller and had a good sense of community service, and imparted both of these values to his children. He also instilled in them a sense of wanting to get ahead in the world, even discouraging them from too much singing and dancing (at which young Andrew was quite good) in case it led them to pursue what he considered ‘unsuitable’ careers.5 However, it was more likely his wife who imparted to her children the practical methods of achieving success.

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Andrew’s mother was the daughter of James Garven, who had been an apprentice to Hugh Murdoch’s grandfather, the village blacksmith. As he got older, James acquired a small cart and pony and became a grocer, selling his goods in the nearby areas. (The pony was even used to carry James to his final resting place.)6 Jane Fisher was, in many ways, the centre of the family. She was a devoted mother and wife and a devout Christian. She was also an excellent cook and had a practical frame of mind that enabled her to make do on what was often a fairly limited household budget. When Andrew later sought to better himself, he was very good, like his mother, at surviving for long periods on little income as well as being a prudent saver. All of Jane’s children were attached to her, and David, William and Janet stayed at home and looked after her as she got older.7 The naming custom in Scottish families at the time dictated that Andrew should have been called James, after his maternal grandfather. Andrew’s older brother John, as the first-born, had been named after his paternal grandfather, in accordance with the custom. It has been claimed that Jane had been raised by her maternal grandparents, the Crawfords, and Andrew was, in turn, named in honour of his great grandfather. Jane’s parents were listed in the 1851 census as residing with six children in Irvine but Jane was not listed as living at home.8 It is possible that her grandparents did help raise her to relieve the pressures on a family with so many mouths to feed. However, James Garven was slighted by this departure from naming custom (especially since it had been followed for John) and according to family lore, upon examining baby Andrew, declared, ‘The miserable wee cullen. I’m glad he isn’t named after me.’ This problem was apparently resolved when Robert and Jane later agreed to name their fourth son after James. Andrew later recalled that of all the Fisher children, James was the only one to bear a resemblance to his maternal grandfather and was adored by him.9

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Childhood When he was about three and a half, Andrew was kicked on the side of his head by a runaway cow on its way to the slaughterhouse and knocked unconscious. The blow left him with limited hearing in one ear and this disability accounted for his occasional seeming aloofness as an adult at noisy social gatherings, even though people found him very personable in one-on-one situations. He also had a slight lisp or speech impediment as a boy, probably due to his hearing problems, but worked hard to overcome it by the time he was an adult. Otherwise he enjoyed good health and grew into a strapping lad of 178 cm.10 Growing up surrounded by his immediate family, other relatives and close friends, he later thought of his Scottish childhood as a happy and secure time. He learnt the value of simple pleasures and physical exercise and enjoyed long walks in the countryside, often with his father. In later life he considered it nothing to walk up to 12 kilometres on a normal stroll. He also spent time fishing, a pastime that had the practical advantage of providing salmon or trout for the family table. Should he have fallen into the water, he knew how to swim as he apparently learnt through the time-honoured custom of being thrown into the river and told to make his way back to the shore.11 He was good at most ball games and, as a teenager, he and Hugh Murdoch organised a local soccer team that regularly played on local farmer, Hugh Woodburn’s, fields.12 The Fishers lived in several places while Andrew was growing up. His first home was in a miner’s row in Crosshouse which had an earthen floor, no running water and an outside washhouse and privy. The beds were probably built into the walls, as was common practice at the time, and it would have lacked privacy as the family expanded.13 During the 1870s, the family lived for a time in or near the village co-op.14 Following Jane’s death in 1879 the family moved into the Ladywell Tollhouse at Kilmaurs. In the 1880s, they became tenants at Thorniehill farm, just outside Crosshouse, where Robert worked mainly as an apiarist and gardener while still doing some mining contract work to supplement his income. This life seemed to suit the family and years later,

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David Fisher, the second youngest, still had very fond memories of his childhood at the farm. The Fisher family was both physically and emotionally close. Despite later geographical dispersion, they maintained ties and responsibilities towards one another over a long period of time.15

Education Andrew received a basic education, initially by attending Rab Porter’s school in Dreghorn before being sent to the small public school at Crosshouse under the guidance of its schoolmaster, James Wilson. He served there for so long that when Fisher made a return visit in 1911 as the Australian Prime Minister, Wilson was on hand to conduct the school’s welcoming choir.16 Basic education in Scotland was, by any standards, quite sound and there was a rough sense of social equality about the system, as schools tended to draw together all social classes from the village and countryside into the one classroom. In the 1880s, John Boyd Orr, a son of a local quarry owner, attended the village school at Kilmaurs and later recollected that ‘children of the poor were probably as well educated as those of the wealthy in rudimentary subjects like reading, writing and arithmetic’. The problem for Andrew was that, while he probably received a solid rudimentary education, it was a fairly short one. Somewhere between ages nine and ten, he left school in order to work in the mines and thus ended his formal schooling.17 Andrew later resumed his education when he was about sixteen by attending night school in Kilmarnock. It was later claimed that he was essentially illiterate and needed to learn to read and write, but this seems unlikely since he would have mastered basic literacy skills at school.18 There is of course a major difference between someone with the literacy skills of a nine-year-old and a well-educated adult. The night classes, among other things, taught letter writing. As an adult, Andrew became a very good correspondent and the night classes also helped improve his reading skills. Kilmarnock was also a much larger town than Crosshouse, with several manufacturing firms and a co-op

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with a library of some 1300−1400 books, as well as a reading room, housing up to thirty newspapers. Andrew also used his free time to expand his education in mathematics and economics and, although never formally trained in accounting, developed a sound knowledge of bookkeeping practices. He obviously enjoyed this chance for further self-improvement and by hard work, eliminated at least some of the deficiencies in his basic schooling. However, his lack of formal education had its long-term effects on him. He was uneasy with too much intellectual speculation and tended to read works that confirmed, rather than challenged, his views. Since he had a practical frame of mind, he also liked technical texts because he felt that he could be the master of such details.19

Scottish radicalism Outside of his family, there were other important influences on Fisher’s upbringing in Ayrshire. The shire had a history of religious dissent and political radicalism. It had been a stronghold of the seventeenth century Covenanters. During the 1640s, most Scots had supported the National Covenant to maintain the independence of the protestant Church of Scotland from crown control. After 1660, under the later Stuarts, a minority resisted attempts to put the church under royal control, especially by introducing bishops into the clerical hierarchy and conformity with the Church of England liturgy. In Ayrshire, the Covenanters had a substantial following and secretly met in open-air ‘coventicles’ or services, on pain of death if discovered. Although the Covenanters were probably as intolerant of those who did not share their beliefs as the establishment that persecuted them, by Andrew’s day they were romanticised as communities that sought religious liberty and were ready to die for their principles.20 More immediately relevant, however, were forms of political radicalism dating from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. These were initiated by the effects of the American and then the French revolutions on both English and Scottish societies. These revolutions influenced the development of radical ideas that emphasised

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the rights of men and the broad notions of liberty and equality. The poet Robert Burns, born in Alloway, Ayrshire in 1759, was to incorporate such ideas into his poetry and, before his death in Dumfries at the age of thirty-seven, had become Scotland’s best-known poet. His first book of poems was actually published in Kilmarnock by John Wilson in July 1786 and many of his poems captured the radicalism of the age. Andrew’s favourite, ‘A Man’s A Man for A’That’, had been inspired by Thomas Paine’s 1792 praise of the French Revolution in The Rights of Man. Burns’s poetry was virtually compulsory reading for most Scots, especially anyone born in Ayrshire. From an early age, Andrew was taken with Burns and years later, when prime minister of Australia, would spend evenings reciting verses from memory to his wife and children. He always admired the humanity, sense of individual liberty and social justice that he associated with this poetry.21 By the 1830s, with the growth in Scottish industrialisation and urbanisation, this radicalism evolved into new forms in the growing Chartist movement. This had arisen in England partly from primitive, and ultimately unsuccessful, efforts to organise a mass trade union movement and partly because the Reform Bill of 1832 gave the parliamentary franchise to the middle classes but excluded their working class allies. In the 1830s and 1840s, the Chartists campaigned for an extension of the suffrage and for parliamentary reforms, as well as for better industrial working conditions. Andrew’s grandfather, John, had been a Chartist and took part in many of these campaigns in the local area. This region had its own Chartist newspaper, Ayrshire Examiner, supplemented by the nearby Glasgow Saturday Post as well as several local Chartist cells. Although Chartism generally failed at the time, it did help transmit a radical sense of politics to many Scots who would later campaign for democratic and industrial reforms.22 The Fisher family was certainly part of that tradition and it was clearly instilled into Andrew from an early age. Andrew and his older brother John had a reputation in the village for being very well read in radical literature. While John was still at home, he and Andrew had begun to seriously study the writings of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Carlyle was, after Burns, the native son most widely read by working-

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class Scots. He became something of a political reactionary in later life, but in his diverse writings he offered trenchant criticisms of the new political economy, its failure to address the social squalor it had created and its loss of any religious underpinnings. The American Emerson is now best remembered as a transcendentalist poet and philosopher, but in 1847 he had first visited England and in English Traits (1856) described the growing gulf between the social classes owing to the industrialisation process he had observed on his visit. Although he had his own crisis of faith, Emerson had been a Unitarian minister, perhaps giving Andrew his first serious contact with this doctrine. Emerson emphasised the idea of men living in simple harmony with nature and with their fellow human beings. Such beliefs fitted with Andrew’s own views and there were certainly elements of Emerson in his later ethical and moral outlook.23

Religion Formally and in other ways, another important influence on Andrew would be his religious upbringing. The Fishers were, like most of their fellow Scots, Presbyterians. This protestant movement, initially based on the theology of John Calvin, had been associated with the religious life and character of Scotland since the Reformation. In Australia, and then later in England, Fisher would be a member of the Presbyterian Church although his actual attendance on Sundays varied in frequency over the years. In Scotland in the second half of the nineteenth century, religious affiliation was a complicated matter because there were three Presbyterian churches, reflecting earlier splits and differences. The Church of Scotland (the ‘Auld Kirk’) still espoused the idea of a national religion closely tied to the state. Of almost equal size, the Free Church had split from it in 1843 and was marginally more Calvinist in its theology. Its followers believed in the national support of religion, provided that the church had its own freedoms which, in practice, meant relying on the support of its members. The other breakaway group, the United Presbyterians (UPs), accepted complete separation of church and state and was entirely dependent upon the contribu-

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tions of members for the survival of its congregations. Crosshouse had long been part of the Church of Scotland parish of Kilmaurs, but that town also contained a preaching station that became a Free Church in 1882, as well as a United Presbyterian church. Nearby Kilmarnock also contained a variety of these churches and most of the Fisher family and their relatives were Free Church.24 Andrew’s Presbyterian background was important to him in two ways. All of the churches were essentially self-governing bodies where, at least in theory, members were supposed to be equal. The congregations elected elders from among themselves who were largely responsible for governing the church. This instilled in him a sense of equality, self-governance and collective decision making that would prove important in his later political career. At the same time, this religious upbringing also imparted to him certain standards of personal morality and conduct. Although traditional Calvinism had emphasised the sinful nature of man and the need for God’s salvation, as the nineteenth century wore on, even strict believers tended to mitigate some of these ideas. There was a greater emphasis on personal faith and the moral improvement of one’s self and, for some believers, the society around them. As an adult, Andrew showed little interest in matters of church doctrine but he certainly found the Calvinist explanation that humans were tempted through their own weakness important in explaining the injustices of the society around him: men were tempted by wealth and power to behave badly towards others. He often judged the world in terms of certain black and white moral values.25 Yet, just as important to him, were the ethical dimensions of his own behaviour. Among the family aphorisms handed down to his children was one that an old man had once told him: ‘You do very well young man if you don’t do any harm’. This was an abiding principle he claimed he always followed and it gave him a strong sense of right and wrong. He regarded faith as a personal issue and not to be imposed upon others. He was opposed to the compulsory teaching of religion in schools because he thought belief was a voluntary issue. He never forced his children to attend Sunday school or church. He respected the beliefs of other religions and later on he admired aspects of

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Judaism and maintained close links with the Salvation Army because of its valuable social work. Despite the anti-Catholic and anti-Irish feelings of many Protestant Scots, especially in the mining towns of Ayrshire, Andrew later got along quite well with Irish Catholic colleagues in the Australian labour movement. At no stage in his long career was he ever accused of bigotry, despite his own firmly held beliefs.26 The religion of his youth also left its mark in other ways. He often used biblical allusions and references in his everyday speech in an almost unconscious manner. He believed in the efficacy of private prayer. He was a firm supporter of the sanctity of the Sabbath, if not always for church going. Later, in Queensland, he joined the local defence force but gave it up partly because he found he would have to train on Sundays.27 Throughout Andrew’s childhood, Scotland closed down on the Sabbath and around half the population, dressed in their Sunday best, attended church either in the morning or in the afternoon or sometimes at both times. The rest of the day would be spent in sober pursuits and although this type of Sunday was beginning to disappear in the larger cities, it was still a common pattern in the rural areas. Andrew’s time on the Sabbath would have been reduced, however, by his having to undertake about four hours of work during the years of his mining employment. Still, it was not surprising that he later viewed Sundays as a time for relaxation and limited pleasurable pursuits.28

Temperance and co-operation Harsh working and living conditions led many a Scottish miner to escape into the oblivion of alcohol. At first, the churches had not been strongly against this pursuit but during the nineteenth century a growing temperance movement emerged, increasingly with religious support, which attempted to deal with this problem in two ways. One method was by imposing restrictive regulations on drinking habits, while the other was to encourage drinkers to show self-abstinence. Andrew’s father was a leader of a temperance society in Crosshouse until his death. In 1880 and then again in 1885, this society petitioned the Company Stores to stop selling alcohol on Saturdays and Sundays.

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The Fisher family were abstainers and both John and Andrew were members of the temperance society (and remained so all their lives), while young Robert was also noted as a total abstainer.29 Andrew spoke at temperance meetings in Crosshouse and one of his first comments on life in Australia was that drink was as much a problem in Queensland as it was in Scotland. He certainly thought a society would be better off with a reduction in the number of drinking houses and had no apparent later objection to King O’Malley, another firm abstainer, decreeing that the new Australian capital would be without licensed premises. However, Fisher’s approach to this issue was in keeping with many Presbyterians, in that he did not campaign to any great extent for the prohibition or restriction of alcohol in society at large. He was also aware that many friends and acquaintances did not share his teetotaller views. At later functions, whenever he was the host, he always provided his guests with alcohol. He was a supporter of the selfdiscipline approach to the issue of temperance and this also shaped his character in terms of his valuing sobriety and self-control.30 The co-operative movement had taken off earlier in the nineteenth century and by 1865 there were between 600 and 700 stores throughout Great Britain. These stores were particularly useful for Scottish mining communities. Working for a designated colliery meant miners not only lived in company houses but often had to buy basic goods from the colliery-owned shop at inflated prices. As mining wages were often only paid fortnightly or even monthly, many families, who had problems budgeting, took advantage of the company store credit but this often only increased their indebtedness. The co-op or ‘The Store’, in which each person paid a small membership joining fee, gave miners the choice of buying quality basic goods at fair prices on a cash basis. The Crosshouse co-op originally started in a small house in High Row in 1863 and struggled for several years. However, by 1872, it had opened a new shop with its own bakehouse, then established branches in the nearby villages of Kilmaurs and Springside and added a reading room and library to its functions. The co-op also provided a store book for each member, essentially a savings account, and it was the main investment of the Fisher family. At Robert’s death in 1887, the family

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store book contained over £100, which was a solid amount of savings from a family that could not be considered well-off.31 Aside from the practical advantages of the co-op, this movement also gave Andrew a sense of how the working class could engage in self-help and mutual co-operation to better their economic conditions. The movement’s success also relied on the hard work and honesty of those who ran it on behalf of others, which further influenced his ethical outlook on the responsibility of those who are placed in positions of trust by the people. Clearly, the Fisher family and his upbringing in Ayrshire were to leave their marks, in various ways, on young Andrew’s character. But along with these values would be his life experiences on the coalfields and in the world of unions and local politics which he also entered at a very early age.

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2 Mines, unions and politics

The coalmines In 1893, Andrew reported that he had left school and entered the Crosshouse mines before he was ten and Margaret Fisher later confirmed that her husband began his working life at age nine.1 His older brother John had already entered the mines at age eleven or twelve but Andrew went even earlier. The 1872 Education Act made thirteen the legal school leaving age and was to come into effect in early August of that year. If the family wanted to avoid their son being forced to stay at school until thirteen, the easiest way would have been to have him leave and not return for the new school year. The Miners Act at the time was supposed to prevent children entering the mines until they turned twelve and Andrew reported that because of this he did later return to school for a short period but then went back to the mines. Although proud of having worked his way up from pit boy to prime minister, as time went on he became vaguer on the exact age he started work. This was almost certainly due to Fisher’s later embarrassment about how little formal education he had actually received.2 It is not clear why John and Andrew went to work in the mines at such early ages. One view has been that Robert Fisher was no longer capable of mine work because of health problems, and so the extra income was needed. But Hugh Murdoch later claimed that both John and Andrew were sent by their father to the mines because coal prices 17

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and wages were high due to the recent Franco-Prussian War, and their wages were then invested in the village co-op. The truth was more likely a combination of these factors. Robert did suffer from chest complaints as he got older, and could no longer provide a family income by mine work as in the past. The high wages certainly were an incentive to send his sons to the mines, as he saw great advantages, not only for his own family, but for the village, in having a strong coop venture. In any event, this mining experience would have life-long implications for Andrew.3 Early employment in the mines as breadwinners, despite the curtailment of their education, was important in promoting the adolescent development of both boys, especially as their father’s health declined. Robert’s diminished role may have mitigated the strictness associated with his former control over his sons. It also gave them a strong sense of the need to take their responsibilities seriously in the care of others. There was no question that the boys would do anything but mining. This was partly because of family tradition but also because Crosshouse, aside from a small agricultural implements works, offered few employment opportunities outside of the dozen local mines. Although Robert and James both stayed on at school until thirteen, they were then sent off to work as miners.4 Young Andrew’s first mining jobs were as a trapper using the manual air pump to push air in to the cleaning shafts, and to open and close connecting doors. He then worked as a pit boy, leading a pony carting coal to the lifting shaft; and when he reached the required age, was permitted to work at the actual coalface. In 1878, at age sixteen, he was made an operator of the sledger, which was a steam pump machine used to circulate fresh air into the mines. The position required training in basic locomotion skills and was better-paid and more prestigious than the usual pick-and-shovel work. This promotion may have been because the teetotaller Andrew was seen as an intelligent, reliable and responsible worker. Many employers looked favourably upon sober working men, as seen from the various testimonials provided about Andrew’s teetotaller brothers that were kept in the family files. The variety of mining positions held by Andrew led to

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later questions as to whether he was ever a miner in the sense of being an underground pick-and-shovel man. Although his family liked to emphasise such a career, he appears to have undertaken a mixture of jobs but a lot of his employment in both Scotland and Queensland was in above-ground work.5 A nineteenth century coalminer was often viewed as being apart from other workers, as he toiled underground, in damp and dark conditions, twelve hours a day, at least six days a week in what was, even by that century’s standards, a brutal existence. The work was dirty and dangerous, and in the twenty-year period, 1855−75, some 383 Ayrshire miners lost their lives in industrial accidents. Many more developed lung and respiratory problems, including pneumoconiosis or ‘black lung’. Caused by micro-coal fibres spearing the cells in the lungs from prolonged exposure to coal dust, it was a slow acting but fatal disease. Even those miners who did not develop actual pneumoconiosis, often suffered from the constant exposure to coal dust.6 Andrew later suffered from catarrh and slept poorly because of breathing and chest problems; and the life expectancy of the Fisher men who had been miners was significantly shorter than that of the Garven family males, none of whom entered the mines.7 Scottish miners were regarded as part of the skilled working class and this made them, in theory, easier to unionise as they also had a sense of industrial solidarity. However, in Ayrshire the scattered nature of the mines made it difficult to create one union, thus weakening the effectiveness of co-ordinated action. Compared to other apprenticeships, the relatively short period of training for miners of no more than six months, left them vulnerable to semi-skilled or even unskilled workers being used to take their place in any prolonged industrial dispute. The main threat came from the above-ground on-cost men who were employed to do night maintenance and bring coal from the storage pits to the train marshalling yards. Usually they were Irish or of Irish heritage and formed a community of their own within Scottish society. In 1861, about 10 per cent of the population of Ayrshire had been born in Ireland. Although some on-cost men did eventually move into the mines, they were usually kept out by the prejudice of

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the Protestant Scots. This created a divided working class and mining community, especially in times of industrial unrest. Most Ayrshire miners were employed under bonds or yearly contracts and the coal owners required them to live in the company housing estates. Usually the housing rent was fixed as part of the bond, but once the contract expired, the miner and his family would have to vacate their home unless he signed a new agreement. Being blacklisted by the mine owner (especially for union activity) meant not only the loss of a job but, as Andrew’s grandfather experienced, also the family home. Although the Fishers may have lived in a miner’s row in the 1860s, the rest of their homes appear to have been outside of this environment. This was probably because Robert had ceased full-time mining work by the 1870s and perhaps because he liked the idea of gaining some security over his residence, given what had happened to his father.8

Enter Keir Hardie It is likely that Andrew joined the union when he started work, given his family’s background, although his known connection began with his election in 1879 as the district secretary of the miners union. This election, at the age of seventeen, suggests recognition by his peers of Andrew’s promising ability as a leader and his commitment to unionism. In this same year, James Keir Hardie arrived in Ayrshire seeking support for the Lanarkshire miners who were then in the middle of a sixteen-week dispute. Born in Lanarkshire in August 1856 as the illegitimate son of Mary Keir, he was given his last name when his mother married David Hardie in 1858. After various odd jobs from the age of seven onwards, Hardie started work in the coal pits at age ten and learned to read and write by attending night school. He was also influenced by his Lowlands upbringing and the poetry of Robert Burns. He was a firm advocate of temperance and, although his parents were non-believers, later converted to evangelical Christianity as well as supporting many aspects of the Christian Socialist movement. He had, like Andrew, begun his union agitation at an early age and was

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blacklisted on many sites for his outspoken views and activities.9 Hardie returned to Ayrshire in early 1880, with his departure from Lanarkshire under something of a cloud. He had been removed from the position of union secretary and been blamed for the extended duration of the dispute which resulted in the financial collapse of the union. However, he quickly assumed the post of general secretary of the Ayrshire Miners Association. The miners had some small successes in early 1880 after considerable industrial unrest during 1879, and then decided in August to press the mine owners for a 10 per cent wage rise. Negotiations broke down very quickly and the miners were again out on strike. It is not clear whether Hardie provoked this strike or was led along by the rank and file who often saw the summer as a good time to seek a wage rise. These were sometimes known as ‘potato strikes’ because the miners could find food in the fields and the warmer weather was a popular time to be on picket lines. Since the average length of a Scottish miners strike during this period was about ten weeks, such practical considerations were important factors for the strikers and their families. When the strike began, the miners, holding banners, marched up and down the town road for hours, preceded by a brass band. Hundreds of people came out on to the streets and waved as they marched past, giving them food and money for their strike fund. This was needed because many strikers and their families soon faced starvation when the company shops were ordered not to give them any more credit. They now relied on the charity of the village cooperative, but after eight weeks, it had run out of money.10 As was common with such strikes at the time, the mine owners soon attempted to bring in Irish strike breakers. The first attempt to transport them by train failed when hundreds of angry miners lined the platforms in the shire and no train would stop at any station on that day. A second attempt by road saw the main highways blocked by hundreds of miners. After several strike breakers were assaulted, the local constable was forced to call out the yeomanry or militia to maintain order. In November 1880, some ten weeks after it began, the strike finally collapsed and half the miners were blacklisted. Many living in company homes had been evicted or soon faced it. After work

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resumed, the mine owners increased wages but the union had been financially broken by the strike.11 As a union official, Andrew now struggled to obtain work and John appears to have suffered the same fate. Despite being in love with one of Hugh Murdoch’s sisters, John decided to abandon mining altogether in 1884 and moved to Liverpool. He never married, but joined the police force and was rapidly promoted.12 Andrew found his mine work was now erratic and, in any event, wages had fallen quite dramatically from the previous decade. He may have found some seasonal farm work and he assisted Robert at home. Andrew had good mechanical skills (as did his father) and the two men appear to have engaged in simple contract work with nearby mines, probably repairing machinery and other equipment. There was also fishing to supplement the family diet and at least one sympathetic farmer always gave the family more produce than they could afford to buy. Yet none of this would have provided a steady income nor given Andrew any sense of a secure future.13 Hardie, without a union to run, decided to remain in the area and eventually bought a house (Lochnorris) in the town of Cumnock, about 30 kilometres from Crosshouse. He found employment as a writer for a local newspaper, The Cumnock News, and over time became its chief writer and then editor. The relationship between Hardie and Andrew grew stronger, especially after John’s departure for Liverpool. Aside from his parents, John was clearly a major influence on the younger Andrew. He was regarded by his mother as the most intelligent of her sons and was incredibly diligent in his work habits. A family photo, taken in 1885 (see figure 1), reveals the seated John to be a powerfully built man with the broad shoulders of a miner, and Andrew literally looked up to him as he was well over 187 cm tall. Andrew’s quest for self improvement in these years had usually been in tandem with his older brother.14 This loss of John was compensated, to some extent, by Andrew’s growing closeness to Hardie. The two men had much in common. They came from a coal mining background, were convinced trade unionists and were eager to change the society around them. Indeed one biographer’s description of Hardie’s moral

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stance of ‘a religion of humility with little doctrinal context, utopian, romantic, outward looking, democratic and egalitarian’ fitted perfectly with Fisher’s own outlook. In many ways both men were typical of the superior workingmen of the time, devout teetotallers, respected within their communities and supporting radical politics within the confines of the known system.15

Politics Andrew visited Hardie on a fairly regular basis and aside from their common love of Burns, politics was an important topic of conversation. Both men’s political views were generally in line with conventional working-class thinking of the time. The extension of the adult franchise in the 1867 Reform Bill opened the right to vote for many of the better-paid Scottish workers. By the early 1880s, a third reform bill was now under consideration and this was strongly supported by Andrew who, in 1884, chaired a public meeting in Crosshouse advocating this reform. He even received a reply to his letter, regarding the resolutions passed by the meeting, from William Gladstone’s secretary on behalf of the prime minister. It is also likely that Andrew participated in a parade though the streets of Kilmarnock in September 1884, organised by the Liberal Association (John Fisher had been a member for many years) in conjunction with local trade societies, supporting reform. Scotland at this time was strongly Liberal in its political alignment, with the party holding sixty-two of the seventy-two Scottish seats in the House of Commons in 1885. There were various factions within this broad party, but the Fishers were supporters of the LibLabs who drew support from the newly enfranchised working class. Many Liberal politicians found they had thousands of new voters in their electorates and this led them to support some industrial reforms. For Andrew, the Liberal belief in individual rights meant a man should also be free from economic exploitation. He was so taken with an inscription quoting his supposed ancestor, William Wallace, that he later copied it into his notebook while visiting Wallace’s monument in Aberdeen: ‘I tell you the truth, liberty is the best of all things, my son,

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never live under slavish bonds’. For Andrew, the liberty to freely associate with others in a union was one way for men to avoid economic and social slavery. Both Hardie and Andrew had been disappointed when two local members, who promoted a Lib-Lab platform, had come out in support of the colliery owners during the 1880 strike. However, Hardie remained orthodox in his support for such candidates until around 1887, when he ran for election himself and began to consider creating a party to represent the working class.16

Socialism It was also during this period that Andrew may have begun to think about socialism. His first known public statements on this issue did not appear until he was living in Australia and may have been more influenced by his Queensland experiences. By 1893, he was describing society as being divided into two main classes, the ‘speculating class’ and the ‘working class’. The speculating classes were the controllers of the means of production and supply, who speculated on a nation’s resources for personal profit and wealth. Instead of returning this back into society, they used it to gain more wealth for themselves. The working classes were almost everyone else in society who toiled under this structure. To maintain their wealth and position in society the speculating classes were more likely to oppress or exploit the rest. One form of exploitation was by holding onto and locking up access to the land. While land reform was a long-standing idea held both in Scotland and the Australian colonies, it was also strongly influenced by the ideas of the American Henry George. In his book Poverty and Progress, George portrayed the speculating classes as the great landowners oppressing the rest of society by controlling not only the means of production and supply but the very land itself. George proposed placing a tax on land in order to at least partially overcome this injustice. He toured the Australian colonies for three months in 1890 where he was warmly received by the labour movement. While Andrew may have taken up these views following this visit, it should be noted that George had also visited Ayrshire in 1884 on his second tour of Britain and gave a

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lecture in Kilmarnock. Although he found that most Scots were not particularly receptive to his ideas, it is quite possible that Andrew first heard George at that time. He certainly came to later endorse many of the American’s ideas as part of his broad political outlook.17 Many of Hardie’s biographers argue that he had shown little interest in socialism before 1886 and that his newspaper columns were simply devoted to arguments for self-improvement and moral reforms. Yet sometime around August 1886, he did begin to move away from this position and his writings now had a harder edge. It seems unlikely that this could have been entirely due to an overnight conversion and it would not have been unusual for Andrew and Hardie to have read and discussed socialist literature, which was widely circulating at the time. Hardie, like Fisher, came to espouse a fairly simple division of society into two components and later claimed it was George who had given him these insights, so there may have been discussions by the two men, given George’s lectures in Scotland and the publication of Progress and Poverty in England by 1881.18 They could also have read Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto, which was published regularly in English editions; or more likely HM Hyndman’s England for All, first published in 1881, which was Marx in plain English. In 1883, in Socialism Made Plain, Hyndman called for the nationalisation of all the means of production and also supported the campaign for universal suffrage. His Social Democratic Federation (SDF), founded in 1881, published a regular newspaper, Justice, and Hardie began reading this paper after it was first published in 1884. Hyndman and the SDF are often seen as ‘Marxist’, but in many ways, they also appealed to workers by espousing long-held reformist ideas that many, including Scottish miners such as Hardie and Fisher, could accept without any real misgivings.19 In whatever form he received it, this literature probably helped confirm in Andrew’s mind what he already knew about the injustices associated with the capitalist system. The mining community in which he had been raised seemed to confirm the notion of exploitation through simple class stratification. Crosshouse and its nearby towns largely consisted of miners, tenant farmers and labourers who made

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up the vast majority of the population, while economic and political power in these communities was held by a small group of mine owners, managers and businessmen. This bifurcation, although simplistic, appealed to Andrew and remained the basis for his thinking about the structure of any society. The fact that he subsequently spent years living in a Queensland mining community where the mine-managers often exerted considerable influence within the town only reinforced this basic premise. Andrew never liked having his views challenged once he had developed them and so he never subsequently advanced much further in his ideas on class structure.20 Andrew was also committed to the concept of an increasingly free society being able to eradicate the worst features of this system by peaceful means. He was willing to accept that the ‘speculating classes’ would be allowed to continue to control most of their assets, provided the workers could right the injustices of the system. At first this was largely by industrial action but over time he also thought of the need for government legislation As he later explained, he wanted government action to give ‘the typical labourer…the fairest condition of life; the fullest opportunity to rise in life; and everything else follows’. He later shared the views of Edward Bellamy, the American socialist utopian, whose book Looking Backward, was popular with many in the Australian labour movement. Bellamy argued that socialism could be achieved gradually, peacefully and almost imperceptibly. Andrew was well aware of the socialist critiques of capitalist exploitation and he certainly shared with many of his contemporaries a general enthusiasm for a broad concept of socialism, however much he may have vaguely and romantically defined it.21

Emigration By the mid-1880s, Andrew Fisher was a man in his early twenties and at a crossroads in terms of his future. The miners union was reformed in 1884 and he became a representative for the Coalhouse District. He found some work in early 1885 but was blacklisted again following a number of lightening strikes at the coal pits. He and James had been

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considering for some time emigrating to either New Zealand or one of the Australian colonies. They chose Queensland, Fisher later claimed, on the basis of material sent by the Queensland government. Sir Thomas McIlwraith, Premier of Queensland and a native of Ayrshire, had also visited in 1884 and trumpeted the opportunities for hardworking Scots in his colony. The local papers often contained success stories of locals who had made good in Queensland, and the colony’s climate was another consideration since it was commonly believed that a warm climate would counter the effects of miner’s lung. McIlwraith had also convinced one shipping line to sail to Australia via the Torres Strait, rather than the Bass Strait, so that Queensland ports, rather than Victorian ones, would be the first landings for passengers. The relatively cheaper fare to Brisbane, courtesy of the colonial government’s subsidy of a £7 assisted passage, was a further attractive factor. Andrew later recalled that there seemed to be greater opportunities ‘for making our way in the world than were possible in our own muchloved country’.22 Andrew then faced a personal crisis. He was torn between loyalty to his family and his need to secure a future abroad. With John in Liverpool, he was the eldest son at home and had a strong sense of family responsibility. The final decision was made when his mother said she would disown him if he did not leave. In many ways, Jane Fisher, rather than her husband, was a driving force for her sons to better themselves. Robert, for all of his interest in radical literature and community service, did not have the same burning ambitions of many of his children. Of the brothers, David was the son that probably most took after his father. Although as intelligent as John, he joined the railways as a clerk at an early age and stayed in this employment all his working life. This caused Andrew enormous frustration as he later, unsuccessfully, urged his brother to make better use of his talents in other employment.23 Although John was in Liverpool, he would, as the eldest son, still continue to look after the family if Robert’s health worsened. Young Robert would also be at home and he and John became closer after Andrew left, with both brothers visiting each other on a regular basis.24

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On a June evening in 1885, Andrew and James left Kilmarnock station for London and took passage from Portsmouth on the steamer New Guinea, bound for Brisbane. The ship carried 422 migrants, three-quarters of whom had some form of assisted passage. In keeping with his experiences of being part of a community, Andrew travelled to Australia in a group of eight men migrating together. The group included James Stephenson (who eventually returned to Crosshouse), William Solomon (Andrew later acted as best man at his wedding) and Walter Herron (who eventually settled in Ipswich). Irene Herron, Walter’s wife, was able to join him two years later, once he had established himself. Despite all the friends with him, Andrew’s departure was undoubtedly one of the hardest decisions of his life. He would never see many of his immediate family again. When he visited Great Britain in 1902, his father and three of his brothers were dead and the family no longer lived in Scotland.25 On Monday, 17 August 1885, the New Guinea steamed into Brisbane after calling at Thursday Island and ports along the Queensland coast. The heat of the Red Sea had seen the death of two passengers but otherwise the rest arrived, after a monotonous voyage, in fairly good health. Upon disembarking the next morning, Andrew’s party were welcomed by the local Scottish Association. Although he didn’t realise it at the time, the colony would offer him far greater prospects than he ever dreamed of when he left Scotland. Yet his Scottish experiences had taught him the value of family relationships, the expectation of setting high moral standards and of the need for temperance and self-improvement. It also had shaped his ideas on the concept of serving the wider community through institutions such as the church, the co-op and the union, as well as liberal political activism and of course he had acquired the skills of a coalminer. The question was how far he would now successfully adapt himself to new conditions in Queensland.26

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3 A new life in Queensland

Andrew and James arrived in Queensland to a booming colony. In the decade after 1881, its population doubled to nearly 400 000 (including over 106 000 British migrants like themselves). The influx of British investment in the pastoral, mining and sugar industries boosted export earnings and employment levels. Queensland was, however, unique in that Brisbane did not dominate the colony in the same way that the southern capitals did in their respective colonies. It also failed to provide the same levels of employment for a large labouring population as the other capitals. This was partly due to its location in the far south of the colony, while profitable industries, such as sugar, were located along the coast and the mining and pastoral industries were located in the north and west. Queensland therefore was more decentralised than its southern counterparts. Its working classes were mainly found in the mining industries, shearing sheds, railway workshops and on the wharves of the ports strung out along the coast. This dispersal had implications for the future shape and direction of the trade union movement and labour politics in that colony, as well as the development of Fisher’s own career.1

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Unions and politics By the 1880s, the Queensland trade union movement was growing rapidly. The Brisbane Trades and Labour Council (TLC) had been established in September 1885 and represented the craft and trade workers in that city. In 1886, the Trade Unions Act gave legal recognition to unions and this helped the growth of so-called ‘new unionism’ among waterside workers, miners and the shearers; and the emerging Australian Workers Union would play a key role in the subsequent history of the union movement in Queensland. Such unions, influenced by the British movement, relied on semi-skilled and even unskilled workers joining on an industry basis. They tended to be more militant and concerned with issues such as hours of work and rates of pay than maintaining skilled status or providing sickness and insurance benefits that the older unions had espoused. In saying that, some of the newer unions were also interested in welfare issues and a number of the older unions, worried over the declining job status of their members, were often more militant than in the past. However, this traditional way of describing the two groups still has some merit. By 1888, the number of union members had doubled in just over a year and Brisbane played host to an inter-colonial meeting of the Trade Union Congress. By 1890, there were officially 21 739 unionists registered as per the 1886 Act, but the majority of the Queensland workforce, estimated at 120 000 to 140 000, remained unorganised. Nevertheless, the unions formed the basis for a growing industrial movement and eventually a political movement as well.2 Queensland politics in the 1880s was dominated by two broad factions. The conservatives, led by the colourful McIlwraith, were supported by the pastoralists, sugar planters and financial interests. The liberals, led by Sir Samuel Griffith, relied upon the middle class, enfranchised workingmen and the Darling Downs farmers. The differences between the two factions were not deep and by 1890, they would merge into a coalition. McIlwraith led an activist government interested in pushing railways and other forms of regional development that would subsequently influence Fisher’s own thinking in these areas.3

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Colonial democracy at the time was uneven in Queensland, with its Legislative Council being a nominated body appointed for life and the electorates for the Legislative Assembly varying in numbers of voters. Larger towns received two seats, irrespective of the population differences among them. Wealthier citizens were allowed to vote not only in the electorate where they lived, but also in any electorate where they owned property. On the other hand, many itinerant workers, especially the large shearing population, were often unable to vote due to stringent residency requirements and no women had the franchise. In 1886, the Members Expenses Act allowed members of parliament to claim expenses for each sitting they attended and in 1889, another bill granted members a payment of £300 a year plus a mileage allowance for travelling expenses. These changes, largely made in the interests of sitting members, made it feasible by the end of the decade for working men to consider standing for parliament themselves. Changing the electoral system, granting full democratic rights for men and increasingly, women as well, became an important part of this reformist movement. Brisbane by the early 1890s gained something of a reputation for the circulation of various radical ideas in its press and debating societies. Andrew was therefore settling into an environment where his Scottish interest in unionism and reform politics fitted in quite well but would also be modified by these new conditions.4

Finding work The first task for the brothers was to find employment. Brisbane was suffering from high unemployment due to a recent influx of unskilled immigrants. They only stayed briefly before leaving for Ipswich; then they travelled by ship to Maryborough and from there to Howard on the Burrum coalfields. It seems likely that most of the Crosshouse group travelled together to the area, since it was well known to Ayrshire migrants. The brothers found jobs as miners, working at the Queensland Colliery Company mine which was one of two in the area.5 Hugh Murdoch, back in Crosshouse, received a photo of Andrew and James in late 1886 and noted how healthy they both looked and how broad

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shouldered James had become in such a short time in the Queensland mines. The brothers kept in regular contact, and Murdoch reported spending time at Thorniehill with the Fisher family reading Andrew’s letters. The family sent out photos, birthday and New Year greeting cards, and copies of the local newspapers along with the annual reports of the co-op. A few later arrivals such as Irene Herron brought direct news from home. Any thoughts of returning were dispelled by letters lamenting the lack of prospects in Scotland. In contrast, by 1888, the two brothers in Howard had been able to purchase a block of land and build a small timber cottage which still stands today in Watkins Street.6 Andrew was soon put in charge of sinking a new shaft for the company’s mine and then successfully applied for the position of manager of the Number 3 Mine at Torbanlea to the south-east of Howard. This was at the second main mine in the area and was run by an ex-Ayrshire man named Robertson who later brought news of the brothers back to Thorniehill.7 In March 1888, Fisher applied for the management position in the newly subscribed Isis Investment Co of Qld mine (floated on Robertson’s holdings) but was rejected in favour of a less qualified man.8 He long believed that he was unsuccessful because he had joined the miner’s union in 1886. Family tradition also has it that he had gotten off-side with the mine owners when he had been supportive of a strike at one of the shafts by workers campaigning for a half-day break on Saturdays. However, this may have been later self-justification by Andrew for not having been promoted.9

The move to Gympie Upset at being passed over, Andrew decided to investigate a move to Gympie about 130 kilometres south. The manager of the mine before him, Matt Ferguson, had been an old Gympie man and it is likely that he talked up the town. Andrew liked the look of Gympie and in April left James behind and departed Howard so suddenly that he failed to collect his back pay which he had to subsequently retrieve. Even today, the tourist brochures proclaim Gympie as ‘The Town that saved Queensland’. In 1867, the young colony was facing bankruptcy

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when a miner named James Nash discovered gold near the present site of the Gympie Town Hall. This led to Queensland’s first gold rush and helped set the colony on its road to prosperity. Within months of Nash’s discovery there were 25 000 people on the goldfields. Gympie was proclaimed a municipality in 1880, became a town a decade later and a city by 1905. The arrival of the railway in 1881 added to its prosperity and in 1888 it became one of the few towns in Queensland to have its own stock exchange. When Andrew arrived, gold was the backbone of the town’s economy with the mines of Gympie, Charters Towers and Mount Morgan providing between them three-quarters of Queensland’s gold output.10 Fisher would find that the Gympie goldmining industry had similarities to coalmining but also many differences. The dangers in the goldmines were much the same, especially now that shafts needed to be dug to extract the ore. In the past, the larger owners often leased their holdings to contractors or used a system, derived from Cornish miners, known as tributing. Individual miners would obtain a section of mine face to work for a set period and a portion of their earnings (tribute) was paid back to the company. Both systems encouraged risk taking in order to maximise profits, but the miners considered themselves as small businessmen. Although most Gympie mines began employing wage earners during the 1880s, many miners continued to hold their old attitudes. They showed less regard for safety issues than coalminers and were often suspicious of the radical side of the labour movement. Because of the presence of the stock exchange, they also had a reputation for speculating in shares. It has been claimed that as early as 1887, Andrew also purchased his first shares in the newly floated Dudley Coal and Investment Company that was to open a mining shaft in Howard but the records of the company, which folded in 1891, do not list him as shareholder. Nevertheless, during the 1890s he certainly purchased mining shares on the Gympie stock exchange and such investments became a life-long interest.11 Not surprisingly, the Gympie miners were regarded, even by goldminers in other areas, as relatively conservative. Although they had an eight-hour day, they worked longer than many other miners because

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they failed to secure a shorter week by united industrial action. They did, however, share with their fellow miners an open hostility toward any efforts to weaken their status. In the history of the goldfields, this frequently meant hostility towards the presence of Asian, especially Chinese, labour. Although there was some tolerance of the Chinese working older diggings in Victoria, this was less so in Queensland. The white miners were strongly supportive of any programs to control Chinese immigration and this was an issue which Andrew never questioned. To add to these pressures, Queensland was peculiar among the colonies in that it had adopted a system of using South Pacific or Melanesian islanders (‘Kanakas’) as imported indentured workers on many of the sugar farms because of a shortage of white labour. Their presence represented a source of unease for European workers, conscious of wages and conditions, especially in periods of economic downturn. Indeed the Kanaka issue became an important part of Andrew’s later electoral success.12 He began his employment in the No.1 North Phoenix gold mine and worked as an ordinary miner but was also expected to be a powder monkey. This involved the dangerous job of planting and detonating explosives to develop new shafts. As he later recalled, ‘I hold there is no more disagreeable duty than to have to go back to an unexploded charge’.13 He would also discover that if he came to Queensland to improve his miner’s cough, the gold mines were the wrong place to go. The mine shafts were up to a thousand feet deep, almost five times the depth of the Howard coal mines, and then followed cuttings that weaved their way well underground. The fine dust surrounding these miners was even more lethal on the lungs than the heavier coal dust. Still the work did reinforce a sense of the collective labour and equality that helped counter some of the previous attitudes of individualism associated with the goldmining industry. He was employed at the mine until he joined a strike at the end of 1890 and was dismissed. It was not until he joined the South Great Eastern Extended mine in 1891, this time as an engine driver on the surface, that he worked regularly again until that mine folded in 1892.14

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The Irvine family Some time in late 1890 or early 1891, Andrew began to board with the Irvine family. Henry Irvine, a local mine manager, had suffocated in a mining accident and his wife, Margaret, faced with the loss of income, decided to establish a boarding house in Crown Road, Red Hill and let out her nearby Maori Lane home.15 Andrew’s new lodgings began an association with that family that would, by his later marriage to the eldest daughter, Margaret, last the rest of his life. Possibly some of Andrew’s support for women’s rights was directly influenced by the Irvine women. Margaret eventually owned the two Gympie homes before she later left to live in Melbourne and young Margaret certainly had a strong sense of financial independence and the rights of women. The new boarder proved, as in Scotland, to be a hard worker and diligent in his free time. He studied and obtained his engine driver’s certificate, of which he remained inordinately proud for the rest of his life. It was the first and only formal qualification that he possessed and he was one of the first fully qualified drivers in the Gympie area. He also mastered shorthand which also stood him in good stead for union work, parliamentary politics and the newspaper industry.16 By the early 1890s, Andrew was working hard at self-improvement. His later explanation for leaving Howard was that he had found ‘a bush township mentally impoverishing’.17 In contrast, in Gympie he found ‘much better informed men than one invariably meets on a gold field’. Although these views may have been espoused partly to show that he had always sought self-betterment rather than simply being upset about being passed over for a job, Hugh Murdoch, at the time, had noted Andrew’s unease with Howard. He wrote hoping that Gympie society would prove to be ‘a little more civilised and sympathetic’ towards him. On his arrival, he had joined the Wide Bay branch of the Manchester Independent Order of Oddfellows. This organisation provided sickness and funeral benefits, stressed the need for the moral development of its members and was a means of extending social contacts within the town. He served as secretary of that body as well as of the Gympie Chess Club and spent many evenings successfully playing that game at the local

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School of Arts. He was a shareholder in the Gympie Industrial Co-Op Society soon after it was founded in 1891, and, for a time, joined the local defence force. He also became a member of the congregation at St Andrews, the local Presbyterian Church, and served as Sunday School Superintendent. He was proud of his British heritage but like many who came from disadvantaged backgrounds, was also aware that Britain had stifled his aspirations. He would enthusiastically embrace his adopted homeland, believing it gave him the opportunities and the rewards that had been lacking at home.18 Around this time, Andrew also considered entering the ministry. Attending St Andrews he had become very friendly with its minister, Reverend Robert Wallace, who was financially well-off, and offered to pay for him to go to university. In the end he declined the offer because he did not wish to leave Gympie for distant Melbourne − presumably to study at the Presbyterian Theological Hall located within Ormond College at the University of Melbourne. He may have also had theological reservations about the ministry in that he was increasingly attracted to the doctrine of Unitarianism during this decade and organised and spoke at seminars on it at his local church. This theological position would have been harder to defend had he decided to study for the ministry. More likely, however, was that he felt his lack of formal education would have been a barrier to pursuing successful tertiary studies. In these years, he sought advice from Wallace on what he should be reading in terms of classical literature in order to improve his general education.19 While Wallace left Gympie in early 1891, he remained a close friend for many years and was to be Fisher’s last real mentor. Later on he sought Wallace’s advice on issues such as his health and even whether to marry.20

Deaths in the family In December 1887, Robert Fisher died after a long illness due to pulmonary phthisis or tuberculosis. Andrew and James received the news in a letter from John, who also insisted on paying for the funeral. Hugh Murdoch wrote telling Andrew that his father had borne his

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final illness with dignity and that he often spoke with pride of his sons, who he described as ‘honest, intelligent and loving’.21 The Fishers then found themselves in a dispute over £24 with their Aunt Janet (Stewart) who claimed she had given her brother-in-law, Robert, the money to invest in the co-op. There was a suspicion by the family that either the money had been repaid by Robert or that it was intended towards a trust fund that he wanted to set up for his three youngest children. Young Robert, as the oldest male at home, had to deal with the court case. The matter went for at least three years and although Janet was successful in the end, the legal costs seem to have eaten away the amount that she won. The dispute created some tension in the small village of Crosshouse, where various families took different sides. Typically, Andrew, despite this dispute, would re-establish friendly relations with his aunt on his visit to England in 1902 and after he returned to Britain in 1916.22 In any event, life in Crosshouse was coming to an end for the Fisher family. John was promoted to Detective in 1888 and Detective Sergeant in 1892 in the Liverpool police force. Robert successfully passed his examination on Mine Inspection in 1888 after three years study under John Cuthbertson in Kilmarnock. (Andrew paid the examination fee for him.) He then found work at the West Drumgray Colliery in Lanarkshire and then at the Bowthorn Colliery at Cleator Moor until he obtained a mine manager’s position in Borneo at the end of 1891. At one stage, Robert and Janet had contemplated joining their brothers in Queensland until Robert found work at the Bowthorn Colliery. The rest of Fisher family joined John in Liverpool, where David joined the railways as a clerk. Before he set out for Borneo, Robert had written enthusiastically to his brothers in Queensland urging at least one of them to join him in his new venture. By this stage, Andrew was well established in Gympie but James was unemployed and, on Andrew’s urging, left Queensland to join his brother.23 James had come to Gympie in 1889 but had not been as successful as Andrew and had even gone to New South Wales looking for work. He was back in Queensland by 1891 but regarded his time in the colony as something of a failure. He later wrote to Andrew that he

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came across a boatload of passengers in India who had left ‘nearly all disappointed with the prospects of Queensland’.24 After first landing in Batavia in March 1892, he briefly met Robert but there were questions over the Borneo mine’s future solvency and his chances of employment. He could find no work in Singapore and decided to try his luck in India. He was then employed on the Kolar Goldfields in Mysore but on 25 November 1893, while trying to dislodge rock from a shaft, he slipped and fell twelve feet, rupturing his bladder, and died from infection four days later. As a member of the local volunteers, James (see figure 2) was given a military-style funeral. The mine manager informed John of his brother’s death and also sent him James’s back pay of £110. Andrew, on receiving the news from John, scribbled on the back of a photo of himself and James, ‘He had a noble mind, my brother James’.25 Robert left Borneo after a short period, also looking for better opportunities and because he had met a girl, Agnes Steel, on the ship out to Asia. He married Agnes and briefly returned to Scotland where, in June 1894, he addressed the Mining Institute of Scotland on his experiences in Labuan. He then obtained employment in British Columbia but found the location cold and isolated and was not particularly happy with it. His income wasn’t sufficient to support his wife and young daughter who had stayed in England, and he was forced to borrow £20 from Andrew. In April 1899, Robert told Andrew that he had been trying to decide if he should join him in Queensland. Eventually, he moved to another mine on Vancouver Island and was able to be reunited with his family but was killed in a private train accident in September 1900. Andrew kept in touch with Agnes when she returned to Liverpool and sent some further financial support for young Marie. Meanwhile, as his Scottish ties were breaking, other career possibilities were opening up for Andrew in Queensland.26

Growing unionism During the late 1880s, the Queensland trade union movement had become increasingly confident in its demands and expectations. It

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enjoyed the advantage after 1887 of William Lane’s editorship of the Boomerang newspaper. Lane, previously a reporter with the Brisbane Courier, was originally supportive of Henry George’s land tax but moved into his own brand of socialism. He created a sensation in his Christmas 1887 issue when he convinced Premier Griffith to write a column which appeared to endorse the idea of the state supporting working class reforms and a redistribution of resources. The Boomerang not only spread a general type of socialist message around the colony but also reported widely on labour issues, giving separate regions a sense, even if it was largely an illusion, of growing working class solidarity.27 Over time, the Brisbane-based TLC had proven to be too weak to organise the movement across other parts of Queensland. In 1889, Mat Reid, from the carpenters union, convinced most Brisbane unions to abolish the TLC and join in the creation of a new organisation to be known as the Australian Labour Federation (ALF). This body was to be geographically based on districts where its council would coordinate affiliated union activities, have power to levy affiliated union members, help create new unions and provide a united front for the unions during industrial disputes. While this organisation never really lived up to expectations, on the surface, it created a powerful instrument for working class agitation. As a part of its sixpence a month levy on members, the ALF would finance a journal. In March 1890, the Brisbane Worker, edited by Lane (who sold off the Boomerang), was first published as a monthly. It became the pre-eminent labour newspaper in the colony, moving to a fortnightly issue by October 1890 and then a weekly four-page broadsheet by April 1892. Its initial income, derived from the 14 000 affiliated union subscribers, was soon supplemented by paid advertisements and the creation of a printing house that undertook outside contract work as well as offering discounted prices for various labour publications.28 After the ALF was created in Brisbane, delegates made a tour of coastal, mining and shearing areas to sell the idea. Andrew, already familiar with the SDF concept of the one big union, participated in the creation of the first ALF branch outside of Brisbane, in May 1890.

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This covered the district of Burnett that included Gympie, Maryborough and Bundaberg. In August 1890, George Ryland, a fellow miner and friend of Andrew, wrested control of the Gympie branch of the Amalgamated Miner’s Association from an older and more moderate group that had founded it in 1886 and that opposed affiliation with the ALF. Andrew appears not to have been heavily involved in this infighting for control of the Gympie branch. Nevertheless, over the next two years he served as secretary and then replaced Ryland as president of this body. Rivalry in the Burnett ALF between the goldminers of Gympie and the coalminers of Maryborough, plus the practical problems of travel, led the Gympie branch to form a separate Joint Labor Committee by mid-1891. Ryland also served as president and Fisher as secretary of this committee.29 In August 1890, the ALF held its first general council in Brisbane, where it drew up its official constitution, set up a women’s organisation and also laid down the basis for future political action. Traditionally the ALF has been described as ‘socialistic’ because of its aim of supporting the socialisation of the means of production. Nevertheless, much of its accompanying platform was fairly pragmatic, focusing on the need for universal white adult suffrage, the abolition of the Legislative Council, equal sized electorates and annual parliaments. The mainly teetotaller delegates also urged the working class to abstain from the abuses of alcohol to bring about a better world. To achieve these aims, the ALF hoped to organise a political party before the next parliamentary election. Andrew clearly approved of the platform and kept a copy of it among his papers.30 However, most labour leaders in the district councils were more hard-headed and only the Charters Towers district was willing to accept the entire platform. The result was that in the following year the platform was toned down to place less emphasis on the socialisation of society and more on electorally popular democratic and industrial reforms. These would become a feature of Queensland’s political labour aims over the next decade.

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The great strikes This wave of labour organising in 1890 was at a time when the Queensland and indeed the global economy began a downward spiral into the worst depression outside of the 1930s. At first, the unions tended to regard the economic difficulties as temporary but they eventually suffered major setbacks because of the depression and the failure of a series of bitter strikes. The first one, in the maritime industries, had begun in the southern colonies but soon spread to the Queensland wharfs and ports. The ALF fully supported the strikers and spent over £15 000 on strike pay before, in late October 1890, it was forced to call the strike off as the government backed the employers bringing in strike breakers. No sooner was the maritime dispute over than the shearers in western Queensland began a strike. A drought since 1888 had already affected the wool industry, while the introduction of fenced paddocks and machine shearing implements reduced the need for labour and threatened the conditions of those who remained. By January 1891, the western pastoralists, encouraged by the failed maritime strikes, attempted to cut wages and open the shearing sheds to non-union workers. Many shearers went out on strike and, faced with scab labour moving into the shearing districts, responded with intimidation such as burning down woolsheds and threatening physical violence on those who did not support them. Troops and police were despatched by the government to maintain law and order and to back up the pastoralists. In the main camp at the junction town of Barcaldine, thirteen of the union leaders were arrested, charged with conspiracy and sentenced to up to three years imprisonment. These events greatly affected Andrew. He protested against the use of troops, which reminded him of the actions taken against Crosshouse miners in the 1880s. He was outraged in July 1891 when the House voted to formally thank the police, soldiers and officials for their role in ending the recent shearers strike. By 1893, while it was politically advantageous to him to campaign for the release of the jailed leaders, his sympathy for them was genuine. He kept a photo of the men in

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his personal papers, taken after they were freed in November 1893 (see figure 3) and as late as 1915 was still openly admiring of them in the federal parliament for their courage and principles.31 Despite the shearers’ defeat, tempers continued to simmer in the bush and further industrial unrest and violence flared in 1894, with police and soldiers again being sent to support the pastoralists. In any event, the failure of the first shearers strike confirmed ‘that the run of union successes of the late 1880s was indeed ended, that the failure of the maritime strike … was no temporary reverse and that union control of the labour force was far from complete’.32

The origin of labour politics Traditionally, the failure of the industrial wing has been seen as the spur to creating a political party that would secure workers’ interests via the ballot box. The ALP’s folklore has it being founded under a ghost gum (the Tree of Knowledge) near the railway station at Barcaldine during the shearers strike in 1891. The present day plaque cites the shearers deciding, after the failed strike, to pool together to have TJ (Tommy) Ryan elected to the Queensland parliament in 1892 as the first real working class representative. This is almost certainly too simple an interpretation of overlapping and complex trends. Even before these strikes, the labour political movement had begun to enjoy moderate success and even if there had been no depression and no great strikes, the political climate would probably still have led to the development of a workingman’s party. However, whether such a party would have been the same as the one created in alliance with the industrial movement, bitter over the failed strikes, is quite another matter.33 Back in 1888, the Brisbane TLC had decided to endorse four working-class candidates to run in Brisbane electorates. Thomas Glassey also ran independently as an advertised labour candidate for Bundama near Ipswich. He had been active in Britain as both a unionist and a liberal political reformer and when he arrived in Bundaberg in 1885 had supported the liberals. Glassey was the only one of the labour candidates elected and, although he informed the new parliament

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that he was a labour representative, he also announced his support for Griffith.34 In September 1890, John Hoolan, a radical newspaper editor, joined Glassey after his success in a by-election. Meanwhile the Queensland parliament finally agreed in July 1890 to reduce the term of its Legislative Assembly from five to three years after the next election, due in 1893. From 1891 onwards, spurred on by the failure of the strikes, there was a plethora of local electoral organisations created throughout the colony in anticipation of this contest. They operated under various names such as Peoples’ Parliamentary Associations (in Brisbane) or, the most common of all, Workers’ Political Organisations (WPOs). While they partly originated out of the ALF’s desire to create a political party, they were open to union and non-union workers who accepted the revised 1891 platform. These organisations were responsible for selecting candidates to run for the next election, helping enrol voters, canvassing for votes and generally educating the workers in the principles of the labour movement. During the first half of 1892, they assisted in the election of Ryan from Barcoo and GJ Hall from Bundaberg, which doubled the number of what now constituted a viable Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP).35 Andrew, with his interest in politics from his Scottish days and his outrage at the state siding with the graziers against the shearers, helped create the Gympie WPO in 1891. He was its first president, with Ryland serving as secretary. He also drafted a welcoming speech for the visiting Thomas Glassey which reflected his own perception of the way in which a politician should behave: ‘We have carefully watched your conduct in the Legislative Assembly of Queensland, and marked with pleasure the courtesy and gentlemanly behaviour which have won for you the appreciation of those who differ widely from you in the field of politics’.36 By the beginning of 1892, Andrew Fisher was an important figure in the Gympie labour movement, straddling both its industrial and political wings. As he later admitted, he then held every important position in the labour organisations on the goldfields. The cost was another period of blacklisting since he could not find work for nearly twelve months after the South Great Eastern Extended mine folded. At some stage, the clean-shaven Andrew decided to grow a moustache,

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probably to make him look older and add a sense of gravitas to his appearance. Despite his unemployment, he had done well for himself in Queensland since his arrival and although he perhaps didn’t realise it at the time, his founding and leading the WPO, rather than his previous union activities, would subsequently alter his career.37

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4 Colonial politician

In August 1890, the majority of Queensland parliamentarians, to the dismay of a minority of Liberals, entered into a coalition government (the ‘continuous ministry’) that lasted for most of the decade. The following year, the ministry slashed parliamentary salaries in half and imposed a six-month residency requirement on voters that was most harmful to itinerant workers such as shearers. These moves were claimed to be cost-saving devices but were also partly designed to counter the growing labour threat. They had every right to be nervous. In New South Wales, when parliamentary elections were held in June− July 1891, candidates endorsed by the newly established Labor Electoral Leagues won at least thirty-five seats. The new party, despite later bitter internal divisions and defections, remained powerful enough to sit on the crossbenches and often held the balance of power between the various non-labour groupings for the rest of the decade. The 1892 successes of the WPO candidates at the two by-elections only added to this sense of unease on the non-labour side of Queensland politics. In 1892, the four labour parliamentarians decided that they should attempt to better organise their party’s efforts for the 1893 election. They called a convention of labour associations to draw up a platform on which to fight the election as well as establish an executive committee to run the campaign. In August, twenty-four delegates, representing the parliamentarians, the ALF and various labour organisations

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which accepted the ALF platform, met in Brisbane for a Queensland Labor-in-Politics Convention. Fisher attended, representing the Gympie WPO, while Ryland represented the ALF. This may have indicated Fisher’s growing preference for the political side of the movement even though he was then president of the miners union. The convention worked fairly quickly to achieve its outcomes and drew together diverse elements within the labour movement to define the Queensland Labour Party’s platform.1 The convention decided to establish an executive council, the forerunner of the later Central Political Executive or CPE, consisting of the four parliamentarians and eight other delegates. This body was not meant to be a permanent one and would only exist until 31 January 1894. The election of delegates to such a council by the Convention, including members of the ALF, meant that this body could claim control over the PLP. However, for several years to come, limited organisational structures within the labour movement meant that the PLP was left with considerable freedom in enacting the party platform and in running much of the movement itself. The adopted platform was largely a repeat of much of the ALF’s 1891 agenda but with electoral reform the first priority and with no references to socialisation of the means of production. Other populist reform measures included a land tax aimed at breaking up large holdings, support for state ownership of the railways and exclusion of coloured labour from the colony. Hopes now ran high that the labour candidates would do well at the next election. Over £200 was subsequently raised across the colony for the campaign. In contrast, the government faced mounting problems associated with the depression. Griffith resigned from his post in 1892 and was appointed chief justice, with a large and controversial salary of £3500 and McIlwraith, back as premier, faced the bitterness felt by many voters over this appointment and by a minority of liberal voters opposed to supporting the conservatives in the continuous ministry. The danger was that these voters would express their anger by supporting labour as a protest or not voting at all.2

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The 1893 election In March 1893, the rank and file of the Gympie WPO voted to preselect its two candidates for the coming election. Fisher won an absolute majority of 237 votes. George Ryland came second (but without a majority) and had to enter another round the following week against Hugh Grennan before securing his nomination.3 Some forty-six labour candidates were eventually endorsed across the colony. Fisher and Ryland were in good company as sixteen were miners or ex-miners and ten were shopkeepers or small businessmen. There were also nine skilled and eight unskilled workers, plus four journalists, two farmers and one barrister. The occupations of these men reflected the diversity of the new party. From the beginning it appealed to Queensland’s small farmers, bush workers, miners and port workers and represented various populist elements in what was a broad reform movement.4 The election was staggered over a period of one month and Gympie was in the first batch of twenty contested seats. William Smyth and Jacob Stumm were the government’s candidates, while James Chapple ran as an independent. Smyth, the senior ministerial candidate, was a wealthy businessman, a former mayor of the town and a member for Gympie since 1883. The more junior Stumm had been a mining journalist and was the editor of the Gympie Times and so they had strong support from the town’s main newspaper. Their opening speeches for the campaign, for example, were given a special eight-column supplement, while Fisher and Ryland rarely received more than one column.5 The government expected that its candidates would be comfortably returned and, not for the last time in his political career, Fisher would be underestimated by his opponents. Without full-time work for about twelve months before the election, he had spent his time organising his bid even before the formal commencement of the campaign. This was fortunate because he missed much of the election due to illness. Ryland launched the first major rally on 13 April and Fisher was only well enough to actively campaign from 24 April onwards. Smyth and Stumm had the disadvantage of representing a government which had run into financial difficulties in the midst of a major economic

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depression. The budget deficit for 1892−93 was in the order of £122 000 and the government was advocating retrenchments as a costsaving measure. Glassey had astutely launched the labour campaign in late March by not only presenting the 1892 platform but also attacking these unpopular cost-cutting measures. Fisher and Ryland could therefore campaign with popular measures such as co-operative village settlement schemes and extra public works for the unemployed to promote their cause.6 Fisher’s increasingly high profile, and essentially moderate stance, clearly worked in his favour. He topped the poll with 28.13 per cent of the votes (each elector having two votes), which translated into over 56 per cent of the final vote. Ryland finished with a respectable 43.7 per cent, just marginally behind Smyth. Dissatisfaction with the government cost Smyth and Stumm crucial votes. Chapple was squeezed between the two major groups but he clearly split some of the non-labour vote, while many liberal voters also defected to labour as a protest.7 Fisher, running on the same platform as Ryland, was able to secure five votes to each of his four. Ryland was more likely to be seen by electors as an ‘agitator’ and some liberal voters therefore preferred Chapple even though they were quite comfortable with voting for Fisher.8 His profile within the church and community, as well as within the union meant that he polled well not only in the mining areas such as One Mile but also outpolled everyone even among the more conservative townspeople at the Town Hall and Court House. Less than eight years after stepping ashore in Brisbane as an assisted migrant, he had achieved an unexpected victory over better known opponents and with little press support. The Gympie Times put Fisher’s success down to voter dissatisfaction with the ministry and his superior organisation, as he had spent a long time working up ‘supporters for Saturday’s election’. Others later thought it had simply been a fluke due to the peculiar economic circumstances of the time. He was also accused of appealing to the town’s powerful temperance vote although representatives of those organisations declared themselves to be nonpolitical.9 The Gympie Miner, a small newspaper run by AG Stephens, was critical of Fisher’s apparent moderation in the campaign but he

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remained unconcerned over this attack. Across the colony, the labour party also did well, gaining a record sixteen seats in the new parliament although its strength was clearly in the northern mining and western shearing districts.

The PLP and parliament Fisher celebrated his win by immediately catching a train to Bundaberg to help the labour candidate in the following Saturday’s election, which the party narrowly lost. Yet he had little time to ponder over this because, due to the colony’s financial crisis, he received an urgent summons and special rail passes for the opening session of the new parliament.10 He travelled down to Brisbane and found lodgings at Gloucester House in Wharf Street. This boarding residence would suit him, and for the next three years he lived there when parliament was in session, with fellow PLP members, Harry Turley, a former wharf labourer and George Kerr, a Barcoo blacksmith, aligned with the AWU and shearers. Fisher was delighted with his victory and arrived in parliament ‘proud of himself ’ which could be seen ‘in his walk’, as well as in his ‘charming though unobjectionable self-confidence’.11 The election success meant that the PLP needed to consider its position within the parliamentary system. They had a problem in that they had no experienced parliamentarians among them except for John Hoolan. Glassey, the expected leader, had been defeated. Hoolan was therefore elected parliamentary leader and remained in that position until the following year when he resigned his seat and allowed Glassey to re-enter parliament and resume the leadership.12 Hoolan set the tone when he assured the House that members of his party may have entered with feelings of hostility towards the government, but were willing to receive advances from the ministry on solving the colony’s problems.13 Fisher also told the parliament that it was ridiculous thinking of working men as revolutionaries. This view he put down to the ‘stupid’ and ‘insane’ writings of the Brisbane papers that made them out to be radicals aiming to destroy property. He denounced the idea that his party desired ‘class government’ and turned this charge on its

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head, ascribing it instead to the conservative side of politics looking after the speculating classes: ‘I say it has been all class government ever since I have been in the colony’. Instead, his party, by their useful criticism of legislation, would ‘secure more equitable legislation’ for the people. Although critical of some aspects of the society around him, he assured the House that, ‘I have come here wishing to learn a great deal…at the same time I am here believing in certain principles’.14 Fisher’s maiden speech, despite these concessions, was cold comfort to the non-labour side of the chamber. He denounced the government’s suppression of the recent strikes as being part of a plot to crush the workingmen of the colony and render them ‘as docile as the coloured gentlemen’. For the same reasons he strongly opposed using Melanesian labour in the sugar industry. He advocated an Australian federation, declared himself a republican in principle, and argued for more public works and assistance for the Gympie goldmines and frozen beef industry. He thought that the string of bank failures might have been prevented if the government had prosecuted the directors of the first failure as a warning to others. He wanted a 50 per cent cut in the defence budget because, from his own training experiences, he considered the local military a useless organisation and only fit for suppressing workers. He advocated restraint in public spending but not at the expense of cutting wages of ordinary workers on less than £200 a year. In keeping with party policy he also supported democratic reforms, wanting equal sized electorates and one man one vote as well as the enfranchisement of all men and women. Once these measures were achieved, Queensland would have a system of government ‘that benefited the whole of humanity and not a portion or class of it only.’ This mixture of criticism, tinged with a whole range of practical reforms and democratic idealism, reflected the party’s ideals of the time and suggests Fisher was in tune with them. Some would not survive the test of time but other ideas would become quite important to Fisher’s subsequent political career.15 The PLP decided to sit on the crossbenches even though it was large enough to become the formal Opposition. The new members felt they needed to master the intricacies of parliamentary procedures

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before they could assume such a role. Instead, they aligned themselves with the Liberal faction of ten members, led by Charles Powers, who undertook to be the Opposition. There was another practical reason for the PLP eschewing this formal role. The party, with its strong grouping of members from the mining and shearing areas of the colony, really needed to win over other parliamentarians if it had any hope of achieving any of its objectives. Sitting on the crossbench was initially seen as a better tactic in order to achieve more by negotiation. However, there were problems in this approach. While their NSW counterparts were able to negotiate for their vote, the PLP, by contrast, faced McIlwraith’s ‘continuous ministry’ that, despite electoral reversals, still held a comfortable majority. The PLP was never to be in the same bargaining position as the NSW party. As well the colony’s trade union movement became progressively weaker in these years because of the economic downturn and the failure of several strikes. It would take the better part of a decade for it to recover. The Queensland labour movement was largely kept together by the publication of the Brisbane Worker as its mouthpiece and by the presence and efforts of its parliamentarians. This entailed an added workload for this small group of men. It also made a political, rather than industrial career, a more attractive proposition for Fisher.16

A rising star in the PLP Fisher enjoyed a rapid rise within the PLP. At the start of the 1893 session, the party set up an executive comprising the leader (Hoolan), a chairman of the caucus (Anderson Dawson) and a secretary (Herbert Hardacre). A year later when Glassey returned and was elected leader and chairman of the caucus, Mat Reid replaced Hardacre as secretary and a new position of vice chairman was created and filled by Fisher. This election reflected his obvious popularity with his colleagues established in a very short period of time. Fisher liked the party-room decision-making and enjoyed male collegiality and these would remain a feature of his subsequent political career. He also spent part of the 1893−94 parliamentary recess touring the shearing areas of Central and

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Western Queensland with Turley spreading the labour message as well as becoming familiar with an important section of party supporters. According to Murdoch, Fisher also attended a trade union conference in Sydney in January 1894 and kept in touch with its organisers. He obviously enjoyed broad support and always had the advantage that, throughout his political career, he was never really seen as a factional warrior. He had, for example, benefited from the power struggles in Gympie for control of the miners union without ever being accused of playing a role in it, despite his close friendship with George Ryland.17 Shortly after his 1894 election, Glassey took ill, and during the first part of the next session Fisher found himself chairing the caucus, the party executive and leading the PLP on the floor of the parliament. His Address in Reply, on behalf of the PLP in July attacked the government over its handling of the rising deficit, its failure to sell land to small landowners, establish a state bank, cut defence spending or support the mining industry. Fisher also criticised its lack of interest in dealing with industrial safety, voting rights, unemployment or finding a solution to the new shearers strike. This was heady stuff for a man only elected to parliament twelve months previously. One of his Fisher’s first problems was with Powers, the formal leader of the Opposition. He was suspicious of him to begin with since Powers had been a director of the Isis Investment Company that had denied Fisher the manager’s position in 1888. Even before he had entered parliament, Fisher had been in correspondence with Powers, who had served as mayor of Bundaberg in 1889, over his anti-labour comments and his strong support for Melanesian labour in the sugar industry. Fisher informed Powers at the start of the new session that the relationship between the two parties would continue but with more separate space than existed in 1893. This reflected the change in PLP leadership because Hoolan had relied on close cooperation with the Liberals. Glassey had no such qualms over his leadership abilities and there was also a growing confidence among other PLP members, including Fisher, that they could now better handle business in parliament.18 By August, Powers, after meeting privately with the PLP, complained in the House that a proper relationship had not been maintained

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between the two parties during the session and that he would have to resign as Leader of the Opposition. He cited Hoolan’s support for him in 1893 that implied all of the opposition parties were under his nominal leadership. Glassey refuted such a notion, claiming the PLP was always an independent party but was willing to co-operate with the formal opposition. Powers continued to offer the idea of a combined party, with an agreed-upon platform, which would be under his overall leadership. The matter was not finally resolved until July 1895, when Reid drafted the official PLP stance on coalition governments. Signed by all members of the party, the letter again offered Powers their general support but also made it clear that the party wished to maintain its independence. In terms of negotiating a common platform, the PLP simply ‘had no power to alter the present Political Platform as drafted and adopted by the various outside organisations’. It is likely that Fisher, as an executive member of the PLP, had considerable input into drafting the letter and it reflected his views on the need for the PLP to maintain its separate identity and support party platforms. Yet the issue of alliances of labour members with like-minded liberals would not be easily resolved either in Queensland or indeed in the later Commonwealth parliaments.19 Meanwhile, Fisher began to thrive in a parliamentary culture. He was a member of the standing orders committee of the assembly and by the 1895 session, revealed his technical mastery of the intricacies of parliamentary procedures. He served on several caucus committees to examine legislation related to conspiracy laws, shops and early closing as well as party rules and organisation. Like the rest of the PLP, he was anxious to make a good impression during this parliamentary term, sometimes by talking too much. The sixteen PLP members delivered 276 speeches on the floor of the assembly and over 1000 in committees, which were greater in volume than those of the forty government members.20 However, unlike his colleagues, Fisher became more vocally restrained over time and preferred to be involved in the vetting of legislation and in dealing with procedural issues. Aside from his hours of committee work, where he provided insights into social conditions and industries beyond the knowledge of most non-labour

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parliamentarians, he began to master areas such as banking and finance, of which he admitted in 1893, he knew next to nothing. In the end, not only could he probe government weaknesses in those areas, but he had developed an expertise that served him well in later federal politics. Although not the best speaker in the assembly, he was good enough to hold his own in parliamentary debates. Over the course of this parliamentary term, he was increasingly seen by his colleagues as being a more effective parliamentarian than Glassey.21 Despite his efforts in creating the PLP, Glassey was admired rather than personally popular with his colleagues. Although outwardly courteous, he lacked tact in dealing with people. He was also poorly educated but, unlike Fisher and others who had been in the same situation, had not made serious efforts at self-improvement. He therefore had a limited vocabulary that, despite his booming voice, hindered his speechmaking and he struggled to master the details of parliamentary work. He also thought in fairly traditional terms about the role of a leader and party within a parliamentary system. In contrast, Fisher was viewed as an aggressive speaker and a good tactician who also understood and accepted the various ways in which the PLP was different from traditional parties. Furthermore, he was respected within the industrial side of the movement and could bridge the gap between those two worlds even though his teetotalism and puritanical stance on swearing and dirty jokes didn’t always suit him to the masculine world of pub politics. Fisher recognised this himself just a few months after being elected, when he told the House that an older member had advised him he would never achieve anything in the parliament unless he spent time at the bar, where the real business was conducted. But since Fisher did not drink, he claimed he would do it ‘by argument in the House’. The PLP was a fractious body and it was here that Fisher honed his skills as mediator and diplomat that would serve him so well in later federal politics. Only Anderson Dawson, another miner from Charters Towers, was a serious rival to him as seven of the sixteen members had been elected from this important region. Dawson would have the advantage of re-election in 1896 and so by 1899 was chosen to replace Glassey, otherwise Fisher might have led the world’s first labour government.22

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Parliament and legislation Fisher would spend all of his first term in parliament in opposition to the continuous ministry. Although he would propose or support various bills, he was never able to have any of them passed. This frustrating situation was made evident early in the 1893 session when the PLP supported the concept of cooperative settlement schemes to provide government assistance and financial aid for workers in agriculture, mining and the pastoral industries. This was meant to be a practical way of dealing with distresses caused by the depression but had also been advocated by socialist and utopian idealists as a means of creating a better world for workers. Yet when this proposal seemed likely to be carried, the ministry immediately introduced its own version of the scheme in order to gain credit for these initiatives. In 1895, Fisher also moved a Workingman’s Lien bill to allow workers who added value to land or chattels by their labour to be able to stake a claim to that effect. The government again refused to pass this bill but took it over and eventually passed similar legislation. Yet, like many other periods of his life that seemed to achieve little, Fisher would make the best use of this period to improve himself as a politician. Aside from his rapid rise in the PLP, he would also use his time to sharpen his priorities and interests in progressive legislation.23 As a representative of an essentially a mining community, Fisher placed an emphasis on these interests. In October 1894, he was able, for the first time, to have the issue of industrial accidents in the mining industry discussed in the parliament. He could, of course, speak from first-hand experience and observation of the dangers facing miners in their industry. He did succeed in having the time allowed for returning to a mine after a charge failed to explode reduced from sixty to twenty minutes in the new Mining Act of 1898. This reduction in safety time seems at first strange but, as he pointed out, the existing legislation was being ignored by many mine managers because the time set (one hour) was too long and so they sent miners back in as quickly as possible. Fisher, from his own work as a powder monkey, believed that twenty minutes was a reasonable safety margin and mine managers were more

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likely to abide by this shorter delay. Despite raising these issues in a prolonged debate, and his later introduction in 1899 of a workers compensation bill, he was unable to get the government to move towards any major reforms in this area beyond minor changes to the Mining Act. As Fisher pointed out, the chief inspector of mines was paid less than the chief inspector of sheep, suggesting that the welfare of animals was seen in Queensland as being of more value than the lives of miners.24 Aside from mining, Fisher also developed a strong interest in Queensland development. He later revealed just how important his experience in that colony was to him in shaping his views on Australian development. By 1914, he could look back on the expansion of Queensland from its coastal cities, which had not even existed when he was born, over an inland area greater than NSW, Victoria and most of South Australia. Such regional development distinguished Queensland from NSW and Victoria, which were dominated by their respective capital cities. A stimulus for this development had been the railways, with the Queensland government borrowing large sums of money to build over 3000 kilometres of track by 1890. McIlwraith had been impressed by his earlier visits to North America and wanted to follow the system in the United States of granting substantial areas of public land to private railway companies in return for them building new lines. Fisher attacked several of these railway proposals during 1893 and 1895 and the favourable treatment given to such companies, yet he was not in any sense opposed to the principle of railway development and saw it as a key factor in opening up the colony. There is considerable merit in the argument that McIlwraith’s legacy to colonial Queensland was the concept of exploiting and conquering the physical environment, and Fisher remained fascinated with such projects. His subsequent interest in the federal government’s sponsorship of national development was aroused by these years in the Queensland parliament.25 Banking was another growing area of interest to him. The major issue of the period was the near collapse of the Queensland National Bank. This institution held nearly 40 per cent of the colony’s banking deposits and loans and had helped generously finance many busi-

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ness ventures by numerous members of the Queensland parliament. These cosy arrangements began to unravel during the depression as the bank, like many of its colonial counterparts, faced disaster because of its previously unwise loans and investments. Fisher and other labour parliamentarians, as early as June 1893, pushed for an inquiry into the bank’s finances and its links to the government, but this did not eventuate until 1896−97. In the short term, the PLP was given credit for unearthing the scandals associated with the bank, which ruined McIlwraith, but in the longer term, also created problems for the party. The government could not let the bank fail totally, given its importance to Queensland’s financial sector. It therefore had to provide funding to bail the bank out and Glassey went along with the scheme as did many of his colleagues (Fisher by then was out of parliament). However, others refused to support such moves and the proposals caused deep divisions within the PLP and further undermined Glassey’s leadership. Fisher knew nothing about banking in 1893 but the time spent on the problems of the Queensland National Bank convinced him that this private institution had become too powerful in the colony and that the people’s interest would have been better served by following labour’s party platform’s proposal for a state bank.26 It was this view of the better use of government power that made it easier for Fisher to later deal with the contentious issue of tree trade versus protection. He arrived from Scotland as a free trader and still supported these principles. In July 1895, he cited the number of Victorian workers that had flooded into Queensland in recent years as evidence that protection was of dubious economic benefit. But he also recognised that free trade might also create problems for workers as they faced competition from abroad or from companies investing in Queensland and then attempting to use their economic muscle to exploit their workforce. This was particularly true when the current ministry made use of ‘class government’ to lower the living standards of workers by smashing the union movement. Along with the rest of his party, Fisher strongly opposed the government’s ‘Kanaka’ policies because it was believed that this cheap imported Melanesian labour in the sugar industry potentially threatened jobs and wages of

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other white workers. He came to the view that government investment in some crucial enterprises such as sugar mills or brick works would ensure fair competition with private enterprise and safeguard wages. Under these conditions he was happy to support free trade but this was clearly a modified version relying upon considerable state intervention. In the next decade, it did not require a great mental shift on his part to accepting that the state could protect industries via tariffs if these firms ensured higher wages for their workers. Over time, Fisher was to move to protection in easy stages. 27

Class government and morality By 1893, Fisher had clearly accepted the view of colonial society being divided into essentially the speculating and the labouring classes. In his address in reply in parliament he charged the ministry with being a ‘class government’, looking after vested interests of the speculators. Corrupt practices were obvious, and the colony had seen ‘the systematic swindlers, who promote land booms and mortgage banks, water the capital in prosperous times by multiplying it on paper by two or three, call it prosperity then rob the poor to pay interest thereon’. He believed there had been an earlier misuse of police powers to intimidate PLP members, with police attending his public meetings to take notes and sometimes acting as agents provocateur. He also believed that the legal system was weighted towards the wealthy, whereby those sentenced had a greater chance of early release if they were rich than those who were poor. In September 1894, the government introduced a peace preservation bill largely aimed at the alleged threat from the union movement during the second shearers strike. The bill was debated amid increasingly rowdy scenes in the House that led to seven members of the PLP, including Glassey, being suspended. Fisher led a sustained attack on the speaker’s rulings, claiming the proposed legislation was a travesty and a disgrace. He felt the suspension of the PLP members was equally outrageous and most likely illegal. The PLP even tried to have the bill renamed the ‘People Persecution and Property Confiscation’ bill. However, for Fisher, this bill was yet another example of

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the government using state power to protect vested class interests.28 Fisher came to accept that an important method for countering such class government was for a society to be as open and democratic as possible. He had observed that since voters had backed Labour so strongly in 1893, police harassment of the movement had largely ceased. Yet the ministry still entrenched itself in power by undemocratic means. In the 1893 election, the PLP had gained 27 047 votes to the ministry’s 29 044, yet it held only sixteen seats to their thirtyfour. Even though reforms were rejected by the ministry in 1894 and 1895, Fisher continued to support measures such as creating equal electorates, introducing universal suffrage for men and woman and having openness in all aspects of government.29 He supported the daily publication of Hansard, cut back by the government to a weekly as a cost-cutting exercise, so that the public could follow debates. Given the opportunity, the people, Fisher believed, would eventually flock to Labour because the party was the voice of the people. This was part of Fisher’s thinking that would make it easy for him to later consider federal labour, not as a working man’s party, but as the natural party of most Australians.30 Obviously a democratic government, would, in Fisher’s view, enact legislation that was ‘fair and reasonable’ and make a better world for ordinary people. Its role was not, as some socialists advocated, to immediately confiscate wealth or nationalise the means of production. Fisher could never, even later in his political career, decide whether this was really necessary. The more immediate aim was to introduce fair legislation and the test for this seemed derived as much from his ethical sense of right and wrong as from any systematic socialist theory. Thus he proposed an Arbitration and Conciliation bill that might have gone some way towards resolving the industrial disputes of 1894. The state would be a neutral referee and play an important role as a conciliator between classes, and this appealed to his sense of maintaining harmony. He supported the early closing of shops even though this would cause some inconvenience to customers, because it was better to protect employees from working excessive hours and this seemed a fair thing to do.31 He wanted scholarships to provide educational

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opportunities for poorer students and supported the introduction of legal aid so that the best lawyers were not at the disposal of the wealthy because such measures were socially just. He opposed both the Tattersall’s Racing Sweeps Bill 1894 and the Gambling Act 1895 because he believed gambling was ‘unsocialistic’ as it encouraged many to bet large sums in the hope that one person would win at the expense of others. But this was as much a moral as a socialist argument.32 Finally, Fisher, with his black and white Presbyterian morality, thought of politics as a corrupting world. He caused unease among members in September 1893 when he announced that the only principle in public life was ‘Plunder, plunder, plunder’ and that this had been confirmed by his time in parliament. Even the PLP had to be on its guard against such practices, but it was more likely that such failings would be found on the non-labour side because his political opponents represented privileged and corrupt interests. In contrast, he informed the House, the PLP aimed to do ‘that which was upright, truthful and just’. Fisher was not alone in ascribing such moral virtue to his party. Labour had attracted more than its fair share of Protestant evangelicals along with various socialist and utopian idealists. But Fisher would bring his party to majority power at the national level and with it his moral view of the political universe. He never used the terms ‘Light on the Hill’ or ‘True Believers’, but would have been quite comfortable with both terms to describe the moral qualities of his party.33 Election to the Queensland parliament had profound effects upon Fisher. He not only developed a range of skills in a parliamentary culture but interests in issues such as finance, banking and railway development that would prepare him for later federal politics. His time in parliament certainly confirmed his view that his future was to be found in the political side of the labour movement. In many ways he was to serve a colonial apprenticeship that made him a better federal politician. However, before that period, he was to face hard times which, in turn, also played a role in shaping his later career.

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5 Hard times and recovery

In March 1896, Fisher faced re-election for Gympie. Because of the inability of the labour movement to organise another convention, Glassey had put together a committee, the Central Political Executive, drawn from the ALF, the PLP and the WPOs to assist with the campaign. Fisher was appointed secretary of this body to help co-ordinate the election. The party was short on finances and organisation, but some fifty candidates were fielded with high hopes for major labour gains. Each candidate was largely left to run his own local campaign with little support provided from outside the electorate except by a few key parliamentarians. Although funds were tight (with only about a seventh of what had been raised in 1893), twenty candidates were successful, thus increasing PLP numbers slightly over 1893.1 Yet for Fisher, the election was a disaster. His share of the vote fell to only 43.9 per cent and the ministerial candidates, Smyth and Stumm, were both returned as the members for Gympie.2 Given the moderate success of PLP candidates elsewhere and his strong showing in 1893, Fisher’s defeat was something of a surprise even to the conservative press. Yet from the beginning things went badly for him. Smyth ran on his record but Stumm adopted the tactic of scaremongering. Upon being pre-selected, he immediately announced that the forthcoming election was over whether the colony would enter into a rash program of ‘Socialism in our time’ that would end in

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general ruin.3 He used his newspaper to mount a negative campaign against Fisher and other pamphlets highly critical of him were circulated throughout the town. The local Mine Managers’ Association, with which Smyth was closely associated, also campaigned against Fisher and he found himself accused of being the tool of radical socialists. The fact that there had been no Labor-in-Politics Convention before the election gave credence to the charge that the party platform had been devised by a minority associated with the ALF. The term ‘Fisher of the Brisbane Trades Hall’ was thrown around by his opponents to suggest he was a creature of outside forces.4 Fisher realised the dangers that he faced with these attacks but had problems in countering them. When reporters cornered him in late March and asked if he was opposed to the aims of the ALF, Fisher replied that he thought every man should receive the full produce of his labour. But he was vague on what he supported regarding the ALF platform and whether he would ever support, in the long term, nationalising wealth. Such a response only seemed to confirm that Fisher was indeed a radical. He desperately tried to head off these smears by asserting that the PLP was less radical than Sir John Gorst’s Tory Democracy Movement in the United Kingdom but this point was lost on the voters.5 He certainly thought the hostile press had been a significant factor in his defeat as he later explained to Henry Boote, ‘We attribute our defeat to the fact that we had no proper paper and that the local press did not give us fair play’.6 Fisher’s lack of campaign funds meant that he could produce little in the way of written material to counter these attacks. The party platform, hastily put together, didn’t help him as it was less appealing than the one that he and Ryland had taken to the voters in 1893. Ryland chose not run in 1896 as he was taken up with council politics, and Fisher’s new running mate, Charles McCormick, lacked the same experience and popularity with voters. The result was that many of Fisher’s previous supporters probably didn’t vote against him but simply didn’t bother to vote at all. The raw numbers voting in 1896 were higher than in 1893 but with more electors enrolled, the percentage voting actually fell. Smyth and Stumm gained back many of the 1893 liberal

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voters who had abstained or switched to labour or to Chapple as a protest. Fisher lost the more conservative subdivisions of the Court House and Town Hall as well as Monkland and only won the mining vote in One Mile by a small majority. This was not enough to make up for his losses elsewhere and he trailed Stumm, the second placed candidate, by over 200 votes on the final count. On the evening of the victory, Stumm told a jubilant crowd that the result ‘had given a finishing stroke to Socialism in our time’ while Powers, in town for the vote, also thought that the electors were determined not to have socialism. The Brisbane Courier regarded the Gympie vote as important, claiming the ‘Labour-Socialists’ had tried to monopolise the goldfields vote and this had clearly failed.7 In his concession speech, Fisher refused to accept such views, arguing that the Labour Party and its platform was what he intended to carry through his life. He could not, despite boos from the pro-Ministerial crowd, resist a swipe at Stumm and what he considered to be ‘the mean contemptible tricks used at this election’. By the next day, Fisher experienced the meaning of political revenge when he was asked to hand in his gold railway pass even though the poll had not been officially declared. This was in sharp contrast with the length of time that it had taken for him to be granted the pass when he was elected in 1893. Fisher would learn the hard lessons from his defeat. Never again, from his re-election in 1899 until his retirement from federal politics in 1915, would he ever be in danger of losing his seat. In the meantime, when the PLP re-assembled for the new session, Glassey, now a member for Bundaberg, was re-elected leader without opposition.8

A new paper Fisher’s first task was to counter the hostile press in Gympie and in mid-April 1896, following a meeting in the Miner’s Hall, he and others founded the Gympie Truth Newspaper Company, proposing a public listing of 5000 shares at five shillings. This would have given the paper a capital base of around £1250; however, the surviving documents suggest its capital never initially reached that figure. A number

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of friends and supporters immediately and later on, bought enough shares to keep the company afloat but the early days of the paper were quite modest, with as little as £150 initially available for the startup operations. Fisher then purchased a small printing press, rented a corner store for ten shillings week and asked Henry Boote to edit the new Gympie Truth.9 Boote had directed the Bundaberg Guardian for eighteen months, from 1894 onwards, and had proven to be a very competent editor. Employed for £3 a week, he was well aware that the new paper was going to struggle on its limited capital base. He and Fisher subsequently convinced the shareholders to lease the plant to them and two others for twenty shillings a month in order to produce the paper. This meant that for a fairly modest initial outlay and a manageable monthly lease, they could undertake what would normally have been an expensive operation. Even so, they relied on further capital being raised by the company in order to sustain the paper.10 The Gympie Truth was always more Boote’s publication than Fisher’s, with the editor promising to deliver ‘a neat looking and brightly written little thing’. Still, it served to keep Fisher’s name before its readers since he wrote for it as well as later acting as an unnamed political reporter (often on his own activities). The first issue, with its claim of being the ‘organ of the common herd’ came off the press in July 1896. The weekly soon enjoyed a wide readership in the Gympie area and may have, at times, eclipsed the circulation of the Gympie Times even though a number of the more conservative tradespeople in the town boycotted its advertising space. In 1898, it became a biweekly and by the following year it was published three times a week. Certainly Stumm found the Truth more than a nuisance and was forced to reduce the price of his paper to compete. In 1898, when money was being raised to launch the bi-weekly, he appears to have applied for shares in the Truth’s holding company for a possible takeover bid. In the years between 1896 and 1899 it is possible to identify about fourteen pro-labour newspapers across Queensland.11 This was not a large number given that most country towns boasted at least one or more papers. Except for the Charters Towers area, no other labour leaders

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actually owned these papers or had such an input into their publication as Fisher. Boote thought the Truth gave Fisher a crucial edge in his successful re-election bid in 1899. While he enjoyed the obvious advantage of a popular and sympathetic paper that very few of his labour colleagues would ever experience, many could have done the same thing as Fisher but lacked the expertise or the drive that made him so successful. In 1897, Fisher fell seriously ill with typhoid fever. It required him to be hospitalised and then took months for him to fully recover. He was fortunate, as Charles McCormick died of the disease during this same period.12 His illness meant turning the running of the paper completely over to Boote while another friend, Thomas Dunstan, also took a hand in its publication. When he eventually recovered, Fisher just looked after the financial side and contributed copy whenever he could. Under Boote, the paper was at least solvent but after he departed in 1902 to edit the Brisbane Worker its glory days passed. In 1905 and then in 1912, Fisher was called upon for loans or to act as financial guarantor when the paper ran into financial troubles.13

Earning a living Both Boote and Dunstan later recalled the period after 1896 as being a hard time for Fisher. He faced the hostility of the mine managers who tried to drive him out of town. His normal job of engine driver at any of the Gympie mines involved, by custom, selection by the mine manager, so it was easy to blacklist him. At first he relied on his savings to get by and also found a series of short-term jobs working briefly as an auditor to the municipal council although he may have lost that position due to pressure from the mine managers. He still had investments in local mining shares that had been purchased during his parliamentary years; however, by 1898 things were becoming quite desperate. His savings were largely gone and he had to sell his house in Howard to help launch the bi-weekly edition of the paper. Fisher, Boote and Dunstan all boarded together in an effort to save money. Eventually, a friend, Dan Mulcahy, found him a job at a small mine of

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which he was a director and Fisher worked there for about six months before the 1899 election.14 Dunstan admired the fact that Fisher did not quit Gympie but the electoral defeat and its aftermath had its effects on him. He had, by 1893, been moving into the political rather than industrial side of the labour movement. After 1896, he certainly made no serious attempt to assume any role as a union leader but concentrated instead on reviving his political career. He would, by 1899, play down any association with elements in the industrial side of the movement which might alienate voters. Boote remembered that Fisher, although short of money, took care to remain neatly dressed, appeared in town every day cultivating people and spoke on labour issues at Saturday night public meetings. He became more muted on his support for ‘socialism’, preferring to emphasise to voters his character and his willingness to work for all classes in the community. When he did return to the parliament in 1899, he was also more measured in his speeches and in his policies towards legislation and political alliances.15 Two other factors also helped Fisher stay in Gympie during this time. He was surrounded by a group of close and supportive friends including Boote, Dunstan, Ryland, McCormick (before his death), Charles Collins and Harry Llewellyn and this was something Fisher greatly valued. Secondly, by at least 1898, he had begun courting young Margaret Irvine so there was an added attraction to Gympie. The pair usually went on outings with another couple who were to marry in 1900 and although Fisher’s political career probably lengthened the period of his courtship with Margaret, the state of his finances was a consideration. His loan to Robert in Canada further ate into his finances and his fiancée refused the offer of an engagement ring because she knew he was short of money. It was not until he was elected to the federal parliament in 1901 that there is evidence of an obvious improvement in his financial circumstances.16

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The 1899 election In 1898, Fisher was elected as a delegate for Gympie to another Labor-in-politics Convention called by the PLP to set up a permanent administrative structure and prepare for the 1899 election. Glassey had run into trouble in the party due to factional infighting and his own obvious failings as a leader, but was again, as a courtesy to his position, elected to chair the convention. The delegates appointed a new CPE, which would have the chairman and secretary of the PLP and the ALF as ex-officio places plus eleven elected members to represent the various regions. In reality, because the CPE met in Brisbane, it tended to be dominated by its PLP members. Fisher declined election to the CPE partly because he no longer had confidence in Glassey’s leadership, but mainly because he did not want to be accused in Gympie of being the creature of any outside organisation. However, this time he had at least an appealing party platform on which to campaign and he could not, as in 1896, be accused of supporting ideas that had been hijacked by radicals.17 The new platform continued to reflect the varying interests of Queensland labour but essentially promoted its pragmatic and democratic reformist policies. Electoral reform, as in the past, remained the first priority, with one man one vote, as well as abolishing residency requirements and the Legislative Council. There were long sections dealing with obvious industrial issues including hours of work, unemployment relief and compensation for workplace injuries. There were also visions of the future with free education, land settlement for small farmers and of course the exclusion of coloured labour. The party proposed using the state to counter business monopolies and abuses by, among other things, state ownership of all railways, a state sugar refinery, a state bank, and a state fire and life insurance company. Any candidate seeking Labour endorsement in 1899 would also be required to sign a pledge supporting the platform and, if defeated in a pre-selection ballot, had to promise not to oppose the selected candidate. Glassey was not enthusiastic about the pledge, seeing it as another binding tie by outside forces upon the independence of parliamentarians. His

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previous support of liberal ideas made him increasingly uneasy over the way in which the party was heading. He agreed to sign the pledge but then made no serious effort to campaign effectively during the election itself except to secure his Bundaberg seat. His leadership of the PLP was all but ended, but the platform gave good local candidates the ability to run a better grassroots campaign than in 1896.18 Fisher was again pre-selected by his WPO to stand for Gympie. This time his running mate would be Ryland, who had recently become the town mayor. His decision to run might have been influenced by the fact that Smyth, suffering ill-health, had retired and Stumm declined to serve again. Fisher had clearly learnt his lessons from the last election. He decided to shun endorsement from the CPE as a labour candidate since there was a loophole that candidates did not have to sign any pledge if they had been endorsed, as Fisher had been, by their local organisation. He also publicly evaded the issue by pointing out the apparent technicality that the CPE had not actually sent him any communication on this issue. He also claimed publicly that he was never indebted to any political association or ‘Trade Hall clique’ because it was important that people see him taking an independent stance. His non-CPE endorsement did not necessarily go down well with some elements in the ALF. They would soon be accusing him of selling out his union ideals in order to gain political office. Fisher further enlisted the support of his friend Dan Mulcahy who stood as an independent liberal hoping to split the ministerial vote as Chapple had done in 1892.19 Fisher also had the electoral advantage that he was to use again with great effect in 1901. He was able to campaign against his main opponent, Francis Power who was a known supporter of the Kanaka labour scheme. Boote, used to such campaigns from his editorship in Bundaberg, gave this issue free rein in the Truth, claiming that Power was an employee of black labour which undermined white working standards. Fisher was also much better organised than in 1896, and between 25 February and 10 March he spoke every evening, except Sundays, at 5 pm, at various locations all over the electorate. He and Ryland had an attractive labour platform that they could sell to the

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electorate and this was set out from the beginning of the campaign in dot point advertisements in the local papers. Fisher also emphasised issues that he thought would be popular such as support for the new issue of Federation, votes for women and a workers compensation law. The two men even took advantage of local politics to add such issues as land tax and a review of local government statutes to the official platform. To counter the usual Gympie Times claims that Fisher had achieved nothing during the 1893−96 parliament, Boote began listing his efforts, including securing the release of flood relief funds for Gympie and his initiating a review of mine safety.20 In the end, Fisher and Ryland were both successful. Although Fisher’s 1144 votes (around 51.5 per cent of the vote) was less than in 1893, it was still a comfortable margin. Ryland trailed Fisher by over forty votes but enough to squeeze out Power by about twenty votes. Suthers, his running mate, came fourth about seventy votes behind him. Power had narrowly outpolled Fisher and Ryland in the central areas of the Court House and Town Hall but the mining subdivisions voted strongly in their favour. Although Mulcahy only received 115 votes, and there are many permutations on the voting figures, it is quite possible that he succeeded in his intent of taking away vital votes from Power, which cost him the election. It should also be appreciated that the colony-wide labour campaign, with a lame duck leader, had not been very effective and the fact that the party won twenty-one seats was probably due to some good grassroots efforts. The conservative papers, devastated by the loss of both seats in Gympie, certainly put this down to labour’s superior organisation and effective campaigning.21

Back to parliament When the new PLP caucus, met Glassey was re-nominated for the leadership and then announced that he would not stand again if there was to be a ballot. Anderson Dawson was subsequently nominated and Glassey immediately left the meeting allowing for Dawson’s unopposed election.22 Fisher appears to have been content to stay on the backbench or perhaps he did not really have a choice. Even though he

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was a well known figure in the party, his three years out of parliament meant other people had assumed leadership roles in the PLP. Fisher was also most likely thinking ahead to a possible career in federal politics and may not have wanted to be closely involved with the PLP. Certainly his role in the parliament in 1899−1900 was more skilful than in the 1893−96 assembly. He spoke less in the debates than many of his colleagues. On the other hand, at point after point, he showed himself well versed in standing orders and in comparing Queensland with British parliamentary procedures.23 He was also now his party’s main speaker on budget and financial matters, which seemed to be his forte. His sense of timing and tactics made him a formidable opponent, as the government discovered in October 1899. All the PLP members, except Fisher, left the chamber during a discussion on a criminal code bill and he then called for a division, knowing the government could not get a quorum for the vote. When Fisher left the chamber after the third attempt to gain the quorum, the House was forced to be counted out and adjourned. ‘Mr Fisher played his cards well’ was one newspaper comment on him.24 Yet Fisher had not completely abandoned his quest for fairer legislation. One of his first actions on his return to parliament was to move a private member’s Workmen’s Compensation bill, modelled on British legislation of 1897, which would provide the payment of specified sums to every worker injured the course of his employment. The bill was defeated, lost again when he re-introduced it the following year and lost again when Ryland introduced it for a third time in 1901. Eventually a modified bill of a more limited nature was passed in 1905, but a proper compensation bill had to wait for the Ryan government in 1915. Fisher was undoubtedly sincere in wanting this bill to be passed since he had raised the issue of industrial accidents in mines back in 1894. Still, he would also have known that it was unlikely that he would have the numbers. It did, however, serve to show his mining electorate that he was actively pursuing their interests. The Gympie Truth gave front page publicity to his efforts and argued that ‘a more valuable piece of labour legislation will not have been achieved for many years’. In this same parliament he also unsuccessfully supported

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the establishment of a School of Mines at Gympie even though he had not been able in 1894 to get a School of Agriculture established for his town.25

A cabinet minister When Anderson Dawson took over as leader of the opposition, the PLP seemed a long way from ever forming a government. The only chance appeared to be by negotiating alliances with the more progressive liberals and in 1898, Dawson had supported a proposal for just such an alliance. The Labor-in-Politics Convention had also supported these moves, in principle, but Glassey scuttled the deal by his unreasonableness when he insisted that he should be the leader of the alliance even though this was known to be unacceptable to the liberals. Fisher had been uneasy over the issue of alliances before 1896 but by 1899, he was coming to accept that they might be needed in the shorter term. But he was also strongly of the view that the PLP had to maintain its separate identity and if it did enter into any such alliances, make sure its independence was not compromised.26 In late November 1899, the ministry suddenly fell after defections from its ranks led it to being defeated on a railway bill. Dawson was asked by the acting governor to try to form a new government, relying on independent liberals and other rebel members. The first proposal he negotiated was for the PLP to enter into a coalition cabinet holding three of the seven seats. Fisher was one of the leading figures to attack this suggestion and the majority of the PLP supported him. He was willing to support a coalition in which the PLP held four of the seven seats even though some in the party opposed any coalition. When Dawson could not get support from the other factions for this, he then approached them to see if they would at least support a minority labour government. He received a negative response to this proposal but went ahead, with Fisher strongly supporting him, to form a minority ministry. Part of the reasoning, which Fisher later explained, was to prove the point that, if given the opportunity, labour might govern and once it did so, even if for only a day, the principle was then established

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that it could expect to hold power ‘as a matter of course’. Dawson also appears to have hoped that once in power the other factions might give way and support the new ministry.27 The new labour ministers walked to Government House to be sworn in on 1 December 1899. Dawson took the positions of premier and chief secretary and then chose his ministry of seven that included Fisher who, because of his long interest in railway development, was allocated railways and public works. His appointment was not unexpected given his popularity in the PLP and his strong arguments in caucus for going it alone in the new ministry. His known honesty would also be an asset in a portfolio long associated with scandals. Although Fisher joined his colleagues for photos and to sit on the front bench, he was also determined to put his new powers as a minister to good use. He had long been suspicious of the government doing business with the Chillagoe Railway and Mines Company over use of the water from the Barron Falls. As minister, he now was able to read the relevant papers and discovered that these waters had been secretly leased to the company at very low rates for it to generate power. He made copies of the relevant documents and later embarrassed the next ministry who had to make known this deal since they were not certain of what Fisher knew. It was typical of his parliamentary tactics that, while his colleagues were focused on whether the new government would survive, he was of thinking ahead to what advantages he could derive out of the situation in which he found himself. In any event, the world’s first labour government was short-lived. On 7 December, it was defeated on the floor and Robert Philp formed a new ministry. The time in office for had been ridiculously short and for some it confirmed the view that the PLP had been too hasty in trying to govern. Dawson thought the lesson was that the PLP needed to form proper alliances in the future. Fisher, while not disagreeing with this view, nevertheless took comfort from the fact that the principle of labour’s right to govern had been firmly established. He then faced another busy year in the parliament, with the assembly sitting for eighty-seven days during 1900. Yet his interests were increasingly taken up with wider issues outside of his adopted colony.28

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Federation Ever since the centenary of European settlement in 1888, there had been moves for a possible federation of the various Australian colonies into one nation-state. After a number of false starts, the Federation movement gathered momentum and in June 1898, a proposal was narrowly carried in four colonies (neither Queensland nor Western Australia voted). Further constitutional amendments and compromises led to a second referendum in September 1899 in these four colonies plus Queensland. The labour movement had not been directly involved in the quest for Federation in that the delegates attending the drafting conventions were usually establishment politicians. Glassey, as leader of the Queensland Opposition in 1898, was one of the few labour men to attend any of the conventions (in Melbourne), and became a supporter. The proposed constitution, with its combination of the Westminster system of cabinet government resting on the popularly elected lower house and the state interests protected by an American style senate, was viewed as a cautious and conservative proposal but not necessarily an undemocratic one. Still, many in the labour movement were suspicious of any proposed national government, especially after the way in which the colonial governments had lined up with employers to break the strikes of the 1890s. An Australian government, more remote and possibly more powerful, could allow employers to better pool their resources against workers. In Queensland, some of those within the labour movement supported the long-running campaign to divide the colony into several smaller ones because of its sheer size. The desire for northern and central autonomy ran strongly in many towns, and Federation was seen as making these proposals harder to achieve. Indeed, to allay such feelings, the government was considering dividing the colony into three electorates for the first Senate election, with two senators being elected in the north, one from the centre and three from the south.29 Fisher, arriving in Queensland as a young adult, thought of Australasia as being one of a kind, compared even to the United Kingdom. Federation therefore seemed quite feasible to him. In 1899, he recalled that when he first thought about the question of Federation ‘the one

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conclusion I could come to was that it was desirable at the earliest possible moment that the various states of Australia should have one central Federal Parliament to do the principal legislative work for the whole continent’. As early as 1893, in his first session in the Queensland parliament, he had spoken of his belief in a federation that could represent the will of the people and combine for the common good. That it might also be a republic was possible, and Fisher was probably taking up the popular ideas of republicanism then circulating in magazines such as the Bulletin. Whatever he meant by the term in 1893, it soon disappeared from his speeches and he showed no further evidence of thinking of it. By 1899, despite some doubts over aspects of the new proposals, he strongly supported Federation. Fisher argued that if the employers (or his ‘speculating classes’) might benefit from co-operation at the national level, so might the labour movement. After all, he could have cited the fact that the union movement had begun intercolonial conferences as early as 1879 to foster co-operation and by 1898, eight such conferences had been held in different colonies. This suggested the labour movement might also develop its common interests through a national government as much as any employer body. He also saw the new national government as co-ordinating naval defence but was wary of it providing a strong army given the use of the military against strikers during the earlier part of the decade.30 In July 1899, Fisher lined up with Glassey and the majority of the PLP parliamentarians in favour of Federation and strongly campaigned with Ryland in their electorate for a ‘Yes’ vote. He helped launch the ‘Yes’ case at the Hibernian Hall in Gympie in late July, and spoke at several other locations over the next few weeks including another interparty rally in the Gympie Theatre Royal on 25 August. Throughout the campaign, he emphasised the practical benefits of a common defence force, of Queensland being in rather than out of the Federation from the beginning, its protection of higher wages, its relative cheapness to join and its democratic nature (although not perfect) that gave everyone the aspiration to be premier of Australia. During this campaign, Fisher found himself an ally of Stumm and the Gympie Times, while Boote used the Gympie Truth to present the anti-case. Boote’s campaign did

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not affect his long-term relationship with Fisher. As usual, Fisher rarely held grudges and accepted that his friend Boote was a man of integrity who simply had a different point of view to him. In the end, Queensland narrowly voted for Federation and most of the labour electorates in the north and west were in favour of it. Gympie voted ‘Yes’ by a margin of nearly two to one, with no real differences between the various subdivisions within the electorate. The Brisbane unions were more suspicious of possible competition from Sydney and Melbourne and that city rejected Federation by a margin of almost 4000 votes.31 The proposed union was accepted in all colonies, with Western Australia a last-minute convert to the cause. The necessary legislation to create the Commonwealth of Australia passed though the British Parliament and was proclaimed on 9 July 1900. Subsequent proclamations appointed a governor general and set 1 January 1901, the first day of the twentieth century, for the inauguration of the new Commonwealth. A parliament would of course have to be elected to govern this new nation. Across what had once been colonies, state politicians had to decide whether they would leave their old careers and venture forth into the federal political arena. Fisher was to be one such politician, along with a number of the better leaders of the Queensland PLP. Despite the formation of the Dawson ministry in 1899 and the uncertainty of labour’s electoral fortunes at the federal level, Fisher almost certainly saw the state party (holding around twenty of the seventytwo seats in the parliament) as unlikely to be governing Queensland in the immediate future. In that sense, there was little to lose by applying his Queensland experiences to another level and trying his hand on the national stage.32 The man who left the Queensland parliament in 1901 was quite different to the one who had lost his seat in 1896. He was now a more measured politician, with some brief ministerial experience, hardened, but not embittered, by electoral defeat and now knew how to run an effective grassroots campaign to secure his seat. Fisher was also anxious to take the pragmatic reformist labour policies devised in Queensland by the labour movement and apply these, where appropriate, in a national setting.

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6 A new Commonwealth and party

On Tuesday 1 January 1901, the people of Australia witnessed the inauguration of their Commonwealth, and Fisher was among a large number of Queensland parliamentarians invited to the main celebrations in Sydney. After a morning procession through the elaborately decorated streets, a large crowd assembled at Centennial Park for the formal swearing in of the caretaker ministry of Edmund Barton by the new Governor-General, Lord Hopetoun. Fisher took part in the parliamentary delegation procession behind the clergy and the mayors of the various cities and before the military detachments that preceded the Governor-General.1 In the evening he again joined fellow parliamentarians at a state banquet held in the Sydney Town Hall. He was disappointed at Barton’s dinner speech because he thought it dwelt too much on Federation from a NSW perspective. After a round of other enjoyable activities over the week he returned to Gympie for the next stage of his political career. He would soon be transformed from a Queensland politician into a federal identity and part of a new political party. Within six years he would become party leader and then a year later Prime Minister of Australia. Although it is tempting to see this as a rapid rise, the first few years proved to be harder for Fisher than has sometimes been imagined.2

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Labour prepares In early 1900, after it was clear that Federation would take place, the executive of the NSW Political Labor League proposed an intercolonial conference to consider a common labour platform and possibly forming a federal labour party. Twenty-seven delegates assembled in Sydney on 24 January in the offices of the Australian Worker. They represented four mainland colonies because Western Australia had not yet decided to federate and the Tasmanian labour movement lacked the coherence and funding for such a journey. Such were the parlous finances of most of the labour movement that the six Queensland delegates had to pay their own expenses. The meeting decided to adopt the NSW party practice of a brief ‘fighting platform’ that was separate from any detailed set of policies known as the ‘general platform’. Over two days, the delegates devised a simple fighting platform on which they could all agree. The four points adopted were electoral reform of one man and one vote, old age pensions, an exclusion of coloured races and provision for a constitutional referendum by the people to break deadlocks between the House and Senate instead of a double dissolution. The first three points were long-standing aims of the broad labour movement. The last item was included because many in NSW were suspicious that the new Senate might prove too powerful and be used by conservatives to stymie the people’s will.3 Some issues facing delegates were too contentious to consider. Australians in 1900 were uncertain as to whether their new nation would embrace the protection of local industry, prevalent in Victoria, or the relatively free trade system of NSW. The delegates put this issue and matters relating to defence into the too-hard basket. Even so, the fighting platform was not binding on any of the individual labour parties and was broad enough to allow for regional or state variations. The conference was unable to put any machinery in place for the creation of a federal labour party and it was left to the individual state parties to contest the first federal election. As Crisp has noted, ‘It is impossible to gauge with certainty how faithfully all Labour candidates in all states in 1901 adhered to the 1900 Federal Platform’. In fact there

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were obvious and well-known variations. Labour candidates in NSW, for example, were allowed a free vote on the trade issue but in Victoria, they were pledged to support protection. In Western Australia, the party hedged its bets with George Pearce (a strong supporter of free trade) being one Senate candidate while Hugh de Largie (a well known Protectionist) ran on the ticket with him and both were elected. Gregor McGregor from South Australia and David O’Keefe and King O’Malley from Tasmania all successfully ran as Protectionists, not as labour candidates, but then switched to, and were accepted by, the party. The 1900 NSW Annual Conference also decided to develop a pledge for the coming election and circulated it to the other states for possible adoption. It required candidates not to oppose the final selected labour candidate, to support the principles of the federal platform if elected and to vote as the majority of the federal party decided in caucus. It is unclear, but unlikely, that any other state adopted the proposal, but it provided a basis for the subsequent federal pledges.4 In January 1900, delegates had been introduced to several leading NSW labour parliamentary figures, especially William Morris Hughes and John Christian Watson. Hughes, born in England in 1862 and migrating to Queensland in 1884, had worked his way up through the union and political movement. A supporter of the ideas of Henry George, Hughes had ties to the waterside workers, eventually read for the Bar and was to be an important and controversial figure in the subsequent federal labour movement and in Fisher’s life. Watson, born in Chile, had, like Fisher, ended his formal schooling at an early age and had become a typographer and newspaperman, with strong connections to the powerful Australian Workers Union. Although he had opposed Federation, once the people had voted for it he was determined to make it work to the labour movement’s advantage. An extremely likable man, then only in his early thirties, he was a excellent speaker and writer, had a good head for political tactics and enjoyed all sports, which made a favourable impression on the delegates that would later stand him in good stead in the new federal parliament.5

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The member for Wide Bay Fisher had not attended the Sydney conference most likely because of the costs involved, but was clearly interested in the federal election. In November 1900, he called a public meeting in the Gympie Theatre Royal to address the issue of whether he should put himself forward as a ‘radical labor candidate’ in the forthcoming contest. It was an astute manoeuvre because, by seeking public endorsement, he eliminated any charge that he was deserting Gympie voters who had elected him only eighteen months earlier. This public meeting stood in contrast to the twenty-one man electoral committee (by invitation only) which the non-labour side had put together around this same period. Some 250 supporters packed the theatre to give Fisher unanimous endorsement and the local newspapers reported on the meeting, giving him maximum publicity. In early 1901, he also received strong backing from the various WPOs in the Wide Bay electorate to be their candidate. It was a good start for what appeared, at that stage, to be a difficult and unlikely election win.6 It was widely expected that Sir James Dickson, ex-Premier of Queensland and, from 1 January 1901, the Minister of Defence in Barton’s interim government, would stand for Wide Bay. None of Barton’s ministers failed to win their seats in the subsequent election and there was no reason to think that Dickson would be the exception. However, Dickson did not look well at the state banquet on the evening of 1 January and, on 10 January, he died, apparently from diabetes, while still in Sydney. Fisher suddenly found himself without a serious challenger for Wide Bay.7 The non-labour electoral committee was thrown into disarray by Dickson’s death and took several weeks to decide on an alternative. This process was further interrupted by the news of Queen Victoria’s death on 22 January and a period of public mourning. Once this official period had passed, Fisher commenced his campaign at Gympie on 5 February followed by another meeting at Bundaberg on the next day, and was soon making use of his rail pass to criss-cross the electorate. It was not until 14 February that his opponent, Queensland MLA and self-described Protectionist, John Annear, was able to announce

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his pre-selection and not until 25 February that he formally launched his campaign. Annear was well known in the area because he had held one of the Maryborough seats since 1884, but was a fairly lacklustre candidate. He did, however, try several tactics to unnerve Fisher.8 The first was to try what had worked so well in 1896: to link Fisher to the Queensland Central Executive Committee and then accuse him of being the dupe of outside radical forces. Fisher quickly knocked that charge on the head by publicly insisting Annear show how and where Fisher had been endorsed by the CEC instead of by the Gympie public meeting and then by the WPOs. Although the war in South Africa was then raging, and Fisher was critical of British policies, he largely avoided the issue in his campaign speeches. Annear and others tried suggesting Labour, and by implication, Fisher, were disloyal to the Empire by opposing Australian participation. This tactic also seemed to have limited impact on the electorate as the war in South Africa was now old news, given its length. Finally, his opponents tried to pin Fisher down as to whether he was a Protectionist or a Free Trader, hoping to swing voters away from one side or the other. Fisher simply sat on the fence on this issue claiming, quite truthfully, to be both since he believed a revenue tariff would be needed if the new federal government was to have enough money while also expressing his longstanding support for free trade wherever this proved possible.9 When Fisher opened his campaign he based it on the Labour platform, giving each of the four points their due, although he also emphasised issues which he knew were more popular with his electorate. Not surprisingly, he strongly campaigned for the protection of wages and living standards by promising to vote for restrictions on immigration from Asia as well as an immediate end to Melanesian labour. At first he was more ambivalent over the forced deportation of the Islanders from Australia and indeed remained uneasy over this scheme when it was later adopted. But support for keeping Australia from being a mixed race nation went down well with the electorate. Fisher also used the campaign to express his views on a number of other issues including his support for creating a federal capital, a land tax, a voluntary army with more being spent on naval defence, a conciliation and arbitration

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system based on the New Zealand model, federal bank notes, a federal bank and a federal commercial fleet. From the beginning, Fisher clearly put himself forward to voters as a man with progressive ideas who would extend and enhance federal power in crucial ways.10 However, in 1901, the only issue that seemed to engage the Wide Bay electorate was the question of Melanesian labour. This was because Annear, while supporting restrictions on Asian immigration, was a supporter of the Kanaka labour scheme arguing that it was needed for growing sugar crops. This became the major policy difference between himself and Fisher and proved to be Annear’s undoing. In something of a re-run of the 1899 election, many of the papers, including the Gympie Truth, ran a lurid campaign focusing heavily on the protection of a White Australia and its living standards. It clearly struck the right note as Edmund Barton discovered when he campaigned in Bundaberg in early March. Some thought him not as strong on the immigration issue as the locals expected. He therefore faced a public meeting, which Fisher also attended as a speaker, full of protesters.11 Even Fisher, by the end, admitted the racial issue had taken over the campaign but nevertheless, in his final meeting in Gympie, still argued that the question facing voters was that of black versus white labour. By this time there was a growing sense in the electorate, even among papers opposed to Labour, that Fisher had tapped into the popular mood and that Annear’s bid was doomed.12 Fisher spent polling day in Maryborough, leaving George Ryland to look after Gympie and making sure that the miners got off work early so they could vote. When the results came through to the central polling station, they revealed that he had won 55 per cent of the popular vote. He briefly addressed jubilant supporters outside the building, telling them that the new nation would commence with no coloured people being allowed. He was then escorted to the railway station where he caught the late train back to Gympie.13 The Gympie Times conceded that while Labour, once again, had proved to be better organised than its opponents, the public mind had been inflamed by the White Australia issue. Indeed, the Gympie Truth simply headlined the result as ‘Victory for White Australia’. Fisher’s win was perhaps not really surprising

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in one sense as the sub-divisions within this electorate (which were each the same as state seats) had already returned a number of PLP members.14 An analysis of voting figures kept by him reveal he polled strongly in Bundaberg, Burnett and Burrum. Wide Bay and Gympie were more narrowly won and rural Musgrove was the only loss. Fisher was by now a well-known local identity and had the support of labour newspapers in Gympie, Maryborough and Bundaberg. He had run against a mediocre opponent but he swept every major town, including Maryborough, which had been expected to be held by Annear. This could partly be put down to the fact that Fisher had played the race card very well and the public perception was that he would be the better candidate in protecting wages and living standards.15

The 1901 results Before the election, Barton had been confident of obtaining a comfortable working majority in the new parliament while Alfred Deakin, reporting anonymously for the London Morning Post, saw the battle as being essentially between the free traders and the protectionists and gave little credence to a strong showing by any of the labour candidates.16 It turned out that Fisher’s victory in Wide Bay was not unique because the various labour parties polled quite strongly, achieving 18.3 per cent of the national vote for the House of Representatives. The ministry formed in the new parliament was still a Protectionist one led by Barton. His party commanded thirty-one seats in the House to twenty-eight held by Sir George Reid’s Free Traders, the official opposition, but the various labour parties held sixteen seats between them. In the Senate, the Protectionists held only eleven seats to the Free Traders’ eighteen and labour’s eight. In both houses, therefore, the labour members, sitting on the crossbenches, held the balance of power.17 The labour vote in the various states was uneven, but Queensland and NSW, possessing the best developed parties, delivered the strongest results. Despite earlier promises to consider dividing the state into three for the Senate election, the Queensland government decided

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it was advantageous to have only one state-wide electorate. They expected this would dilute the Labour vote and the ministry was confident of then securing all six places. In fact, Labour won three seats and might have won a fourth except that Thomas Glassey successfully ran as an independent and picked up votes that might have gone to John Hoolan. Overall, Queensland returned seven labour parliamentarians, followed by NSW with six, Western Australia with four, Victoria with three and South Australia and Tasmania with two each. Potentially then, there were at least twenty-four members of the House of Representatives and Senate who could become members of a single federal parliamentary labour party.18 The composition of the labour members also reveals just how typical Fisher was of his time and place. Some two-thirds had been active in one way or another in the trade union movement and nearly as many had seen service in one of the colonial or state parliaments. All but two were Protestants but, compared to their non-labour counterparts, only a minority (eleven) had been born in Australia. Some seven had been born in Scotland and at least three others had Scots parentage. The Australian-born members contained a slightly higher proportion of skilled workers compared to the immigrants who had, like Fisher, mainly arrived in the colonies as young men. Many labour members also belonged to lodges, literary societies, temperance movements and other local organisations devoted to moral and self-improvement and about half regularly worshipped at church on Sundays. Most, like Fisher, could loosely be described as ‘socialist’ in the sense that they had read widely in the socialist literature that regularly circulated in late nineteenth century Australia, including Bellamy, George, the Fabian Essays and Marx, but had no systematic approach to the subject. Watson later recalled that the party ‘irradiated buoyancy and health’ no doubt partly from the euphoria of the unexpected victories but also from the fact that the average age of its parliamentarians was just forty. Indeed when Fisher was sworn in as a minister in Watson’s first government in April 1904, he was not even forty two, but four of the seven ministers were younger than him including the thirty seven year old Prime Minister.19

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Creating the FPLP Fisher, having sent in his resignation to the Queensland parliament, duly arrived in Melbourne and was present to be sworn in on 9 May 1901(see figure 4) when the parliament was formally opened by the Duke of York in an elaborate ceremony attended by over 14 000 people at the Melbourne Exhibition Building. Margaret Irvine and her mother also attended as Fisher’s guests.20 The Commonwealth’s real home would be in what is now Victoria’s state parliament building, which was to be occupied by the federal parliament until a new capital was created. Even before the parliament had assembled, the first major task for its labour members was to create the envisaged federal parliamentary party. On 7 May, Fisher and eight other labour members from Queensland and New South Wales held a preliminary meeting in a basement room at the parliament house. Anderson Dawson chaired the meeting and Chris Watson was elected to take the minutes. It was decided to adjourn until 11 am the following day with the view of inviting as many labour parliamentarians as possible to the next meeting. At this time, twenty-two senators and MHRs voted to form themselves into the ‘Federal Labour Party’.21 The fourteen members of the House chose Watson to be their temporary spokesman while the eight senators chose McGregor for the same role in the upper chamber. McGregor was widely admired because he had been made almost blind in an industrial accident and overcame this handicap to enjoy a successful parliamentary career by sheer willpower and a prodigious memory for facts and figures.22 The temporary leaders and their positions were subsequently confirmed as permanent ones by a unanimous vote of the caucus on 12 June. At that time James Stewart (Queensland) was appointed Whip for the Senate and Secretary for the Caucus while Frank Tudor from Victoria became Whip in the House and Assistant Secretary. These four men then formed the caucus executive. Although the name ‘Commonwealth Labour Party’ was adopted by caucus on 20 May, the long-standing term, ‘Federal Parliamentary Labor Party’ (FPLP) was frequently used to describe this body.23

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The leadership issue Looking back on this period in May 1927, Watson recalled that he and Fisher had contested the first leadership position. Watson remembered being nominated by Josiah Thomas (NSW) while Fisher was nominated by Charles McDonald, a fellow Queenslander.24 Yet the editors of the caucus minutes point out in a footnote that there is no evidence that there was a ballot for the two spokesperson positions on 8 May. The minutes are clear that Watson and McGregor were elected unopposed as leaders in June so it is unlikely he was confusing events. In fact, the wording of the caucus minutes on 8 May is more ambiguous than the editors’ claim. There was a motion, seconded by Fisher, that the members of each house select one man to temporarily speak for the party. It then simply states that McGregor and Watson were chosen. George Pearce, who was present at the meeting, noted in his memoirs, admittedly nearly fifty years later, that Fisher had been preferred as leader by a number of members ‘but in the final vote Watson had the larger following’. 25 Watson’s memory of who proposed each of the men at the meeting also makes it likely that some formal contest had taken place, although another possible interpretation it is that Fisher withdrew his nomination before an actual ballot. There may be some truth to the view that Fisher, in putting his name forward, was less interested in challenging Watson than in staking his claim to being the leading figure among the Queensland delegation.26 Herbert Campbell-Jones later claimed that both Egerton Batchelor from South Australia and Hughes were also interested in the leadership but dropped out earlier when discussions with colleagues indicated that they did not have the numbers. He also thought Hughes did not attend the meeting to elect the leader because he was miffed at not being given this role. In fact, Hughes was away on business and did not arrive in time for the meeting but was apparently upset at missing out on the opportunity to stand for the leadership.27 Watson was not confirmed as leader until June and was clearly given a trial run while members assessed his parliamentary performance and sorted out the party’s platform and standing orders. In any event, he proved to be an

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excellent parliamentarian and had little trouble convincing members that he could permanently lead them on the floor of the House as did McGregor in the Senate. Within two caucus meetings, Watson, not Dawson, was voted in to chair the meetings and the tradition of the House leader also chairing the caucus had been established.

Watson’s tactics On 20 May, caucus received the report by the committee which had been set up on 8 May to frame the constitution and rules of the party. It proposed that it be called ‘The Commonwealth Labour Party’, would sit on the crossbench, have a party executive of seven members and endorse a fighting platform consisting of White Australia, Adult Suffrage, Old Age Pensions, A Citizen Army and Compulsory Arbitration. Interestingly, the caucus saw no problem in altering the fighting platform of the January 1900 conference. It dropped one plank (on the referendum over deadlocks) and added the need for a citizen’s army and compulsory arbitration. The committee’s report explained that the compulsory referendum had been opposed by a number of parliamentarians from the smaller states and was unlikely to come up in the immediate future. It was silent as to why it had added the other two planks, although these were generally popular ideas within the labour movement. Again, the ‘fiscal question’ (the issue of free trade versus protection) continued to be a non-binding matter for the party since roughly half of its parliamentarians at that stage favoured free trade and the other half protection.28 Sitting on the crossbench should have, in theory, given the FPLP leverage over the Barton ministry. Fisher pointed out to the Speaker in December that there were, as in Queensland, three parties in parliament and the FPLP would demand to be heard, for without it nothing could be done unless the other two parties were willing to combine their votes. 29 However, the reality was more complicated. On some matters, one wing of the Protectionist faction was often closely aligned with Labour. On the whole however, the majority of Protectionists were just as likely to see eye to eye with the Free Traders, rather than

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with the FPLP. Pearce, looking back on these years, admired Watson’s obvious talents but was critical of his tactics. Despite coming from a free trade state, Watson was a supporter of protection and also became a friend and admirer of Deakin. The conservative press later made much of Deakin apparently taking orders from Watson. Yet Pearce, who became a strong opponent of alliances, argued that the FPLP had often been too willing to side with the Protectionists rather than deal with the Free Trade opposition led by Reid. In fairness to Watson, he had come from a state where his party had sat on the crossbenches and had often been quite successful in extracting concessions from the other parties. But the early FPLP had only a limited platform of binding policies upon its members and so he was unable, on many crucial issues, to guarantee delivery of a solid bloc of votes.30 The FPLP was initially just as split over free trade and protection as the other two main parties and had to allow a free vote on this matter, which further weakened Watson’s bargaining position. As a result, the Protectionist ministry, despite problems on occasions, was able to maintain the confidence of the House and complete a full term in office before it decided to go to the polls in December 1903.

The first parliament While the issue of free trade versus protection was a vexing one in national politics, it should also be recognised that a great many of the issues before the first parliament were broadly consensual. In May 1901, the government outlined its program that included issues that would become familiar in federal politics over the next decade. It proposed constituting a High Court, establishing an Inter-State Commission, taking control of the public service and the defence forces, selecting the new federal territory, restricting Asian immigration, abolishing South Sea Island labour and creating an Arbitration Commission. There would also be investigations into creating uniform postal charges, a railway line to Western Australia and transferring the Northern Territory from South Australian control. As well, Barton indicated a range of bills that would be needed to cover banking, tariffs,

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navigation, quarantine, old age pensions and uniform federal electoral laws. Although all the parties generally supported these proposals, it was to varying degrees. The arbitration system was a good example and it caused the fall of two governments before a limited bill it was finally passed through the Senate in December 1904. The Commonwealth had been given powers to legislate for conciliation and arbitration to prevent and settle industrial disputes that went beyond one state (but not within any state). Barton believed that an arbitration system should be the last resort when collective bargaining failed and was also needed to cover federal employees, but hoped it wouldn’t really be pro-active or have extensive powers. The FPLP, in contrast, increasingly came to believe, but not without its own divisions, that the system should be widely used to cover the maximum number of workers. Deakin tended to stand closer to Barton but with more concern for genuinely settling disputes and benefiting workers. As well, many of the issues that had to be dealt with were quite complicated and took more time than members originally envisaged. Even apparently straight-forward tasks such as drafting new regulations for the Commonwealth’s defence forces took nearly two years to enact.31 Some matters, however, were resolved relatively quickly. On 5 June, Barton introduced the first major pieces of legislation in the form of the Immigration Restriction Act and the Pacific Island Labourers Act. The major objection from the labour side was that the former, in deference to British diplomatic sensibilities, did not exclude nonEuropean persons outright from entering the country but imposed a dictation test upon them. Watson and McGregor sought amendments for outright exclusion but lacked enough support from non-labour members. Fisher objected to Barton’s approach on two grounds. He wanted a White Australia clearly spelt out by the government because that is what he and others, including Barton, had promised the electors. To impose a dictation test was not keeping faith with what he had promised and his subsequent parliamentary career would be marked by his determination to honour such commitments: ‘I asked for the vote of my constituents with absolute freedom to exclude by legislation all Asiatics from the Commonwealth’. Fisher also objected

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to the explanation offered by Deakin that the bill had to be shaped in this way in order to receive royal assent. To argue such a case was ‘to create the impression among the Australian people that we are not a self-governing community at all’. The need for the new nation to clearly identify itself and its place in the world would also be an important issue to Fisher during his federal career. In any event, despite these objections, Fisher voted with most other parliamentarians for the final bill.32 The second piece of legislation, the Pacific Island Labourers Act, was designed to prevent such labourers entering the country after 1904, while those already employed or residing in the country would be deported by 1906. At the caucus meeting of 2 October, the party also agreed to support this bill in principle. Fisher of course had long advocated excluding Melanesian labour from the sugar industry of Queensland. As he explained in the House, the one big question in the first federal election in Queensland (and certainly for him in Wide Bay) ‘was whether that State was to be the heritage of the white or the coloured races’. Yet there was a humanitarian side to this issue for him. He had always been uneasy over the proposal to simply deport the entire South Pacific population. He believed these people had sometimes been coerced into coming in the first place but had settled quite well into the local communities. It was now inhumane, in many cases, to ask them to leave if they posed no economic threat to Queensland workers. He was consoled by the fact that the deportation would be handled locally and hoped that there would be some leniency in the administration of it. Although the FPLP quibbled over details of the bill, most members finally supported it. In 1905, there were a reported 14 000 white workers and 7970 ‘coloured’ labourers working on the sugar fields of Queensland but by 1909, white workers now numbered 26 000 while coloured labourers had fallen to 1685. In the end, only a small number of the Melanesian population in Queensland was able to escape the deportation orders. By 1914, only about 2 per cent of the entire Australian population (excluding Aboriginals) could be classified as being of non-British or non-European origins.33

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Fisher was also kept busy during the year serving on the Joint House Committee plus a number of important caucus committees. The first one drafted new standing orders for caucus, the second dealt with the first legislation designed to regulate the various defence forces and the third dealt with proposed new import duties. On the Defence Act, the party decided in July 1901 to offer an amendment that militia and volunteers should not be sent beyond Australian shores unless on a voluntary basis, which Fisher supported. Otherwise, the party was divided on the way in which the army should be organised and to what extent citizens should be subject to compulsory military training. In the end the bill, which was badly drafted, was dropped by the government before the amendments were even put to the parliament.34 Fisher’s third committee membership was needed when the government proposed imposing various duties on some imports as a revenue measure in its first budget. Under the Braddon Clause, the federation founders had agreed to the Commonwealth having the power to levy import duties but three-quarters of that revenue would have to be returned to the states during the first decade of Federation. Although the new parliament was required to pass a tariff measure before the end of 1902, the question of import duties re-opened the free trade versus protection debate. The Barton ministry’s proposal in late 1901 immediately led to the accusation of it imposing extra taxes on the poorer classes and trying to introduce protection in stages. At its meeting on 30 October the caucus resolved to appoint a committee of six, including Hughes, Batchelor and Fisher, to consider its attitude to such a tariff. In the meantime, the caucus resolved not to move any censure against the government for its actions nor take part in any public debates on the issue lest it fracture party unity. The committee came out in support of very limited protection, which was also Fisher’s view at the time. Of the seventeen categories listed by the government for a tariff, the party would only support six items at a reduced rate and published its recommendations in the press. This measure would be haggled over in the parliament for nearly a year before it was finally adopted. Labour’s campaign saw the duties dropped on tea and kerosene, although no party was really happy with the final outcome.35 By

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the end of his first year in parliament Fisher had every reason to be pleased with having won Wide Bay in the first place and having established himself as a presence in the FPLP. Yet he wasn’t the party leader, nor was he an obvious rising star in a parliament of talented men. This would come in time.

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7 Marriage, England and cabinet minister

At a personal level, 1901 would be a year of mixed fortunes for Fisher. His brother John had been rapidly promoted through the police force and in 1899 was appointed as Chief Constable of Grimsby. However, on 11 July 1901, John was found dead in his bed from a heart attack. Although a shock to the family, John’s doctor had been concerned for months about his declining health and increasing breathing problems. He found that John was suffering from a heart condition and advised more rest, which was ignored by his patient. Robert Wallace, visiting Scotland at the time, had been with the Fisher family in Liverpool about a month before John died. Jane Fisher contacted Wallace through his brother and asked him to write to Andrew informing him of John’s death. With the family’s agreement John was buried in Grimsby by his police colleagues. Wallace, in a second letter, included a newspaper clipping on the burial service and a lengthy obituary on John from the Grimsby Police Gazette.1 John’s death meant that Andrew had now lost three brothers in less than ten years and had also become the eldest male of the family. Fisher had originally hoped to visit England in 1900 but his decision to stand for Wide Bay had put this on hold. John’s death may have influenced his desire to visit his mother and remaining family as soon as possible and also his decision to create a family of his own. Like most non-

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Melbourne parliamentarians on the Labour side, Fisher had initially found accommodation in a boarding house. Although he had plenty of company among his colleagues, the Melbourne experience was much more of a bachelor existence away from the Irvines. He decided that he would finally marry Margaret during the next parliamentary break and wedding invitations were sent out at the beginning of December. Fisher attended his last caucus meeting in Melbourne on 11 December before making the long train trip back to Gympie.2 On 31 December 1901, Andrew, aged thirty- nine, married Margaret, aged twenty-seven, at her family home. (A home, rather than church wedding, was common practice for Scots at the time.) Born in Australia, Margaret inherited enough sense of Scottish customs from her parents to fit comfortably into a marriage with Andrew and while speaking with an ordinary Australia accent, often used a slight Scottish burr when calling him ‘Andrew’. A tall brunette − she was the same height as her new husband − Margaret also shared many of Andrew’s values. She had taught Sunday school at the Gympie Presbyterian Church and was a firm believer in the cause of Labour. She was close to her family, especially her widowed mother, and shared with Andrew the need to be surrounded by a large and extended kinship group. The age difference between herself and her husband was actually less than her mother, who was only nineteen when she had married the thirty-three year old Henry Irvine in 1872. Although they were not outwardly demonstrative (they never later held hands, embraced or kissed in front of their children), the Fishers would have a solid and enduring marriage.3 The service was performed in the early evening by the nowreturned Robert Wallace, and assisted by the minister of the Gympie Presbyterian Church. Andrew’s best man was Charles McGhie, a fellow Scot, and solicitor from Maryborough, while Margaret’s sister Christine and her cousin Mary acted as bridesmaids. Another sister, Elsie, walked several miles to obtain drinking water for the wedding since the nearby wells were dry in the summer heat. The bridal party and guests, who included several of Andrew’s FPLP colleagues, then partook of a reception of cold chicken and non- alcoholic drinks. The couple stayed in town that night and were accompanied by young Annie Irvine as

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‘the child needed a little holiday’. The next day they departed by train for Brisbane and then for a honeymoon at the home of the Wallaces. The government presented the couple with a canteen of cutlery, while fellow Labour members contributed a silver tea and coffee tray set. Unfortunately, the set was later stolen in London in 1940.4

The Maori Lane residence In the early 1970s, the Gympie council decided to move the old Irvine house in Maori Lane and preserve it in the city’s Mining and Historical Museum. It has since been advertised as the ‘Andrew Fisher House’. Even today the museum accepts there is only limited evidence that Fisher ever resided there. It seems that he paid some rates on the house and an elderly resident remembered Andrew and Margaret living there soon after they married. Until 1901, the house, in which Margaret Fisher had been born in 1874, had been rented out by her mother, and Andrew had always lived in the nearby boarding house. The day after their wedding the Fishers left town and had little time to live in Maori Lane in 1902 since they left for England in late April and did not return until January 1903. However, Peggy Fisher noted that her father did rent the home when they returned from England even though the family then went to live in Melbourne. They could have actually lived in the home for a few months in early 1903, which would be what the elderly resident later remembered. It is also quite possible that Fisher continued to pay rent and rates on the house for a reasonable period of time afterwards. Since the disastrous 1896 election, he had been sensitive to the charges of being an absent member and Maori Lane provided him with at least a postal address within in his electorate.5

More union work Aside from the need to be present in parliament, another reason for Fisher to be back in Melbourne was important union activities. The previous year, Billy Hughes had proposed that Fisher and other interested Labour parliamentarians join him on a provisional committee

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to help form a federation of waterside workers across Australia. This committee had written to all relevant unions and received enough encouragement to organise a meeting at Parliament House on 7 February 1902, to inaugurate the Waterside Workers Federation, comprising twelve unions and over 6300 members. Hughes was elected president of the WWF and Fisher was one of the original members of the executive committee. Although a member of the mining union, his ALF links had previously connected him with the Maryborough port workers. Fisher was never active in the new WWF but it appealed to him as proof that the Australian federal system could be used to strengthen the Labour movement.6 In 1903, he supported the creation of the Gympie Engine Drivers’ Association – one of the first in Queensland and a sign of the pride and prestige those men had in their trade. His work in creating these two new bodies was the last active involvement by Fisher in the union movement.7

Votes for women Another reform that greatly appealed to Fisher was passed by the parliament in March 1902. This was the new electoral bill for the Commonwealth. The 1901 federal election had been conducted using the different state voting laws until the Commonwealth could pass its own electoral bill. This resulted in women in South Australia and Western Australia being able to vote in the first federal election, but not women in the other four states. Among the electoral reforms proposed by the FPLP and various Liberals, and carried by Barton with no great enthusiasm, was the extension of the suffrage to all women over the age of twenty-one (but not Aboriginal women).8 Fisher had advocated suffrage for women in his opening address in the Queensland parliament back in 1893 and remained a life-long supporter of this cause, along with his wife. It confirmed in his mind that the new federal government was off to a good start in expanding democracy. Despite these busy beginnings, 1902 was a year in which Fisher made few major contributions to Labour politics. This was partly because of events largely beyond his control.

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Attending a coronation The Australian government had decided to send a parliamentary delegation (that included Barton and Sir John Forrest) to represent the new Commonwealth at the coronation of Edward VII, set for June 1902. Fisher was chosen to represent the FPLP and would also investigate Labour politics in England. He clearly wanted the role because it provided a chance to introduce his new wife to his relatives back home. It may also have been the case, as we shall see, that Watson considered Fisher more dispensable than other senior party figures. Although the government covered most costs, the expenses meant that Fisher still had to be economical in his travels. The Fishers sailed to England across the Pacific on the Miowera via Fiji, Honolulu, Victoria and Vancouver and then caught the Canadian Pacific railway to Montreal. They subsequently boarded the Lake Ontario on 29 May and reached Liverpool on 8 June, where Andrew introduced Margaret to most of his family. He had a large number of people in England and Scotland (at least sixty) that he intended to visit, if his address book was any guide.9 Presumably, as part of his investigation into Labour politics, Fisher, while still in Liverpool, wrote to Keir Hardie in London seeking an appointment with him. Hardie quickly replied inquiring that if he was the same Andrew Fisher of Crosshouse days he would be happy to renew their acquaintance.10 However, there were to be major changes to Fisher’s overall plans. On 24 June, just two days before his coronation, Edward fell ill with acute appendicitis and for a time there was considerable concern for his life. Andrew and Margaret found some shops in London putting up coronation decorations while others were busy taking them down. Fortunately, the king survived his appendectomy surgery (only the third person to do so up to that time in England) but his coronation had to be postponed until early August. For Barton and Forrest, this delay meant an endless round of social engagements to fill in their time. Andrew and Margaret attended the inspection of troops at the Horse Guards Parade on 1 July but the delay in the coronation required more thought. Margaret had arrived in England several months pregnant

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and could not, after the postponed coronation date, make the return journey to Australia in time for the birth.11 The Fishers initially appeared to think about staying in Liverpool until the baby was born but Andrew’s family lived in a relatively small home shared by his mother, two brothers and sister. Andrew and Margaret then diplomatically suggested that they wanted the birth to be in Scotland, as well as to see something of the country. Day rightly points out that this was a strange decision since the couple could have rented a house in Liverpool and still had family support. It is possible, as he argues, that Andrew and his mother were estranged for some reason. Just as likely, the newly married Margaret Fisher felt insecure being so close to her mother-in-law.12 In any event, after a short visit to Kilmarnock and Crosshouse, the couple moved to Edinburgh where they could be assured of medical assistance for the birth. They rented a home at 93 Comiston Road, Morningside from a Miss M Thompson and consulted Dr John Thomson about Margaret’s delivery. Andrew left her in August to attend Edward’s investiture and sent her a Westminster Abbey program and a description of the events. He was back in plenty of time for Margaret’s labour at the end of September. This proved to be a long and difficult ordeal, lasting over two days. Near the end, Fisher went out and found a second physician to assist the exhausted Thomson. When the baby boy was born, he was blue and appeared lifeless but the second physician gave him another ‘toss’ and he began to cry. Fisher was forever grateful that he had found the second doctor, as Thomson had given the baby up for dead.13 The couple tended to keep the Scottish naming tradition for their children, and so the boy was called Robert after his paternal grandfather. The Fishers employed a nurse to assist Margaret with Robert, and when he was about six weeks old, the family set sail on the Teutonic for North America. Once again, they crossed Canada and the Pacific and reached Brisbane on 4 January 1903, to be greeted by Margaret Irvine, now to be known as ‘Gran’ by the children. They all returned to Gympie as the parliament was no longer in session.14 This trip was the last time that Fisher saw his mother, who subsequently died from smallpox. The Fisher household in Liverpool had to be quarantined

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as a result of her illness. Then, in 1907, William, the youngest of the brothers, also passed away. This left David and Janet as the only other members of his immediate family, although he had plenty of relatives in Ayrshire.15 By the early 1900s, the amount of correspondence, which had helped sustain Fisher since leaving Scotland, was diminished by the smaller numbers left in his family. His focus was then upon his own family in Australia. Margaret and Robert returned with Andrew to Melbourne in 1903, and for the next few years, the Fishers would live in various rental accommodation in Kew and then around St Kilda. In 1904, they were joined by Margaret’s sister Elsie who undertook housekeeping duties for the family.16

The second federal conference While on his way back from England, Fisher had missed the second federal Labour conference, commencing in Sydney on 2 December 1902. The 1900 meeting of delegates in Sydney has been counted by the ALP as its first federal conference, but it was really the 1902 meeting that was the first genuine one. In 1902, delegates attended from all six state branches and, with the FPLP now an obvious success, the conference seriously began to devise both a fighting and general platform. The new fighting platform included four of the FPLP’s 1901 fighting planks: namely, the maintenance of White Australia, compulsory arbitration, old age pensions and a citizen’s defence force. It also added three other items in the nationalisation of monopolies, restriction of public borrowing and proper navigation laws (mainly to regulate the wages and conditions of local seamen). The general platform, in many cases added little by way of explanation to the fighting platform although the item dealing with defence elaborated on the need for both a citizen military force and an Australian owned navy. The item relating the navigation laws, however, was the most comprehensive, proposing a raft of issues to protect local shipping and seamen. Item eight also proposed a Commonwealth bank of deposit and issue with life and fire insurance departments, while item nine related to cheap federal patent laws. Item ten not only listed uniform

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industrial legislation but the need for a constitutional amendment to provide for it. This was a contentious issue for many in the party, who still preferred to keep industrial matters in state hands. Frank Tudor’s motion to adopt this item was only carried by thirteen votes to ten, and the five delegates from NSW, Watson included, voted against it. NSW already had its own arbitration system that worked reasonably well, but that was not the case in many other states. Queensland had no system at all and Victoria only had a limited Wages Board. Although later conferences were apparently more harmonious in accepting such aims, the vote revealed tensions within the party over federal/state power that would cause Fisher later headaches. The conference also refined the pledge, largely adopting the NSW model that had been circulated in 1900, and required all its members of parliament to vote with the caucus majority on issues affecting the platform. On the contentious fiscal issue, however, parliamentarians were still allowed a free hand.17

The inner circle While Fisher had established himself as one of the senior politicians from Queensland in the FPLP, he had also been absent for nearly twelve months by the time he attended the new session of the parliament in May 1903. Fisher got along well enough with Watson, who acted as a referee for him with a Melbourne bank in August 1901, and the two would maintain a close working relationship when Watson later stood down as leader. However, Fisher was not part of Watson’s inner circle of senior advisors. During these early years, Batchelor often behaved like the unofficial deputy leader in the House and, in June 1901, was appointed acting leader while Watson was absent assisting in the NSW state election. Hughes was also a strong parliamentary performer and by the time of the first Watson ministry in 1904, would hold the second most important position within the government. He too could also lay some claim to being the de facto deputy leader of the party. Watson, a former journalist and compositor with a love of language, Hughes who, despite earlier financial difficulties, had been admitted to the bar and Batchelor, a former minister of education, comprised a

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parliamentary leadership elite largely based on their education. They certainly regarded themselves as the men most able to match wits and classical allusions with Barton, Reid or Deakin. Fisher’s lack of a classical education and his average skills at oratory kept him out of Watson’s inner circle. This was partly why he was seen as a good choice to represent the FPLP at the coronation in England. He was senior enough to be the party’s representative but would not be particularly missed, from their point of view, in the cut and thrust of the parliamentary debates.18 Yet within two years Fisher was elected deputy leader of the FPLP and within another two years became party leader. This relatively rapid rise to power by an underestimated parliamentarian owed something to Watson’s own problems but was also due to Fisher’s ability, as in Queensland, to gain widespread support from his parliamentary colleagues while astutely reading the direction in which the broader Labour movement was heading. In July 1903, Barton reluctantly introduced his attempt at the Conciliation and Arbitration Act, intended to cover workers under federal awards. The bill had long been advocated by the FPLP and also pushed by the radical Minister for Trade and Customs, Charles Kingston. He resigned from the ministry because his colleagues would not accept coverage of Australian seaman under the bill. He decided instead that, free of the ministry, he would move an amendment to the Arbitration Act from the floor of the Senate. In the House, Fisher saw an opportunity to expand federal industrial coverage that the 1902 conference had advocated. In September, he moved, as a private member rather than as a part of caucus, to include state public servants under the bill, but this was narrowly lost. Charles McDonald was then able, with some radical Protectionist support, to successfully move that at least state railwaymen be covered. After this amendment, the government felt it was easier to drop the entire bill. Later in the month, Barton decided to move to the newly created High Court and Deakin took over the government. In mid-October, the parliament was prorogued and elections were set for 15 December. The dropping of the Arbitration bill was condemned by the FPLP and the Labour movement in general but there the matter rested until after

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the election. However, Fisher’s private amendment, which had subsequently led to McDonald’s success, clearly added to his stocks within the caucus.19

The ‘three elevens’ election The December 1903 election saw the FPLP increase its strength, becoming the largest party in the Senate with fourteen seats to thirteen Free Traders and nine Protectionists. In the House, the party’s share of the popular vote rose to almost 30 per cent and it won twenty-two seats (and another at a subsequent by-election) mostly at the expense of the Protectionists. The seventy-five lower house seats were now divided almost evenly between the three main parties. In Queensland, Fisher was easily returned in Wide Bay with 61.2 per cent of the vote and, overall, Labour received some 56.7 per cent of the popular vote in that state. The win of seven of the nine House of Representatives seats and all three Senate vacancies was one of the highpoints for the party in all its years of Queensland federal politics. The Queensland contingent of twelve parliamentarians (ten elected and two Senators continuing from 1901) gave that state the largest representation within the FPLP.20 Deakin had been silent since the rather disappointing election results, but finally on 1 February 1904, fresh from hearing about the test match in Adelaide, he likened the new political situation to having a game of cricket with three elevens instead of two. He was determined to reduce this to just two teams as soon as possible. He therefore entered the new parliamentary year anxious to create better working alliances within the House. Yet he remained vague on what sort of alliances he intended. On 2 March, Deakin reintroduced the Conciliation and Arbitration Act, presumably to win over the FPLP. Yet it was soon clear that the FPLP’s position remained unchanged and that the bill still needed amendments. On 14 April, the caucus authorised the possibility that Fisher might act in Watson’s place and move the same amendment he had proposed in the previous year. The caucus originally wanted Watson to move the amendment but then allowed him the option of having Fisher move it if it seemed to create a

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possible political crisis for Watson. The most likely explanation is that the caucus expected the Fisher amendment would again be defeated and Watson would then move a second amendment to include the railway workers which had previously been successfully moved by McDonald. Presumably this would be a signal to Deakin that the FPLP was open to a compromise, even though Deakin was reluctant to accept even this inclusion. Fisher moved his amendment on 21 April, and to everyone’s surprise, it was narrowly passed with some Free Trade support.21 Reid had astutely outmanoeuvred his opponents on this matter to defeat the government. Hughes later claimed that the party was surprised by the fall of Deakin and such an idea had never entered their thoughts. Yet the party was engaged in brinkmanship with uncertain consequences. Despite his loss, Deakin fairly cheerfully tendered his resignation and advised a reluctant Governor-General to ask Watson to form a ministry. Given his insistence that Watson be called, the likelihood was that Deakin expected a coalition might be possible between himself and the FPLP. He had no intention of allowing Reid, whom disliked and distrusted since their days in the constitutional conventions, to be given a commission.22 It is possible that Watson, a man friendly and sympathetic to Deakin, did not convey to him as forcefully as he might have the FPLP’s views on the arbitration bill. Deakin in one of his London Morning Post articles just a few months before, had been full of praise for Watson’s ‘tact and judgement’ in leading the FPLP. Yet the idea of using federal power to overcome oppressive state actions was important to sections of the party after the bitter strikes of the 1890s. As recently as 1903, the Victorian railwaymen had their conditions and wages eroded by a vindictive conservative government and this was on the minds of party members in 1904. Although Watson and many in the NSW party might have dragged their feet on giving industrial power to the Commonwealth, Fisher’s strong and consistent stand on this issue strengthened his position within the FPLP. To make matters worse, not only had Deakin’s initial efforts at cementing an alliance come undone, his own party was now tending to divide into two camps. While a radical minority moved towards supporting the FPLP, the majority tended to

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lean towards Reid. This placed Deakin in an invidious position since he really could not seriously think of long-term support for Watson’s ministry if he wanted to maintain leadership of his party. On the other hand, he found it difficult to envisage supporting Reid or accepting a ministerial position in a coalition government. 23

Forming a ministry Following Deakin’s resignation, an excited caucus meeting was held on Saturday 23 April. Watson reported on the situation and said he expected to be called on by the Governor-General to form a government and it was moved that he be authorised to accept the commission. The meeting re-convened at 3 pm to hear that Watson had accepted the commission. At this point, some members began to get cold feet over the FPLP governing in a minority. Instead, they did what Deakin was probably expecting and proposed that an alliance be formed with his party. This quest for or against a working alliance with like minded members would absorb much of the party’s energy over the next few years. Higgs and Fowler moved that Watson approach Deakin over forming a government in which there would be a least four paid Labour ministers. This was not all that dissimilar to an agreement already made by the PLP in the Queensland parliament the previous year, and what Dawson had sought in 1899. This motion was defeated after heated debate. McGregor then moved that the chairperson have a free hand in choosing his cabinet, and this was passed unanimously. It was implied in the motion that Watson would of course head a Labour government but the caucus had not precluded non-party members from the ministry. Watson certainly believed this to be so as he told journalists and so did Hughes and Batchelor, to whom he once again turned for advice.24 Watson decided to maintain the Barton/Deakin ministerial balance of two places from the Senate and six ministers drawn from the House. He also decided he would be Prime Minister and Treasurer while Batchelor became Minister for Home Affairs. McGregor was not considered for any administrative post because of his eyesight but was

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given the largely honorary position of Vice President of the Executive Council. Hughes was asked to consider the post of Attorney General but refused as he felt he was not qualified and became instead Minister for External Affairs. In any event, the three senior members of Watson’s inner circle held the most important cabinet positions except for Attorney General. There being no other obviously qualified legal candidates in the party, Watson then considered Kingston and Henry B Higgins who, while not party members, were counted as allies in the parliament. Kingston declined on account of ill-health and Watson approached Deakin and sought his advice on Higgins being invited into the ministry. He had no objection and Higgins accepted the post. Watson then chose Anderson Dawson as the second Senate minister and, despite having been a critic of Australian involvement in the Boer War, he was appointed as Minister for Defence. Hugh Mahon was appointed as Postmaster-General and Fisher became Minister for Trade and Customs. The cabinet had representatives from every state except Victoria and Tasmania, while South Australia was over-represented due to Batchelor’s presence, but he was the one man with genuine ministerial experience. Watson’s new ministry was well received in the labour papers and even sections of the conservative press were approving despite their horror at the thought of Australia being governed by Labour.25 Fisher was by now the most senior party member from Queensland, despite the presence of Dawson. His old Queensland leader was already in physical and mental decline. He had moved his family to Melbourne in May 1901 and purchased a comfortable home but his miner’s lungs were unaccustomed to the colder Melbourne air. He began to drink excessively, allegedly to ward off bouts of influenza, as well as gamble heavily in John Wren’s gaming houses. In contrast, Fisher was well regarded by his colleagues and his cabinet appointment was not unexpected, especially after his role in attacking the arbitration bill. Although not part of Watson’s inner circle, he was still obviously senior enough, and from an important enough state, to be appointed to the cabinet.26

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The Watson Government The Watson government was sworn in on 27 April, with the ministers wearing their ordinary suits rather than formal attire. This relative informality did not undermine the fact that Watson was a fastidious dresser and his sense of style would be a model for most of his ministers, including Fisher. Each minister swore an oath which they read aloud except for McGregor who, having memorised what his fellow minsters had just read, proceeded to recite it word perfect. The press were horrified by the obvious lack of experience of the new government and some urged Reid and Deakin to immediately get rid of it. Others wondered how a government bound by party pledges, platforms and caucus votes could possibly operate in the Westminster system. Fisher, addressing the Melbourne Trades Hall Council on 14 May, defended the government from these attacks, pointing out it had done nothing wrong that would justify its dismissal and had the support of those ‘who desired a democratic government for Australia’.27Although Deakin publicly congratulated Watson and assured him he would give his new government ‘fair play’, he was clearly disappointed that the FPLP had not entered into a working alliance.28 On the same day Fisher was at the Trades Hall, Deakin met with Reid to consider the possibility of an alliance between their two parties. Four days later, the Argus formally, but prematurely, announced the coalition. Instead, the personal animosity between Deakin and Reid and divisions among the Protectionists over such a move, gave the new ministry at least some breathing space. When parliament reconvened on 18 May, Watson outlined a fairly comprehensive program including, as a first priority, the conciliation and arbitration legislation which would resume where the Deakin ministry had left it. There would also be a bill to select a new federal capital site, the appointment of an Australian high commissioner to London, aid and development for Papua, the survey for a transcontinental railway and amendments to the postal and electoral administration, including the removal of the prohibition of employment against Aboriginal persons in the postal service. The program was less about

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Labour priorities as set out in the fighting platform of 1902 than an appeal to many of the Protectionists to keep them and the Free Traders from combining against the new ministry. Watson was determined above all to show that his party, if given the opportunity, could govern responsibly. For all the limitations of this first ministry, its short-term success was a turning point in Australian federal politics, especially in Victoria.29 The Victorian Labour party had struggled during the late nineteenth century, despite the fact that payment for members of parliament was introduced in that colony as early as 1871. Faced with a strong Liberal tradition that supported protection and social reform, Labour seemed simply a wing of the Liberal Protectionists rather than an identity in its own right. The advent of the federal parliament in Melbourne and the presence of the FPLP helped transform this situation. The federal party, with its clearer identity, provided a working model for the Victorians. The FPLP also provided speakers and advisors from the other states, including Fisher, who often gave up time to address both the political and industrial wings of Victorian Labour. The gaining of government in 1904 by the FPLP spelt the death knell for the Deakin Protectionists, whose heartland was Victoria. It was now clear that Labour could be a radical party and yet also responsibly govern the new nation. Although Victoria long remained the FPLP’s weakest state, it would still double its seats, at the expense of the Protectionists, from two to four in 1906 and then more than double it again to ten in 1910.30 Fisher’s appointment to the ministry was an important step in his political advancement. His old friend George Kerr, recently elected leader of the Queensland party, wrote to him congratulating him on his appointment: ‘Now you have the chance to show to the people of the Commonwealth that you are a man with a backbone’.31 The new post, despite its shortness of tenure, gave Fisher the chance to prove he could handle administrative work at a federal ministerial level. He answered parliamentary questions in detail and his ministry brought him directly into the areas of trade and customs and the perennial issue of protection.32 Ironically, his first political crisis in the portfolio was

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not with the Opposition but with Watson and Hughes. When Fisher was given Trade and Customs he naturally assumed that it included the areas of navigation and shipping. Hughes, however, had been interested in this area because of his waterside activities and had Watson’s promise that he would be the chairperson of a royal commission to investigate and eventually draft a proper Navigation Act for the Commonwealth. Hughes’s reluctance to take the Attorney General’s post might have been because he saw this work on the navigation laws as a higher priority and holding External Affairs better fitted his objectives. Watson, it seems, had forgotten to inform Fisher of this promise to Hughes when he was handing out the portfolios. Fisher was disturbed when found out about Hughes’s role and approached Watson on the matter. The Prime Minister at first told Fisher that he had not authorised Hughes to undertake this project. When Hughes and Batchelor reminded him of his promise, he had to recall Fisher, apologise, but tell him that Hughes would have the post. Fisher then threatened to resign but was persuaded to stay on after what appears to have been a meeting of the three men. A compromise was reached whereby Hughes would remain chairperson, but Fisher would collaborate in preparing the new bill and in carrying it through parliament in the first and second readings. Although Hughes certainly kept his post, Watson had initially promised him total control over this area, so the inclusion of Fisher represented a partial victory for him over the Prime Minister and his inner circle. In fairness to Hughes, he did an excellent job in trying to sort through the complexities of the navigation issues.33

Alliances and the fall By the end of May, faced with press speculation over the demise of the ministry, the caucus had second thoughts on the need for an alliance with Deakin. On 25 May, it decided it would write to the executive of each state Labour party asking them to consider giving electoral immunity at the next election to parliamentarians willing to support the government during the life of the parliament. Watson was also empowered to offer an alliance and he wrote to Deakin the following

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day setting out its terms. He proposed that this alliance would come into effect after the passage of the arbitration bill and the cabinet numbers would be determined on a proportional basis, but that the FPLP insisted on the right of veto on Deakin’s cabinet choices. The alliance would also commit itself to the program already outlined by the government and at the next election the two parties would support each other. On 1 June, Deakin briefly replied that his party had rejected the offer of such a proposal. What he didn’t say was that a majority of his supporters now favoured an agreement with Reid. Without an alliance and with Deakin’s party splintering over this issue, the end for the Watson ministry was merely a matter of time.34 On 12 August, the government was defeated on the floor on the issue of providing preference for unionists in the contentious Arbitration Act. Watson approached the Governor-General to dissolve parliament but Northcote refused since he correctly sensed that Reid and Deakin had tentatively reached a political pact. Indeed, when Watson formally resigned his commission on 17 August, Reid was asked to form a ministry and invited a number of Liberals into the cabinet. While Deakin and Forrest did not join the ministry, they were prepared to support Reid while a minority of liberal-radicals continued to support the FPLP. This switch to Reid enraged many within the FPLP with Hughes in particular leading a parliamentary assault upon Deakin that temporarily estranged the two men and caused Deakin to describe Hughes as ‘the ill-bred urchin whom one sees dragged from a tart-shop kicking and screaming as he goes’.35 During September 1904, caucus again seriously considered a formal alliance with the radicals led by Isaac Isaacs who were distancing themselves from Deakin. The ‘three elevens’ were now very much in danger of becoming ‘four elevens’. The caucus even went so far as to draw up articles of agreement for the alliance and to publish them. The program was, at least in the short term, acceptable to both sides. The problem for Watson, however, was that his potential parliamentary allies wanted future electoral immunity as part of such an agreement. He had no real authority to give such guarantees because the 1902 federal conference had decided that the decision to select candidates for federal seats

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remained a matter for the state organisations. Several of these bodies, particularly the Queensland and Victorian state executives, had been quite negative towards Watson’s May proposals on this matter. The Victorians saw their party as having a real chance of winning many of the Protectionist seats at the 1906 election. That state, in particular, opposed any alliance and it was supported by a number of parliamentarians in the caucus, including Charlie Frazer from Western Australia. Yet Watson appeared unperturbed by mounting opposition to these issues. Fisher, whose stocks had clearly risen with his colleagues since the arbitration amendments in 1903 would soon be the beneficiary of Watson’s troubled leadership.36

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8 Leadership

During the first half of 1905, George Reid, ever the astute politician, began re-organising his party as ‘anti-socialist’ partly because he thought it would prove a vote winner and partly to create a fusion of all the non-Labour groups in the federal parliament into one party. 1 This first attempt at fusion failed, largely because of Deakin’s personal hostility to Reid, his distaste at the anti-socialist propaganda and his suspicions that Reid remained essentially a free trader. Watson shared a similar distrust of Reid and by June was actively encouraging Deakin to get rid of the ministry, claiming in a revealing statement, ‘We, and especially myself, don’t want office but I have the utmost anxiety to stop the retrogressive movement which Reid is heading’. 2 Deakin finally withdrew his support and Reid’s ministry fell in late June. Reid was less forgiving of Deakin’s actions than Watson had been in 1904 and remained a bitter enemy for the rest of his life. Deakin and Watson also privately discussed how to get the FPLP to support Deakin’s ministry without arousing anti-alliance forces at the forthcoming federal Labour conference. When Deakin did assume office, Watson urged caucus to give its general support to the ministry for the life of the parliament. In July 1905, Fisher attended his first federal conference, held in Melbourne. In these early conferences, the costs of attending and the importance of the early parliamentary members meant they largely

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dominated these meetings. Some 44 per cent of delegates were from the FPLP and another 31 per cent were state parliamentarians, many of whom used their free railway passes to travel part of the way to Victoria. At first all went well for Watson. Previous conferences had not adopted any objectives for the party so this was a new agenda item in 1905. Earlier in the year, Watson was responsible for the adoption of a new set of party objectives at the NSW state conference which modified the earlier and more socialist ones then in place. This won him praise from sections of the clergy of the Sydney Catholic Church, including Cardinal Moran. It was important for Labour that it captured the conservative Irish Catholic working class vote. It did not want Catholics creating their own political party out of a fear of socialism that Reid was trying to whip up.3 Just a week before the federal conference, Watson also attacked Reid’s campaign in parliament by pointing out that Reid was on record supporting, on occasions, state ownership of industries and had long worked with the Labour party in NSW without worrying about its apparently socialist objectives. Describing himself as a ‘state socialist,’ Watson thought that municipal socialism, such as was successfully operating in England, was the most likely system to emerge in the foreseeable future in Australia.4 However, many delegates at the 1905 conference were obviously anxious not to play into Reid’s hands. Watson was successful in having the NSW objectives adopted federally rather than the more broadly socialist objectives put forward from Queensland or two possible radical alternatives emanating from Victoria.5 The first part of the new objectives committed the party to ‘the cultivation of an Australian sentiment based upon the maintenance of racial purity and the development in Australia of an enlightened and self reliant community’. The second part wanted collective ownership of monopolies and the extension of the industrial and economic functions of the state. Fisher was among the eleven Queenslanders and Victorians who voted against these objectives which some critics saw as a set of principles that Deakin could easily have espoused.6 The work of the conference was largely unexceptionable in terms of the fighting and general platforms, most of which were essentially a

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re-affirmation and exposition of the 1902 decisions. The fighting platform was expanded to nine points to include a tax on unimproved land value and a referendum on the tariff issue. The general platform reinforced these points and included a twelfth point wanting civil equality between men and women. Watson, however, soon found some conference proceedings unacceptable to himself as party leader. The first was a motion from the Victorian PLC secretary, who proposed that no parliamentary alliances be formed by the party that were not ratified beforehand by a special interstate conference. This was modified by a Fisher amendment that the party would not enter into any alliance beyond the existing parliament. George Pearce also added another rider that the party would not grant or promise electoral immunity to any opponents at election time. Watson opposed even the amended motion but lost out to delegates who were hardening in their attitudes. The alliance issue was expected by Watson since he and the caucus had raised it in their proposals to the state organisation in May 1904, and it would be an important issue with the next federal election due within the next eighteen months.7 Watson took even greater offence at the motion moved by Charlie Frazer: ‘That this Conference recommends that in the event of the Labour Party obtaining the Ministerial benches the Labour Ministry shall be chosen by the Party in caucus’.8 The motion was partly due to unhappiness in sections of the caucus at Watson’s appointment of Higgins and unease over the mistaken rumours that Deakin had been allowed a voice in determining the composition of the 1904 ministry. These rumours had led Watson to defend himself in a short note to Fisher in late April 1904 that he had not sought this advice, irrespective of what Hughes had been saying.9 Hughes, aware of the growing caucus criticism of the Higgins appointment, appears to have sought to deflect the blame by claiming Watson had accepted Deakin’s advice rather than his own. The fact that Higgins, for all his personal brilliance, had performed poorly in parliament while serving in the ministry, provided further ammunition for those critics of the appointment. Frazer had actually tabled a motion in caucus in October 1904 that it be allowed to elect a future ministry by exhaustive ballot ‘in order

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to promote the peace and general satisfaction within’. The motion was postponed in early November after the caucus decided to set up another committee to consider the internal management of the party.10 Frazer’s well known opposition to Watson’s proposals for electoral immunities and alliances only added to his desire to bring the leader under greater caucus control, and added to Watson’s annoyance. The only comfort for Watson was a successful amendment to the motion that the caucus would ‘recommend’ not ‘choose’ the ministers.11

Deputy leader On 9 August 1905, caucus elected Andrew Fisher unopposed as deputy or assistant leader of the party in the House of Representatives. Officially it was to assist Watson with his workload, given his health problems. Behind it were more fundamental issues concerning Watson’s leadership. Less than two weeks after the conference, Watson made a ‘lengthy statement’ at the caucus meeting which led to general discussion in the party room.12 At the next meeting, on 2 August, he tendered his resignation as leader with the state of his health cited as the official reason. He did have some medical problems, including very painful haemorrhoids, and his workload was punishing. However the ‘lengthy statement’ of 27 July was almost certainly much the same as a letter that he circulated to all colleagues, dated the same day, in which he outlined the reasons for his intended resignation. These were his unhappiness at the two resolutions passed by the July conference that he believed had made his position as leader untenable.13 Watson’s letter was interesting because it attempted, for the first time, to formally define the relationship between the FPLP, the state branches and the federal conference. From Watson’s point of view, the six branches sent delegates to the federal conference which devised broad policies that were endorsed by the state branches and became the platform for the FPLP. Having done that, it was up to the parliamentarians to pursue those policies in the way that they saw fit. ‘Once the Party enters Parliament it alone should, by its corporate voice, decide the course to be taken in any particular emergency.’ The conference’s

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interference in the matter of alliances and electoral immunities represented a censure on the parliamentary party (and obviously Watson’s leadership). He ignored the point that he and the caucus were the ones that had first raised the issue of electoral immunity directly with the state bodies as they sought to shore up support for their minority government. On the second motion, Watson had no doubt that this was a direct censure on himself and his selection of the first federal ministry. Even leaving this issue aside, he could not, as parliamentary leader, accept such a binding motion on his future judgments. ‘The leader is supposed to have, or should have, the most matured judgement amongst members of the Party; yet according to the Conference decision he is to be given no greater voice in the selection of his colleagues than the rawest recruit in the party.’ In consequence of these motions Watson therefore felt it was his duty to resign as the party leader.14 The meeting of 2 August was really something of an anti-climax. Watson had announced in his letter and probably at the caucus meeting of 27 July that he intended to resign on principle. There was no mention in the letter of his health, although this may have been raised by him in caucus discussions. It seems likely that Watson was persuaded by colleagues to stay on as leader before the caucus meeting. Watson, however, still felt obliged to tender his resignation as he had promised in his letter. By resigning over the state of his health, he gave the caucus the chance to remedy this problem by appointing a deputy to help with his workload. Maloney gave a notice of motion that Fisher be appointed as deputy leader (of the party in the Lower House) at the next meeting. The assumption of the meeting at its conclusion was that the leader’s position was not vacant and a copy of Watson’s circular letter of 27 July has, in his own hand, a note on it ‘Withdrawn 2/8/05’.15 At the subsequent meeting on 9 August, there being no other nominations, Andrew Fisher was elected deputy leader and thanked the members for the honour bestowed upon him.16 More than four decades later, Hughes claimed he had contested the deputy’s position and had even made Fisher a cup of tea while waiting for the votes to

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be counted. He was more likely confusing the events from 1907 when he did in fact contest the party leadership with Fisher after Watson’s retirement. There is no evidence that Hughes ever stood for this position. Indeed, it seems unlikely that the caucus, even if they had clearly favoured Hughes, would have contemplated having both the leader and his deputy from the same state. Probably Batchelor, rather than Hughes, was the real loser with Fisher’s election since he had acted in Watson’s absence in the early years of the party. Watson remained greatly respected within the party, as seen by the obvious efforts made not to accept his resignation. Nevertheless, the only thing the party did to meet his objections was to take the issue of ill-health at face value and elect someone, who was not part of his inner circle, to ease his workload. Perhaps Watson felt that the efforts his colleagues obviously made in persuading him to stay, overcame some of his personal difficulties with the two conference resolutions.17

Andrew Fisher’s success There could be many reasons for the uncontested election for deputy but an obvious one was that Fisher, as a senior member from the large Queensland delegation, simply had the numbers and the backing of the majority of his colleagues. One paper soon after this election claimed Fisher to be ‘one of the most popular men in the federal parliament’.18 However, his likeable personality concealed his political shrewdness. The journalist Herbert Campbell-Jones came to know Fisher fairly well in these years and noted, ‘It was often supposed that he was as innocent as a new borne babe in the guile and wiles which each party practised. … It suited him that his opponents should think his bowling was orthodox on the wicket. The “wrong un” was there all the same.’19 During the period from May 1903 until August 1905 Fisher, without a leadership role in the party, carved out a solid relationship with his colleagues in the parliament and with those outside the Labour movement that stood him in good stead for any future caucus election. He maintained a solid attendance record in caucus itself, averaging over 72 per cent when it was not unusual for barely half of the FPLP

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parliamentarians to put in an appearance at any given session. By July 1901, the term ‘caucus’ had become accepted in the FPLP as the name for party meetings and although sometimes denounced by the conservative press, the caucus had been used in the nineteenth century on the non-Labour side of politics, both in England and Australia, as a way for like-minded parliamentarians to consult and lobby together. It was subsequently used by the various Labour parties in the 1890s, including in Queensland, where Fisher had been deputy chair of the PLP. In the NSW party it became a more tightly controlling body but this model took time to be developed in the federal arena.20 Fisher was clearly comfortable with caucus’s role in determining policies and votes in the chamber. He later told the House in September 1908 that Labour’s opponents were envious of their solidarity because ‘we have a common purpose’ and he therefore took the time to make the caucus system work and to his advantage.21 He also told AG Stephens that he was never troubled by the idea of such meetings and indeed thought it ‘the finest battleground any political party could wish to have. We are pledged to each other to the same extent as we are pledged to our constituents. No organisation has been successful which has not a guiding principle and a body to which it can appeal for a decision on disputed points of law and procedure.’22 Fisher has sometimes been seen as a dupe or tool of the caucus, but this is unfair. His relationship with this body was quite complex but it would be true to say that with his sense of community, derived from the Presbyterian church and the Scottish co-operative movement and his sense of the virtues of a democratic society, Fisher actually liked the concept of collective decision making that the caucus provided for his party. As well as working with caucus, Fisher was also seen by his colleagues, as in the Queensland parliament, as being at least a competent speaker, sound on financial issues, astute at tactics and possessing an excellent understanding of parliamentary standing orders. This gave him influence in the parliament even if he was not one of the leading party orators. Furthermore, he was highly regarded in the wider world of the Victorian Labour movement in those early years of the FPLP. As it struggled to carve out a separate identity from the

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Liberal Protectionists, many were upset by Watson’s attempts to seek alliances with Deakinites because these were seen to run counter to its interests. During the first half of 1906, Watson lobbied the NSW and Victorian state conferences to accept his plans for electoral immunities for radical-liberal allies. When they ignored these proposals, Spence and Hughes moved in caucus that certain allies be recommended for immunity anyway based upon Watson’s earlier assurances and their support for the FPLP. This saved Watson from the embarrassment of his assurances to these men not being honoured but was unlikely to have muted criticism of his tactics. In contrast, Fisher was lukewarm on these issues. He was certainly not totally opposed to alliances but since his Queensland days had always sought agreements that would clearly be in Labour’s interests.23 Unlike Watson, who often made the rail trip back to his wife in Sydney, Fisher lived with his family in Melbourne for most of the year and was willing to give up his time to speak at the Trades Hall, visit local unions and political groups and even address various socialist bodies in the city. He was fortunate that the more radical socialists, although recognising that the FPLP was not, in their view, a socialist party, took the advice of the Englishman Tom Mann (who had arrived in 1903) and decided that the Labour parliamentarians might be educated into socialism. During the period up to 1907, they maintained good relations with many members of the FPLP, including Fisher. They eventually gave up on the party and began to support new militant unions, such as the US-derived Industrial Workers of the World, as being more useful for radical change. However, this was after Fisher had gained the party leadership. In the meantime, he was held in good stead with the broad Victorian Labour movement and this also had a positive effect on many interstate FPLP members.24 Fisher was also not averse to play on state parochialism as when he denounced in the House the pretensions of NSW in regarding itself as the ‘mother state’ or suggested that he was much more radical than many in the FPLP, with a pointed reference to Watson. This didn’t help him win hearts and minds among the NSW FPLP members but realistically Fisher thought they were more likely to support one of their own (as they had done in

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1901) than him. But he could count on a few dissenters from that state and it gave him more credibility with other members of the caucus. By the end of 1906, he was also on record strongly supporting national uniform industrial laws, old age pensions, the new protection policies and increased government ownership of shipping lines to prevent monopolistic exploitation of the nation. All were issues that gave him solid credentials as being on the cutting edge of Labour reform.25 When Fisher was elected deputy leader, the caucus − aside from its elected leaders and whips − had still not established its proposed seven-man executive. A week after the election, Charles McDonald moved and Fisher seconded a motion to create an executive from the present officers (Watson, McGregor, Fisher, Tudor and O’Keefe who had replaced Stewart at the beginning of 1905) plus two others to be elected by caucus. This new proposal was carried and on 23 August, Pearce and McDonald filled these positions. Although something of his own man, Pearce was highly critical of Watson’s tactics and saw eye to eye with Fisher on such matters. McDonald was an old ally of Fisher and would eventually become the Speaker of the House. Tudor, who had become caucus secretary when Stewart stood down, had moved the resolution at the 1902 federal conference on turning industrial powers over to the Commonwealth and came from a state strongly opposed to Watson’s alliance proposals. This group was far more sympathetic to Fisher and his outlook than Watson’s old inner circle.26

The 1906 general election FPLP support for the Deakin ministry enabled it to survive until the end of the parliamentary term, when a general election was set for 12 December 1906. Deakin in his opening campaign speech offered a few promises such as a tariff inquiry, naval defence measures, the possibility of old age pensions and uniform banking and insurance laws. He also acknowledged the support of Watson and the FPLP and accepted that he could work with them in parliament but ‘with the machine outside that dictates to them we have not found it possible to work and can’t find it possible to work’. Relying on parochial feelings

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(the speech was delivered in Ballarat), Deakin spoke of sinister forces in the Sydney Labour Leagues that had spilt over into Victoria and most other states.27 A week later Reid, now fully re-labelled as an antisocialist, joined this battle against the FPLP with his opening speech in Sydney entitled ‘War Against Socialism’. His attack, however, was somewhat blunted because he spent most of his speech abusing Deakin by depicting him as being a captive of the FPLP.28 Watson, campaigning on the 1905 party program, did his best to cover as much of NSW as he could and even ventured into south-east Queensland as far as Wide Bay. But overall, each state Labour organisation had to conduct its own campaign and counter the generally hostile press by grassroots campaigning.29 The growing national support for Labour was confirmed by the election results. The new Senate comprised fifteen Labour, three Protectionists and eighteen Anti-Socialists (including independents loosely aligned with Reid). In the House of Representatives, Labour achieved nearly 37 per cent of the popular vote and returned twentysix members (plus another added at a by-election in 1908). There were also sixteen Protectionists (down ten seats on 1903), twenty-six of Reid’s anti-Socialists and seven others who largely revolved around Sir John Forrest and his so called ‘Corner’ group of conservatives. However, party lines for many on the non-Labour side were fairly fluid and the numbers fluctuated between these groups over the sessions of the parliament. Labour’s pleasing election results were distributed unevenly among the states. NSW improved its position and now held eleven of the twenty-six seats in the House, although no Senate seats. In contrast, Labour performed poorly in Queensland with a decline of 4 per cent in its popular vote for the Representatives and the loss of two seats.30 The Queensland state party had become divided over internal policies and personality clashes. It consequently conducted a very poor federal campaign. To compound these problems, Anderson Dawson had not been re-endorsed for his Senate seat and decided to run as an independent candidate, and thus split the Labour vote. As a result neither Dawson nor any of the official Labour candidates were elected.

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Watson could only lament that the troubles in Queensland ‘lay in the dissensions among the members of the local Labour Party’. Fisher was comfortably returned for Wide Bay with a smaller majority (54.5 per cent of the vote) but he now found his state’s representation reduced in the FPLP, with NSW possessing the largest number of parliamentarians. Nevertheless, all members of the caucus executive were re-elected unopposed at its first meeting after the election. The first referendum to amend the Commonwealth constitution was also held with the 1906 election. It simply moved the election date for Senators from 1 January to 1 July, making it more likely that half Senate elections would be held in conjunction with the poll for the House of Representatives. This proposal had the support of all parties and was easily agreed to by the electorate 31

Intervention in Queensland Fisher’s first priority was to do something about the state of the party in Queensland. The problems had begun in 1900 when William Browne had been elected leader after Dawson. Browne was supported by his deputy, William Kidston, who emerged as the real force in the party. By 1903, a formal alliance of Liberals and Labour saw a breakdown of the old continuing ministry and the emergence of a new coalition government. It created an unusual situation in Australian politics. The two Labour leaders were appointed to seats in the cabinet but only after they had formally resigned from caucus. The PLP then supported this new ministry even though it had no power over its decisions and could only make suggestions on reforms through its former leaders. Browne died in 1904 but Kidston became a major power broker in the government and eventually emerged as premier in January 1906. The problem was that the union movement and even elements in the political wing wanted a different kind of party to that of Kidston. At the 1905 Labor-in-Politics Convention, new rules tightened qualifications for parliamentary candidates. Among other things, they would have to sign a pledge binding them to the Labour platform and vote in parliament according to the decisions made by the majority of the caucus.

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The Convention also committed itself to a more socialist objective, which Fisher supported at the later federal conference. These measures drove a further wedge between Kidston and a minority of PLP parliamentarians along with most of the state’s union movement. It was this disunity that was reflected in the poor showing of the party in the 1906 federal election. These differences became greater in early 1907 when Kidston demanded personal support from each of the PLP parliamentarians (rather than to any binding caucus decisions) if they wanted further reforms from his ministry. The next Labor-in-Politics Convention was held in Rockhampton in March 1907. Since the federal parliament enjoyed a long recess during the first half of the year, Fisher decided to attend. He backed the union movement and sections of the political wing to defeat the directions Kidston was proposing. He personally moved a motion to have all Labour candidates pledge themselves to the Convention’s platform, unhampered by any compact with another party. Fisher also met with his old friend, George Kerr, the formal leader of the PLP and an ally of Kidston, to ascertain where he would lead the party. When Kerr seemed non-committal on supporting the direction set by the Convention, he was soon replaced by David Bowman at a special party meeting. The results of these decisions seemed disastrous in the short term. A majority of PLP parliamentarians defected to Kidston in a new political faction. In the May 1907 election, the PLP only secured eighteen seats in the Assembly. As in the federal sphere, there were now three main parties of roughly equal size competing for survival. However, as a foretaste of events federally, by October 1908, Kidston had merged most of his group with the conservatives to form a single anti-Labour party. New men now came into the PLP (some were defecting Liberals) to replace the departed leaders and the party began to regain its electoral success. This was reflected in an improved showing at the 1909 state election and then the 1910 federal election, although it was not until 1915 that TJ Ryan finally led the state party into power in Queensland.32 Fisher’s fairly direct and even ruthless intervention reflected his own sense of the need to ensure the in-fighting did not go on and

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destroy Queensland Labour at the federal level. Personal relations between himself and Kidston remained poor after this intervention. Three years later, Fisher, as Prime Minister, threatened to walk out of a dinner hosted by Kidston when he omitted a toast to the GovernorGeneral. Fisher had chosen to come down on the side of those wanting a style of parliamentary Labour party closer to what he believed was emerging in the FPLP. Kidston, to a large extent, wanted a party and a leadership model of the nineteenth century and not entirely at odds with the type of roles that Watson had espoused.33

Watson’s resignation If Fisher had been concerned by the declining Labour vote in Queensland in 1906, then Deakin would have been more concerned by his own party’s poor showing at the polls. He now found himself heading the smallest of the three main parties in the parliament. He was only able to stay in power because the increasingly anti-Labour tone of the Reid group meant that the FPLP gave its support to his ministry. As well, Watson continued to assure Deakin in private that he was not anxious to take office in a minority government. As Deakin was to attend the next Imperial Conference in London, the parliament only briefly met in early 1907 and then adjourned until the middle of the year. Within months of it re-sitting, Watson announced his retirement from the FPLP leadership for health reasons. In many ways his retirement would not have been unexpected. In February, when he had been re-elected leader, he had to reassure colleagues that rumours of him intending to resign from parliament were untrue. Some biographers have suggested that the strain of leading the minority government in 1904 had been too much for such a young man. Since his threat of resignation in 1905, the party had moved further away from his views on how it should be run and was less interested in long-term alliances. A report in the Age from the Brunswick branch of the PLC on 24 October allegedly recorded its satisfaction with Watson’s resignation and hoped that a more uncompromising leader would be appointed. Although the branch subsequently wrote to the caucus officially repudiating this

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report, the article certainly reflected unease with his policies within the Victorian movement.34 The accumulated pressures of his parliamentary workload had certainly taken their toll on Watson’s health. However, domestic discord almost certainly was another factor in his resignation and in his decision (announced at the same time) to retire from politics altogether in 1910. The Watsons had no children and his wife was unhappy over her husband’s long absences but did not wish to join him in Melbourne. Ada Watson also ignored pleas from a number of his supporters to convince her husband not to resign the leadership. The FPLP lost a potentially capable cabinet minister with Watson’s decision to quit politics.35 He later left the party over conscription but remained on good terms with many who had stayed. On his death in November 1941, the caucus, at Prime Minister John Curtin’s suggestion, recorded its sympathy for Watson’s passing and acknowledged his contributions to Labor and Australia. This was a rare break with the firmly held tradition of ignoring all who had left the party.36 Watson had served the early FPLP well. In 1901, he took a disparate group of parliamentarians and, by his leadership on the floor of the House and his hard work behind the scenes, shaped them into a coherent electoral force. He had shown that Labour, if given the opportunity, could govern the nation in a responsible manner. While he did not always approve of the way the party was developing and many in the party did not always agree with his tactics, Watson’s contributions to his party’s early success needs to be acknowledged.

The leadership contest The meeting to choose Watson’s successor was held on the 30 October 1907, and Fisher was nominated first, followed by Hughes, Batchelor and Spence. Fisher’s general popularity with his colleagues was obvious and he made sure he was not nominated by anyone from Queensland but by Maloney, a Victorian, and King O’Malley from Tasmania. Hughes’s closeness to Watson would have been held against him by members critical of the former leader’s tactics. Fisher was already

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perceived as sounder in dealing with economic and financial issues than Hughes (it remained a weakness he would never correct) and this was important in a party that needed to show it could govern responsibly. On the other hand, Hughes was admired for his obvious debating skills and for his hard work. While electing another leader from NSW may have counted against Hughes, there was the argument that a replacement leader from that state seemed desirable given its increase in numbers in 1906 and the fall in the Queensland representation. Also many people have been appointed deputy leaders of their parties without their colleagues considering, when the time came, that they were necessarily the best qualified person for the top post.37 Batchelor was more than a worthy candidate in his own right, but had the disadvantage of being from a small state and Spence’s decision to stand crowded the field. Batchelor withdrew immediately nominations were closed. Even though he was never going to be a serious candidate, Spence’s presence in the leadership race initially took away vital votes from the other two candidates. He was eliminated after the first ballot and then Fisher won an absolute majority over Hughes. The actual votes are unknown, as the meeting decided that the numbers should not be published. Some historians have claimed it was a close election but the Melbourne Age, the day after, reported that Fisher had won by a ‘comfortable majority’.38 Hughes was an ambitious man but not until after the l913 election defeat did he again challenge Fisher. Of course, the stunning electoral victory in 1910 also made Fisher’s position as leader virtually unassailable until 1913. It is possible to make an educated guess as to the distribution of the thirtyeight votes on the second ballot. It seems reasonable that Fisher, as the native son, secured all the Queensland votes and most, if not all, of the votes from Victoria because he was so highly regarded in that state. He almost certainly had the support of the Tasmanian members and a majority of the Western Australians. Hughes would have relied on most of the NSW votes (it is unlikely Spence voted for him) and most of the South Australians. Fisher’s victory margin seems likely to have been at least as high as ten. After Fisher was elected leader, Hughes and Spence combined to nominate Fisher as chair of the caucus since,

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technically, the two positions were not the same thing. A ballot for the vacant deputy’s position was deferred until the following week and at that meeting, Pearce foreshadowed a motion to rescind the motion to elect a deputy and this was subsequently passed. Presumably Hughes would have stood for such a position if it had been available and the fact that it was easily abolished suggests that he simply did not have the strength in caucus to lobby for its retention. For the time being, the deputy’s role was no longer needed, for Hughes or anyone else, now that Fisher was in control of the party.39

Hughes and Fisher Historians have never been in agreement as to the exact nature of the rather multi-layered relationship between Hughes and Fisher. Outwardly, the two men got along quite well over many years. They consulted regularly on government and party matters, visited and dined together, worried over each other’s health and exchanged many friendly letters. Hughes later thought nothing of rushing into Fisher’s office to borrow the official prime minister’s car for family business.40 Hughes publicly called Fisher his friend and lamented how much he would miss him as Fisher departed for England at the end of 1915. It was not until Fisher was in London as High Commissioner that their relationship became strained and was never fully restored to its pre-1915 friendliness. Hughes was an ambitious and highly intelligent man and clearly thought he should have been leader, but lacked caucus support to ever seriously take it away from Fisher.41 In October 1907, just before the leadership election, Hughes agreed to write a series of articles for the Sydney Daily Telegraph under the title ‘The Case for Labor’. He continued these at regular intervals until 1911 and this gave him something of a reputation as being one of the party thinkers (something never associated with Fisher) as well as keeping him in the public eye. Outwardly, Hughes remained loyal as Fisher’s deputy, officially or unofficially, and if he annoyed or angered Fisher he would always profusely apologise on those occasions when he actually realised what he had done. Privately, Hughes certainly resented playing second

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fiddle and often implied that he was the real power in the party. Part of Fisher’s later problems as High Commissioner certainly sprang from Hughes’s determination that his former leader would not outshine him in his London post. Yet after Fisher’s death, Hughes came to idealise their relationship even if he continued to portray himself as the power behind the throne. There was an element of begrudging admiration by Hughes for Fisher, perhaps because he was so liked by his colleagues in a way that Hughes would never be able to emulate.42 There is no evidence that Fisher ever found Hughes obnoxious or hated him − a charge that seems strange for some historians to make. Fisher was always very up front with people and hardly ever disliked anyone. If he did, then his honesty made it obvious, as was the case later on with King O’Malley whom he increasingly found irritating. Fisher did find Hughes annoying but then so did most of his colleagues and they usually did not have to work with him at close quarters over such a long period of time. Three times Fisher left Hughes in charge of Australia while he was overseas, which was not the sign of a man who feared his deputy. He obviously respected Hughes’s drive and energy and was happy to seek his advice. On the other hand, he was well aware of Hughes’s failings, especially his inability to get along with colleagues, his desire for keeping power to himself and his relative isolation from the caucus. This of course, in one sense, made Fisher comfortable because Hughes’s obvious failings were Fisher’s very strengths within the party. In any event, Fisher at the end of 1907 was now the party leader. Since 1903, he had shown himself to be astute in handling colleagues and in dealing with the broader labour movement. But harder tasks lay ahead of him. He needed to take his party into power, perhaps in some type of coalition or minority government, but, ideally at the next general election, by winning enough votes to govern in its own right. These seemed daunting tasks and few expected Fisher to be so successful in such a short period of time.

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9 Minority Prime Minister

In the course of the next two years, Fisher would show considerable tactical skill and an ability to achieve a degree of consensus within the ranks of both the FPLP and the wider labour movement that eventually led his party to unprecedented political success. In his new role, Fisher was galvanised into visiting parts Australia with which he was not familiar. This began in the summer of 1907−08 with tours of western New South Wales and there followed years of travelling in order to cover as much of the country as possible. By the time he retired from politics in October 1915, Fisher could claim to have seen more of the nation than any other prime minister or party leader to date. These tours sometimes became marathons. In one twentyeight day trip around Queensland, he covered nearly 5600 kilometres and visited thirty-six towns, using train, coach, buggy, horseback and even a railway tricycle. He received over sixty deputations, attended fifty-one meetings, and on one day alone, spoke some fourteen times.1 Although Watson had been a likeable figure, he had been fairly shy in meeting people and his travel was sometimes restricted by domestic considerations. In contrast, the energy and friendliness of Fisher in his journeys suggested a man anxious to meet people and know more about his country.

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Domestic considerations In the same year that he became leader, the Fishers decided that they would make Melbourne their permanent home. They acquired land in Dinsdale Street, Albert Park, a comfortable, working−lower-middleclass suburb, to build a new home. Margaret purchased the block in June 1907, and the six-room house, with a good size lounge room, was ready for occupancy by December. This decision was perhaps precipitated by the fact that in 1906 Margaret Irvine left her two Gympie homes in the care of her sisters and, along with her two other daughters, came to live with the Fishers and Elsie. The mortgage on the property was in Margaret Fisher’s name and by 1909, all debt, of some £250, had been discharged. The ability to quickly pay off this relatively large sum may have been simply due to Fisher’s increased salary; however, it may also have been thanks to some contribution from Margaret Irvine as part of her new living arrangements with the Fishers. The decision to live in Melbourne meant that the Fishers escaped from the expectations of a certain social position often consigned to people in a country town. Over time, they found it possible to transform their social status within a larger and more fluid urban region. The arrival of Margaret’s family in Melbourne also meant that while Fisher still had to regularly visit his electorate at Wide Bay, his time there could be reduced by not spending time with the Irvines or always taking all his family with him on such trips.2

Fisher and Deakin With Fisher as leader, the relationship between the FPLP and Deakin’s party now began to change. Fisher’s relationship with Deakin was ‘correct, but never as close or admiring as Watson’s had been, and his (Fisher’s) accession to the leadership hastened the inevitable breach between the two parties’.3 On 9 April 1908, the government was defeated on an adjournment motion when several FPLP members voted against it. This had followed a move by these members to have a royal commission into the postal service which Deakin initially tried to defer.

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He subsequently accepted this inquiry under pressure from the FPLP but felt it imperative that he seek some form of alliance to shore up his government. On 10 April, the caucus voted yet again on alliance conditions that included the FPLP being the senior partner, the passage of an old age pension bill, carrying through New Protection policies and a commitment to a land tax as part of any joint programme for the next election.4 Fisher and Watson held discussions, mainly with Deakin’s deputy Sir William Lyne, but these went nowhere. Fisher was willing to talk but largely left the negotiations to Watson, so he was always at arms length on the discussions. This was not surprising because it was common knowledge that Deakin’s party was hopelessly divided on the alliance question.5 Fisher was more open to the views of a growing number in caucus and in the outside labour organisations that were opposed to formal alliances. Indeed, he expected, quite rightly, that this issue would be a major discussion point at the next federal conference to be held in Brisbane in July. If Fisher were to enter any agreement before then it would only be if his party was to have the higher profile and he could show critics that it was to the party’s benefit. Instead of a formal alliance, the FPLP continued to give general support to Deakin but now, with Fisher guiding it, the party became more hard-line in expecting concessions. These included a review of tariff levels, passage of an old age pension bill (and the necessary extra tariff funding for it) and putting surplus revenues into sinking or trust funds to pay for the acquisition of an Australian coastal navy and the old age pensions. The possibility of old age pensions had first been mooted by Barton in 1901 and in October 1904, Reid set up a select committee, subsequently turned into a royal commission, to investigate the issue. Its report, in February 1906, recommended white persons over sixty-five receive a weekly pension of ten shillings and ten pence subject to a means test.6 The proposals were not all that dissimilar to the system that had operated in NSW since 1900 and then later in Victoria. Fisher began pushing for something to be done about it, claiming in July 1906, for example, that at every election nine tenths of members pledged themselves to support an old age pension scheme but nothing had been achieved. In both August and September 1906,

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he continued to call for such a scheme and twelve months later attacked the Deakin ministry for having the wrong priorities when they introduced the Postal Rate Bill instead of pension legislation.7 Eventually, in June 1908, the Surplus Revenue Act, which allowed for monies to be paid into trust funds, was passed and subsequently upheld as constitutional by the High Court. Trusts were established in the same period with the passage of the Harbour and Coastal Defence (Naval) Appropriation Act, to provide for coastal warships, and for pensions with the Old Age Pensions Appropriation Act. The Invalid and Old Age Pensions Act itself allowed for white men and women over sixty-five (and being of good character) to receive a pension subject to an income and property means test. It also included provision for an invalid pension for those over sixteen who were permanently incapacitated. All of this legislation came about because of considerable pressure exerted by the FPLP even though the party disliked the means test. The new pension would come into effect on 1 July 1909, and over 58 000 people were expected to be eligible in its first year of operation.8 These legislative measures in mid-1908 represented the high point of co-operation between the two parties, yet it was not clear how long this would continue. Fisher made the point at the end of May that there were now four parties in the chamber and none were strong enough to govern in their own right. The FPLP, the largest party, had continued to support Deakin because it felt it had a duty to deal with pressing business. Although Fisher assured Deakin in June that he would not simply turn him out, these signals sent by Fisher suggest he was keeping his options open. Within the next few months differences between the FPLP and Deakin would grow, particularly over the problems surrounding the policies of ‘New Protection’.9

New Protection Protection of local manufacturers (sometimes called ‘Old Protection’) by imposing tariffs on imports was practised in varying degrees in colonial times but ‘New Protection’ had arisen in Victoria and the term appeared regularly in The Age newspaper by 1899. As Fisher described

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it, New Protection sought to impose some obligation on employers who ‘benefited from the imposition of protective duties’ to distribute among their employees ‘a fair proportion of the advantage so obtained’. Deakin had assisted in establishing a Wages Board in Victoria to adjudicate on these matters. Although some liberal and labour politicians had been converts to this concept at Federation, it by no means won immediate acceptance. It remains unclear to what extent Deakin and other liberals such as Isaac Isaacs and Higgins pushed the concept of New Protection for their own political advantage and to what extent they were forced along by elements in the Labour party. What is clear is that by 1906, there was an increasing consensus by both groups that such legislation was now desirable as a social ideal for the new nation. Under the scheme, Commonwealth tariffs and other laws protected local manufacturers, who promoted fair and reasonable wages for their workers. Deakin claimed this policy was not all that different from what operated in colonial Victoria and South Australia except it was an improvement in providing higher wages for workers. Fisher moved from his moderate free trade position in 1901 to support this policy because he had long supported active state intervention to protect the living standards of workers and the new system seemed to offer higher wages for the nation’s workforce.10 What was a ‘fair and reasonable’ wage was first defined in terms of a ‘basic wage’ by the well known Harvester decision of the Arbitration Commission, under Justice Higgins, in 1907. The origins of that decision went back to 1905−06 when the McKay Harvesting Company, a local employer of nearly 3000 workers, claimed it faced ruinous competition from the giant American International Harvester company. After investigation by the Tariff Commission, Deakin was ready to consider imposing a tariff to protect that industry. But the investigations led parliamentarians to ponder how they would know what was a ‘fair and reasonable’ wage and what could they do about it if the employer did not pay it. It was Fisher, subsequently supported by Batchelor, who, in September 1906, suggested an answer. An excise could be imposed on all local agricultural machinery equal to half the customs duty, which could be returned to them if the employer conformed to wages set

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by a wages board or arbitration court. If the company operated in a state without such bodies, it could still claim the waiver by adopting wages set by a neighbouring state that used such a system.11 It has been suggested that it was Isaacs, an old ally, who came up with this proposal but it may equally be that, shrewd politicians that they were, the pair had come up with this proposal themselves. One of Fisher’s great strengths was that he often proposed commonsense solutions to complex problems. This parliamentary discussion led to the Customs Tariff Act complemented by the Excise Tariff (Agricultural Machinery) Act and the Australian Industries Preservation Act, all passed in 1906. These were really part of a series of broader measures that, in whole or part, contributed to this New Protection policy.12 However, New Protection hit a major problem in June 1908. The McKay Company had been happy to receive protection for its machinery, but objected to being bound by Higgins’s basic wage decision because it was higher than what they were paying their workers. The High Court, hearing an appeal by the company, ruled in King vs Barger that an excise used to promote fair and reasonable wages under the Excise Tariff (Agricultural Machinery) Act was an unconstitutional regulation of conditions of employment. Only Higgins and Isaacs (both now on the High Court) supported the government’s right to regulate conditions of employment in this way. An angry Fisher believed that the majority of judges had acted to ‘conserve the rights and interests of those in possession’. Once again, the speculating classes had triumphed. Both he and Batchelor thought this could be resolved by changing the constitution to give the parliament the power it needed.13 The High Court decision actually acted as a catalyst and forced the labour movement and FPLP to finally come down on the side of protection which it had been moving towards, by degrees, over the previous years. Deakin, in contrast, appeared reluctant to move towards defending New Protection if it meant challenging the constitutional system he had played such a major role in drafting. Thus, Fisher was given a major advantage in being able to distinguish his party from Deakin’s on a cause he felt the electorate generally supported. In September 1909, he moved a motion, carried unanimously by caucus, that the

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party seek to amend the constitution to give the Commonwealth the necessary powers to enforce New Protection. This was essentially the motion already agreed to at the recent federal conference and reinforced the position that Labour was committed to both New Protection as well as the necessary constitutional changes to secure it.14

The 1908 conference In July 1908, at the next federal conference in Brisbane, Fisher was given the honour of being the first leader of the FPLP to act as chairman. In opening the conference, he was at pains to emphasise the progress made by the FPLP in the context of the current political and industrial scene. One achievement was that those who had once scorned the concept of socialism now discovered just how popular it had become. ‘We are all Socialist now’ he declared to delegates, revealing his love of coining phrases and working them into his speeches. It remain unclear in his address as to what he meant by the term ‘socialism’ but since entering federal parliament, Fisher had identified himself as a supporter of ‘socialistic’ measures in two ways. They were either associated with his advocacy of public ownership of major institutions such as railways or shipping lines that could compete with and drive down the prices of existing private industries that he thought were often overcharging the nation. It was this philosophy that led him to later obtain government ownership, or part ownership, of the cable communications to Australia from North America and Europe in order not to be at the mercy of monopolies. He also used the term, as in Queensland years earlier, in an ethical sense of supporting measures aimed at creating a fairer society. Thus socialism meant providing ‘social justice to every person who acted justly’ and making sure that no man could extort another but instead they would get the just due for their labour.15 Such measures could be achieved by progressive legislation and Fisher also highlighted to delegates the way that the FPLP now found that that ‘the very men who were against us are coming to us’ and by that Fisher partly meant the white collar workers who had discovered the advantages of seeking Labour assistance. He further observed

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that the labour movement had two methods for improving the lot of ordinary workers. It could use the universal strike, increasingly being advocated by militant unions, especially those influenced by overseas syndicalist thinking, or use the parliamentary method via politicians. ‘I believe we have reached a stage in Australia, where, with universal suffrage and an educated democracy, we can do in Parliament for the workers what we could not accomplish by the universal strike.’16 Fisher could see that Labour was on the right track with its policies. Looking back over his twenty years of struggle, he had a sense of satisfaction that those who had opposed him had eventually come around and now tried to follow in Labour’s footsteps. Typically, Fisher’s speech offered little in the way of an intellectual framework for his party and historians have not made much of it. Yet, his experience of nearly twenty years in the Australian Labour movement on its industrial and then political wings, had made him aware of its growing success and increased his sense that Labour represented the genuine voice of most Australians. When the conference adopted the name ‘Australian Labour Party’, it reflected his belief that its name was quite appropriate. The conference also continued with this nationalist theme, by endorsing the need for an Australian owned and controlled navy and supporting compulsory military service for citizens, based largely on the Swiss model, which Watson and Hughes had long advocated. Fisher was also able, at last, to lay the tariff issue to rest when the conference decided that New Protection should now be placed on its platform. A range of other measures were also re-affirmed as policies for the next election including the need for a Commonwealth bank, old age and invalid pensions and a tax on unimproved land. Finally, to counter recent High Court decisions that seemed to restrict Commonwealth powers, the conference agreed to a series of referendums to give the federal government greater powers to control monopolies and to extend and safeguard arbitration/industrial relations and New Protection.17 Aside from the platform issues, among matters on Fisher’s agenda at the conference was the political status of women. Before the two women representatives at the conference, Emma Miller and Kate

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Dwyer, Fisher had stated: ‘I trust that not another Federal election will take place without there being a woman endorsed as a Labour candidate for the Senate and I hope that it will not be only in one State’.18 This was clearly not window dressing, as both Fisher and his wife were firm supporters of women’s rights. Yet the reality was that the ALP remained heavily dominated by males and giving women the vote and the right to stand for parliament was not the same thing as promoting them, as Fisher wanted, as fellow members of parliament. While he had little real control over the various state executives who were responsible for endorsing candidates, Fisher showed little in the way of pro-active leadership in trying to secure any women Labour parliamentarians over the next three general elections. As Fisher expected, the conference also passed what would be a historic motion that formally prohibited the FPLP from entering into any alliance or granting, or promising any electoral immunity to its political opponents. Unlike Watson, who had been offended by such interference in the parliamentary party’s affairs at the 1905 conference, this motion had Fisher’s support. Nor did he appear to have any difficulty, although it was not his preference, with an amendment to the 1905 motion whereby the caucus would in future select the next Labour ministry rather than simply recommending names to the leader. This issue was soon to be tested again before being resolved along the lines that Watson had long opposed. Overall, the conference, from Fisher’s point of view, was a great success and formally provided the policies that he was about to sell to the Australian electorate.19

Taking government In mid-October, Reid tabled a censure motion against the government over its recent budget which did not seem to provide enough revenue to meet its growing expenditures including future old age pensions. The press rightly thought that Reid, aware of the FPLP’s disenchantment with Deakin, wanted to signal that he would support them removing him. But at that stage, the FPLP had not formally decided to topple the government nor did Fisher want to alienate Deakin and

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all his supporters by siding with Reid. In the censure debate, Reid made a fairly weak attack on the government, although his criticisms of aspects of the budget were valid. Deakin, in turn, bolstered his support with effusive praise of Labour’s progressive policies and put forward a motion supporting, in principle, a land tax that would boost revenues. In the end, the FPLP voted against Reid’s motion, largely unconvinced by his case and rightly suspicious of his motives.20 But the party was also mindful that there was only a year or so before the next general election and there were advantages in the FPLP holding office in its own right. By early November, the FPLP’s growing alienation from Deakin because of his vacillation over New Protection as well as potential problems in paying for pensions and other financial matters, finally came to a head. On 4 November, Charlie Frazer, always a critic of alliances, moved to withdraw party support from the government. Following the caucus meeting, Fisher informed Deakin of the party’s decision.21 The prime minister appeared to take this in his stride, telling Fisher then and a few days later in parliament that, ‘Labour was under no obligation to support him’. Fisher reported back to caucus later that day and it authorised the executive to take action to implement its resolution. Two days later, Fisher informed the House of the caucus decision but made no attempt to formally bring down the government.22 Some historians view Fisher’s apparent indecision at this stage as owing to weakness or confusion, but he had a good head for parliamentary tactics. There were several interrelated factors that explain his actions. He had previously assured Deakin that he would not humiliate him in turning out his ministry and Fisher was a man of his word. He was also mindful of the custom and practices of the House. He could have defeated the government on a technicality or amendment but, having openly announced the withdrawal of support for Deakin, he knew that normally the Leader of the Opposition would be expected to put forward a no-confidence motion. However, Reid, having already been denied his motion just a few weeks before, obviously enjoyed watching his opponents at loggerheads. Fisher certainly went along with his party in turning Deakin out but also realised that he would be

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facing a difficult time in minority government and was in no hurry to force the issue.23 On 10 November, it was Deakin who moved ‘That the House adjourn until to-morrow at three o’clock’. Earlier in the day the caucus had decided to oppose any motion by Deakin as a way of ending the situation. Deakin was almost certainly aware of this and his motion, if passed, changed the time for the sitting of the House without the government having been given clear notice of it. On a technicality, Deakin was paving the way for his government to lose the confidence of the House. Fisher quickly moved an amendment that all words after the word ‘That’ be removed from the motion. The amendment resulted in a substantial defeat for the government, with only thirteen members supporting the prime minister who, having lost control of the proceedings, subsequently tendered his resignation.24

Selecting a ministry Two days later, Fisher reported to caucus that the Governor-General had sent for him and had asked him to form a new administration. The advent of a second Labour government now opened up once again the issue of how to select it. Watson, still not willing to abandon his position from 1905, moved that the leader be left to select his ministry. This led to an amendment from Ted Findley, ‘That we give effect to the resolution carried at the interstate conference at Melbourne. “That future labour Ministers be Recommended by the parliamentary party in Caucus.”’ This amendment was carried, twenty-four to seventeen. Interestingly, the motion supported the 1905 conference resolution and ignored the more recent one from Brisbane whereby the cabinet should have been selected by caucus. Findley was a friend of Fisher and perhaps wanted to assist him to organise his ministry.25 What followed was a series of events which remain unclear. Fisher began by reading a report from the caucus executive on the question of procedure, which presumably contained a suggested policy for selecting the new cabinet. It appears to have included a list of names that Fisher wanted for his ministry, which he expected caucus to approve although it also seems possible that there were more names than places

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so that a caucus election could take place. The report was read out by Fisher, adopted, and caucus then agreed that Fisher and McGregor, as the party leaders, be recommended for the ministry without ballot. Then the mood of the meeting changed. Watson moved that the recommendations be voted on by open ballot and when this was lost, asked for candidates to be nominated, presumably from the floor, but this was also lost. Meanwhile, the senators took the opportunity to again try to obtain a fixed ratio of three senators to six representatives for the new ministry but this was also lost. At this stage, the meeting adjourned until 2 pm. Watson’s motion appeared to be confusing. Having initially wanted the leader to select his ministry he then pushed for formal nominations and selections from the floor which would be more in keeping with the Brisbane conference resolution. But if Fisher had a list of recommended names then Watson might have been trying a sleight-of-hand: the caucus would ‘nominate’ and ‘select’ names as actually proposed by the leader.26 It seems likely that during the adjournment, Watson helped Fisher lobby for the candidates he most wanted for the ministry. Watson was well placed to play something of an elder statesman role. In any event, when the meeting resumed it quickly recommended the necessary names for the ministry from a list put forward by Fisher. The Age speculated that there may have been an election but the minutes remain unclear on this point. Fisher denied the ministry had been elected and declared that the list of ministers ‘is the same as that which I made out myself ’.27 This seemed to be confirmed by a disillusioned Fowler in the Age in the following May. He told the paper he had been approached the day before the caucus meeting to stand for the cabinet, believing that there would be a direct election. Instead, the names of the cabinet were put forward and voted on as a block by the caucus and he had no chance of being selected since his name wasn’t on the list.28 Yet Fowler’s account doesn’t preclude the possibility that caucus may have elected ministers out of a block list. McMullin believes that Findley, Frazer and O’Malley were on the list but missed out on selection.29 On 17 November, caucus also passed the following: ‘That the fact that Ministers were recommended by the party need no longer be denied’.

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This might also suggest some selection process had taken place. After the election win in 1910, a formal system of nomination, seconding and ballot from the floor was used. This was a new method developed by Fisher who had composed a typewritten set of election rules perhaps to avoid the problems he had over the 1908 selection of his ministry.30 There was never any doubt in 1908 or in 1910 that Fisher, as the party leader, would be allocating the actual ministry portfolios. On that issue he never compromised, and the caucus never pushed the matter. Fisher immediately took the Treasury portfolio, Hughes became Attorney-General, Batchelor took over External Affairs, Mahon became Minister for Home Affairs, Thomas was PostmasterGeneral, Pearce the Minister for Defence and Tudor the Minister for Trade and Customs. As under Watson in 1904, McGregor became Vice-President of the Executive Council and Hutchison was a minister without portfolio. There were only two senators while six were drawn from the House and only Tasmania missed out on a representative. As in 1904, the minority Labour government had to rely on keeping the Deakin and Reid groups from combining against it and also on Deakin’s willingness, yet again, to give the government fair support. This was initially forthcoming, with the Deakin group voting for the requested recess of parliament from 11 December 1908.31

Surviving parliament Before the recess, the new government would manage to pass or propose just a few pieces of legislation. It quickly amended the Seat of Government Bill 1904 to provide that the new Federal capital should be in the Yass−Canberra area. Early in 1909, the Minister for Home Affairs, Hugh Mahon, directed a survey of the district named in the Act, which was an area between the New South Wales towns of Yass and Queanbeyan. By the end of the year, the New South Wales parliament had enacted the necessary surrender of land and the federal parliament had accepted the territory for the new federal capital. A Manufacturers Encouragement Bill was also passed, with Deakin’s support, to provide

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financial assistance to iron and steel manufacturers who paid fair and reasonable wages to their workers. Because of its minority position, the Fisher government’s legislation in late 1908 was fairly meagre. Indeed it kept a fairly low profile in the parliament during the twentynine days of sitting to ensure that it was never tested nor likely to involve itself in controversial legislation. In December, when Fisher successfully received an adjournment to give him time to develop his government’s program, he remained vague in the House on what he would be proposing in 1909. Deakin certainly seemed to expect that the current legislation left over from his ministry would be enough to keep the parliament busy for the next year. Fisher, however, had other plans.32

The Gympie speech Watson in 1904 had seen his government as an opportunity to show the world that the FPLP could govern responsibly but with moderation. Fisher saw his chance to use his national office of prime minister to prepare his party for the next election that was barely a year away. After the events of 1904, he remained wary of Deakin and of his commitment to support the Labour government. Instead of preparing a limited agenda for the next parliament to keep Deakin onside, Fisher decided instead to present the recent conference policies to the electorate to show that his party had genuinely national and progressive ideas. He therefore used the travelling expenses associated with his office to spend a considerable amount of his time between December 1908 and May 1909 touring Australia to spell out his ideas. In particular, he visited Western Australia and South Australia, two states he had not visited to date, and also briefly attended a Premiers Conference in Hobart, thus covering an estimated 30 000 kilometres. He knew most of the electorate did not pay much attention to parliamentary affairs but personal visits and a major public speech could be a different matter.33 On 30 March 1909, Fisher rose to address an audience of around 2000 at the Olympia Theatre in Gympie. For nearly three hours, he

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outlined the policies he hoped his government would implement in the coming parliamentary session. Malcolm Shepherd, who had worked hard in putting the speech together, was appalled by Fisher’s poor delivery. He had not spent enough time examining the document beforehand and tended to keep reading it out, irrespective of the audience reaction. If they broke into applause or cheers Fisher, hard of hearing at the best of times, would repeat whatever he thought had been missed by the noise. Still, this was the age of the print, not the electronic media. Whatever the Gympie audience thought of the delivery, the bulk of Australians would only see the printed word. Copies of the 34 000-word speech were telegraphed to newspapers around the country and were prominently reported over the following days. Even Shepherd had to concede the print media’s reception of the speech was very extensive.34 The chances of Fisher achieving most of the program set out in this speech were slim given the time left before the next election and Labour’s numbers in the parliament, but Fisher hoped to gain enough Protectionist Liberal support for at least some aspects of the program. Any legislation passed would be of electoral benefit to his party. The speech also intended to transform what many still saw as a narrow workingman’s party into a one claiming to look after Australia’s interests in terms of defence, national development and social welfare. In terms of defence, Fisher outlined an enhanced compulsory military training scheme for young men from ages fourteen to twenty-five (broader than what Deakin had previously proposed), the formation of a munitions industry and the construction of an Australian navy of coastal destroyers.35 On national development, he proposed that the Commonwealth take over control of the Northern Territory, begin construction of an east−west railway and initiate plans for a north− south line. He also wanted to protect the sugar industry, reintroduce the policy of nationalising the iron industry, seek the necessary constitutional referendums to enforce these laws and have Commonwealth notes issued as the only legal currency in Australia. On the advice of Hughes, he shied away from proposing a publicly owned bank since he was unsure if it might prove too contentious. On social welfare,

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Fisher proposed to seek a constitutional amendment to have the principles of New Protection enforced (something Deakin would not do), expand old age pensions and bring in a land tax on undeveloped land worth over £5000. Given the fact that the forces of conservatism in early 1909 were still splintered, Fisher could point to his opponents as disunited and without clear policy positions. In contrast, he gave the voters an indication as to what Labor stood for under his leadership and that it was well prepared for government.36 While Spence later boasted that ‘Anti-Labor was struck dumb and failed to find a flaw in his speech’ this ignored the fact that the Gympie speech led to strong reactions from conservatives.37 Certainly, many were impressed. The Argus noted that ‘Mr Fisher’s policy speech at Gympie has made no little sensation in federal politics’. The paper expected that Deakin would oppose many of the proposed policies, especially the land tax, although at first he said little about the speech.38 Joseph Cook, who had recently replaced Reid as leader of his party, thought the Gympie proposals ‘inflated’ and reflected the essentially socialistic policies of the Brisbane federal conference. The Brisbane Courier saw the speech as a ‘glorification of the Federal Parliament’, pandering to the Labor party caucus and their ideals of socialism.39 The Sydney Morning Herald claimed that: We have not looked at the policy as a party manifesto, but on its merits. We have tried to consider as though it had come from any possible leader other than Mr Fisher. But in spite of that detachment we think there is very little in the speech which we think Australia can adapt as an immediate gospel of work.

The proposed land tax was seen as ‘The Commonwealth going beyond its fair limit’.40 The Argus argued, probably correctly, that Fisher sensed that his government would not last for very long and so had turned the recently adopted Labour platform into government policy in order to get credit for attempting to realise the ideals of his party. This was true enough and it made for good party politics, but the paper overlooked the fact

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that Fisher was also campaigning hard around the country selling these policies to the broader electorate.41 By April 1909, Fisher was setting the legislative parameters not just for the next session of parliament but for the general election expected within the year. He had so far led his party quite well, maintained a high degree of consensus in Labour ranks and shown considerable tactical shrewdness. The question was what would Deakin do to counter this challenge?

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10 A triumphant struggle

By 1909, Labour’s growing electoral appeal and coherent policies stood in sharp contrast to the obvious divisions on the non-Labour side of politics. Soon after Deakin’s resignation, the Sydney Morning Herald had noted that the days of allied party governments were over.1 It called on Deakin to now form a single non-Labour party while the Argus saw the need for a ‘Liberal Party to save Australia from the follies of socialism’.2 The possibilities of such a ‘fusion’ seemed promising, given that the old free trade versus protection divisions seemed increasingly meaningless. Nevertheless there were still problems with such a merger, especially the long-standing differences between Deakin and Reid. Deakin in 1906 accused Reid of being an opportunist who ‘talked more and promised more and performed less, than any man in Australia’. As late as 1917, Reid would recall, ‘Following the events of 1905, Mr Deakin and I could never come together again’.3 But within two weeks of Deakin’s resignation, Reid had lost the leadership of his party. Joseph Cook, a former Labour politician, Free Trader and Liberal, was elected as his successor. Although there were past tensions between Cook and Deakin, Cook was realistic enough to ignore these, given the need to match Labour’s growing electoral strength. Initial talks between Deakin, Cook and Sir John Forrest, began in the early weeks of 1909. By March, Cook openly called for conservative parties to become united against Labour in his article on the ‘Need of Fusion’

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published in the Sydney Morning Herald. On his visit to Sydney in the same month, Deakin also spoke of the same need claiming, interestingly enough, that the Labour government ‘was in office without the will of the people’.4 Certainly the Gympie speech and its popular reception further influenced the need for united action. Deakin and Cook drew closer now that Reid was out of the way and a new umbrella organisation, the ‘Commonwealth Liberal Party’ was launched with their support in the Melbourne Town Hall in May 1909. Deakin had been guarded in his response to Fisher’s Gympie speech but there were certainly indications that he was unhappy with continuing to support Labour. He was annoyed when Fisher postponed the next meeting of parliament until late May and early in that month, as expected, announced that he would oppose Labour’s land tax in its present form. Indeed, of all the policies in the speech the land tax seemed to push the splintered antiLabour forces towards some type of fusion. The press reported that the main leaders had been in close talks since they had been in Sydney, although Fisher remained sceptical that this would result in any lasting merger. He actually had some justification for this view. The newspapers had announced on 8 May that discussions between Deakin and Cook were expected to quickly produce a fusion, only to report six days later that they still were not in agreement. Instead they had to turn the negotiations over to Forrest to act as a mediator.5 Malcolm Shepherd thought that Fisher was misled by Lyne who occasionally dropped by to see him. Although Lyne was Deakin’s nominal deputy, he was strongly opposed to a fusion (along with up to five others in the party) and so was largely kept out of the loop by those involved in the merger talks. He kept assuring Fisher that he didn’t believe any fusion would take place. Even when the press finally announced the success of the talks, it also reported that the government thought Lyne and the others who opposed fusion might be able to save the ministry.6

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The fall of the ministry In the early afternoon of 26 May 1909, the governor-general opened the next session of parliament. Lord Dudley outlined what was essentially the Gympie speech as the program for the ministry.7 By this stage, everyone in the House knew that just a few hours before, a new ‘Fusion’ party had been agreed to by the three main non-Labour groups, which had elected Deakin as their leader. At the meeting, Deakin seized upon the Gympie speech to claim that Labour had widely diverged from any program which had justified him previously giving Fisher his support. It was unclear what program Deakin had in mind but presumably it was his expectation in December 1908 that Fisher would simply continue with legislative matters left over from the last session. The government managed to survive the first day, but on the following day Deakin handed to Fisher a letter explaining that, ‘At yesterday’s meeting of our party, I was authorised to intimate to you that under the conditions upon which its support was originally given its support can no longer be continued’. The words of the letter were virtually identical to those Fisher had given to Deakin in the previous November and the point would not have been lost on either man. Although Deakin ended his note assuring Fisher his relations with the ministry had always ‘been of the most friendly character’, in reality that relationship was now moving to a distant and even hostile stage. The decision to topple Fisher’s government set off a period of bitterness never before seen in the federal parliament.8 During the afternoon of 27 May, which was set aside for the addressin-reply, Deakin rose to speak, but Lyne leapt from his seat and roared ‘Judas! Judas!’ at him. After the uproar subsided, Deakin again rose to speak and Lyne again interjected and promised to pursue him to his political grave. When order was restored Deakin continued claiming there was no point in any debate on the address-in-reply because the government’s program was not acceptable to the majority of the House. Fisher replied heatedly he had been addressing people all over Australia on these policies and challenged Deakin to go to an election on them. Deakin responded that he would go to an election but only

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after the next session. At that stage, WH Kelly, member for Wentworth, moved that the debate be adjourned. This really represented a noconfidence motion in the government’s program and should normally have been moved by the Leader of the Opposition. Fisher, in fact, later asked Kelly whether he was moving this with the knowledge of Deakin and Kelly assured him that he was. The motion was then carried by thirty-nine votes to thirty.9 Although Deakin had no choice but to back Kelly, he had moved the motion on his own initiative because he was strongly opposed to Labour’s naval policy and did not want the government sending George Pearce to a proposed London naval conference. He therefore saw it as imperative that the government be defeated and seized the opportunity when it arose. However, this motion, moved by a backbencher, was regarded by FPLP members as an additional insult as they were not dismissed by the normal custom of the parliament.10 Fisher then moved for an adjournment of the House so that this could bring on a further debate and the government could have its say. This debate witnessed a series of bitter speeches within the House as old scores were settled and memories of past grievances reawakened. Lyne spent the better part of an hour abusing Deakin in the most personal terms. It was, however, Hughes’s speech which has long been regarded as a masterpiece in the art of political invective. He accused Deakin of turning on his old allies by forming ‘Fusion’ and as to his involvement in the fall of Fisher’s government: ‘The Honourable member has abandoned the finer resources of political assassination and resorted to the bludgeon. Having perhaps exhausted all the possibilities of that fine art, or desiring to exhibit his versatility in his execrable profession.’ Taking up Lyne’s description of Deakin as Judas, Hughes noted, ‘I do no agree with that; it is no fair − to Judas for whom there is this to be said, that he did not gag the man whom he betrayed, nor did he fail to hang himself afterwards’. Eventually, amidst emotional scenes, the House adjourned on the Friday afternoon so that Fisher could consult with the governor-general.11 Over the weekend, Hughes and Shepherd worked feverishly on a longish document (fifty pages of transcript and twenty-two of small

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print) to argue for a dissolution of the House rather than for the ministry resigning. The document was barely ready in time for Fisher’s Monday meeting at noon with Dudley and so he never had time to read it. The governor-general did not read the document either but he did have his private secretary study it. Shepherd later claimed the secretary advised him that it was quite sound in its arguments, although this seems dubious. Since Deakin could command a majority on the floor of the House, Dudley refused an election. On 1 June, he accepted Fisher’s resignation and commissioned Deakin to form a government. The paper Fisher presented to Dudley has been described (if at all) by historians as being about constitutional reasons why the Labour government should have been granted a general election. The reverse to this is that the paper must have also been arguing that Deakin, despite commanding a majority in the parliament, should not be allowed to govern. In that case, in what could be called Australia’s first constitutional crisis, Hughes and Shepherd, despite some rummaging through English and colonial precedents and practices, delivered more of an exposition of moral political principles that should govern a democratic society.12 The paper outlined the state of parties in the parliament since the previous general election and focused on the fact that the government had been defeated on a technicality without ever having the opportunity to discuss or put any of its agenda to the parliament. The Opposition had refused to discus these policies, even though some members, presumably many of the Liberal Protectionists, had actually been elected to pass such legislation. Since the ministry was not facing charges of corruption or other issues of probity, the government should have been allowed to present its legislation. This was because its proposals had been carefully presented to the people over recent months and were found to be popular measures. In comparison, the Opposition had never put forward any alternative policies because they could not agree among themselves as to what they held in common. The paper ranged over recent years, drawing attention to matters such as immigration, naval defence and New Protection to highlight serious differences between the various anti-Labour groups. It also quoted

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Deakin and Cook on their unflattering views of each other and how, in October 1908, Deakin had praised the FPLP for its policies which were close to his own. This was reinforced with references from the Age that as recently as February 1909 suggested any anti-Labour alliance was bound to fail since it was as ‘unnatural as the marriage of a lamb and a leopard’. It also went on to point out that there was ‘but a shade of difference between the Liberal and Labour programmes, whilst there is a wide interval between the Liberals and the Conservatives led by Mr. Joseph Cook’. Dudley was really being asked to endorse the FPLP’s belief that it represented the popular will that was being thwarted by sinister interests and the opportunism on the other side of the chamber. The only way to solve this moral issue was for the people to decide rather than for Deakin to govern.13 In fact, Dudley advised Fisher that he would not be willing to grant a double dissolution because Deakin could command a majority in the House and there was no reason for believing that his party did not represent the views of their electors. ‘The argument founded upon previous differences of opinion between members comprising the majority has no support in parliamentary or constitutional history.’ Dudley also pointed out that Fisher had previously defeated Deakin’s government by withdrawing support and now Deakin was simply doing the same to him. No case had been made that there was one major policy division that needed to be taken to the electors.14 Although disappointed by Dudley’s refusal to call an election, the political crisis nevertheless served to give Labour both a sense of moral advantage as well as outrage. Fisher had taken his cause to the public from the beginning of the crisis when senior ministers addressed 8000 people at the Melbourne Exhibition Building on 31 May. Hughes took the lead, arguing that Deakin’s actions were a blow against democracy and the constitution. It was typical, Hughes said, of the falsity previously seen against the Watson government and now against Fisher by a man determined to govern with people he had opposed in the past. Once Deakin was sworn in as prime minister, Fisher attended the next public meeting at the Melbourne Town Hall on 4 June where, in his words, he ‘got

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a good reception’ and denounced Deakin as being afraid of Labour and its policies which 90 per cent of the people supported.15 On 11 June, he addressed a meeting in the Sydney Town Hall followed by a ‘splendid meeting’ at Lithgow the next day. He was back in Victoria to tour towns such as Ballarat, Hamilton and Ararat before returning to Melbourne to talk to a church meeting on Sunday 20 June.16 His message was always the same, Labour had the support of the people because of the popularity of its policies, and its opponents were afraid of testing this at an election. Malony, at the Melbourne Town Hall meeting, went further claiming the parliament no longer even represented its constituents. Spence also argued that now the nation’s political alignments were clearly delineated: On the one side there are the land monopolists, syndicators, money-grabbers, rings, trusts, combines, and the whole body of exploiters of society… On the other side stands the people’s party − those who work for the uplifting of the masses and the setting up of social justice.17

Here was the Fisher idea again of society divided into a simple stratum with the ALP as the voice of the vast majority of the Australian people. As Spence later noted, the Labour movement was indeed ‘a people’s movement controlled by the people’.18

Deakin’s moral fall The creation of the two-party system in 1909 and the fall of the Fisher ministry represented a watershed in Australian politics, and Deakin’s career. He never fully recovered from the charge that he had sold his political soul for the prime ministership and many radical Liberal Protectionists switched to the Labour cause. In the 1910 election campaign, Deakin would have trouble with crowds shouting ‘Judas’ at him. It raised, in the words of one biographer, ‘problems of motive and conduct which were to hurt the estimates of Deakin in his life, and beyond it’.19 Fisher was angry with Deakin for going back on his

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word to support the Labour ministry. In one sense this appears unfair because Fisher’s shunning of alliances and seeking to advocate national policies pushed Deakin into the arms of the other non-Labour factions. Fisher also thought Deakin had betrayed his ideals for short-term gains and this hurt all the more because he had long admired Deakin for his parliamentary skills and his personal integrity. On the other hand, there was a certain relief on Fisher’s part that Deakin had, in the end, fallen from his high moral ground and joined the interests aligned against Labour. Hughes, even in early May, had already discounted Fusion policies, seeing them as simply dictated by newspapers and vested interests rather than by the people.20 Although both Fisher and Hughes eventually resumed friendly relations with Deakin, they did not easily forgive him for destroying the government. Shepherd thought Fisher remained angry with Deakin until at least the 1910 general election and as late as 1914−15 most of the Labour cabinet strongly doubted Deakin’s trustworthiness because of the events in 1909. But whatever Deakin’s failings, Fisher was convinced that Labour now stood alone in advocating policies that were in the best interest of the Australian people.21

Opposition On 24 June, the FPLP, now in opposition, launched a no-confidence motion in Deakin’s ministry, even though it had little chance of unseating it. Fisher made a fairly ineffective speech that few could understand because he was so angry and spoke so quickly. Indeed, even the parliamentary reporters could not follow him and the proofs of his speech were picked up by the Age and ridiculed as incoherent. Fisher was furious with the report, refused to read the Age any longer and would not talk to its reporters. His reaction probably had less to do with the newspaper (he was normally unmoved by press criticisms) than with his overall rage at the political situation.22 The no-confidence motion went on through various adjournments and other business until the middle of July when it was defeated largely along party lines, although Lyne voted with the FPLP. It did, however, add to

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the tensions within the House as members, day after day, raked over old grievances and slights. These ill feelings continued with a rowdy fourteen-hour committee session on 22 July, leading to the distressed Speaker, Sir Frederick Holder, collapsing on the floor muttering, ‘Disgusting, disgusting’ before dying a few hours later. Holder had been Speaker since the first parliament, was well respected by all sides and had established a reasonably independent role. However the question of his successor was bitterly contested by both sides and the result was the emergence of a partisan system of speakership within the parliamentary system.23 Now operating with a comfortable majority, Deakin, as a result of the recent London naval conference, agreed to build an Australianowned fleet (which he had long advocated), including a new major warship. Fisher pushed him on the issue of just how he would pay for such a naval force given the Commonwealth’s limited budget. After some prevarication, Deakin ordered the new ships from Britain and had a Naval Loans Act passed to borrow money to pay for the fleet. Fisher and the FPLP opposed such a loan although not the acquisition of the ships.24 With the Braddon Clause set to expire in 1910, Deakin finally reached a financial agreement with state premiers over future funding. Fisher had been invited to Hobart in early March 1909, when the premiers hoped that they might extract a favourable agreement from a minority prime minister. He refused to commit himself at that stage and the premiers went away empty-handed. They did, however, pass a resolution that they wanted, at the expiration of the Braddon Clause, at least three-fifths of the Commonwealth’s customs revenue, provided that it would not be less than £6.75 million. Deakin finally negotiated a compromise agreement with a pro rata formula of 25 shillings per head of population (which came to less than the minimum previously sought by the premiers) but that this new formula be incorporated into the constitution by a referendum at the next election. Fisher opposed this move, although he was happy enough with the formula, because he thought it would tie the hands of the Commonwealth in the future. Indeed, Deakin struggled to have the necessary referendum legisla-

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tion passed by the parliament as many in his own party also shared the FPLP’s concerns. His only consolation was that the NSW Labour branch supported him, but it meant that the referendum was to be put to the people with most of Labour opposed to it and many Liberals not really wanting a ‘Yes’ vote either.25 Deakin also modified the Old Age Pensions Act, created a high commissionership in London (Reid took the post) and drafted the first legislation to take over the Northern Territory. All of the legislation was passed in a parliament where animosities were greater than at any time in the past. In that situation, any legislation was more likely to be claimed solely by Fusion or ended up being disputed by Labour in both the parliament and the press. While the FPLP may have strongly opposed the Naval Loans Act on principle, it simply delayed the Northern Territory Bill in the Senate to stop Deakin gaining too much credit. When the parliament was finally dissolved in early December, many members, on both sides of the chambers, thought of it as a relief from what had been a rowdy and emotional session.26 Labour’s uncompromising attitude was obvious to the conservative press. As early as August, the Melbourne Herald observed, ‘The Federal Labour Party today is sending a warning to its Ministerial opponents. With its organisation and party structure in the electorate, its policies already spelt out, the danger is that the Fusion may not stand.’27 Deakin was aware of the problem. In mid-1909 he had been apprehensive that Fisher might have secured his sought-after double dissolution and a general election. This would have placed Deakin’s new party at a considerable disadvantage in campaigning because it was not clear how far any grassroots fusion had been achieved in most of the Australian states between the various anti-Labour groups. Yet, Deakin was never particularly pro-active in trying to rectify any of these organisational issues before the next election. When he finally did set the election date for 13 April 1910, Australia now faced a political watershed. For the first time since Federation, there were only two political parties contesting the election and clearly one or the other should be expected to win outright.28

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Australia decides After the traditional Christmas and summer holiday break, the two leaders commenced the election campaign. Deakin opened for Fusion in Ballarat, followed by Fisher two days later at Maryborough. The conservative press, the Age notwithstanding, gave Deakin’s opening speech extensive coverage, usually a minimum of two full columns plus prominent headlines and favourable editorials. The Argus was typical, describing the Ballarat gathering as ‘one of the greatest political meetings ever held in Australia’ and representing ‘the triumph of united Liberalism’.29 Deakin began his speech by listing his achievements and then announced that he would campaign on the referendum question. He then outlined a series of measures, including establishing the Interstate Commission, passing the Northern Territory bill and a range of other eye-catching proposals. He had clearly learnt the lessons from the Gympie speech and placed his policies under separate headings to capture the reader’s attention. Yet a closer reading reveals there were few details behind many of these headings. He hoped, for example, that wage boards would be set up in all the states, he also hoped that there might be a superannuation scheme in the future, he would be disappointed if nothing was done about building the east−west railway and he skipped over the High Court’s challenge to New Protection and left the matter to a new Tariff Board. In reality, Deakin, leading a relatively new party with divergent interests, found himself running more on his past record and the referendum issues. The Sydney Morning Herald in early January had again warned Deakin of Labour’s superior organisation and Fusion’s apparent lack of policies. There was some truth to the view that since Fusion was not as well organised as Labour and did not have as many concrete policies, it was often reduced to conducting a smear campaign against its opponent.30 Fisher arrived to a large crowd at Maryborough Town Hall. He had already set out his detailed program at Gympie, which was by then well known, so he could spend more time reviewing his party’s record in defending the standard of living of white labour and developing national defence policies. He also spent time on the failures

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of Deakin’s policies, his unsound financial agreement with the states and his general untrustworthiness. Still, Fisher had to conduct the campaign with much of the non-Labour metropolitan press either hostile or unsympathetic to him. Only the Age and the Bulletin were prepared to give Labour at least reasonable coverage. The Brisbane Courier spent less than one column on the Maryborough speech and as much space ridiculing it in an editorial labelled ‘A Programme of Distress’.31 The Melbourne Herald could only find one column for the speech compared with three for Deakin’s opening meeting.32 In NSW, the Sydney Morning Herald gave Fisher’s speech only half a column and Hughes got a mere three lines, telling the public he would present Labour’s platform at Glebe Town Hall. He did somewhat better in the Daily Telegraph, which gave him several lines and a brief summary of the agenda of the meeting.33 There were glimmers of opportunity for Fisher, such as when Cook, dealing with Labour’s defence policy, apparently made the comment that the purchase of ‘River (class) Destroyers’ by Labour was a ‘monumental blunder’ because ‘there are no rivers in Australia’. Fisher cleverly, and probably misleadingly, took the comments out of context and ridiculed Cook. Almost every paper made mention of it at some time during the campaign. Cook was still issuing angry public denials about what he had said on the eve of the election and even afterwards.34 Although Deakin was in poor health, it did not stop him campaigning hard in the eastern mainland states. By the election, he was maintaining, both publicly and privately, that Fisher did not have a chance of forming a majority government and he expected a solid Fusion victory. The Brisbane Courier conceded that the Liberal campaign had not been as well organised as Labour’s but thought the referendum on the financial agreement and the differences in policies between the two parties would see the Liberals home.35 Once again, Fisher was being underestimated but remained quietly confident. It was not until the day after the election that the extent of Labour’s win began to be realised. The referendum on the state funding formula was rejected by the electorate. In the Senate, Labour gained a national vote of 50.3 per cent and won all eighteen vacant seats. Although non-Labour candidates partly split the vote in three

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states, at the very best Fusion could only have won three seats in a straight ALP/Fusion contest (NSW, Victoria and Queensland). In the House of Representatives, Labour secured around 49 per cent of the total votes cast and won forty-one seats to Fusion’s thirty-one. Not a single Labour member standing for re-election was defeated. In Victoria the Labour vote rose by 15 per cent and it captured six of the old Protectionist seats, while it did even better in NSW, capturing seven seats from its opponents. Deakin only managed to hold on to Ballarat by 443 votes against his Labour rival. The ALP was the first government since Federation to hold an absolute majority in both Houses. The increased voter turnout to nearly 62 per cent was no doubt due to the greater interest in the campaign compared to 1906 (barely 50 per cent) and also due to the work of Labour organisers in bringing out voters.36 For Deakin, it was ‘the greatest public cataclysm in which it has been my lot to share’. In an extraordinary public statement he came close to blaming the electors for having made the wrong decision and for being unpatriotic in not voting for his referendum proposals.37 Fisher was comfortably returned, with 54.1 per cent of the vote, against his old Gympie rival, Jacob Stumm. The size of the electorate had increased significantly since 1901 and some of the small decline in Fisher’s percentage vote can be attributed to more rural voters being added to the roll. However, Stumm, who went on to win the nearby seat of Lilley in 1913, was well known locally and was the most competitive candidate Fisher ever faced during the time that he held his seat. Fisher spent the day in Maryborough so that he could watch the central returns for Wide Bay as well as the general election results. By midnight, when it was clear that his party was headed for victory, a large crowd demanded a speech. Fisher briefly promised that they would not regret their choice since he would never betray the people’s trust. But it took a while for the depth of his victory to sink in, and the next day he was reported as being subdued, even stunned, by the results. He again briefly responded to the press by pointing out that the people seemed to be more Australian than many of their representatives in the parliament and they recognised the Labour argument

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that minimising the powers of the federal government would seriously damage national progress.38 When Fisher arrived in Brisbane by train a large crowd mobbed him and he could only reach a local café with police assistance. Another big crowd greeted him in Sydney while the numbers at Spencer Street station in Melbourne were so large that, once again, police had to clear a path for Fisher’s car. Nearly twenty years later, James Scullin recalled a cartoon from the Australian Worker printed just after the election results became clear. Australia was seen standing at the top of a mineshaft calling down to Fisher, ‘Andy, come up, your country wants you’.39

A clash of cultures Historians, in discussing political developments in these years, have often underestimated Fisher’s political skills. They have usually seen him as a good party man who was perceived as ‘safe’ and likable by most of the electorate. Yet, after 1907, Fisher and Deakin were engaged in a struggle over the future of Australian political culture. Fisher represented the growing electoral power of the Labour party and a way of running politics which an essentially nineteenth century liberal and radical such as Deakin found disturbing. Fisher led his party well in these years and his victory in 1910 meant the colonial political and parliamentary culture that, to some degree, had continued in the new federal parliament now came to an end. One side of the chamber now clearly belonged to Fisher and his party, and the other to whatever non-Labour forces could be brought together to oppose it. Just as importantly, Fisher represented, by his own background, someone who would test the claims of an Australian democratic culture. Was it possible for a man from a humble mining background, to be voted into national office? In the end, his election clearly changed forever the way Australians would think about the social aspirations of their democracy. However, before looking at him in national power it is worth pausing to get an overall sense of Andrew Fisher, the man, who had now been in Australia for twenty-five years.40

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11 Portrait of a Prime Minister

Turning forty-eight in August 1910, Andrew Fisher still had the broad shoulders and a straight back of a miner. A Scottish reporter in 1911 described him as wiry ‘without an ounce of fat’ (see figure 6). Pearce thought he had a commanding presence and looked like a leader.1 His face also projected a sense of kindness and friendliness despite his sometimes apparently dour expression. Fisher’s brown eyes now no longer matched his hair because it had gone grey over the decade and would eventually turn white − a characteristic inherited from his mother’s side of the family.2 He still had all his teeth and never needed dentures, but now used reading glasses which he rather vainly removed before being photographed. Although sometimes thought of as being old before his time because of his hair, Fisher’s Scottish complexion served him well. By 1916, English reporters commented on the fact that, although Fisher was now a man in his mid-fifties, he looked nearly a decade younger.3 In 1910, Fisher still possessed his neatly trimmed moustache, although would later shave it off in England and then remained clean-shaven until his death.4

Dress Fisher had been influenced by Chris Watson’s sense of dress and had become used to wearing quality suits, although he resisted the grow-

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ing fashion to wear trousers with cuffs and preferred sombre colours.5 His dress, by 1910, was a far cry from the string tie and ‘blue serge, two pound reach-me-down suit of the working man’s Sunday best’ that he had worn on his arrival at the Queensland parliament in 1893.6 Yet some of his earlier thrifty habits died hard. He preferred to wear boots, not shoes, usually buying three pairs at a time. He thought nothing of wrapping newspapers around his legs if he was cold and no rug was available. Nevertheless, the care and cost of his clothes suggest a respectable and prosperous man whose aspirations for self-improvement had led him far away from his Crosshouse days.7

Speech Even after twenty-five years in Australia, Fisher still spoke with an Ayrshire accent. This lack of adaptability in his speech was largely due to his arriving as an adult, although it may have been worsened by his partial deafness. Over time, he discarded terms more likely to be used in Scotland from his vocabulary. When he arrived in the Queensland parliament in 1893, for example, he had asked where he could get a ‘bite to eat and a sluice’. The context suggests Fisher was asking for food and a drink of water (sluice) and was shown the members dining room.8 However, he was also shown the men’s rest room since the attendant thought Fisher possibly wanted a wash (also a sluice) or maybe even to relieve himself. Fisher’s speeches were fine as long as he spoke reasonably slowly, but when he rushed his delivery, he lost his audience because of his brogue. This has led to mixed views on his public speaking. George Pearce thought him an indifferent speaker and that his accent was a problem, but that Fisher always commanded respect from his audience because he was sincere and earnest in what he had to say.9 Malcolm Shepherd found him a poorly organised orator compared to Deakin, who cleverly structured his speeches and spent a great deal of time practising their delivery.10 Of course, Deakin was one of the finest speakers among Australian prime ministers, so it was not surprising that Fisher, his immediate successor, seemed to pale in comparison. When on tour, Fisher sometimes delivered the same

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speech many times in the one day and its delivery would improve over time. His speeches were largely devoid of the classical allusions Deakin liked to make, but in their everyday points, Fisher spoke directly to his audience. He also liked the idea of coining a phrase and building a speech around it. This could sometimes be quite effective, as in his ‘last man and last shilling’ phrase or ‘we are all socialists now’ or ‘the empire is a family of nations’. Sometimes, however, Fisher wandered too far off the subject or the phrase was too glib to make the point effectively and the speech sounded trite.11 Overall, Fisher’s speeches, even on paper, were rarely of the highest quality and while he was certainly not the worst orator among Australian prime ministers (he thought of himself as a good speaker) he could only be rated as little better than average. Unlike many men of his generation, there was little difference in Fisher’s language, either in public or private, or between how he talked to men compared to women. Although he had a sense of chivalry towards women, the polite conversation he shared with his wife and the Irvine women was essentially the same language he used anywhere else.12 He disliked swearing in any setting and a journalist once reported a cluster of Queensland politicians engaged in excited conversation in the halls of the Brisbane Parliament. On inquiring as to the cause of their excitement, he was informed that ‘Mr Fisher had said “damn”’.13 Fisher also eschewed dirty or crude jokes and no doubt part of the belief that he lacked a sense of humour (he had a dry humour but usually only displayed it to those closest to him) largely arose from the fact that he refused to share in this type of banter. He was also known to walk out of the cinema if he thought the content or images were inappropriate. Yet he was not a strict moralist or a prig and lacked the judgmental tones often associated with many brought up in strong Protestant households.14

Dignity Throughout his career Andrew Fisher walked a fine line in trying to balance his hatred for pretence and snobbery with a sense of his

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own dignity and even a slight egoism over his success. He practised an easy informality (insisting upon being called ‘Andy’ even when prime minister) that made him popular with Australians. He would never contemplate accepting a knighthood or other awards which he regarded as artificial class contrivances. He objected to people talking about him ‘rising’ from miner to prime minister because he thought the very concept ‘foreign to democratic and socialist thought’.15 There are abundant stories of Fisher’s dislike of social distinctions. As prime minister, he lined up at the turnstiles with ordinary Melbourne sports fans and stood with them in the stands to watch Saturday afternoon football. In 1921, when returning to Australia from England, his ship stopped in Colombo and the Fisher family were offered rides in rickshaws. Fisher refused to be carried by another man and the whole family was forced to refuse to ride in this way.16 Yet Fisher was also acutely aware of his status. He was the first prime minister to have an official motor vehicle, and the myrtle green Renault, costing some £850, caused mutterings even among colleagues. It was pointed out that Deakin had walked, cycled or caught the tram to work. Fisher justified the car in terms of it being needed for the office of prime minister and not his personal use.17 He also thought, as an inveterate letter writer, that the quality of a person’s stationery, like the cut of his attire, proclaimed the character of the man.18 Some of this need for dignity he thought justifiable in that the status of the new Commonwealth still needed to be established. Before setting out for South Africa, Fisher asked Malcolm Shepherd to purchase travelling cases for the trip. Shepherd wanted to know what type and was told to buy the best leather because Fisher was ‘going to Africa as Prime Minister to represent the Commonwealth and nothing but the very best will do me’.19 Fisher also regarded social snubs on himself as ‘only a Labour Prime Minister’ as an attack on the whole labour movement. Understandably, Fisher was proud of his and his party’s achievements but may have been, on occasion, oversensitive to perceived or alleged slights.20

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A grand house In March 1912, the Fishers moved into Oakleigh Hall located in Hughenden Road, East St Kilda, as the house at Albert Park was now too small for the expanding family. Fisher had become friendly with artist Hugh Paterson and spent some of his free time in his large Carlton studio, possibly because of the overcrowding in Albert Park.21 A sister of Paterson had bought Oakleigh Hall at a sale and, knowing that Fisher was looking for a home, offered it to him for £1000. This was affordable for the Fishers but they then discovered it only included an acre of land on which the house was located. They wanted more land and had to borrow money to acquire it and generally maintain the property. Oakleigh Hall was a substantial residence, with seven bedrooms, each with its own marble fireplace, a full-sized billiard room and a drawing room with sliding doors that could be opened to make it into a ballroom. There was a length-of-the-building cellar that included a large laundry. Out the back Fisher kept fowls and Briddle the milking cow. Although Gran normally did the milking, Andrew also took his turn. The gardens, covering nearly 2.5 acres (1 ha), were probably never formally organised, but Fisher personally planted an extensive variety of trees and shrubs in the grounds, including camellias, of which he was extremely proud.22 Oakleigh Hall, more than fifty years old, was certainly run down when the Fishers bought it, but by any standards, it was still a magnificent home. It did, however, stretch the family budget for several years before they once again felt financially comfortable. The home’s furnishings were kept fairly simple, partly because of cost, and because Fisher had a miner’s dislike of being surrounded by frilly and elaborate décor. The one luxury was that the walls were decorated with several paintings by a number of Australian artists, such as E. Phillips Fox, Will Ashton and William Lister Lister. In 1913, Lister won the Wynne Prize for his painting of the federal capital site and he painted a smaller version for Fisher.23 Billy Hughes, on being shown around the two-story home for the first time, produced a small compass from his pocket and gave it to Fisher so he could find his way back to his

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bedroom after locking up for the night. The Labour caucus and ministry sometimes used the home for formal meetings as well as various informal get-togethers. Oakleigh Hall was not just a family home for Fisher, although this was a major consideration in buying it, but an outward symbol of his success.24

Leisure activities Despite having use of a car, Fisher continued his practice of walking as a pastime. George Pearce once observed that, you could tell Fisher had been a miner by the way he walked because he kept his left arm rigid while swinging only his right arm. Like many miners, he ‘had carried his tea billy in the left and the tucker in the right. The tucker bag would not spill’.25 It was not unusual for him to invite a colleague to dinner at the last moment because he had unconsciously walked him back to his own house. The distance from his offices to the Albert Park home made such walks a relatively pleasant stroll, given his penchant for 10 or 12 kilometre jaunts. Fisher could, like Deakin, have cycled to work or even have ridden a horse and he also knew how to handle a horse and buggy, which was a means of family transport before the car arrived. He did continue to ride on horseback in some of his tours of the more remote outback, and while crossing the Nullarbor in 1915, also learnt to ride a camel for at least part of the journey.26 Good at many ball games, Fisher enjoyed playing makeshift cricket in the grounds of the parliament, along with lawn bowls. His natural co-ordination meant that he quickly and easily learnt to skate in South Africa while Shepherd nursed bruises for several days from his spills on the same rink. He took up golf and became a competent though inconsistent player. He sometimes played against his friend Reverend Patrick John Murdoch and his son Keith. It was possibly the senior Murdoch, an excellent golfer, who taught Fisher the game. Interestingly, fishing was never an adult activity, even though it had been part of his childhood in Scotland, suggesting it may have been for necessity rather than enjoyment. He took his children swimming in the sea while living in Albert Park and then St Kilda as well as on family picnics.

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He enjoyed football and while in Melbourne became a follower of Australian Rules. He also turned out to watch soccer games while in England and Scotland but in 1902 suffered the indignity of having his pocket picked by one of the crowd in Edinburgh. He avoided the racetrack and was strongly opposed to all forms of recreational gambling. As a teetotaller he also avoided the Melbourne hotels and pubs and never drank, even table wines, except for the very occasional medicinal brandy or, following his father’s custom, the occasional nip of paraffin. He did however sometimes smoke cigars. He had to limit these as he found they created problems with his speaking voice and usually avoided them altogether when parliament was sitting.27

Quieter leisure pursuits Fisher had mastered draughts and chess at an early age and was a very good player. For many years he played a weekly chess game against Josiah Thomas, an FPLP colleague and family friend. Many attributed Fisher’s tactical ability in politics to his long-standing practice of thinking out moves ahead of his opponent on the chessboard. He was also a reader and collector of books throughout his life.28 He preferred serious books, especially on economics and politics, rather than novels but also enjoyed works dealing with Scottish culture, history and poetry and kept several dictionaries in the house to ensure that he and all the family could find the meaning and spelling of any word. He certainly made a start on reading the classics of English literature while in Gympie, but by the standards of the early twentieth century, was not well-read in classical literature. He was certainly keen to improve his self-education but a lot of this was clearly technical knowledge. When the Lighthouse Act was first introduced, Fisher noted that it had omitted references to submarine cables and immediately gave the House a mini-lecture on the wonders of this technology.29 He had a good sense of mechanics, could work at these things with his hands, understood the principles of their operation and admired modern machinery.30 However, he was not given to speculating too deeply on broader issues. Shepherd thought Fisher preferred to read works that reinforced his

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existing ideas rather than seek out works for intellectual curiosity and there is considerable justice in such a claim.31 Being a diligent correspondent, Fisher kept busy in his leisure time maintaining contacts with his relatives and friends by mail. He tended to write more frequently than many of his correspondents. He was not a regular viewer of the cinema but when he did see a film that captured his imagination, he would sit through it several times. He was also a good amateur photographer and, in 1910, he purchased his first Kodak camera while visiting South Africa. He became an enthusiast and built up a large collection of photographs. He compiled his own photographic record of the progress of the construction of the new Commonwealth Bank headquarters in Sydney. Later on he took photos of the battlefields of France where Australian troops had seen action. He presented many of these snaps in an album to his old colleague George Pearce, the Minister for Defence, when he visited London in 1919.32

Domestic life It is interesting that Fisher and a number of his siblings either never married or married quite late in life. His age at marriage, and even that of Margaret, suggests it could have been a marriage of convenience for both but by any standards they seemed to have had a successful union. ‘To you I owe everything − You have made me very happy’, he once wrote to his wife, though they were not an outwardly demonstrative couple. Despite the fact that many women found Fisher physically attractive, and that he was frequently absent touring the country, there was never any hint of sexual scandal. Yet the couple also produced six children and Margaret last fell pregnant at the age forty-two while Andrew was then fifty-three, suggesting they enjoyed a healthy interest in sex. Margaret Fisher appears to have been content with a largely traditional role, publicly agreeing with her husband’s views. But as her children observed, their father was always in agreement with her views as well, especially on domestic matters. She happily accompanied her husband to official functions and Fisher’s colleagues found they

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were always welcome at her home. However, Margaret was reluctant to give press interviews as she worried that she might say too much to reporters and embarrass her husband. Of course, her shunning the public limelight was not unusual in this period as none of the early prime minister’s wives assumed any real public roles. In other ways, Margaret was quite an independent woman. She held the mortgage on the Albert Park residence and the couple kept a joint bank account, something relatively uncommon in those days. She was not given a housekeeping allowance by her husband but managed her own budget and drew out money when needed. Fisher was always known to be careful with his money and had a reputation among his colleagues as a good saver. Nevertheless, he trusted his wife to manage the household’s affairs with no check on it by himself. 33 Having married late, Fisher found himself in middle age with a large family of six relatively young children. Besides Robert, there were four sons, Henry (1906), Andrew (1908), John (1910), the first child born to a prime minister in office, and then James (1912). The only daughter, Margaret, always known as Peggy, had been born in 1904 and another daughter, Jean, was stillborn in 1916. The Fishers maintained, by Australian standards of the time, quite a large household. They never employed outside servants but had a large force of female relatives to assist them. When Gran came down from Gympie with her other two daughters there were, for several years, six adults in the house, and by 1912, six children as well. Although Christine married in 1913, Elsie and Annie still lived with the Fishers until their weddings during 1915. Fisher almost certainly saw himself as the centre of this household with its women and children serving him to some extent. Gran would always bring him a cup of tea whenever he was working at home and Elsie spoilt him by bringing his breakfast in bed every morning. This also enabled Fisher in the cramped conditions at Albert Park to then work in bed. Margaret ran the household smoothly so that her husband could concentrate on his public duties. It is hardly surprising that Shepherd thought of Fisher’s domestic life as being ‘pleasant and unpretentious’ or that Fisher was quite unsettled when visiting South Africa without Margaret or her mother to look after him.34

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Fisher tried, whenever possible, to be home for the evening meal with his family. Maintaining his own dairy at Oakleigh Hall enabled him to enjoy generous helpings of cream and butter. He had few dislikes in fish, meat and vegetables although he normally did not eat rabbit or pork. Aside from his daily apple, he liked bananas, often buying them in large bunches, but tended to avoid oranges because, he claimed, he had eaten so many in his early mining days in Queensland. Gran had long enjoyed the odd glass of stout with her evening meals but gave this up when she came to live with the Fishers out of respect for their teetotalism. Normally no alcohol was served with meals although at formal dinners it was provided for guests. On occasions, Fisher’s teetotalism produced some odd moments. While on a tour of Kalgoorlie with a large party of males, the group entered a pub where Fisher asked for his usual soda water and the official party all felt obliged to do the same.35 He also spent his free evenings, and whenever possible, his Sundays with the family and friends and with Gympie, his black and white fox terrier. He enjoyed reciting, to his wife, usually from memory, the poetry of Burns and also slabs of Charles Dickens and CJ Dennis’s The Sentimental Bloke. Despite his deafness in one ear, he was a moderately good singer, enjoyed listening to musical concerts and both he and Margaret were good dancers. He would also join in choruses, popular and religious, with the rest of the family around an Australian-made ‘Wertheim-Australia’ piano that he purchased in 1912 for £58. True to form, Fisher refused to have his name used in any endorsement of the product, even though he liked it and its Australian manufacture. He was also known to entertain his caucus colleagues with Scottish songs that he rendered with great passion.36 Fisher clearly enjoyed his children when they were young and happily joined in their games. Shepherd remembered him as ‘the playmate of his children’ and often found him in the garden with his two eldest sons climbing all over him.37 Young Peggy always wanted her father to be like their Albert Park neighbour and drive a tram which seemed much more exciting than being a prime minister. She did, however, remain devoted to Fisher, remembering him as ‘a deeply

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loved and loving father; a true family man in every sense of the word’. James, the youngest, looked back on him as fair and generous to a fault, especially with children. The Fishers were extremely protective of the children and their personal privacy. It was only later in England that he briefly relented to have the children pose in the English newspapers on a couple of occasions (see figure 10). He would also spend money giving his children the education he had missed. All the Fisher children were to be educated in English and Scottish schools and Robert, Henry and James would go on to graduate from university. The long-term problem for Fisher, being an older father, was that by the time his youngest children were beginning high school, he was already a sick and aging figure. James, therefore, did not remember his father as someone that he climbed over but as a ‘stern man’ even though he clearly admired him. (In these later years, due to circumstances beyond his control, he became much more of a remote father for several of his children.)38

Health Since recovering from typhoid in 1897, Fisher had enjoyed very good health, despite bouts of congestion. But while prime minister, this began to change. His hearing remained uneven and on at least one occasion when he had a severe cold, he found that he had gone completely deaf in both ears. He would conceal this from the outside world for several days until his hearing returned.39 He was able to compensate for his partial deafness to some extent, by being able to read lips, although he kept quiet about it to his obvious political advantage. Malcolm Shepherd only discovered it by accident when Fisher, wanting to prove a point, was able tell him what the Duke of Connaught had said to Lord Gladstone at a public ceremony they were watching in South Africa. Having enjoyed reasonably good health over a long period, Fisher remained suspicious of the medical profession and advances in technology. He refused to have himself or his children vaccinated for any disease until forced to do so when going overseas, and he preferred to avoid the doctor whenever possible.40

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Historians have usually seen Fisher as increasingly suffering from congestion and breathing difficulties due to his early mining days, some form of nervous tension from the pressures of public office and finally, in England later on, some type of obvious mental decay. While it is no longer possible to find Fisher’s medical records, scant as they probably were, it is not unreasonable, given his family history and the symptoms that he exhibited, to suggest that he was suffering longterm congenital heart failure. His brother, John, died of heart disease at age forty and his own son, John died of heart disease at age fifty, while his other son Andrew survived a heart attack in his sixties but suffered ill health thereafter. The symptoms Fisher exhibited from around 1912 onwards were breathing problems, especially at night, feelings of exhaustion that required periods of rest and then, by 1914, failing memory and, later on, loss of weight and lack of appetite. Every one of these symptoms, especially together and in growing intensity, could be indicative of heart problems.41 Of course it does not preclude the effects on his lungs from his days in both coal- and goldmines also affecting his health. He also suffered some form of nervous tension associated with the pressures of running the country. Both Hughes and Shepherd thought some of Fisher’s physical health problems resulted from psychological pressures. For a man seeking harmony and consensus there must have been times when Fisher internalised his personal anger or hurt and that could only have added to his levels of stress. Indeed, from the time that he was rejected for the mine manager’s job in Howard in 1887, Fisher obviously internalised his disappointments and rarely let others know what he was feeling.42 Aside from periods where he clearly needed to rest, Fisher sometimes took quick naps during the day to compensate for his lack of sleep at nights. Interestingly, he often refused to see his doctor about his problems as he believed he would only tell him to rest. It seems likely, knowing John had suffered from breathing difficulties and exhaustion before his death, Fisher may have feared that his heart was a problem and avoided being examined. His answer was to rest up at home but still be available for administrative work. He also found his frequent trips around the country seemed to revitalise him once he was

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away from the relentless pressure of his normal administration and he came to enjoy travelling. Later on, Fisher undoubtedly hoped that the change of office in late 1915, as he set off for England, would benefit his health. However this was still in the future. In 1910, Fisher was in his prime and ready to begin the task of transforming Australia.43

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12 Governing Australia

On 26 April 1910, Fisher called together the caucus to explain that he had refused the invitation from the Governor-General to form a government until he had been confirmed as leader. He was immediately re-elected to this position, although he did not get everything his own way. He proposed allowing absent members to vote by telegram for the election of the ministry in three days time. This motion was defeated but Fisher was appointed the sole returning officer for the election and the allotment of portfolios was left entirely in his hands. He also outlined how the ballot would be conducted from a typewritten list of rules. There would be an exhaustive ballot, with senators elected first, and by members placing an X against candidates’ names. If not enough candidates gained an absolute majority on the first ballot, there would be subsequent ballots but any candidate with less than five votes would be eliminated before these ballots. Only the number of votes of those elected would be given to the meeting by the returning officer.1 Despite the obvious process of election, the paper suggested that this would be a system of ‘recommendation’ of ministers in accordance with the 1905 Melbourne Conference and in keeping with the caucus resolution of 17 November 1908. This pretence was continued in the September 1914 ballot, but three weeks later the caucus moved without discussion to change the word ‘recommend’ to ‘elect’ in the rules. The origins of these rules remain unclear. Fisher was expecting

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to be appointed returning officer and conduct an election since he had these procedures ready to outline to the caucus, which only made a few minor modifications. It seems likely he produced the paper himself or with some assistance by members of the caucus executive. Three days after the meeting, this system of exhaustive ballots was used for the first time to elect the new ministers.2 The senators had three positions allocated to them after a successful motion from the floor on 26 April, and McGregor, Pearce and Findley were elected on the first ballot. However, it required three ballots to elect the ministers from the House. Hughes, Batchelor and Tudor were elected on the first ballot, while Thomas, O’Malley and Frazer eventually gained the other spots. The main loser was Hugh Mahon who polled well in the first ballot to end up one vote short of a majority. In the subsequent polls, the various tickets and lobbying that went on for the remaining posts saw his votes slip away. His aloof manner and difficult personality more than his religion or radical Irish views, probably cost him votes. He would have to wait until 1914 before he secured another ministerial position. Fisher became Prime Minister and Treasurer for the second time and his cabinet comprised Hughes as Attorney-General, Batchelor as Minister for External Affairs, Thomas as Postmaster-General, Pearce as Minister for Defence, Tudor as Minister for Trade and Customs and O’Malley as Minister for Home Affairs. Findley and Frazer were ministers without portfolio. This ministry would prove to be a remarkably stable team as Fisher set about implementing the first majority government since federation. How then, did he govern?3

The governors-general Fisher’s personality and political astuteness would serve him well in leading his government. He enjoyed respectful and generally good working relations with both of the governors-general during his time in government, even though both Lord Dudley (1908−11) and Lord Denman (1911−14) were considered mediocre incumbents. Dudley was known to castigate the competence of the Labour ministry in private

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with Deakin. He also disliked the fact that Reid, now High Commissioner in London, communicated directly with the government rather than through himself, although this was true for all governments not just the Labour one. Yet Fisher personally got along very well with him and this relationship had been firmly established during his previous minority government. In a Christmas greeting for 1908, Dudley thanked him ‘for the consistent kindness and consideration that you always show us’.4 In 1909, Fisher had found himself placating an agitated Dudley from the insults of the Queensland premier, William Kidston. Dudley wanted to tour the Commonwealth and the easiest way of finding suitable accommodation in most capitals was to use the state governor’s residences if they were vacant at the time. He wanted to stay in Brisbane for two months in the middle of 1909, knowing that the governor would be leaving. Fisher asked Kidston several times whether this would be possible but the premier remained evasive. In April 1909, a furious Dudley reported to Fisher he heard that Kidston that he didn’t want him residing in Brisbane as if he was the governor of that state. Kidston had even asked the state governor to inquire if it would be possible for his replacement to arrive in mid-June so that Dudley would have no place to stay. Dudley demanded that Fisher to go to Parliament and get enough money to rent the largest house in Brisbane, surround it with a military honour guard and have it known as the ‘Federal Government House’. Fisher instead wrote in a lowkey, but firm manner, to Kidston, again seeking the accommodation. The premier, finding that the new governor could not arrive in time, tried using the excuse that the residence need renovations but at least offered it for half the time that Dudley had requested. After further efforts by Fisher, Kidston extended the period of Dudley’s residence from early July to the end of August. One of Fisher’s last letters before his resignation in June 1909 was to assure Kidston that this matter was now settled to Dudley’s satisfaction.5 Fisher almost certainly worked much better with Denman, who liked him so much that he asked whether he might be a godfather to young James when he was born in early 1912. (Fisher had to politely refuse since he thought people would question the closeness between

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the two men and hence their independence.) Ronald Munro-Ferguson (1914−20) who was to work with Fisher in his third period as Prime Minister, described to Bonar Law why Fisher was so well regarded, noting that he ‘played with all his cards on the table, and according to his own fixed rules. He was absorbed in his own opinions, which are unchangeable. Nevertheless, such is his honesty and public spirit that it is always a pleasure to confer with him as a friend, and as a Minister it was often useful to do so.’ He also reported that Fisher’s resignation in October 1915 was a real loss to Australian public life given ‘his honesty, courage and public spirit’.6

The prime minister’s department Fisher was the first prime minister to pay careful attention to the administrative structure of his office. Previously, every non-Labour prime minister had also been the minister for external affairs and the administration of both positions had been handled within that small department. This had also been the case when Watson and Fisher were in office during their minority governments, even though neither had held the external affairs portfolio. Fisher now regarded this arrangement as no longer suitable. Malcolm Shepherd had served as a private secretary to each prime minister since 1903. So impressed was Fisher with Shepherd’s ability that he appointed the thirty-eight year old to head the new prime minister’s department that came into effect on 1 July 1911. This new section with Shepherd and five clerks, remained within External Affairs for the parliamentary estimates, but otherwise was a separate entity. All paperwork associated with the work of the prime minister now passed through this office, as did matters relating to attendance at, or the organisation of, official functions involving the prime minister.7 A number of parliamentarians and sections of the press criticised the new department because of its cost, but Fisher’s structure was continued and developed by subsequent prime ministers.8 Shepherd knew all of the early prime ministers and by comparison to Deakin found Fisher slower at dealing with paperwork and coming

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to a decision. Certainly, Fisher did not have the same quickness of mind as Deakin, which annoyed Shepherd who was intelligent and efficient himself (Deakin was in awe of his speed at shorthand) and admired such characteristics in others.9 Yet Fisher was not indecisive, as witnessed by the sheer amount he achieved over his three years in office. As Humphreys points out, a cabinet note for 8 August 1910 shows Fisher dealing with everything from an appointment of an entomologist for Papua to arrangements for the Land Assessment Act and the Defence Act and possible amendments to the constitution.10 In three years he oversaw over one hundred Acts of Parliament (some quite complex), authorised several royal commissions and prepared three budgets and the relevant papers and accounts. He was methodical rather than brilliant in administration and aimed to keep a clean desk at the end of the day. He also weighed up issues carefully before coming to a decision and then saw the issue through even when others faltered. Fisher’s honesty, even temper and kindness towards his staff more than compensated for any deficiencies he might have had as an administrator. It was part of the reason why his ministers, staff and other public servants enjoyed working with him. Indeed, Shepherd, for all of his frustrations with Fisher’s delays, responded in the same way to this positive encouragement. On his resignation in 1915, Fisher sent a personal letter of thanks to Shepherd for his service which he ‘treasured’ for many years.11

The cabinet While he was fortunate that caucus had given him a cabinet of mostly able men, Fisher also gave his ministers a free hand while he set priorities and maintained a general oversight of the administration. The result was a cabinet of remarkable stability, with even a sense of team spirit, and with few major clashes despite the diverse and often difficult personalities involved. Although both Batchelor and Hughes had been earlier allies of Watson, Fisher had no hesitation in giving them senior cabinet posts which they were obviously capable of undertaking. Hughes served unofficially as deputy and even as Acting Prime Minis-

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ter on two occasions while Fisher was overseas. Over time, some of Fisher’s harmonious dealings with his cabinet colleagues even seemed to rub off on Hughes. Frazer reported to Fisher in London in 1911 that he had gotten along much better with Hughes this time than when Fisher had been in South Africa.12 Frazer, previously a young firebrand, obviously enjoyed the range of work Fisher entrusted to him and channelled his energies into his increasing cabinet responsibilities. Although Hughes had his moments, the major irritant for Fisher was the colourful but erratic King O’Malley, a fellow resident of Albert Park. Fisher felt O’Malley’s flamboyant behaviour undermined his attempt to show that the ALP could soberly govern. This worry over his behaviour extended to Fisher often rising in the House and answering questions that were directed to O’Malley. So irritating did he find O’Malley in cabinet, that at one stage Fisher held meetings beforehand with most of the senior ministers to work out business and hence shorten formal cabinet meeting time.13 However, too much can be made of this. O’Malley, for all his faults, clearly admired Fisher and worked hard for him. In contrast, Pearce, while acting prime minister in 1916, found working with O’Malley to be a ‘nightmare’. It is a tribute to his people skills that Fisher could have Hughes, O’Malley and Frazer in the one cabinet and get them working so effectively.14 The only change to the cabinet during the entire three years occurred when Batchelor died suddenly in October 1911. Thomas took over his portfolio and Frazer succeeded him as PostmasterGeneral, while Ernest Roberts was elected as a minister without portfolio. All of the ministers from Fisher down worked extremely long hours and at a cost to their health. Pearce later admitted to having a nervous breakdown from the strain of his portfolio. Hughes suffered a range of chronic health problems and in 1912 was absent from work for months. While both men lived to a ripe old age, Batchelor, Frazer and Roberts died well before their time. Fisher’s own health suffered from the punishing workload and the strain of administration. Shepherd soon saw him suffering a form of mental tiredness which would worsen over the years. At least this was relieved in these earlier periods by short breaks of physical activity.15

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Fisher was conscious of the need for him and his ministers to show rectitude in all matters of administration. One of the reasons that he liked being treasurer was that there would never be any question over the financial probity of his government. One visitor was thrown out of Fisher’s office after he offered a bribe to recommend him for a title and Shepherd was threatened with the sack for having given him the appointment.16 When he thought a friend was trying to compromise him with a financial offer because he was short of funds, Fisher cut him short in a devastating manner.17 He took out an oil lamp (which Margaret had innocently accepted) from his home and put in the street when he thought it might be construed as a bribe. Although noted for his compassion, when Fisher felt someone had violated his trust in this way it was unlikely that they would ever win it back.18

Working with caucus By 1909, WG Spence was able to describe the workings of the caucus as it had developed over the years. ‘The Party meets every Wednesday morning. On measures affecting the Platform the party votes are solidly together. On all other questions each member is absolutely free to vote, as he likes. All important bills, whether affecting the Platform or not, are discussed and in most cases remitted to a committee of the party, who go through the measure and recommend amendments.’19 Although this was an idealised description meant for public consumption, it did nevertheless capture the essence of how the caucus worked, but of course ignored how it would operate in regard to cabinet decisions made by a Labour government. Overall, Fisher did as good a job as any Labour prime minister (and better than many) in balancing the tension between the need for a Westminster system of cabinet solidarity and the caucus decision-making processes. He had few precedents to follow from previous minority labour governments. Watson had taken the view that cabinet decisions did not need to be passed through the caucus. Fisher’s first government in 1908−09 was largely conducted during a parliamentary recess when caucus didn’t regularly meet. There had only been a handful of caucus meetings in

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November/December 1908 and the most interesting motion was by Turley, attempting to have a new chair and caucus executive elected to replace Fisher and those who had become cabinet ministers, but this was defeated.20 Fisher was responsible for developing the rules for the caucus to elect the ministers to his cabinet, provided he allocated the portfolios. At the commencement of every parliamentary session, he outlined to the caucus what would be the government’s legislative agenda. In August 1909, the caucus had decided to set up four committees to review the legislation of the Deakin ministry and every member of caucus was allocated to one of these bodies. In August 1910, the caucus decided that these four committees, defence and external affairs, home affairs and postal, customs and attorneys-general, and treasury and old age pensions now be used to review FPLP legislation before it went to parliament. This sometimes led to modifications of cabinet decisions, as for example, in August 1910, when there was opposition in the caucus to exempting crown leases from the new land tax. The bulk of the considerable legislation passed over the three years received only minimal alteration but gave every caucus member a sense of having input into the government’s agenda.21 Fisher also quietly made sure he was the pivotal link between caucus, cabinet and the parliament. A new caucus executive of just five was approved on 6 July 1910, comprising Fisher, the two party whips and two elected caucus members, Long and Mathews, who were not in the cabinet. McGregor was then added, ex-officio, to this group, which remained unchanged, like much of Fisher’s personnel, for the next three years.22 By chairing the caucus and this executive, Fisher was the direct link to the cabinet and through the whips to the parliament. He made a point of attending the caucus meetings whenever possible and this diligence seems to have rubbed off on his ministers. Of the eighty or so caucus meetings he could have chaired over the period of his government, he was in attendance for around 78 per cent of the time. There was no period when he was absent from these duties for any noticeable length of time. Indeed even during the thirteen months of his final term as wartime prime minister he still managed over 70

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per cent attendance at the caucus meetings. He, of course, had risen to power partly by his cultivation of the caucus and at least during this term in office saw it as largely reflecting and reinforcing his ideas.23 It was a measure of Fisher’s diplomatic skill that he managed to develop a harmonious relationship between the varying interests within the caucus. Occupying the role of chair combined with his prestige as prime minister and his good sense of standing orders, he made rulings that few would challenge. Thus, when faced with the contentious and confidential search for appointments to the High Court, Fisher simply ruled that such appointments were not part of the party platform and would not be submitted to caucus. At the end of 1912, as the last parliamentary session came to an end, an appreciative caucus insisted, over Fisher’s objections, to hosting him to a lunch for all his hard work in the party room over the previous three years. For critics who have seen Fisher as merely a dupe of this body, it is interesting to compare what happened when his presence was temporarily removed.24 In October 1910, Fisher accepted an invitation to attend the inauguration of the new Union of South Africa and left while the parliament still had more than six weeks to run and did not return until the summer recess. Hughes took on the role of Acting Prime Minister, which Fisher apparently decided on. Within weeks of Fisher’s departure, the press began reporting a government in disarray, owing to a series of arguments among its members within the parliament.25 The first was over criticisms that the referendum legislation for the Arbitration Bill did not mention disputes involving railway workers. This led to a long caucus meeting on 27 October that forced Hughes to move an amendment in the parliament to include the workers.26 On 9 November, William Webster criticised the government for not giving enough attention to the report on the reorganisation of the post office. This was followed by further open dissent by backbenchers in the House over the entrance qualifications required for the new Australian military college being established at Duntroon. Once again, Hughes had to summons meetings of caucus on 17 and 22 November to settle these differences. While the caucus reaffirmed its confidence in the ministry, Hughes accepted that should party members have strong objections to

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proposed bills or regulations, these would be delayed until considered by caucus. Although Hughes was an able minister, his tendency not to consult with the backbench nor to anticipate caucus reactions did not bode well for the future. Fortunately for him, on the next two occasions when he stood in for Fisher, the parliament was largely in recess so he did not have extensive dealings with the caucus.27

The press Fisher was remarkably honest in dealing with the press. Many reporters, even then used to stock answers from politicians, commented on his attitude as ‘refreshing’. They enjoyed cordial relations with him even when their editors were against his government. George Cockerill from the Argus, Bert Cook from the Melbourne Herald and the young Keith Murdoch from the Age all had long-standing friendships with him.28 Fisher had, of course, his own experience of developing a newspaper and even served as a reporter for the Gympie Truth on his own political activities in Queensland. Shepherd certainly considered him very wise in the ways of the press.29 Since his Queensland days, he had been used to most of the press being anti-Labour and thought it might even have had something to do with Labour’s success. This hadn’t changed in the federal parliament when he informed the House in 1911 that he tended to ignore the expected slanders found newspapers and simply went on discharging his public duties.30 Fisher would never really win over these papers but at least he sometimes made inroads in getting his government’s case heard by them. The Argus was normally against labour but usually saw eye to eye on issues such as protection and defence. The Sydney Daily Telegraph, which published Hughes’s articles on ‘The Case for Labor’ was more even-handed on occasions than the Sydney Morning Herald. Fisher gained some advantages from parts of this press when it fell out with Deakin. The Melbourne Age was estranged from Deakin over his policy of Fusion with the hated free traders and indirectly gave Fisher some favourable political capital, as did The Bulletin. Fisher may have taken press criticism in his stride but also kept his eye on it. One of

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Shepherd’s daily tasks was to cut out relevant press clippings from a range of national papers and paste them onto blue coloured cardboard for Fisher’s perusal. Margaret Fisher would also read out the main headlines to him, especially if some item caught her attention. Fisher’s one source of irritation, as for many prime ministers, was the leaking of information to reporters by cabinet and caucus. In January 1909, Fisher had been embarrassed, and Dudley extremely annoyed, when a confidential proposal for a new Colonial Office structure for the Dominions appeared in The Age soon after Fisher had briefed cabinet colleagues.31 Lloyd Dumas of the Argus had a close friendship with Patrick Lynch, the Western Australian senator, and Fisher suspected he was the source of many leaks. Cook was once passing along the corridor outside Fisher’s office, when the Prime Minister rushed out into the corridor, looking up and down hoping to catch anyone talking to the reporter. Of course, Fisher himself was not averse to leaking political information, directly or indirectly, to the press. The Age report in 1907 that he had won the leadership by a large margin was very likely his own doing in order to scotch any rumours that the contest had been too close. His main complaint was the leaking to reporters of government business that he thought should remain confidential, since he was very good at keeping such secrets.32

Wide Bay Fisher, living in Melbourne, still needed to cultivate his electorate of Wide Bay. This was not just a case of visiting when parliament was not in session, because other business including overseas trips to South Africa in 1910 and then England in 1911 ate into his time. Fisher tried to set aside a block of time most years to make the journey to Wide Bay. In 1912, he spent thirteen days in April visiting both NSW and Queensland, that included seven days spent entirely in his electorate. In 1913, he spent eight days in Queensland in January, including six days in Wide Bay. He was back by late March to commence formal campaigning for the general election and again in the first half of September, although now as the Leader of the Opposition. Fisher’s

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public profile, old friends in the local labour organisations and several sympathetic local papers assisted him in maintaining his popularity. He also made sure that his party’s election campaigns were launched in his electorate, either in Maryborough (in 1910 and 1913) or Bundaberg (in 1914), thus giving the people of Wide Bay a sense of being at the centre of national affairs. Like most sitting members, he also made sure he returned before the election for last-minute campaigns. This cultivation of his electorate, along with the obvious prestige of being prime minister or at least party leader, meant that he was returned in 1913 and 1914 with increased majorities, even though Labour would lose Wide Bay at the end of 1915 after Fisher had resigned from the seat.33

The national electorate Fisher also kept up his visits around Australia and thought nothing of travelling endlessly to meet people and cultivate the electorate. Travel could still be slow and uncomfortable at the beginning of the twentieth century, and it needs to be appreciated that it often made huge demands on Fisher. By the beginning of 1913, for example, not only was he in Wide Bay but he had started travelling in Victoria in late December before visiting Sydney and then attending a reception in Brisbane. After time in Gympie and other Queensland towns, he returned to Melbourne at the end of January after more functions in Sydney. But he was not finished with his travels. He was due to turn the first sod for the Kalgoorlie end of the Trans-Australian railway and so left Melbourne by ship on 5 February for Fremantle. He was then taken by car and train to Kalgoorlie for the ceremony as well as visits to local mines and other functions before returning to the coast to sail back to Melbourne, where he arrived on 18 February. In March, he visited the new naval college being constructed at Jervis Bay and then laid the foundation stone for Canberra. This was of course an election year and later in the same month he was off to Queensland again for his official election campaign which commenced on 31 March at Maryborough.34

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Fisher held office in an age when media-driven personalities were very much in their infancy. Yet he clearly had characteristics that made him widely admired as a national leader. Men were attracted to Fisher’s friendly and informal manner and his sunny optimism on the future of the country, and women found him sincere in his desire to improve welfare and support women’s rights. Although a generalisation, there is something to the idea that Australian prime ministers have often been either men that people feel are above them in either intelligence and/or social standing (even if this is not openly admitted by the electorate) and those who seem exactly like them. Andrew Fisher could be seen as representing the coming of age of the ordinary Australian (a view his friend Keir Hardie endorsed) and the expanding democratic system that would sustain the nation for the next hundred years.35 Finally, by 1910, Fisher resolved the apparent problem with Labour governing that its conservative opponents had long argued against. The party had originated out of a trade union background, represented the working class − or sections of it − and had created a culture of conferences, pledges and caucuses that controlled its parliamentarians. How could this fit into a parliamentary system where representatives were supposed to judge legislation on its merits and be responsible to their electors and ultimately the nation? For Fisher, the answer came over a period of time, reinforced by his party’s electoral success and his views on social divisions within society. Fisher certainly did not hide his trade union sympathies while Prime Minister. When a general strike erupted in Brisbane in 1912, the Queensland premier asked Fisher for troops to keep order. He not only refused but publicly donated money to the strike fund. Yet Stephens in an interview with him noted that in his answers he made no distinction whenever he talked about Australians and workers. Fisher simply assumed that they were the same thing.36 After his election win in 1910, Fisher told a Brisbane crowd that his party was not just the Labour Party. ‘They were the accepted National Party of Australia, and they would be true to Australia.’37 Fisher had long believed his party reflected an enlightened democracy that sent to parliament representatives ‘the like of which has never been seen before’. In such a view, the interests of Australia, the Australian people,

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the Australian worker and the ALP merged together.38 Whatever was party policy would be national policy because the ALP was the natural voice of the Australian people. Those who opposed it were doing so because they wished to defend vested interests. Gordon Greenwood was close to the mark when he suggested that Fisher was an idealist who was convinced that the Labour program served humanity and the national interest and made no distinction in his thinking on these issues. Thus, the previous criticisms by opponents of the Labour Party’s methods of operation were rendered irrelevant in Fisher’s view of politics and society.

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13 Defending Australia

On 31 July 1914, Fisher, electioneering in the Victorian town of Colac, promised his audience that if a European war came, not only would Australia be at war in support of the Empire, but would assist the mother country ‘to our last man and our last shilling’.1 The phrase has entered Australian political folklore and been associated with Fisher’s name ever since. Yet, in many ways, such an apparently openended imperial commitment in 1914 was not in keeping with most of Fisher’s own views on Australian interests and defence policies. Although Deakin initially took the lead on many defence issues, it was Fisher’s majority government that was able to develop, in a serious and systematic way, the Australian armed forces.

Colonial defence When he arrived in Queensland in 1885, Fisher was a Scottish immigrant moving from one part of the British Empire to another. Like most Australians at the time, he retained a strong sense of membership of this imperial world. Indeed the Scots, for all their sense of differences with England, had a long history of serving as administrators, soldiers and civil servants in the Empire. As part of Fisher’s settling into Queensland society, he had joined the local militia and had no objection to military training on a voluntary basis.

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The militia was set up by the Queensland government after the British Army garrisons had departed from Australian shores. In the late 1880s it numbered between 3000−4000 men. Fisher left the militia partly because of the Sunday training sessions but also because its members spent a considerable amount of time drinking and socialising rather than engaging in serious military preparation. He found it even more disturbing that during the strikes of the early 1890s, the Queensland government had used the military against workers. When he entered the Queensland parliament in 1893, Fisher not only called for cuts in expenditure on these forces, but even their abolition. He argued that the colony faced no real danger, the existing forces were of little military value and that they were being used as an agent of suppression of workers by the state.2 Despite his disdain for these local forces, Fisher was more sympathetic to the concept of naval defence, which was needed to safeguard Queensland’s coastal cities from the potential threat of raiding warships. Indeed, all colonies saw advantages in co-ordinating their limited naval defences for the protection of their coastlines. Following a London Colonial Conference agreement in 1887, the Royal Navy provided warships to form an Australian Naval Squadron whose operating (and some building) costs were subsidised by the various colonies on a per capita basis. In theory, these warships were committed to operating in Australasian waters and could only be removed with the consent of the various colonial governments. The colonies also actively encouraged British control of all the local Pacific islands south of the equator as a defensive buttress for the Australian mainland. This policy met with mixed success, since British interests and Australian interests did not always coincide. The colonists, especially in Queensland, were unhappy that Britain allowed Germany to establish a colony in northeastern New Guinea under an 1886 agreement and accepted French joint control over the New Hebrides during 1887.3 Fisher in the 1890s was an enthusiastic supporter of Federation because it seemed to him that the new national government would secure Labour interests, especially in terms of controlling immigration and improving industrial relations and social welfare. But he also

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supported the idea that a national government would be more efficient in coordinating and developing naval defence while being openly opposed to it creating an efficient military force. After his Queensland experiences, he still regarded such forces as both unnecessary and a threat to the interests of the working man. His Scottish background suggests that while he admired his British heritage, a certain regard for local interests was also important. He was not alone in this regard, for most of his contemporaries thought of Australian defence interests as being focused in the Pacific region, and this might be different to British interests in Europe or the Mediterranean. Yet when he entered the new federal parliament in 1901, like many on both the Labour and non-Labour sides of politics, Fisher had only vague ideas on what would constitute Australia’s new defence policies.4

Early defence policy On 1 March 1901, the new Commonwealth government, in principle, inherited the defence forces from the various colonies, consisting of about 1800 permanent army troops and 27 000 partly-paid militia and volunteers. Its naval force consisted of less than a dozen coastal ships (and about 1500 sailors) with no vessel less than twenty years old. The main naval protection continued to be the Admiralty’s Australian Naval Squadron, whose cost was to now to be partly paid for by the new federal government. At the London Colonial Conference of 1902, Barton agreed to a renewed ten-year naval agreement. The Admiralty would operate the squadron in the western Pacific and, although based in Australian ports, it could operate in the China and East Indies stations without Australian agreement. Nearly half the annual operating costs (five-twelfths) would be paid for by Australia, provided the total sum did not exceed £200 000. Britain would also provide a number of cadetships in the Royal Navy for Australians and New Zealanders, and it was hoped that up to three training ships might be manned by Australasian crews.5 Fisher was immediately opposed to this agreement. He almost certainly came under the influence of Captain WR Creswell who had

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commanded the Queensland naval forces before Federation and who, by September 1901, had begun to campaign for a separate naval force of five cruisers manned by Australians. Fisher, echoing Creswell, felt relying on Britain for its main defence force was a denial of Australian responsibilities. The new Commonwealth needed institutions that defined its identity and interests, otherwise the new nation might ‘fade away and possibly die’. Fisher’s first federal parliamentary statement on the navy occurred during a debate over the future of New Guinea in November 1901. As a Queenslander, he was well aware of the concerns of his state in wanting to keep the Germans out the bottom half of New Guinea, as well as the possible dangers Australian coastal cities might face from any German naval raids. ‘I think the sooner we recognise that we are a nation, and require a fleet of our own, the better it will be for all concerned.’ He later thought Barton’s renewal of the naval subsidy in 1902, even though the amount was quite paltry, was establishing the wrong principles for the young nation. It was expecting others to do what it should be doing for itself. Hughes generally supported this line of reasoning but Watson, worried over the rising costs of defence, initially opposed Creswell’s naval scheme. However, partly reflecting changing public opinion, the views of his senior colleagues and the 1902 party conference, he decided by the 1903 election to support building an Australian naval squadron.6 The issue of the future army caused the FPLP greater headaches. The Barton ministry saw its initial task as simply creating a uniform set of regulations for its newly acquired military force. Barton also asked the British government for an active officer to take charge of its land forces, and Colonel Sir ET Hutton arrived in Australia in January 1902 to take over this responsibility. Hutton had commanded the NSW colonial forces in the early 1890s as well as later serving in Canada and then in the Boer War where he worked with, and admired, the Australian troops. He was a competent and experienced officer and familiar with Australians. His weakness was that his first loyalty was to Britain and its imperial needs rather than looking at defence issues from an Australian perspective. 7 Fisher, like many of his Labour colleagues, remained suspicious

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of any standing army and took the view that the nation should try to create a force of citizen soldiers dedicated to democratic values and devoid of the pomp and social distinctions of the British Army. Caucus gave considerable attention to the first proposed defence bill introduced by the ministry in mid-1901. They worked through it, clause by clause, until the bill, badly drafted in the first place, was withdrawn by the government. It was not until 1903 that a new defence bill ensured the Commonwealth forces finally came under a common set of regulations. Yet one issue was clear in the caucus even in 1901: there was unanimous agreement that Australian forces, especially the militia and volunteers, should not to be sent beyond Australia’s shore without their consent. This was accepted in July 1901 and became the basis of Labour policy until modified, but not totally altered, by the Curtin government during the Second World War. Fisher had been on the caucus committee that had examined the military bill and accepted this principle without question. The later Defence Act, although drafted by a non-Labour government, reflected these concerns. While the regular forces were eligible for compulsory overseas service, volunteers could not be sent out of the country without their consent.8 The 1903 Defence Act also provided, for the first time, compulsory military training for eighteen- to twenty-five-year-old males in time of war, and the FPLP had divergent views on this issue. Hughes accepted the principle of not sending citizen troops beyond Australia’s shores, but proposed organising a substantial local force with compulsory peacetime military training along the lines used in Switzerland. By 1903, he had gained the support of Watson and then, eventually, Pearce. The latter was a firm convert after 1905 to the dangers of the ‘Yellow Peril’ and to the rising power of Japan. In contrast, Fisher in these early years, remained part of a smaller group in the party that were sceptical, as he had been since the 1890s, of any serious military threats from Japan or indeed any other power, given the distance of Australia from Asia.9 This meant he also was sceptical about the need for compulsory peacetime military training. In parliamentary debates in both 1903 and 1905, he was opposed to Hughes’s arguments on this issue. Fisher was more interested in defending the Australian coastline

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from a possible raid by German naval units and so his focus was always upon spending the limited defence budget money on an independent naval force.10

Watson’s defence policy When Watson took office in 1904, he put forward a modest defence program. The new prime minister was anxious to ensure that Labour was seen as a party interested in defending the nation and not as antimilitarist because many of its members had opposed the Boer War. He proposed a modest increase in armaments for the army and sought the loan from the Admiralty of three modern torpedo boat destroyers which would be manned by Australians (in the end, the Admiralty refused this request). Surprisingly, Watson appointed Anderson Dawson as his Defence Minister, even though he had been a noted critic of the Boer War and his health and political skills were failing. Nevertheless, Dawson diligently took to his task of reorganising the nation’s defence structure and produced a report to parliament on 16 August 1904, and its main recommendations were carried through by the new Reid ministry.11 Hutton had found himself, by the end 1903, facing cutbacks in defence funding and commanding a smaller regular military force than when he had taken up his post. He had began to lobby for a stronger military force, but as a result, his relationship with his political masters, Labour and non-Labour alike, rapidly declined during the following twelve months. The new Defence Act abolished Hutton’s post and divided its functions between a general officer and a military board. It also created a naval board and a director of naval forces, as well as a council of defence. Hutton resigned his post, recommending that another British officer be appointed as his replacement since no Australian was qualified to lead the army. The government ignored him and appointed Major General Henry Finn, an Australian, while Creswell was appointed to command the navy. Over the next few years, the new nation would find its defence, naval and military, challenged by events beyond its control.12

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International changes In 1902, Britain had caused consternation within Australia with the announcement of an alliance with Japan. To protect its Far Eastern possessions and be free to meet the growing naval challenge from Germany in home waters, Britain really needed this alliance. A visit during the next year by three modern battleships of the Japanese navy to various Australian ports was a further reminder of the growing naval strength of that nation. In 1905, the Russo-Japanese War starkly revealed the military power of the Japanese in the Pacific. In 1906, the British unveiled their Dreadnought class of battleship, which revolutionised naval construction. The new ship was a product of the technology of the early twentieth century and if the British had not developed it, her rivals would eventually have done so. Yet the Dreadnoughts proved to be a mixed blessing. They were expensive to build and their radical design made all other capital ships of the Royal Navy obsolete. Britain now enjoyed only a narrow margin of superiority over its rivals. In such a fluid situation, the Admiralty chopped and changed its mind on what its naval policy should be in relation to its Dominions. It first attempted to convince them to supply funds to build new Dreadnoughts that would strengthen the Royal Navy in home waters against the German menace. Thus, the Dreadnought scare that Fisher faced in early 1909 was partly the result of this policy and the scare tactics coming from the British Admiralty.13 During 1905, largely because of the Russo-Japanese war, the National Defence League was formed in Sydney and then in Melbourne to lobby for a system of universal military service in peacetime. It attracted support from a number of Labour politicians including Watson, Hughes and Pearce, as well as Liberals such as Deakin. In September 1906, Deakin produced a definite defence policy by accepting recommendations from Creswell to develop a local navy and acquire a force of four first-class and eight coastal destroyers over the next three years. This policy was endorsed by Labour. In early 1907, Deakin attended the next Colonial Conference in London. While he resisted British attempts to formalise arrangements for the newly named

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‘Dominions’ to supply capital ships for the mother country, he modified his naval proposals and now intended to acquire nine submarines and six torpedo boats instead of the destroyers. This fitted with Admiralty thinking that Australia could have minor vessels for its coastal defence. Deakin, under FPLP pressure, then decided to put aside some £250 000 into a trust fund to eventually acquire these ships.14 Deakin also committed his government to developing an army reserve that would be based on a system of sixteen days per year military training for all males between the ages of nineteen and twentyone. He further caused something of a stir in Whitehall by actively encouraging a visit of the American Great White Fleet to Australian ports during 1908. The warm reception given the Americans by the Australian public reflected something of their fears for their security against Japan as much as Germany. Although nothing came of any US military support, many Australians, including Fisher, had come to recognise that they probably had closer interests to the Americans than the British when it came to dealing with Japan’s military presence in the Asia-Pacific region.15 Fisher’s earlier views of the United States had been mixed. He informed parliament in 1906 that he was appalled by its industrial system and the long hours worked by American youths, as well as the ‘bitterest poverty’ found in that society. Over time, however, he came to regard the United States as sharing common cultural heritage and language that made it a potentially valuable and natural Australian ally.16 By the end of 1907, Fisher had slowly come to a change of heart on defence issues and was quite willing to support the thrust of Deakin’s new policies. As we have seen, the idea of a local naval squadron under Australian control had always appealed to him and it only meant a change of degree as to how much he thought should be spent on such vessels. His general sense of frugality and his known aversion to the federal government incurring debt meant that he had thought in modest terms on the composition of such a squadron. On the issue of military training, he had always believed that a citizen force, doing training in rifle clubs, should be available to defend the nation, and had been reluctant to increase the size of the military force itself. In

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this regard, he was pushed along by changing opinion in the party and community, as well as international events, into accepting more extensive proposals. By the time he attended his first federal conference as party leader in July 1908, Fisher was prepared to accept a defence program that went beyond even Deakin’s proposals. At the conference, Watson moved and had passed a resolution calling for universal military training in peacetime while calls for an expanded Australian naval squadron were also supported by delegates.17 Despite his pioneer work in these defence matters, Deakin was slow at enacting any of his proposals. When his government fell in November 1908, he had done nothing except put aside money in the trust fund. It was during his first minority ministry, that Fisher, in February 1909, authorised the spending of the allocated funds. It was not, however, for submarines or torpedo boats but, taking up Creswell’s earlier proposals, to acquire a series of destroyers for coastal defence. In April he proposed to the Admiralty the creation of an independent Australian naval force that would be under Australian control in time of peace but placed under British control in time of war. Fisher’s preferred position would have been that the Australian government maintain control of its naval force in all circumstances but gave in to advice from the governor-general on this matter. In his Gympie speech, Fisher also advocated, in line with the 1908 conference policy, the expanded system of universal training that went beyond Deakin’s original proposals. He also resisted public pressure for a Dreadnought gift to Britain, maintaining his first policy for a separate and now larger Australian naval squadron. The first two destroyers that Fisher had ordered built in Britain arrived in late 1910 (another was assembled in Australian dockyards) and formed the basis for the later Royal Australian Navy.18 .

The Dreadnought scare Fisher’s ability to keep his head, maintain policies and steer his colleagues through a political crisis can be seen during the so-called ‘Dreadnought scare’. By early 1909, the British Admiralty put pressure

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on the British government for greater naval expenditure. It produced a report that suggested that previous economising measures in the naval budgets since 1905 meant that Britain only had eight new dreadnoughts under order compared to Germany’s ten. If this trend continued, it might lead to the loss of Britain’s naval supremacy. The report caused panic in Britain and led to an increase in naval building orders and this alarm was picked up by the Australian press. The Age reported on the Admiralty’s concerns and German battleship numbers on 18 and 19 March and also included a fairly alarmist editorial arguing that Australia should pay for a new Dreadnought for the British Navy to help meet this German threat.19 Within days, other national papers took up the Age’s article and public meetings called for the ‘gift’ of a Dreadnought to Britain to help in the naval race. This new ship would cost around £2 million. The press, patriotic organisations, such as the Australian Natives Association, and various state premiers, headed a campaign to provide funding for a Dreadnought. This campaign gathered force when the New Zealand government decided to supply funds for such a ship, although it had no navy of its own to finance at the time. Up to this stage, Fisher’s proposals for a separate naval squadron of coastal destroyers had been well received by the public, even if there was some criticism that the first two ships were to be built in Britain and not Australia. Now, within weeks of its announcement, the scheme was being viewed by many as the wrong policy. Fisher came under intense pressure when he refused to consider such a gift and instead restated in his Gympie speech that Labour’s priority was the development of an expanded Australian owned and funded naval squadron. His refusal to consider a Dreadnought gift was based upon two principles. Firstly, his party was committed to building an Australian navy and any battleship given to Britain would hardly be of use in Australian waters. Secondly, the cost of £2 000 000 for the battleship was beyond the federal budget and could only be financed by a loan, which was anathema to his sense of economy.20 Initially, Deakin also publicly pointed out the costs involved and, while thinking it a magnificent proposal, seemed to support Fisher in not wanting to make such a gift. However, with public opinion seem-

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ingly so in favour and with the possibility of a fusion with the more conservative anti-socialists into one party, Deakin on 7 April, criticised Fisher over his refusal to supply the Dreadnought and offered the gift.21 He thought Fisher’s refusal reflected a narrow point of view, although one biographer has described Deakin’s new stance as ‘hasty and opportunist’.22 This was all the more so since it remained unclear how Deakin actually proposed to pay for it. The premiers of NSW and Victoria had already made the gesture of agreeing to provide the Dreadnought between their states by borrowing the funds, although nothing actually came of their proposal.23 Dudley even gently suggested a change of government policy to his Prime Minister but did not press the point because Fisher remained ‘so wedded to his opinion’. Hughes and Pearce certainly began to waver on the issue but Fisher remained committed to the policies outlined at Gympie.24 Eventually, at the end of April, Fisher asked the British government to call an imperial naval conference in London to discuss defence matters. Dudley was pleased and told him it was ‘obviously the sensible thing to do’.25 However at the Eight Hour Parade in Melbourne on 27 April, Fisher had remained adamant that he would not be bullied or rushed into any changes when his policy was to spend money to build up the Australian navy. If this was unacceptable to the parliament, he declared, someone else would have to govern. However, he remained confident that his policy would be endorsed by the electors.26 Fisher revealed his toughness during this crisis. When the Dreadnought affair abated, he looked back and saw it as a ‘newspaper-made policy’ and although ‘due largely to patriotic fervour, it had not a little of hysteria associated with it’. 27 Later evaluations of Fisher’s career by close colleagues often focused upon his ability to remain steadfast during a crisis while others around him lost their heads. He had not, of course, finished with Deakin on this matter. Since he was committed to at least offering the gift of the Dreadnought, Deakin made it much easier for the British government to subsequently insist on the building of a much larger Australian naval squadron. This placed him in a position where, during the second half of 1909, he would have to find more money than he had originally envisaged for his naval force.28

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New defence arrangements Although Fisher would have liked Pearce to have attended the Imperial Defence Conference in London, his government’s defeat in May 1909 meant that this was not possible. Still, both he and Deakin were pleased by its results. The British government admitted defeat on its plans for subsidised battleships from all the Dominions. Alarmed by the 1908 visit of the American fleet and the obvious independent interest of Australians in their Pacific security, First Sea Lord, Admiral John (Jackie) Fisher now proposed, in what was a face-saving offer, creating a Pacific Imperial Fleet. This would be made up of contributions from Australia, Canada and New Zealand as well as Britain itself. This proposal would allow for the emergence of genuinely local defence squadrons such as the Australian Navy but in time of war they could combine into a larger fleet to protect the whole Pacific region. Australian governments took up these proposals with enthusiasm, with both the Deakin and then the Fisher ministries being ready to spend considerable sums on building the new navy. Deakin ordered ships from Britain and had a Naval Loans Act passed to borrow money to pay for the fleet. Fisher and the FPLP opposed the loan but not the acquisition of the ships. La Nauze thought Deakin far sighted in ordering the ships, particularly the powerful battle cruiser HMAS Australia which arrived before the outbreak of war in 1914 and was able to keep German naval raiders away from Australian shores. Certainly, if Fisher had been in charge of ordering and then paying for it from the budget, the battle cruiser might not have arrived before the war. But if Deakin had gotten his way earlier in 1909, there would have been no HMAS Australia in local waters in 1914, only an Australian-funded Dreadnought operating, like the New Zealand gift, somewhere near Britain. It was Fisher’s firm stance against the gift that enabled much of the Australian navy to be built and to operate close to home.29 Fisher and Pearce subsequently acquired two submarines (built in Britain) and added another light cruiser to this force but decided to have it built in Australia. This delayed the construction of the ship, as Australian workers had to be trained in Britain for nearly two years before work commenced at the

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Cockatoo Island dockyard in Sydney. However it gave the country the basis of a naval ship-building industry instead of simply re-assembling destroyers that had been sent in sections from Britain.30 In 1911, the Crown approved the new title of the ‘Royal Australian Navy’ for this squadron with the Australian flag to be flown on the jack-staff and the Royal Navy Ensign flown astern on every vessel now titled ‘His Majesty’s Australian Ship’. In the same year, Rear Admiral Sir Reginald Henderson completed a report for the Fisher government on future naval needs. He recommended a massive twenty-year building program to create an Australian navy of fifty-two ships, including eight battle cruisers, to be located in a western and eastern fleet and backed by new naval bases around the continent. At first, the government baulked over the size and cost of the force, although Henderson’s proposals for the first seven years were fairly modest, proposing just additional destroyers and submarines.31 Pearce hoped that the new Pacific Imperial Fleet would obviate the need for such a program but that grand scheme was not carried through by Canada or Britain. By 1912, the British convinced the Canadian government that their real naval contribution to the Empire should be the provision of three new battleships for the Mediterranean. Pearce, forty years later, still could not conceal his disappointment with this failure in Imperial co-operation. As a result, by 1913, the Fisher government decided it would have to do more in terms of its naval expenditure. It now proposed spending a massive £9 million to expand the navy by acquiring another battle cruiser, three destroyers, two submarines, a supply ship and a naval aircraft. This program was not endorsed by the Liberals in their 1913 election pledges and eventually, in June 1914, they produced a more modest plan for two light cruisers and two submarines. Nevertheless, even under the existing naval program, Australia had acquired a modern navy by the outbreak of war, supported by expanded dockyards, new naval bases on the east and west coasts and the Jervis Bay training college (opened in January 1915) as well as a growing naval reserve.32 The military side of the defence policy was partly advanced by the new Fusion ministry enacting, with FPLP support, a modified version

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of Deakin’s proposed 1908 Act, which now required periods of compulsory training for junior cadets (12−14) senior cadets (14−18) and citizen forces (18−20). Deakin also invited Lord Kitchener, perhaps the Empire’s most distinguished soldier, to tour the Commonwealth and assess its defence preparations. During January and February 1910 Kitchener conducted his survey and gave the newly elected Fisher government his report. He recommended an army of 80 000 with half defending the cities and the other half as a mobile flying force. He approved of the current training scheme but recommended it be extended to include twenty-to-twenty-five-year-olds for six days a year. He called for more railway lines, especially between the east and west coasts, and for the establishment of a military college. Fisher’s government then took responsibility for implementing these proposals. This included the establishment of Duntroon Military College (see figure 7), under William Bridges, whom Kitchener admired, as the military training academy for Australian army officers. It received its first cadet intake in 1911.33 The army was expanded from 20 000 in 1909 to nearly 46 000 by 1914, backed by an increasing number of trained reservists. It was estimated that by 1920 the universal training program would provide the nation with a pool of 130 000 trained men. The government also commenced the building of the east−west railway, partly for defence purposes, and attention was given to coastal fortifications and the establishment of armaments, munitions and clothing factories that could supply its forces. Pearce even established a flying school at Point Cook, with Australia being the only Dominion to experiment with aviation defence before World War One. The defence budget of £1 million in 1908 had risen to £4.3 million in 1914 and Australia’s per capita defence spending was greater than any other Dominion at the time.34

Fisher’s achievements By 1914, the Australian defence forces were a far cry from the days of 1901 or even 1910 when Fisher came into office. While Deakin was a pioneer in the field, it was the Fisher government, especially in the

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three years from 1910 onwards, which played a major role in upgrading and preparing the nation’s defence forces, both military and naval, for war. As time went on, Fisher spent considerable effort in pushing the idea that his government in 1909 had been the initiator of the concept of an independent Australian naval force while Deakin had pushed for the gift of the Dreadnought to England. By his death, Fisher had won that struggle as he was credited with being the founder of the Australian navy. Of course there were limits to what Fisher and his government could achieve. That Australia still felt vulnerable in 1914 due to the rising power of Germany and Japan and the relative decline of British power was, in hindsight, probably inevitable. Although Australians were reluctant to admit it, their defence interests and the interests of the mother country were not necessarily the same. Fisher at least prepared the nation’s defences as best as he could, given its small population and resources, and the creation of the armed forces training academies and the emergence of an independent Australian naval fleet were part of his legacy.35

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14 Fisher and the world

Although Fisher was long regarded as an admirer of the British Empire, he was neither uncritical in this admiration nor did he see Australian interests being served by simple subservience to Britain. Indeed, although he was not an original thinker on this subject, he was in tune with notions of Australia’s changing international role and was at least as active as Deakin in thinking of how his nation should define its place in the world. Fisher’s Scottish background meant he shared a regional view that Scotland was a partner (possibly an unappreciated one) in union with England. He would certainly have liked to have added Ireland to this partnership. From the 1880s until 1914, he remained a consistent supporter of Irish Home Rule.1 His Scottish sense of partnership also fitted nicely into his later Australian outlook, which he shared with Deakin, of a growing Dominion autonomy and partnership within the framework of Empire. Australian interests in the near Pacific region were also particularly relevant to Fisher, having settled in Queensland which had been pro-active in securing control over parts of New Guinea in the 1880s despite objections from London.2 Despite admiring the Empire, Fisher could be critical of British policies in other parts of the world. In 1899, the British became involved against the Boer republics in South Africa in a war that was unpopular in many parts of Europe. Like Billy Hughes, Fisher thought the war unworthy

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of Britain and its institutions, and was sympathetic to the plight of the Boers. He publicly voiced these concerns, even though support for the war was strong in Queensland.3 In January 1902, the federal parliament passed a resolution denouncing accusations of British inhumanity in South Africa and a second one promising all requisite aid to the mother country. Fisher accepted the first but abstained on the second even though he had long accepted that Australians had to ultimately stand by the Empire.4

South Africa In 1910, Fisher’s first overseas visit as Prime Minister was to South Africa for its Union celebrations. He departed Melbourne on 5 October aboard the Medic, accompanied by Shepherd and George Lamb, serving as a messenger. Fisher missed hosting a luncheon for Captain Scott and his party, who were entertained by Hughes in Melbourne on 14 October on their way to their ill-fated South Pole expedition. On landing at Cape Town, Fisher declared his delight at what South Africa had achieved, and began a busy round of receptions and dinners until the formal opening of the parliament by the Duke of Connaught on the morning of Friday 4 November. He was then entertained at a luncheon with the South African labour members. Two days later, Fisher and the New Zealand Minister for Education, George Fowlds and his two daughters, embarked upon a special train tour of southern Africa, lasting nearly a month. The train was outfitted with its own bedrooms, dining room, kitchen and smoking rooms and would cover Kimberley, the Victoria Falls, Bulawayo and Johannesburg, the Mozambique capital of Lourenco Marques, then Bloemfontein, Grahamstown, Port Elizabeth and back to Cape Town.5 Fisher inspected the famous De Beer diamond mines in Kimberly, where some 2000 white and 17 000 black miners were employed. He was besieged by well-wishers, including fellow miners offering tours of local diggings, applicants for assisted migration, former Gympie residents now settled in South Africa and even the Bloemfontein Catholic clergy advising him of times for the local Mass. His well-known teetotalism (he only

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drank mineral water throughout the trip) led to requests for donations to a local temperance organisation, while labour unions and political organisations wanted him to speak on developments in Australia. An invitation was extended to him (which he appears to have accepted) to talk privately on the issue of women’s suffrage in Australia to the Cape Colony Women’s Enfranchisement League.6 Fisher was, at times, ill at ease in South Africa. Shepherd found him so trying that he eventually threatened to resign after a blazing row. This was Fisher’s first overseas trip as Prime Minister and he seemed insecure once he left the familiar Australian political scene, so that small incidents were sometimes blown out of proportion by him. At Victoria Falls, for example, Shepherd and Adam McCay, from the Argus, were prevented by police from using a track because the Duke of Connaught was canoeing on the nearby river. When Fisher found out, he was furious and disgusted ‘that two Australians could sit calmly down under such an indignity’. It was usually Shepherd who was responsible for co-ordinating Fisher’s daily calendar, so he got the blame if things went wrong, even if they were beyond his control. The fact that Fisher was not travelling with Margaret added to his sense of discomfort and he became increasingly reliant upon Fowlds and his daughters for company. In true Fisher spirit, he did, however, think about Shepherd’s complaints and when they reached Bloemfontein had a long talk with him. Both men vowed to work on a better relationship and the trip ended on a far happier note.7 Before leaving South Africa, Fisher played host at a dinner at the Mt Nelson Hotel on 8 December for more than fifty people, including most members of the South African government, plus other British and Dominion dignitaries. In his speech, he developed two inter-related themes about the recent constitutional developments in South Africa and its place in an expanded British Empire.8 Fisher welcomed (and also admired) the new South African constitution and parliamentary institutions that would handle, in his opinion, any problems associated with a democratic society. As we shall later see, he would often cite the new South African constitution as a better model for a nation than the one adopted by Australia. He likened South Africa to Canada in that

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they both had racial and linguistic divisions when granted Dominion status, but the Canadians had solved these and he was confident that the South Africans would do the same. Fisher’s view of South Africa was an obviously racially-based one, whereby the Boers would presumably assimilate into the system as had, he believed, the French speaking peoples of Canada. McCay later pointed out the weakness in his approach: ‘Where the eight million of blacks will stand in this division he does not explain’. The black African population, already more than twice the size of the European population, could not vote at all or did so only in limited numbers because of local property qualifications of the type that had offended Fisher when he was in Queensland colonial politics. Fisher also felt that he had to deal with the issue of the Boer War in his speech. Despite the warm reception he had received, he also had often been asked why Australia had been involved in fighting against ‘brave and liberty loving peoples’. His answer was partly rationalisation from a man who had opposed Australian involvement in such a conflict and who admitted to admiring the Boers’ attempt to maintain their freedom. He explained that imperial sentiment had overcome Australian feelings of sympathy for the Boers, even though they had never held harsh feeling towards their enemy. The end of the war brought with it the promise that the Boers would enjoy the blessings of being admitted as full-fledged citizens of the Empire. Whether such an answer satisfied many Boers was dubious. McCay claimed that Fisher had largely met the British white population on his tour. When he had met Boers, they diplomatically did not discuss their real feelings towards Britain.9 This charge was not completely fair, Shepherd certainly reported on an interview with a young Boer who had openly expressed his hatred for the British and he was not surprised by this attitude given the recent history of the country.10 But Fisher’s comments reflected his ever-optimistic nature on the progress of the Dominions in creating democratic societies that could handle all of the problems of the past. The speech was less an apology for either British or Australian actions, than an affirmation of the foundations being laid in South Africa, as in Australia, for a prosperous democratic future based on harmony and consensus.11

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The second theme in Fisher’s speech was his observation that granting Dominion status to South Africa was significant, as it was the last country to make up the various ‘units’ of the British Empire. There was now an imperial system of five democratic and interdependent governments (Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa) that comprised the English-speaking peoples of the Empire under the Westminster system of government. For Fisher, this new imperial system was the best arrangement of government in world history and it was also constantly evolving. The freer and more independent these states became, the closer would be their mutual interests and common bonds.12 The addition of another Dominion in the Indian/Pacific Ocean region obviously appealed to him because now Australia, New Zealand and South Africa could think of forming a future regional area of common defence. Like Deakin, Fisher regarded areas such as India or tropical Africa as simply areas under British imperial rule and not part of this vision.13 Aside from any defence considerations, the task of these five governments was to move closer together in areas of mutual interest and concern. After returning home, Ambrose Pratt, who had been the press representative with Fisher’s party, combined his notes with Shepherd’s photos to produce a book on South Africa, with Fisher agreeing to write a short introduction. He had obviously read the proofs of the book (published in 1913), which was fairly critical of the level of inequality in South African society (Shepherd had been shocked by it) and the future problems that it faced. Yet Fisher still maintained his optimism, believing that the Union would not be cemented simply by whites uniting in their fear of the black population. The black population was, however, a problem that he could not ignore as he had in his South African speech. Fisher now conceded they were renowned for their splendid physique and great virility and were fine in the countryside but urban living did not, according to his observations, agree with them. The problem was what to do with them since some whites wanted them left in their ‘primitive state’ while others wanted them working in the towns at jobs that whites did not wish to perform. In the end, Fisher simply left the questions he raised unanswered but of

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course the last thing on his mind was that South Africa could become a multiracial society.14 Fisher’s vision of South Africa as basically a white community working harmoniously together was very much shaped by his Australian experiences. Although there was a large Aboriginal camp outside Gympie, and western Queensland was the scene of frontier warfare, Fisher’s historical vision of settlement across regional Queensland was one consistently devoid of any reference to Aboriginal peoples. He just once conceded that white settlers should have asked permission of the original inhabitants to settle their land, but essentially the indigenous peoples were blotted out of his mind when considering the nature of Australian settlement, citizenship or civilisation.15

The 1911 coronation Arriving home in Australia at the end of December, Fisher left his ship in Adelaide and caught the overnight train to Melbourne, where he was met by Hughes. He had spent Christmas Day at sea and had entered into the spirit of shipboard life by dressing as a Zulu warrior for a fancy dress party. Although Shepherd thought him somewhat too stiff in his movements for a Zulu, he still won a prize from author Arthur Conan Doyle who acted as judge.16 Fisher did not have much time to spend back in Australia. Parliament was in recess for the first nine months of 1911 while a large Australian contingent travelled to London to attend the coronation of George V and also the Imperial Conference. In April, Fisher left Hughes once again to act as Prime Minister and also be in charge of conducting the rest of the campaign over the referendums to extend Commonwealth powers. Andrew and Margaret (who was also officially invited) set off, accompanied by young Robert, while the remaining Fisher children stayed in Melbourne to be looked after by Gran and their aunts. The official party also included Shepherd, George Horton, and three departmental secretaries, as well as Pearce and Batchelor, along with all their spouses. The Fishers decided that they would take a brief European holiday on their way to London.

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The trip only lasted ten days but covered Pompeii, Naples, Rome, Florence, Milan and Lucerne before ending in Paris. Thomas Cook arranged for tour guides in each location to pick out the best tourist sites that could be covered in this short period of time. Shepherd thought they must have covered every church in Europe, but Fisher made good use of his Kodak camera which he had purchased the year before and took many photos, including one of Milan Cathedral which he long admired.17 When they arrived in London in mid-May, the success of the labour party in Australia made the Fishers local celebrities among British Labour parliamentarians and even many members of the Liberal Party. The volume of press reports on Fisher’s visit certainly outweighed those on Deakin during his 1907 trip.18 As soon as he could, Fisher took off for Scotland, accompanied by Keir Hardie, who had visited Fisher when touring Australia in 1907 (see Figure 5). Arriving in Kilmarnock, the party was warmly welcomed by relatives and locals at the railway station. They toured around Burns country by car and Fisher was guest of honour at a banquet organised by the Ayrshire Miners at the George Hotel, where he was presented with a 1786 first edition of Burns’s poetry.19 Back in London there were more social engagements, including a Pilgrims Dinner for visiting prime ministers, a reception from the British Labour Party and an Australian Artists function. The Fishers attended the unveiling of the Queen Victoria monument in front of Buckingham Palace on 16 May where, for the first time, they saw the German Kaiser. They later attended the Spitshead Naval Review.20 Fisher, Batchelor and Pearce were also invited to breakfast at Number 11 Downing Street by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lloyd George. They set off from the Hotel Cecil down the Strand looking for this apparently grand building only to be directed by the milkman to an unpretentious house where Lloyd George himself answered the door. Here they were met by Hardie and Ramsay McDonald (who they also knew from his 1906 visit to Australia), along with Labour stalwart Arthur Henderson and Lloyd George’s liberal allies FE Smith (later Lord Birkenhead) and Winston Churchill. The Australians were quietly amused by the obvious British embarrassment of hosting the corona-

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tion and Imperial Conference while the Liberal government struggled to reform the House of Lords in what was a major constitutional crisis. It would have confirmed Fisher’s general view that the young Australian nation was well ahead of Britain in the scope of its democracy and general sense of progress.21 Britain also faced a relentless campaign by women and their male supporters for the right to vote. Lloyd George was presiding at the dinner for Prime Ministers but before he could formally welcome guests, a young man interrupted and asked him when he would give women the right to vote. He was hurried away but further tension developed when another man rose as the South African Prime Minister was commencing his welcoming speech. He was seized by the toastmaster, only to discover that this man was Botha’s English translator. The guests were amused but clearly the suffrage issue touched a raw nerve with many in the English establishment.22 On 17 June Margaret Fisher and Rosin Batchelor joined organisers at the head of the Australian and New Zealand contingent in a 40 000-strong suffrage procession through the streets of London. Although Asquith and Lloyd George, as well as their wives, opposed votes for women, Fisher saw nothing wrong in having his wife campaign for this principle through the streets of London. He had already publicly received a deputation from the National Union of Women’s Suffrage on 3 June.23 It was another example of how, in his view, Australia was ahead of the mother country in many areas of democratic reform. Nor did he have any problems accompanying Hardie to the Welsh coalfields in midJune to offer moral support to the striking miners of Ton-y-pandy.24 Margaret, however, found herself in a storm over other matters that gained her some unfavourable publicity from the press. Hardie had arranged a British Labour Party reception for the Australians and their wives. Unfortunately, this was on the same night that Margaret and Rosin Batchelor were to be presented at Court. Through an error in the delivery of messages, the two women were not told to leave dinner with enough time to change into their Court dresses and drive to Buckingham Palace. The women apologised privately to the King for their absence and Margaret was eventually presented at Court later

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in Scotland. The press, nevertheless, had a field day, dubbing her the ‘Yes, No Lady’ over her refusal to explain this apparent snub to the monarch. This was in one sense an unfair title for a woman who had firm views on most issues, but felt it was not her place to hold press interviews.25 Fisher also came under pressure from his Australian and British colleagues to accept the invitation to become a Privy Councillor. As he was in principle opposed to such honours, he begged off attending the actual swearing-in ceremony at the end of June on the grounds that he and his family were due for another visit to Scotland before leaving for Australia.26 He went back to attend a public banquet in Crosshouse, presided over a sports day, donated the prizes to it and heard the school choir perform under the leadership of his old teacher, James Wilson.27 On his return to London, he was tersely informed that the King had consented to his being appointed a member of the Privy Council in his absence, by an Order in Council, but he would need to be sworn in the next time he visited the country. Eventually, while serving as High Commissioner, Fisher did get around to doing this. This same lack of social pretension was seen when Fisher was forced to wear court dress for the coronation ceremony in Westminster Abbey on 22 June. Hating frills at the best of times, he succeeded in ripping off the laces from his suit before leaving the hotel by horse drawn coach for the ceremony because Margaret had refused to remove them for him.28

The Imperial Conference Aside from his presence at the coronation, the other major business for Fisher and his ministers was to attend the Imperial Conference, arranged as in 1902, to coincide with the ceremonies. The meetings, some fifteen in all, commenced on 23 May and concluded on 20 June. These meetings could sometimes be social occasions and certainly added to the view, which Fisher endorsed, that the British Empire was a large family. In the lead-up to the conference, the Australian parliament had to decide on the focus of their interests and these were

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put together by Hughes, fairly hastily, in late November 1910, while Fisher was still in South Africa. Aside from dealing with the expected defence matters, there were specific grievances the Australians wanted discussed. Fisher’s government and the previous Deakin ministry had been upset by the so-called Declaration of London, drawn up without any consultation with the Dominions, by a conference of the leading naval nations in February 1909. These contained rules for the future conduct of naval warfare, including allowing for the destruction of neutral vessels, which Australia might need to rely on in wartime. It also listed most items of Australia’s exports for inclusion in possible contraband goods. The government also objected to British pressure placed on it to accept the Anglo-Japanese commercial treaty of 1894. Queensland had accepted the treaty before Federation, but the new Commonwealth had resisted it, fearing cheaper Japanese imports would undermine Australian living standards.29 The parliament also approved resolutions on gaining greater imperial uniformity in areas such as navigation laws, currency and weights. They also wanted to improve imperial trade and British immigration, reduce the costs of the Atlantic cable and set up a new imperial appeals court to replace the Privy Council.30 Fisher had a strong belief that, as industrial arbitration could ensure labour peace, so international arbitration might achieve the same thing for world peace. A resolution supporting such a system had also been passed by the parliament.31 Fisher spoke warmly on this subject to the Australian Natives Association in January 1911 and clearly favoured such measures in principle. Before the conference, he met Norman Angell, whose popular book, The Great Illusion, first published in 1910, impressed him with its arguments that the old basis for war among nations had vanished because it was now too expensive. In that situation some form of international cooperation might be a possible alternative, and this fitted with Fisher’s own view on creating harmony and consensus in the political world as well. Yet, the resolution on international arbitration never came before the Imperial Conference because the government did not finally submit it as an agenda item. Hughes had been too busy to read the resolutions he put to the parliament and perhaps later thought it would go

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nowhere although, in principle, he claimed to be a supporter of such ideals. Fisher, who had a good head for committee tactics, probably shared the view that it was unlikely to gain much support at the meeting even if it was a worthy objective.32 On returning from South Africa, Fisher had expanded the themes over the next few months of not only imperial co-operation but the possibility of all the English-speaking peoples of the world, being linked in a variety of agreements: military, economic and humanitarian, to ensure the peace of the world. Like most of his fellow countrymen, Fisher viewed the British alliance with Japan as necessary but unnatural. If Britain was no longer going to be the dominant Pacific power, then two things were needed. Firstly, a more logical protector of the Empire’s interests in the region should be the English-speaking United States.33 He had been strongly behind Deakin’s efforts to promote such ties and enthusiastically attended the Sydney and Melbourne receptions for the Great White Fleet in 1908. He also believed that with its new navy and growing population, Australia should at least become a regional power in the south-west Pacific, looking after both its own and British interests in the area. In that regard he would have preferred the new British High Commissioner for the Western Pacific to have been an Australian appointment rather than a British one. Secondly, if the English speaking peoples were to be linked by a series of agreements, then these needed to start somewhere and in a sense many of the Australian conference resolutions wanting greater uniformity across a range of areas were, in this context, not just goodwill gestures but an attempt to advance the cause of greater imperial co-operation.34 In London, the issue of imperial consultation took up much of the delegates’ time. Deakin in 1907, had tried to reform the imperial system by removing the traditional communication channel through the Colonial Office and placing it in a special section of the British prime minister’s department. The Canadians and to a lesser degree, the South Africans, liked the looser arrangements with the Colonial Office and so allied themselves with these bureaucrats to oppose him. Aside from granting the title of ‘Dominions’ to the self-governing states and some minor re-organisation of the Colonial Office, little had changed

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since that time. In 1911, it was the New Zealanders’ turn to suggest a different approach whereby Sir Joseph Ward put forward a scheme for an Imperial Parliament of Defence in which the United Kingdom and its Dominions would be represented, on a population basis, and have responsibility for defence and declaring war. This was a cumbersome proposal but designed, from Ward’s point of view, to ensure the imperial fleet protected New Zealand’s shores. The South Africans and Canadians strongly opposed the proposal, while Fisher thought it impractical and had never been a proponent of imperial federation schemes. In any event, the British government had no interest in such a restructuring. Ward’s more moderate proposals for changes in the Colonial Office were also lost, and the conference again largely left the structures unchanged. Fisher even agreed not to press his pet project of establishing a foreign relations advisory committee after objections from his own cabinet which feared giving too much power to London.35 The major concession by the British government over the apparent lack of consultation with the Dominions and their concerns over defence issues was to invite the delegates to three special meetings of the high-powered Committee of Imperial Defence. The Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, gave them an insider’s briefing on several aspects of defence and foreign policy, including the Foreign Office’s wish to renew the Anglo-Japanese alliance before it expired in 1915. This was necessary for Britain since a friendly Japan allowed the Royal Navy to be concentrated in European waters against the German navy. Fisher saw the point and agreed to this on behalf of the Australian government, even though he knew the treaty was unpopular at home. Although Grey concentrated on the Asia-Pacific region, his overview of events in Europe convinced Fisher, Pearce and Batchelor, all separately, that a European war was inevitable. They therefore were determined to complete Australia’s defence preparations as quickly as possible. In fact, Grey had not been completely forthcoming with the delegates since he omitted any references to the secret assurances that had already been made to the French in 1906 that Britain would support them in the event of a German attack. This made the possibility of a full-scale European war even more likely.36

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The apparent frankness of Grey with the delegates on these secret matters certainly had an effect on Fisher. He dropped Australian objections to the Declaration of London and abstained as delegates endorsed these proposals. He also accepted a fairly general proposal by Grey to allow for consultation with its Dominions on future international conferences that was largely symbolic. He did, however, persist with a resolution that the next conference should be held away from London as part of what would now be a meeting of the five members of the Empire. This was cold-shouldered by the British, who did not want to concede such a symbolic change, although the final resolution indicated such a move might be possible in the future. Otherwise, most matters agreed to at the Imperial Conference were relatively minor ones, with pledges in a range of matters to investigate or co-operate in the future without any real mechanisms or timelines established for achieving any of the objectives The only defence issue decided was delineating the areas of responsibility in the Pacific for the new Australian navy and the Canadians. Not surprisingly, the Australian navy would essentially operate in the south-west Pacific as far north as Papua and this seems to have been an option that the Australians decided on more than the British Admiralty.37 Fisher certainly came to London with hopes of developing the consultation process, protecting Australian interests and developing a slightly different form of rotating imperial conferences. His achievements in this regard were, on balance, fairly slim. The British cleverly headed off the grievances of the Dominions by giving them a defence briefing that certainly went well beyond any previous conference, so there was a sense of having being taken into London’s confidence. Fisher could also point to his being consulted over the renewal of the Anglo-Japanese alliance in a way that certainly had not been the case in the past. The grievances of both Australia and New Zealand were accommodated, to some degree, by the British who then resisted any serious changes to the imperial structures and largely got their way over the Declaration of London and the renewal of the Anglo-Japanese alliance. On the other hand, as Deakin had discovered, a major problem was that the Dominions each had their own interests and

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rarely spoke with a united voice, despite Fisher’s idealised vision of the five states moving closer together. At the same time, even Fisher’s own cabinet was suspicious of backing any proposal for new imperial structures that might undermine Australian autonomy. Fisher’s bargaining position was also weak since Australia still needed Britain and its navy more than it needed Australia.38 Still, his lack of success in the corridors of power in London perhaps should have pointed to his being something of an outsider and not naturally given to diplomacy. He had several clashes with Lewis Harcourt, the Secretary of State for Colonies, that Shepherd was forced to smooth over. His expectation in 1915 that he would be able to deal more effectively with the British in his role as High Commissioner seems unrealistic, based on these 1911 experiences.39

An infamous interview At the end of their London commitments, Batchelor and Pearce decided that they would return home via Russia, Siberia and Japan but Fisher stipulated that they would need to meet the extra expenses of getting home from their own pockets. However, Fisher’s trip did not end without controversy. Before leaving London, he gave an interview over breakfast to WT Stead, a journalist and publisher who had a reputation for interviewing world leaders (including the Kaiser and the Sultan of Turkey). Stead subsequently sent a transcript of what he intended to publish to Fisher, but in the rush to leave England, he did not look at it and left it to Shepherd to peruse. When the interview appeared in Stead’s own Review of Reviews it caused a storm in Australia and left Hughes calling for calm until Fisher had arrived back to defend himself. Even passengers on Fisher’s liner demanded a meeting with him after hearing from ship radio reports of the interview. Fisher declined the meeting, claiming the interview was a gross exaggeration but could not escape public attention once he returned to Australian soil.40 In the published account, Stead alleged that Fisher had told him on the question of the Empire:

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Don’t talk of the Empire. We are not an empire. No end of mischief has arisen through the use of that word. We are a very loose association of five nations, each independent, each willing, for a time, to remain in fraternal cooperative union with Great Britain, and with each other…There is no necessity to say that we will or will not take part in England’s wars. We recognise that our territory is subject to attack by England’s enemy, and if we were threatened we would have to decide whether to defend ourselves, or, if we thought that the war was unjust, and England’s enemy in the right, we should haul down the Union Jack, hoist our own flag and start on our own. 41

Fisher finally clarified the position at the end of July, claiming the interview had only lasted seven minutes and Stead had not kept notes at the time. He had simply repeated to Stead his now well-established views regarding world peace, effective defence and the structure and unity of the British nations. Obviously Stead had misheard, through Fisher’s Scottish brogue, ‘loose association’ when he had actually said ‘close association’. (A phrase clearly confirmed by his speeches the previous year in South Africa.) He also denied ever making any remark about hauling down the Union Jack or breaking away from the Empire. On the issue of war, Fisher was clear that once the Empire was at war, Australia was, de facto, at war. This was a point that Asquith had also insisted upon during the Imperial Conference and was unchallenged by Fisher at the time. Stead was a renowned Little Englander and defenders of Fisher implied the journalist was causing mischief with his distortion of his views. Watson thought Stead nothing but a ‘sensation monger’, while Hughes hoped that Stead would ‘perish miserably and in the end be compelled to interview himself- at breakfast with Old Nick’. (Ironically, Stead drowned in the sinking of the Titanic just a year later.)42 Fisher did not retreat from his position in the interview that the Dominions were autonomous and no-one had questioned this when

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his South African speeches had previously been published in Australia. The controversy was over whether this would mean that each nation had to determine how far they would actively participate in a war. The conservative side thought this view seemed to be too close to the Canadians and the South Africans in suggesting a stand-off position in relationship to the Empire and not being quite in it or outside of it. In fact, the Fisher view was exactly the one that Australia would subsequently adopt in the coming war, with the government and parliament producing the policies on the extent of military commitment. Yet, by September 1911, when war clouds gathered again in a great power crisis over Morocco, Fisher obviously thought it prudent to quickly assert in parliament that Australia would not allow Britain and its peoples to be attacked with impunity by Germany.43 Fisher also faced unease within his own party when it was revealed that he had given his consent, and therefore his government’s consent, to a renewal of the Anglo-Japanese alliance. He had to apologise to Hughes for forgetting to inform him at the time. He explained that at least the treaty acted as a restraining influence on the Japanese. Pearce, who had returned to Australia in August via Russia and Japan, reluctantly agreed with this assessment and supported Fisher in the party room. Most of the local press accepted the need for the treaty and it caused little public debate. Privately, Pearce felt that Australia should not be lulled into any false sense of security by the renewal of the treaty and disliked what he had seen about the nature of Japanese society during his brief visit. Yet for all the fears of Japan and the Australian sense of wariness over the alliance, it served Australia well during the war years when Japan honoured its side of the agreement, at least in terms of protecting British possessions and Australian shipping, in the Asia-Pacific region.44 The Fishers had returned home to the news that while they were away Hughes, a widower, had quietly married Mary Campbell. This was the second important wedding for them in a matter of months. On 4 July, while still in England, they had travelled to Liverpool to attend the wedding of Andrew’s sister, Janet. However, tragic news now lay ahead. On 8 October, after having recently returned from his trip with

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Pearce, Batchelor had gone hiking at Mt Donna Buang near Warburton, Victoria with members of the Wallaby Club. As he neared the top of a path, he clutched his chest and fell down dead from a massive heart attack. Although never particularly robust in his health, Batchelor had certainly projected an image of vigour and kept a busy and active schedule. His sudden death rocked Fisher, deprived the party of one of its ablest ministers, left Hughes without any close friends in the cabinet and created a by-election for the South Australian seat of Boothby. The party lost the subsequent contest to the Liberals by a large margin. The loss probably said less about the popularity of the Fisher government than it did about the large personal following of Batchelor in what was, over the next few decades, an electorate only held by Labour for relatively short periods. In fact, over the years of the majority Fisher governments, he managed to hold all but two of the eight electorates that had to be defended at by-elections. This was a solid record for any prime minister, especially one who had embarked on an essentially reformist set of policies.45

Closer New Zealand ties The briefing that Fisher, Batchelor and Pearce had received from Grey at the Committee of Imperial Defence, had as we have seen, led all three men to conclude that a European war was inevitable and they therefore needed to urgently press ahead with Australia’s defence developments. Another consequence was the desirability of developing closer defence and trading ties with New Zealand. Fisher warmed to such an idea in the parliament after his return from Britain, noting that New Zealand delegates had been present at the early conferences on Federation and hoped that perhaps it was still not too late for both countries to consider a much closer relationship in the future. At the federal conference in Hobart in January 1912, Fisher sponsored a resolution calling for a closer union with New Zealand that was carried unanimously. The following August, the Reform Party under William Massey, won power at the general election and they were more critical of British policies and receptive to the idea of the development of

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the separate Australian navy than their predecessors. During the last few months of that year, there were defence discussions between the two nations on naval co-operation and military matters. They agreed to make further efforts to develop Canadian naval co-operation and pressure the British to seriously contribute to creating the Pacific Imperial Fleet. Fisher would also further explore closer economic ties with New Zealand on his visit to that country in early 1915, but by then the war meant that these issues had to be put on hold for the future.46 Although not a natural diplomat, Fisher nevertheless tried to think about Australia’s position in the British Empire, which he greatly admired, in different terms than in the past. While none of his ideas were particularly original, the concept of an empire of relatively equal and apparently white democracies, with imperial conferences being held around the globe, rather than only in London, was a challenging notion. At the same time, his attempt to actively develop closer ties between Australia, South Africa and New Zealand and have Australia play a greater role in the south-west Pacific also represented a different emphasis in policy. Fisher, while accepting the necessity of the AngloJapanese alliance also remained uneasy about it and was willing to look across the Pacific to the possibility of fostering closer Australian involvement with the United States. While maintaining an admiration for the British Empire he had, like Deakin, begun to at least point the nation in a slightly different direction than in the past, and these first tentative steps can rightly be described as a Deakin–Fisher foreign policy initiative.

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15 Finance and national development

Aside from having to deal with defence and foreign policy matters, when Fisher assumed office in 1910, the Commonwealth of Australia was without a national capital, a national currency, a national public bank, a Commonwealth railway system, an interstate commission or federal territories and had only limited social welfare legislation. Fisher and his ministers put in an enormous effort at changing that situation. He did this because he thought the new nation needed to have a sense of its identity through actual structures as well as the Commonwealth government setting development goals and contributing, in various ways, to a fairer society. By 1913, Fisher had given Australia a strong sense of national progress and later generations of Australians have viewed his measures as important foundations for their nation.

National finances In order to implement any program, Fisher needed to be able to finance it. He had the advantage that the Braddon Clause, that had allowed three-quarters of the Commonwealth’s customs revenue to be handed back to the states, was due to expire during 1910−11. In 1909−10, Fisher opposed Deakin’s referendum proposal to place his negotiated financial agreement with the states into the constitution,

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although he had no problem with the agreed upon per capita formula that would replace Braddon. Under the Surplus Revenue Act, passed in September 1910 the Commonwealth, from 1911, would for ten years pay out of its customs revenue (its main source of income) 25 shillings per head (to be adjusted for inflation) to the states. Tasmania, with its smaller population, was given supplementary grants by a 1912 Act. Despite their bravado with Fisher at Hobart in 1909, the premiers had been preparing themselves for a falling away in these Commonwealth funds by imposing new direct taxes. State income tax alone covered almost 75 per cent of their revenue even before the Braddon Clause expired. Although the state grants still ate into Commonwealth revenues, averaging around £6 million a year over his three budgets, the growing economy, increasing imports and other fiscal measures meant that Fisher had much more money to spend than previous ministries. By 1910, the gross national product of Australia had reached £329 million compared to £202 million in 1900 and it passed the £400 million mark in 1913. Its population, assisted by the largest migration rates since the 1880s, reached nearly 4.7 million people by the end of Labour’s term in government. Revenue from tariffs and excise rose steadily because imports by 1914 had almost doubled in value compared with 1901. (Exports still narrowly ran ahead of the mounting import bill throughout this period.) Deakin in 1909−10 had only £7.8 million available in his last budget after his payment to the states and had to borrow to meet a deficit. Over Fisher’s three budgets he could rely upon revenues of between £17 million and £21 million per annum.1 Fisher’s decision to also introduce the controversial Land Tax and Land Tax Assessment Act in 1910 seemed a radical financial and social measure. It taxed unimproved land valued in excess of £5000 throughout Australia. Yet, implementing the tax in the first year of government was useful in various ways. A tax on land was a long-standing and popular idea in Labour circles dating from at least the days of Henry George and it enjoyed wider community support as a number of the colonies/states had previously introduced such measures. The idea of breaking up large estates of supposedly wealthy and absent British

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landlords to encourage smaller farmers had a respectable history in the Australian past and Fisher regarded it as a broadly ‘socialistic’ measure. It also fitted nicely with the idea of attracting suitable migrants to the land, increasing the Australian population and therefore strengthening national defence. On a pragmatic note, if the tax was to be controversial, better to get it out of the way early than to delay and allow opposition to build up before the next election. Since many wealthier landowners avoided the tax by simply transferring land to other family members, the effect on Australia was hardly profound. Yet it was not abolished until 1952, despite the long periods of conservative rule after 1916. The tax provided the government with another, and relatively painless, source of revenue and by 1912 was earning over £1.3 million per annum.2 Despite all of these financial bonanzas, Fisher could not escape from increasing rates of expenditure for the Commonwealth. One of his first decisions after the 1910 election was to repeal Deakin’s Naval Loans Act, which he considered to be unsound since the Commonwealth government had previously remained debt free. Yet, it can be argued that only his first budget ended with a genuine surplus even after repaying Deakin’s budget debt. The increasing costs of defence, growing welfare benefits such as old age pensions and a new maternity allowance, along with various important national development projects, made huge demands on Commonwealth revenues. The Commonwealth had established sinking funds (from 1908 onwards) for meeting some of these costs but it was difficult to continue to have both a surplus and remain entirely debt free. One possible source of new revenue was income tax; however, this was the base for much of the state revenues so Fisher decided it was politically wiser to overcome his previous aversion to government borrowing. In principle, he paid for the new navy out of general expenditure and sinking funds but by 1913, defence spending ate up nearly 29 per cent of the government’s budget and so he needed to borrow at modest levels to cover other expenses. Technically, Fisher still ended his second and third budgets with a surplus (of which he took considerable pride) but really he had to seek internal loans from the Australian Notes Trust Fund and from

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the General Trust Fund to cover all costs. These were at rates of 3.5 per cent, which were lower than public or bank borrowing rates at the time. By 30 June 1914, the debt of the Commonwealth in the last full financial year of peace was between £4 million (according to Fisher) or £5.3 million if unspent loans were included, or £9.3 million if the loans taken over from South Australia and the Northern Territory were included. Even so, this was modest compared with the six state governments that had a combined debt of over £293 million.3 After Federation, Australia had made do with British coins and notes issued by the private banks for its currency. Deakin eventually arranged for the issue of four denominations of silver coins, which were struck by the Royal Mint and replaced the British coins in circulation. Under the Australian Notes Act 1910, the Commonwealth now took over the issuing of Australia’s paper currency by placing a large tax on the private banks’ notes in order to drive them out of existence, and then circulated its own notes instead. From 1911 to 1913, these were the old private bank notes overprinted by the Commonwealth Treasury and derided by conservative critics as ‘Fisher’s flimsies’. By 1913, the government began to issue notes of its own design, starting with the orange and brown ten shilling note and eventually having eight denominations of up to £100. The first green-coloured pound note, with an image of miners operating in a shaft on reverse side, was given to Fisher as a keepsake. The ten shilling note represented a departure from the bank currency since gold or silver coins had usually served this purpose. But Fisher insisted on this note, based on the fact that the ten shilling postal note was the most popular one sold. He also thought of this note as playing the equivalent role of the Canadian or US dollar. It might also serve as a later forerunner (which it finally did in 1966) for introducing a decimal currency system, which Fisher thought desirable (along with converting to metric weights and measures), even though there were practical problems in doing this without the support of New Zealand and the United Kingdom. The new banknotes only required a 25 per cent backing in gold reserves, so the effect was to provide the government with an interest-free loan of 75 per cent for every print run. Most of the currency was issued via

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the private banks and they were charged a commission for it as well. By 1914, any Australian holding paper currency in their purse or wallet was reminded of the presence of their new Commonwealth government. Issuing the paper currency later gave the federal government more wartime powers over the private banks and the states in terms of controlling foreign exchange and gold reserves because it could convert these into its banknotes.4 Fisher was able to make the case to the electorate in 1913 and again in 1914 that he had been a sound manager of the nation’s finances. The Liberals complained about rising costs but, once in power, changed little in their 1913−14 budget from the financial parameters set by Fisher. In 1914, he was fortunate that Forrest as Treasurer, while bringing in a surplus of £1.2 million, had only done so by relying on the surplus of £3.6 million from the previous ALP budget. Fisher would make great play on the fact that in reality Cook had been unable to keep his expenditure within his revenue base. Thus, Fisher could present himself in the 1914 general election as the more financially prudent manager in a time of expected war costs. Fisher certainly handled the nation’s finances well but obviously, given his ambitious programs, could not avoid incurring small levels of debt while always giving the impression of being an essentially loans-free government.5

A Commonwealth bank Successive party conferences had adopted the proposal to create a Commonwealth bank of issue, deposit, exchange and reserve. This bank could consolidate state debts and carry on the business of receiving deposits through the post office system. Many in the labour movement, including King O’Malley, thought the new institution could bring the private banking system to heel. O’Malley became a leading advocate for creating this new bank. Eventually, under the 1911 Commonwealth Bank Act, Fisher established a national trading and savings bank in competition with the private banking system. This proposal was introduced to cabinet and caucus by the Prime Minister as Treasurer, who then guided it through the parliament. Although Fisher was praised in

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most circles over the next few decades for creating the bank, O’Malley spent many years in his long retirement perpetuating the idea that he had created the bank by dragging a reluctant Fisher along with him.6 From his days in the Queensland parliament and the scandals surrounding the Queensland National Bank, Fisher had been a supporter of state banks to keep the private system honest and competitive. There is no evidence that Fisher was opposed to this banking concept when he attended the 1905 and 1908 federal conferences. In these same years, he was an advocate for various publicly owned businesses that could, by competition, keep the private sector honest and force down excessive costs. However, various factors made him cautious about introducing the banking proposal and in making it less extensive than what O’Malley wanted. Creating a bank was a fairly complex legislative process and in 1910, Fisher already had higher priorities that were to be introduced first. He later secretly gave the draft banking legislation to AV Ralston of the Queensland National Bank (and perhaps others as well) to make sure he had covered everything. Fisher was also conscious that the bank should not offend the rest of the banking community by appearing as a Labour grab for power by competing in ways outside of normal banking practices. He and Hughes held private talks in Melbourne with many of the leading bankers in July 1910, mainly about the Australian Note Issue, but assurances were apparently given by Fisher that the proposed bank would not threaten the private sector.7 Most importantly, neither Fisher nor Hughes was confident, despite O’Malley’s claims, that the bank would be a financial success. It would have been a major disaster for his government if he had put in place an institution that caused massive losses to the Commonwealth. The banking community certainly played upon such fears and Hughes was particularly spooked by these claims, although Peggy Fisher later claimed her father also took such views seriously. The fact that O’Malley was a leading advocate of the bank, and Hughes and Fisher both thought him irresponsible, only added to their fears.8 The press who opposed the scheme frequently referred to it as coming from O’Malley and assumed that this alone condemned it as unworkable. From a

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practical point of view, the proposed bank had no offices or clear identity and there was no guarantee anyone would put their savings into it. Hughes, at one stage, even suggested to Fisher that they consider buying a couple of the smaller private banks, whose share prices were quite low, so that they would at least have some branches and staff to commence operations.9 The decision in 1910 to allow the Commonwealth Treasury, not the proposed bank, to issue bank notes was seen by O’Malley as Fisher delaying the bank’s creation. It is more likely that Fisher was hedging his bets. The notes issue came first because it was easier to organise through the Treasury and proved to be very successful, despite dire predictions from the conservatives. Fisher had some experience in this area from his Queensland parliamentary period when the Treasury quite successfully backed up the failing currency of the private banks. He had been impressed by this operation and therefore was more confident that his proposed note issue would be successful.10 Indeed, by June 1912, Fisher could report to caucus that the scheme was working well and would ‘yield a large profit this year’ so there was no reason to share this with the new bank. Once these processes were successfully put into place, Fisher then decided to move towards creating the bank in late 1911.11 O’Malley later made much of his attempts in caucus, particularly on 5 October 1911, to push Fisher and Hughes to introduce the banking legislation and claimed he made Fisher support it by threatening his leadership and parliamentary seat. It is unlikely such threats were ever made, since Fisher was not at this meeting and in any event he would certainly have ignored them. O’Malley only recalled the events in 1947 and they were taken verbatim from a letter sent to him in 1941 by Alfred Ozanne, who had been a caucus ally. A more reliable witness was David O’Keefe, the Tasmanian senator, who agreed that Hughes opposed the bank, that Fisher (who he admired) was perhaps overly cautious and that O’Malley was a keen advocate of the scheme. However he did not believe that O’Malley pushed Fisher in the way he later described.12 The new bank was not exactly what the 1908 conference had envisaged, because that was to be jointly run by the Commonwealth and

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the state governments and presumably would also incorporate the various state banks then in operation. Fisher was practical enough to realise that if his banking proposal relied on state agreement it would never get off the ground. However, one weakness in his final proposal, perhaps because of private bank opposition, was the lack of any real central banking role for the new body such as that played by the Bank of England or even the US Federal Reserve that was set up in 1913. The 1911 Act also called for a governor rather than a board, who would be fairly independent of government control and also at arm’s length from the influence of the other banks. The problem, Fisher explained to parliament, with a board running this bank (which was meant to be ‘conducted in the interest of the people’) was that its directors would likely be bankers with interests in other concerns. A governor with Australian banking experience, would have the ambition to succeed but would also be likely to give the government the best possible service. In fact, Fisher was able to find just such a man but there was no guarantee this would be the case in the future and the government could be left defending the bank, as Fisher did in 1914, while admitting that all he knew about it was what he read in the paper since the governor did not report directly to him.13 At first Fisher found few senior bankers willing to take on the task of heading up this new institution. Eventually, Denison Miller, an assistant to the general manager of the Bank of New South Wales, agreed to be the new governor at an annual salary of £4000 . Fisher and Miller shared the same cautious outlook and as a result got on famously. Even O’Malley, who opposed the appointment, came to admire Miller and his achievements. The Commonwealth Bank accepted the Prime Minister as its first savings account customer on 15 July 1912 at its Collins Street headquarters. It was to receive deposits mainly through post office agencies and by the end of January 1913, was established in all states and territories as well as London. Within a short time of accepting its first deposits, Miller was able to pay back the Treasury loan that he had been advanced to help establish the bank. Any profits then made by the bank would be split equally between its reserve fund and the federal government’s sinking fund. The national headquarters

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for the bank would be in Sydney in what is now Martin Place; and in 1913, Fisher laid one foundation stone and Miller the other for the building. At first, Miller was cautious in competing against the private banking sector but this made him acceptable to them and some even assisted the new bank in various ways. By the outbreak of the war the Commonwealth Bank, after some small losses during 1912−13, was well in the black. It had attracted 143 142 savings bank customers and held 5.5 per cent of the nation’s savings deposits and 2 per cent of its trading accounts. This was a respectable figure for just two years of operation, even if it was not spectacular growth.14 The bank would come into its own during the First World War. By the end of 1918, its national share of savings bank deposits had risen to 13 per cent and its trading account share was 16 per cent. It was not only the banker to the Commonwealth but also to the state governments of South Australia, Tasmania and Western Australia. It also had established a major leadership role in London in terms of handling a range of important financial issues, including floating loans, for Australia. After 1920, it was finally responsible for issuing the Commonwealth’s banknotes. Considering that it had been launched with no real capital, no Board of Directors and only on the recommendation of the Commonwealth government, the bank proved to be a great success. Whether it ever kept the private banks competitive and honest remains another issue and its lack of central banking powers remained a weakness. However, for many years, it was at least seen as ‘the people’s bank’ (Fisher’s description of it), and Miller, for all his considerable work, was forever unstinting in his praise of Fisher’s role in creating it. Even O’Malley came to grudgingly respect Fisher for his work on the banking legislation, despite his later efforts to take credit for the bank’s creation.15

A national capital After a decade in existence, the Commonwealth parliament still lacked a permanent home. Since 1902, members of all parties had inspected a number of sites in New South Wales and eventually in 1904, both

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houses chose Dalgety in the lower Snowy Mountains for the national capital. But, over time, opinion on this rather remote and chilly area changed in favour of the Yass-Canberra region. One of the few pieces of successful legislation by Fisher’s first minority government was to amend the Seat of Government Act to provide that the future capital should be around Yass-Canberra. Early in 1909, Hugh Mahon also directed a survey for the district and by the end of the year, the New South Wales parliament had enacted the necessary surrender of land and the federal parliament had accepted it as the new federal capital territory. The formal transfer of the land was set to occur on 1 January 1911, and during 1910 the new Seat of Government (Administration) Act prepared for this by providing a federal organisation to help run the national capital site.16 In 1911, King O’Malley, as the Minister for Home Affairs, announced a world-wide competition to design the new capital. A panel of three judges whittled down some 137 entries before sending a majority and chairman’s minority report on the winners to O’Malley. He endorsed the decision of the majority that Chicago architect Walter Burley Griffin be given the task of designing the new capital. However, the plan was seen by some, including many in the public works sector, as too extravagant. Eventually, O’Malley decided to accept an alternative city plan from the Department of Home Affairs, which Fisher endorsed on grounds of economy. This plan was widely criticised and the new Cook ministry in 1913 restored the Griffin plan and invited him to come to Australia for a three-year term to begin work on the capital. The American soon found himself fighting a running war with many of the disgruntled bureaucrats annoyed that their ideas had been overruled. They had the support from the next Labour minister, Archibald, during Fisher’s third term. Archibald then lost his post in the 1915 cabinet reshuffle and O’Malley returned to his old ministry. This time he strongly sided with Griffin (since he had never really liked the bureaucrats in his department anyway) but this caused the embittered Archibald to denounce the money spent on the site as a waste. Criticisms aside, Griffin was able to have the bulk of his plan established, even if the war and rising costs did not enable him to complete

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any of it, before resigning in 1920. Griffin could rightly lay claim to being the architect of the national capital even allowing for many later variations to his plans.17 It was the Fisher government which, on 12 March 1913, inaugurated the site of the new capital. There was a ceremonial unveiling of three foundation stones (by the Governor-General, Fisher and O’Malley) as part of a commencement column that formed a pivotal point of the public service plan for the city. A crowd of nearly 5000 assembled to await the arrival of the Governor-General and the event was partially captured on film. The novice behaviour of the Prime Minister and his colleagues with this media is obvious in the surviving footage. They talk to each other as they ignore the camera or even move in front of it with their backs turned and blow cigar and cigarette smoke over the screen. They would have been a visual media advisor’s worst nightmare. Eventually, Lord Denman headed a mounted procession through the gum trees to the site and, after the laying of the foundation stones, Lady Denman then named the new capital ‘Canberra’ − allegedly a local Aboriginal name meaning ‘meeting place’. Endless stories abound of the possible names proposed, especially those involving Fisher and O’Malley. At first the Prime Minister seemed to like ‘Myola’ which also meant ‘meeting place’ but changed his mind when the press pointed out how much it looked like an anagram for ‘O’Malley’. Peggy Fisher later recalled how she heard stories that the capital would be called ‘Kingfisher’, with King (O’Malley) obviously before Fisher. At one cabinet meeting, O’Malley asked for a list of place names and suggested there could only be one − Fisher. The Prime Minister was not amused and asked for a list of Aboriginal names for the next meeting.18 It was clearly Fisher who took the lead in preferring the Aboriginal name, then in use for the region anyway, for the new capital over a vast number of possible imperial, nationalist or abstract concoctions. At the lunch that followed the ceremony, he spoke of his great hopes for the future site pointing out that the wrangle over the home for Australia’s government was now over: ‘The city is to be built, and the Commonwealth will build it. I believe all parties desire to make it worthy of the

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country and the nation that we belong to and govern.’ Still, Canberra was never one of the projects which Fisher usually counted as one of the major achievements of his government. Compared to the obvious success of the Australian navy or the Commonwealth Bank, the national capital would take decades to come to fruition.19

Railways and territories At Federation, many assumed that Western Australia, if it was to be part of the Commonwealth in the long term, needed to be joined to the rest of the states by rail. This was reinforced as the defence needs of the Commonwealth were reviewed firstly by Hutton in 1904 and then by Lord Kitchener in his 1910 report. Fisher had supported the idea of public railway construction for national development while in the Queensland parliament and was willing to consider the idea of a north−south railway line as well. Although, in principle, the Commonwealth accepted the need for an east−west line, the main problem was funding the proposal and the fact that many of the eastern states objected to money being spent solely for the benefit of just one state. In 1908, Deakin finally struck a deal that was to be embodied in a 1909 bill and was eventually passed in 1910 by Fisher. South Australia was paid nearly £4 million in cash for the Northern Territory, plus another £2.5 million for the acquisition of its Port Augusta to Oodnadatta railway line. The Commonwealth agreed to extend this line to Alice Springs and eventually to Darwin, although without any timelines on its construction. In return, the South Australians allowed the Commonwealth to construct an east−west railway line across the state on any route it chose.20 Fisher normally had no problem having legislation passed by his well disciplined party but the Kalgoorlie to Port Augusta Railway Act of 1911 evoked a rare display of state jealousy, with every Queensland senator voting against it at its second reading.21 The survey route had been carried out earlier by the Western and South Australian governments using camel trains. In September 1912, Lord Denman, amidst elaborate celebrations by hundreds of guests, turned the first sod at

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Port Augusta to commence rail construction. The following February, Fisher performed a similar ceremony at Kalgoorlie at the western end.22 Two teams of construction crews rapidly began to build the linking railway, despite criticism of the costs and the quality of the steel rails used by a contractor who was friendly with O’Malley. Like most of the projects he had initiated, Fisher took a great deal of interest in this construction, which he regarded as further cementing the unity of the Commonwealth. It cost nearly £6 million and took some five years but the new Commonwealth Railways line with its 4 foot 81/2 inch gauge (different in size to both of the state connecting lines) was completed in February 1917. It cut some two days off mail delivery to Britain and provided a faster and easier passage between the east and west coast than coastal shipping using the stormy Great Australian Bight. Fisher was resident in London when the railway was opened and would take his only ride on the completed system on his way back from Melbourne to England in late 1921. Although the Pine Creek to Katherine Railway Survey Act 1912 set in motion a survey for the extension of the Darwin to Pine Creek line further south, the costs of the east−west line and the outbreak of war meant this project was not completed down to Katherine until 1917 and eventually reached Larrimah in the early 1920s. The southern line from South Australia was eventually extended to Alice Springs in the same decade but the two sections were not linked together. It was more than ninety years after the federal government promised it would be built that a true north−south line was finally completed. Nevertheless, considering that when he had been elected to office in 1910 the Commonwealth owned no railways, Fisher eventually expanded its ownership of this vital communication network by more than 2000 kilometres of steel lines both east and west as well as north and south in a short period of time. By 1914, he had high hopes of then converting all the main railways lines between Brisbane and Adelaide into the same uniform gauge but the war put a stop to such schemes. Aside from the issues of national unity and defence, the railways for Fisher were also part of his vision of regional development of the continent and were therefore linked with federal control over new territories.23

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Since Federation, the future of the Northern Territory had been the subject of discussion between various federal ministries and the South Australian government, which controlled an area totalling 17 per cent of the land mass of the continent. South Australian administration over this area had been patchy with the total non-Indigenous population having actually fallen since 1901. It had failed to attract any of the increasing numbers of new immigrants entering Australia in this period. In 1910, for example, of the 40 000 people who had arrived, a mere 272 went to the Territory at the same time as 231 other Europeans departed. At the agreed takeover date in 1911, the Territory had a total population of some 3301 non-Indigenous persons, of whom 1729 were white Europeans and 1177 Chinese. There was an unknown number (but estimated at up to 20 000) of Aboriginal people. Although there was a perception that South Australia had preserved the Territory for white Europeans, it was only in 1911 that Europeans outnumbered Asians due to a dramatic decline in the Chinese population since 1901. The Northern Territory had limited industries in mining and pearling but little in the way of agricultural crops. Its main industry was in beef cattle, with around half a million head, but even that was marginal, with over 93 555 ha of available public pastoral land still unoccupied. There were few major roads and only one railway line running from the small coastal town of Palmerston (renamed Darwin on 18 March, 1911) south to Pine Creek. Contact with the rest of the country was essentially carried out by coastal shipping.24 The arguments in the parliament in 1909 for the federal acquisition of the Territory focused on the need to provide for northern defence. Against its acquisition were the worries over its immediate and long-term costs. Deakin certainly thought that Australia could not fully advance without some kind of northern development, although most of the Victorian and NSW parliamentarians took a sceptical view of such visions.25 Fisher strongly shared Deakin’s views. This was not surprising because nearly half of his home state of Queensland formed part of the broader band of ‘Northern’ or ‘Tropical Australia’. Fisher was proud that he had defeated arguments that Kanaka labour was necessary in the Queensland sugar industry because white labour could

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not do the job. Even though this was partly achieved by the Commonwealth subsidising the industry since 1902, he saw no reason why white labour could not also develop the Northern Territory. Fisher had less interest in the administration of Papua at the time since this area was obviously not on the continent and unlikely to attract large numbers of white Australians. In contrast, the future of the Northern Territory provided a vision of development shared by Batchelor who, as Minister for External Affairs, was responsible for its administration under the cabinet arrangements at the time. Fisher was convinced that the area had to be developed and thought there were large tracts of land ‘suitable for white settlement’. Other friends and colleagues shared this enthusiasm. George Pearce would be interested in northern development until well into the 1920s.26 Chris Watson sounded out Fisher on the possibility of applying for the position of the first Administrator of the Territory. Fisher was supportive, but Watson’s wife refused to go so he was unable to proceed with his application.27 George Ryland moved from Gympie to Darwin in 1912, and was appointed a Justice of the Peace and then Director of Lands. He wrote very positive reports back to Fisher on the promise of these new lands for white settlement, especially if there was railway development.28 The federal government therefore began its task of administering the Northern Territory with some enthusiasm. In 1911, it assembled a team of experts led by Professor Baldwin W Spencer, a leading biologist/anthropologist and an expert in Aboriginal culture and society, to report on future developments in the areas of agriculture, beef exports and mining. It selected sites for experimental farms at Rum Jungle, on the Daly River and Mataranka, which commenced in 1912, and settlers were encouraged with offers of free blocks of farming land. John Gilruth, professor of veterinary pathology at the University of Melbourne, advised on livestock issues and the government planned a state owned meatworks at Darwin to improve the profitability of beef exports. By 1914, the Cook government turned this over to the British-owned Vesteys which became an important pastoralist group in the Territory. The Fisher government eventually appointed Gilruth as the first Administrator, and he arrived in Darwin in April 1912. He was

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a poor choice in that he clearly lacked people skills and his arrogance alienated many around him. Even without those liabilities, he ran into problems in that, while he reported to the Department of External Affairs, the various ministers around him reported directly to their own departments back in Melbourne. Thus, there was little administrative co-operation in what was often a poorly run government.29 The Territory continued to languish in the period up to 1914 and beyond, despite a royal commission being established in March 1913 to investigate infrastructure such as railways, ports and even a new capital. The experiments in new crops such a sisal hemp, rice and Indian wheat failed. Little new mining emerged and the meatworks, delayed by the war, eventually opened in 1917 only to close again in 1920. There is probably some truth in the view that failure in the Territory was expected by many southern politicians, based on the previous record of the South Australian government. Therefore, the failures were doubly serious and often magnified. As the 1914−18 War took up more resources, the government, wary of investments with slow returns, began to lose interest in this northern experiment.30 Still, this vision of new settlement was not easily abandoned by Fisher. In 1913, one of his main campaign promises was to develop the Northern Territory for white settlers. He remained influenced by his Queensland experiences where, in his lifetime, whole coastal towns had been created and an area of land greater than most of the southern states had been opened to development. In December 1914, he told parliament that the policy of the government was ‘to open up Australia, from east to west and from north to south’. In the same month, he reported his disappointment that the number of permanent white settlers in the Territory had not increased but hoped the new railway line would encourage this, along with the dairy cattle experiments and the Darwin meatworks.31 Fisher remained optimistic over such regional development and Peggy Fisher remembered him talking of irrigating the deserts in the future. In November 1915, before leaving for Britain, he travelled to the eastern head of the trans-Australian railway construction site. Here his party left the train and boarded two buggies that would be drawn

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by camels. They proceeded over 120 kilometres to the start of the Nullarbor Plain, and crossed it without seeing another soul or any signs of permanent habitation, before reaching the Western Australian border and the western head of the railway. It is unlikely that Fisher ever crossed a river bed on this epic journey. Yet despite the apparent sparseness of the Nullarbor, Fisher thought it would show great promise once the railway was completed. He believed that with water, this area could graze several million sheep and would eventually ‘support a population that will be adding to the wealth of the Commonwealth’.32

Aboriginal policies With the acquisition of the Northern Territory came the responsibility for the first time by the Commonwealth of looking after an estimated 20 000 Aboriginal people. The basis for this administration was set by prior South Australian legislation and this was incorporated into a 1911 Act and a 1912 Commonwealth Ordinance. These measures established a chief protector and made it possible for the government to declare reserve areas and rules governing them. The protector was the legal guardian of all Aboriginals until they reached the age of eighteen. All employment was subject to the protector’s permission and the movement of the reserve population, and indeed other people’s movements, could be restricted. The first two chief protectors were the anthropologist Herbert Basedow, who only lasted forty-five days, and then Baldwin W Spencer. Spencer took a proactive role from the start. His administration of the Aboriginal population was benevolent but tinged with racism that reflected the attitudes of the wider society at the time.33 Although it was commonly accepted that Aboriginals were part of a dying race, Spencer was more positive in his outlook, believing they might survive in tribal areas away from inter-racial contact. He therefore convinced the government to considerably expand the reserves while restricting European access to them. He also took the view that fringe town dwellers and half-cast or mixed race peoples should be

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moved into these reserves, where they would eventually blend into the broader tribal societies. To prevent possible drug abuse, Aboriginals were forbidden from entering Darwin’s Chinatown area, Asians were not permitted to employ any Aboriginal person and Europeans and Asians could not enter Aboriginal reserves without the protector’s permission. These policies ran into trouble, especially in Darwin, where many citizens had a more heterogeneous view of such racial matters. Given his earlier views on the need for a White Australia, his ignoring of Aboriginal peoples in the European expansion of Australia and his perceptions of a white South Africa, it was logical that Fisher supported Spencer’s policies. The Northern Territory was to be opened up for white European settlement but if Spencer could find a humanitarian solution for the Aboriginal peoples, then Fisher was willing to accept such a position. He was not, however, all that interested in the details of these arrangements. In 1913 Spencer tabled an outline of his policies in his report to the federal parliament that argued for more resources for his vision. No one was particularly critical of the plan but it essentially disappeared without a trace.34

The achievements There has been a tendency by some historians to suggest that all Fisher’s government did was enact national projects that all parties, but especially Deakin, had been working towards. This seems an unfair evaluation. It is true that many matters, such as selecting the national capital or building the trans-continental railway, were long-standing policies generally endorsed by the other parties. But these had also been under consideration for many years and it was Fisher who actually implemented them. He certainly had the advantage of control of both Houses of Parliament and a greater revenue base after Braddon, but there were many measures that could have been developed by the non-Labour side before 1910 and passed with Labour support. Yet, for a variety of reasons, these were never enacted. Shepherd, who admired Deakin’s oratory and intellect, was also critical of the way in which he tended to put off enacting legislation.

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Fisher, in contrast, was noted for his determination to actually implement programs. Labour was also the party that developed a systematic set of national policies after 1908, and some measures such as the land tax and the new bank were initially opposed by the nonLabour side of the parliament. Many of these development projects also appealed to the technocrat side of Fisher’s character − often unnoticed by historians – which derived from his mining background, his obvious interest in things mechanical and his views on how Queensland had developed its regional areas. If some of his visions, like that of making the desert bloom, were unrealistic, he nevertheless gave Australians a broad vision of great projects to be carried out by their new national government. Beyond this was Fisher’s sense that many of these projects would also lead to a fairer and more equal society.35

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16 Enhancing the Commonwealth

Aside from obvious national development projects financed by increasing revenues, Fisher tried to enhance the Commonwealth government by extending its powers and responsibilities and making it a model of efficiency and fairness in the eyes of ordinary Australians. He was restricted in these moves by the actual powers which the Commonwealth government then possessed. However, despite such limitations, he still carried out a variety of reforms that left their mark on the future of the nation and gave it a greater sense of its own identity.

The maternity allowance The Fisher government made changes to the social welfare program by expanding the payment of invalid pensions to the blind and adjusting the old age pensions by exempting the family home from the means test. In 1912, it also managed a small increase in the payments of these pensions. However, its major welfare achievement was in the area of maternity allowances. When he later had his portrait painted by Lily Findley, Fisher had a choice of holding various pieces of legislation that he had introduced and chose the 1912 Maternity Allowance Act because he considered it one of his most significant accomplishments.1

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Despite some critics wanting money paid only to married women, the Act gave £5 to any European woman who successfully delivered a live birth.2 Often now referred to as the ‘baby bonus’, Fisher at the time was at pains to dispute such a notion. He pointed out that the allowance was really intended to provide a limited form of supplementary income for many previously working mothers and also enabled them to pay for doctors to attend their births. Fisher certainly hoped that this medical care would reduce infant mortality rates and therefore increase the population. During its first year of operation in 1912−13, some 82 556 women received this allowance. Fisher presented the maternity allowance to parliament as another piece of social welfare legislation that in one sense simply followed on from the old age and invalid pensions. It is also claimed that he was influenced to introduce this legislation by his earlier experiences in Queensland when a fellow miner was at his wits end as he returned from the pits with Fisher because his wife was expecting their first child and they had almost none of the resources needed to look after it.3 But Fisher was also quite open about other reasons as to why this allowance had been introduced. It was clearly intended as a move into the area of health, and he saw the day when the Commonwealth − either alone or in co-operation with the states − would be directly involved in health care for the Australian population.4 Back in 1907, he had suggested that the federal government might consider paying for doctors to attend to the poor since they could not afford medical services and instead often resorted to the use of patent and sometimes harmful medicines. The maternity allowance, although not means tested, clearly fitted into such a notion of the public purse supporting medical care.5 Significantly, although Fisher was personally a good saver and supported, in principle, the introduction of superannuation, he was opposed to the introduction of national insurance similar to that operating in places such as Germany. Such schemes were looked on with favour by Deakin and Cook, and in 1910 the Commonwealth Statistician, George Knibbs, tabled a report, originally commissioned by Deakin, on its operation in many European countries. It was sympa-

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thetic to introducing compulsory insurance in Australia, although on a gradual industry by industry basis.6 Such proposals also had a growing following in Labour circles. At the 1912 Hobart Conference, a motion was put forward for a compulsory national insurance scheme covering maternity, sickness and old age benefits. This was dropped when Fisher spoke against it on the grounds that it was unlikely that the Commonwealth would have the powers to enact it, given the recent views of the High Court. Just as importantly, he thought such a scheme discriminated against lower income workers because they had to save for a longer period before they would receive any reasonable benefits and had to be a worker to contribute anyway. In contrast, direct government welfare payments went to those who needed it at the time.7 In 1912, Fisher also introduced, with a certain degree of pride, the Commonwealth Workmen’s Compensation Act that provided limited compensation for employees covered by its awards who were injured at work. As he pointed out to parliament, he had proposed such a bill in Queensland in 1899 only to have it rejected as too expensive and now such legislation was becoming commonplace in many countries. In the debate on the bill, he again refused to consider having either an insurance scheme to cover it or even putting money into a trust fund on the grounds that this wasted public service time and such monies should be paid out of consolidated revenue when needed.8 Indeed, Knibbs, in his 1910 report on health insurance, pointed out that in many countries, a large bureaucracy was needed to enforce the compulsory insurance contributions. Although Fisher was a supporter of enhanced federal powers, he retained an almost nineteenth-century liberal distaste for government interference directly in the lives of ordinary citizens. Such liberal principles later led him to oppose conscripting citizens to serve overseas without their consent. Yet the idea of some type of national insurance as a substitute for direct government welfare continued to gather force. Cook proposed looking at such a scheme in the 1913 election and in 1915 the ALP federal executive decided it should be put on the party platform.9 Although these ideas were discussed over the next few decades, little came of them. In that sense, Fisher’s judgment was correct. If he had waited for an

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insurance scheme to be implemented then little would have been achieved in the short term. By the end of the Fisher ministry, it was clear that social services, paid out of government revenues, had been established in Australia. The weakness in Fisher’s approach was that these benefits were fairly limited in scope and no basis had been laid for a comprehensive welfare state.

Improving postal services In 1901, the Commonwealth assumed responsibility for the postal services of the nation. The post office was a large organisation, employing some 12 240 people at the beginning of 1910 and offering a range of crucial activities including telephones, telegrams, the delivery of packages and letters, and the issuing of postal notes. It was also not without considerable criticism for its inefficiency and mounting costs. Even in 1910, the post office was essentially six separate organisations left over from colonial times, with each state having its own postmaster-general. These organisations were highly parochial, with most employees showing a ‘lack of a federal spirit’. Its unequal service costs concerned many in the parliament, especially in the FPLP, since it was a system that workers often relied on for communication and the transmission of monies. Deakin had succumbed to pressure from the FPLP in 1907 and instituted a Royal Commission into Postal Services, which finally delivered its report to Fisher in October 1910. It showed, among other things, that the organisation was so inefficient that although it had received more than £23 million since Federation in revenue, it appeared to have spent at least £600 000 more in this period. However, its bookkeeping was so poor that the Commission could only estimate the real deficit to be closer to £2.3 million.10 The Commission made a raft of recommendations to improve the system, including establishing a proper board of management with three directors in different areas, that would make the organisation more efficient and businesslike in its operation. It wanted uniform national postage rates, new suburban post offices to be built and older ones remodelled, all stamps and forms to be centrally printed for cost

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efficiency, telephone rates to be raised to better reflect costs of the system and more males, rather than females, to be employed as postmasters because of the heavy work at most post offices.11 After some hesitation, the government, through Thomas and then Frazer, began to take up most of these recommendations, and over its next two budgets increased spending on the building of new post offices by 30 per cent and more than doubled the amount spent on telephone lines and cables. On 1 May 1911, despite some obvious reduction in revenue, the penny postage rate for letters was introduced across Australia and then into all territories and other parts of the British Empire, completing the ‘true federation of the postal services of the Commonwealth’. There was also a hope that after 1914 it might even be extended between Australia and the United States. In 1911, a national competition was also held to design the post office’s first adhesive postage stamp that was now produced, along with all post office forms, in the one printery. The winning design showed the King flanked by a kangaroo and emu and the six state badges, but Charlie Frazer was unhappy with it allegedly because of his republican sympathies. Eventually, a departmentally-designed stamp with a kangaroo within a map of Australia was issued in 1913, and was the first genuine Australian stamp despite widespread criticism of its design.12 Although the post office had obviously existed before Fisher, and all political parties saw a need for a more efficient service, it was, again, his government that did the hard work and made serious efforts to improve it. This was not simply a matter of just another national development project but of making an existing institution, which millions of Australians depended on, cheaper, fairer and more efficient. By 1914, there were over 225 400 km of underground telephone cables in the country, compared to only 32 200 km four years previously, and the number of telephone subscribers had more than doubled in that period. The loss of some revenue by introducing the uniform penny postage was more than compensated by the fact that the post office handled one hundred million more letters by 1914 than in the year before the uniform rates had been introduced, as well as 1.25 million extra telegrams.13 Equally, the Pacific Cable Act regulated the

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use of the Australian section of the submarine telegraph cable from Canada through the Pacific that helped link the Empire together. The Act provided for Australian control over part of this means of communication (the post office owned one-third of the company) in order to keep cable costs at reasonable levels. Fisher also turned his attention to the Atlantic cable system, hoping at the 1911 Imperial Conference to get the British government to agree to build a cheaper public cabling system. He met with little success in London, but continued to push for greater government ownership of such a cable before the war halted his efforts.14

A fairer democracy The labour movement had a long history of wanting to democratise Australia as Fisher had experienced in his days in the Queensland parliament. Yet the movement was often divided on the best means of achieving this. The Commonwealth Electoral Act 1911 was Fisher’s first effort at reform but it was in reality only the minimum that everyone in the FPLP could agree upon at that stage. It introduced compulsory enrolment for Commonwealth elections in order to maximise the people’s vote and designated election days for Saturdays so that working people were not disadvantaged. More contentiously, it abolished postal voting on the grounds that it tended to favour the better off who could afford to be away from their homes. Also, it was argued, many women faced an open, not secret, ballot under the gaze of their husbands and couldn’t vote the way that they really wanted (presumably for the ALP). Labour was much better organised in bringing out voters, even in rural areas, than their conservative opponents, who relied on the postal vote, to some degree, to offset this disadvantage. The issue of a different voting system instead of the ‘first past the post’ was certainly considered (everything from preferential to Hare Clark), but consensus had been hard to achieve. The government did not make voting itself compulsory even though some in the caucus were strongly of the view that this would be to Labour’s advantage. As late as the 1915 Adelaide Federal Conference, when this issue was

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again discussed, Fisher had an open mind on it but thought it best considered at a later time. Hughes opposed it and the Conference finally resolved to only recommend it for the next federal referendum rather than for all elections.15 The Swiss idea of the initiative and referendum (where citizens bring forward proposals to be voted upon by the electorate) had long been popular in the labour movement and Fisher was personally supportive of it. In 1913, and again in 1914, it was included as part of the party’s election campaign promises and was even listed in the government’s legislative agenda for 1914 but was never enacted due to other wartime priorities. Yet, despite its apparent democratic nature, it remained a contentious issue because, as some critics pointed out, it could actually be used by conservatives and lobby groups to oppose and stifle reform. The failures of the electorate in 1911 and 1913 to pass important referendum questions certainly dampened the enthusiasm of some earlier supporters of letting the popular will be known. Ironically, despite these moves, there was some loss of democratic rights under the Fisher government. The acquisition of the Northern Territory meant the loss of suffrage for the resident population, since it was not large enough to comprise one Commonwealth electorate. When it was part of South Australia it could be joined to one of their electorates, but once separate, it lost this right since Commonwealth electorates were always confined within the boundaries of a state.16

E xtending Commonwealth jurisdiction The Fisher government took advantage of its numbers to pass legislation, which for various reasons, had long been considered by the federal parliament without being finally resolved. The Inter-State Commission, set out in Section 101 of the Constitution to regulate trade and commerce, had been listed as a legislative measure by Barton in the opening session of the first parliament. It was later listed again by Deakin but had never been passed into law. Finally, in December 1912, the Inter-State Commission was set up as a judicial and fact-finding body on matters affecting trade and commerce between the states.

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Although the Commission had the potential to extend Commonwealth jurisdiction, even Fisher did not give it a high priority. The necessary Act was rushed through with several other pieces of legislation, late in his government, just before the Christmas recess. Then he and Hughes focused their attention on other matters, including new appointments to the High Court (discussed in the next chapter) and did not get around to appointing a chairman for the Commission before the 1913 election. Fisher entertained the possibility that Hughes, then in poor heath, might want the role of chairing the Commission, and he did at least consider it. However, Fisher, in the end, deferred consideration of the appointment.17 Although the states were suspicious of such a Commission, so in fact were many in the federal system. Isaacs thought it represented a fourth arm of the government that might challenge both parliamentary and judicial powers and Fisher, always a supporter of parliament, was probably influenced by this view. He had become suspicious of institutions that did not reflect Labour policies (the High Court was the obvious one) and therefore was unenthusiastic about creating another body beyond his control, especially since the Commission would possess quasi-judicial powers.18 In any event, it was the Cook ministry which decided, after Deakin declined, to appoint AB Piddington, previously a nominee for the High Court, as the first chairman. He set to work with some enthusiasm, looking at range of trade issues. But in 1915, a wheat grower appealed to the Commission after his crop was compulsorily acquired by the NSW government. The Commission struck down the law as unconstitutional. The state government appealed to the High Court, which upheld the appeal ruling that the Commission was not a court and therefore could not rule on constitutional matters. Stripped of much of its intended powers, the Commission did limited work over the next few years and was formally abolished in 1921.There have been proposals over the years to revive it, but it remains dormant, a victim of fears by others of potential challenges to their powers and authority.19 The amended Navigation Act 1910 was really the culmination of work going back nearly a decade that had first been the source of a demarcation dispute between Fisher and Hughes during the Watson

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ministry. The Act itself was largely influenced by an earlier New Zealand Act, as well as Hughes’s own considerable work on a royal commission on the subject. The purpose was to regulate shipping and conditions for seaman on the Australian coastline (a major FPLP concern) and should also have been an obvious need for any island nation such as Australia. However, this Act ran into objections by shipowners anxious not to be regulated into having to pay Australian standard wages to its sailors on the coastal trade. Just as significantly, there were also concerns in London that different sets of regulations by the various Dominions would affect the smooth operation of sea trade within the whole Empire. The Act was eventually disallowed and many of these matters then remained unresolved even during the Fisher ministry after 1914.20 The same concern for the safety of coastal ships and their crews led to the passing of the Lighthouses Act in 1911, which was more successful in setting uniform standards and specified clear Commonwealth responsibility for these vital installations around the Australian coastline. Fisher again saw such a project as not only the responsibility of the Commonwealth but as creating another technical achievement, whereby ships would be safely guided because there would be ‘a safely lighted and completely light coast around Australia, supported by the most modern means’.21 Finally, the government did what it could in terms of fairer industrial reform. In 1910 it amended the Conciliation and Arbitration Act to cover domestic servants and agricultural workers, introduced compulsory conferences, authorised the courts to fix minimum wages and provided preference for unionists (‘all other things being equal’, according to Fisher) for employment on federal pubic works. In 1911, coverage was extended to Commonwealth public servants. However, the contentious issue of control over national industrial awards had to await either a successful referendum on the matter and/or changing views on federal power by the High Court.22

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Symbols, collections and identity Previous governments had already decided on a number of Australian national symbols, including a flag (which Fisher disliked but was too busy to change) and a coat of arms that had been designed by the College of Arms in London and adopted in 1908.23 There was considerable disquiet over the coat of arms with a kangaroo on one side of a shield and an emu with its raised right leg on the other. Critics thought the emu seemed ready to kick a goal, and the shield contained the Cross of St George and six chevron escutcheons representing the states but not their badges. After cabinet had accepted the proposal on 2 February 1911, Fisher sent a new design, drafted by Hugh Paterson and prepared by the NSW Government Printer, to London for approval. The emu now had its feet firmly planted on the ground and the shield contained the six state badges. Two sprays of wattle, which Fisher had advocated as the national flower, now adorned it instead of grass, and the words ‘Advance Australia’ were replaced by simply ‘Australia’. This was almost certainly Fisher’s doing because he was not a fan of the popular ‘Advance Australia Fair’. He firmly believed that Australia was already quite advanced as a nation. The amended coat of arms was granted a second royal warrant on 19 September 1912, although it did not appear to cover the embellishments of the sprays of wattle. Nevertheless, the design remains to the present day as the national coat of arms.24 Although symbols were only one part of the scene, it is interesting how some would soon be taken for granted. For the Prime Minister’s 1914/1915 Christmas/New Year greetings card (see figure 8), Esther Paterson designed, over the new coat of arms, a young woman standing on the shoreline under a gum tree and holding the Australian flag (the red ensign) and a huge bunch of wattle in a basket. In the background, off the coast, one of the new ships of the Australian navy was steaming past.25 In these various ways, that also included the new currency and postage stamps, Fisher certainly encouraged Australians to have a greater sense of their national identity26 Fisher, probably due to the influence of his friend Hugh Pater-

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son, also became something of a patron of the arts as Prime Minister. He imposed an import duty on paintings coming into the country to encourage the purchase of works by local artists. He also set up the Historical Memorials Committee, chaired by Paterson, to assist local artists to paint former prime ministers, presidents of the Senate and speakers of the House of Representatives. The Committee was also responsible for collecting photos of ministers and other parliamentarians. Fisher, after his defeat in 1913, was among the first to have one of these portraits painted (by E Phillips Fox) and accepted, after some further minor changes, in December of that year. The artist received the standard £250 for his work. At that stage, only Barton’s portrait had also been painted but other earlier prime ministers were subsequently added to the collection. All of their portraits currently hang in the Kings Hall of the National Portrait Gallery (or the Old Parliament House) in Canberra.27 Paterson also chaired the Art Advisory Board which at least did the planning for a national gallery in the new federal capital and also convinced Fisher to spend money on decorating the future Australia House in London with paintings of Australian rural scenes. In 1911, Fisher also negotiated the purchase of over 16 500 books and documents from Edward Petherick, who had brought this extensive collection of historical records on Australia and the South Pacific from England to Melbourne a few years earlier on the promise of previous governments that they would take care of this collection. While this concept was accepted by all political parties as an excellent idea, it was again Fisher who made this a reality by passing the necessary legislation. Petherick’s collection formed the basis for the subsequent National Library of Australia. Fisher was very conscious of the need to safeguard this collection that provided such a rich historical record of Australian development.28

The achievements The achievements of Fisher in these years were, by any standards, impressive; and later tributes to him point to the fact that he had tried

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to enact everything that he had promised the electorate. He certainly set out to enhance the powers of the Commonwealth and made a conscious effort to develop a greater sense of national identity. He would have seen many of his measures as being ‘socialistic’ in the various ways he defined it, without applying any systematic ideological framework to the legislation. As in Queensland, the real test for most of his legislative measures was whether he thought them ‘fair’ and in the public interest. Of course, in such a busy program, not all his measures were equally successful. The welfare payments, for example, were credible, but did not, conceptually, provide enough of a welfare framework that even Fisher thought the Australian people deserved. Still, it is easy to find fault with what was an enormous workload that almost certainly contributed to ruining Fisher’s health in the long term. Nevertheless, for all of his achievements, Fisher was still not content at the time because there were, for him, real constitutional limits on how far he could use federal powers to reform Australia.

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17 Defeats

Of all the early prime ministers, Fisher was unique in his attitude to federalism. He was the only one of the first three Labour prime ministers to have strongly supported Federation. Yet despite welcoming the new constitution, within a few years, Fisher was the first prime minister to become openly disillusioned with its apparent limitations. Buoyed by his 1910 electoral success, he would embark on a long and determined campaign to amend the constitution to give the Commonwealth extensive new powers. But in doing this, he would find the task more difficult than he first envisaged and that defeat, not victory, was to be the outcome.

Attempting constitutional changes In supporting Federation in 1899, Fisher was of the belief that a single national government could more easily advance the cause of Labour than having to legislate via six separate states. However, over time, problems with the High Court’s interpretation of the powers of the Commonwealth over New Protection and other issues reinforced his view that judges such as Sir Samuel Griffith and Barton had narrow ideas of the constitution. Opposition by some in his own party at the state level to giving more authority to the Commonwealth, made Fisher even more certain that a re-distribution of power was needed. The

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South African visit was a seminal event for him.The four colonies there had created a strong central union with a national parliament under the Westminster system of government and a clear procedure for white majority rule. Fisher admired this system and it was close to the model that he thought Australia should adopt. His observations on the Canadian and New Zealand systems of government also convinced him that the Australian founding fathers had got it wrong by borrowing from the US constitution and allowing too much power to remain with the states. At Hobart in 1912, he controversially told delegates, ‘it would not be an outrageous proposition to lay before the people of Australia the argument that a re-distribution of the powers of the Federation and the States would be a good thing and for their benefit’.1 Fisher also thought that the current division of Australia into six states would not be of long duration. Like many in Queensland in the late nineteenth century, he had been dissatisfied with the colonial boundaries established by London, which bore little reality to the needs of the vast area under the control of its government. There had been several moves and proposals to divide the colony into at least three broad regions, and while Fisher was never outspoken on this matter neither did he hide his sympathy with this concept. In Hobart, he argued that as far as Queensland was concerned ‘more than one local body would be required for the proper government of that great territory’.2 During the 1910 election, Fisher had promised, in line with party policy, future constitutional amendments to secure New Protection, extend Commonwealth powers over many state industrial responsibilities and give it wider powers over trade, commerce and designated monopolies. After the victory there was a certain, although perhaps understandable, naivety in the new Labour government’s approach to these propositions. There had been only three constitutional amendments voted upon since Federation and all had been simultaneously held with a general election. Only Deakin’s proposal for a new funding formula to the states had been rejected by voters. The victory in 1910 seemed to suggest that any future constitutional amendments would easily be accepted by Labour voters. In June 1910, the cabinet and

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then the caucus approved the draft legislation for a referendum dealing with extensive constitutional changes.3 In fact, the Australian electorate has proven extremely conservative in accepting constitutional changes and only eight of forty-four referendum propositions have been carried since Federation. These have only been passed when they have had strong bipartisan political support. In 1910, once the parliament had passed the necessary legislation for the referendum, most of the conservative press along with the Opposition, immediately attacked what they claimed was a grab for power by Labour. Fisher didn’t help by criticising the deficiencies of the Australian federal system while on his visit to South Africa. These comments, plus his obvious admiration for the more centralised system of government in that country, were widely reported back home.4 He gave his opponents immediate ammunition that he was aiming at ‘unification’ not ‘federation’. This would mean the end of the states and, according to the Brisbane Courier, control of Queensland by an administration in the south. Premier William Kidston also claimed that Fisher aimed at ‘ringbarking the constitution’ by wanting to reduce the industrial powers of the states. It was, the Argus, claimed, ‘a leap in the darkness, into the unknown’, because it grasped ‘at enormous powers’. Although the Age pointed out that there was nothing inviolable about the 1901 constitution and it had already been altered by the people, it was in a minority among the non-Labour press. Most papers would continue to mount a fear campaign against the government’s proposals.5 The idea that these proposed referendum changes might threaten the states’ powers was underlined by Hughes’s handling of caucus while Fisher was in South Africa. When dissidents attacked the proposed referendum legislation for not specifically including disputes involving railway workers, Hughes accepted an amendment to include such workers in the legislation. This, however, only further alarmed the states that the Commonwealth really intended to strip them of their powers.6 Deakin rallied for one last great campaign battle by heading the ‘No’ case, and accused Fisher of wanting to destroy the Federation by acquiring centralised powers over social and industrial affairs and ending the independence of the states.7

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To make matters worse, Fisher had known back in September 1910 that he would be attending the coronation of George V in London for several months in 1911. He had not set the date for the referendum before leaving for South Africa, and by the time it was decided, it was put down for late April. Fisher therefore could not lead the ‘Yes’ case for any length of time before leaving for England. Even so, he returned home in late December, but waited nearly two months before launching the official campaign on 28 February at the Melbourne Town Hall. At this meeting, he pointed to the fact that ten years had passed between the first attempt to write an Australia constitution and its final form, which was a much better document. If another convention was now called, it would most likely produce an even more democratic document than the present one. It would almost certainly give powers to the Commonwealth parliament, especially over industrial legislation and the protection of ordinary workers.8 Fisher then began his usual vigorous campaign travels covering parts of Queensland, NSW, South Australia and Victoria before ending back in Melbourne on 30 March. At times, he seemed to get carried away by the rush and pressure of the campaign. In Queensland, he suggested, in language unusual for him, that if these referendum issues were not carried, then more radical changes would be proposed in the future.9 The claim that Fisher simply launched the campaign and then left the country leaving Hughes to run the whole affair was certainly not true. Fisher put in a very strenuous schedule of campaigning during March but appears to have been initially too optimistic about success. He left the launch date later than he needed and he only had a month of campaigning before leaving for England nearly three weeks before the actual polling day.10 The government’s case was further weakened by several other poor decisions. Hughes put forward a series of complex issues into just two major ballot questions. This made it more difficult for voters to understand them and to vote for one part that they might favour if they were against another section. Neither Fisher nor Hughes thought it necessary to put out any official information to educate the electorate as to why the government needed these considerable changes to a constitution that had only been in effect since 1901. Finally, aside

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from opposition from the Liberals and the press, not everyone in the labour movement was behind these initiatives. WA Holman and many of his NSW state parliamentary colleagues disapproved of this apparent drift to centralism. Using the claim, probably technically correct, that Hughes’s proposals were more extensive than what the 1908 federal conference had adopted, Holman stood out against the ‘Yes’ case. The fact that Labour was now in office in that state and in South Australia meant these governments stood to lose powers and they showed little enthusiasm for the cause.11 Fisher sensed from his speaking tour that the voters were not as receptive as they had been to his 1910 election campaign. On his way to England, he wrote to Hughes from Ceylon, noting that states rights was deeply rooted in Australia but that it was Labour’s duty to make the constitution workable.12 On 26 April 1911, every state, except Western Australia, rejected the amendments by large majorities, with only 40 per cent of voters willing to support the ‘Yes’ case. There was a consistent pattern in all the ‘No’ states with the ‘Yes’ vote well down on the Labour vote of 1910, which probably reflected the lack of enthusiasm among many grassroots Labour organisers to bring out and convince the voters in the way they had done in 1910.13 Fisher was obviously disappointed by the results but in a cable to Hughes agreed that these proposals needed to be resubmitted to the people at the next election. Once in England, as in South Africa, he talked about the shortcomings of the Australian constitution, made no secret of the Commonwealth needing greater powers and stated that these referendum issues would again be put to the people.14 He repeated these views quite openly in parliament at its next sessions in September, claiming that the people had been misinformed on the issues because of the hostility of most of the press.15 There were several things which immediately flowed from this referendum defeat. An attempt was made by Fisher and Hughes to pull NSW into line. A special meeting in August 1911 of the NSW Political Labour League endorsed the need for another referendum and urged all party members to support it. However, intimidated to some extent by Holman, the delegates refused to discipline him for his actions in opposing the referendum. They also refused to support

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a motion from Hughes that federal parliamentarians should have the sole right to interpret the federal platform between federal conferences.16 Therefore some stronger action seemed needed at the Hobart conference due in 1912.

The Hobart Conference In January 1912, Fisher again attended the party’s federal conference in Hobart, but neither Holman (who was in England) nor Hughes (who was ill in Sydney) were present. Fisher and Hughes did, however, discuss their strategies by letter. Fisher deliberately declined the offer to chair the conference in order to be free to conduct business from the floor. The conference spent a considerable amount of time on the whole federation versus unification issue and Fisher spoke at length on his views that the present constitution was inadequate and needed to be overhauled to enhance federal powers. It was an honest view, but perhaps too honest, since such comments only continued to alarm opponents of the referendum within and outside of the ALP. Still he used his authority to quickly head off any attempts to sidetrack the conference on the referendum issue.17 Fisher was successful in having delegates unanimously reaffirm the need to amend the constitution to incorporate federal powers along the lines of the 1911 referendum and to put these to the people again at the next federal election. At the same time, the conference left the wording of these proposals to the government. This way there would be no repeat of Holman’s claims in 1911 that the referendum questions put by Hughes were not really what the 1908 conference had intended. Fisher’s role on the floor was easily his most pro-active performance since his intervention in the Queensland Labor-in-Politics Convention in 1907. He expressed delight on the last day of the gathering that that the constitutional amendments should have been given such a prominent place, since ‘several planks could not be carried out until the Constitution had been amended’. Fisher’s doggedness on this issue revealed all his strengths and weaknesses as a politician. As admirers often saw it, when he was convinced something was right he

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would stand firm and never waver, while those around him sometimes lost their nerve. On the other hand, once convinced he was in the right, he could pursue an issue with a single-mindedness that sometimes seemed to ignore its political consequences.18 Fisher didn’t entirely get his own way on all matters at the conference. Hughes had wanted the issue of caucus being able to interpret federal platforms between conferences, always a contentious issue, accepted by delegates but this was not even raised. Instead, a more general proposal was moved by Fisher to create a federal executive of two representatives per state, who would act as the interpreters of the federal party platform between conferences. This body would also act as a secretariat for the conference as well as be a referee for states in any disputes. In the end, the conference did not act on his proposal since state versus federal power was obviously a raw issue in the party. Nevertheless, Fisher was able to eventually secure the creation of the federal executive at the Adelaide conference in 1915 and to him goes much of the credit for proposing and eventually creating this body.19 The conference, again partly due to Fisher’s influence and partly due to international events, also looked outwards in another sign of Australia’s growing sense of itself in the world. Fisher proposed his motion for Australia to foster closer ties (defence and trade) with New Zealand, and this was carried unanimously. At the same time, delegates, with Fisher speaking in support, felt that they should try to develop closer links to the Socialist International and voted to consider sending a delegate to read a paper at its next scheduled meeting. The practical problems of costs (the meetings were always held in Europe) were a factor in the party not usually participating in such conferences. King O’Malley also had the spelling of the party name officially changed from ‘Labour’ to ‘Labor’. Although this was an obvious Americanism that appealed to O’Malley, both spellings had been used interchangeably since the 1890s and this would continue for some time to come.20 Fisher had every reason to be pleased with the outcome of the Hobart Conference. However as the proposed referendum would not be put to the people again until 1913, there were other ways that the government might be able to increase its powers over the states.

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The High Court For many years, Fisher’s nemesis on constitutional issues was not his political opponents in the parliament nor the outside press, but the High Court. This body, in 1908, had delivered judgments limiting Commonwealth powers, which he loathed. During 1911−12, the Court delivered two more decisions in the cases of the Newcastle Coal Vend and the Colonial Sugar Company, which further annoyed him. The northern coalmine owners of NSW had an agreement to maintain prices for coal on which wages were set, and further colluded with four shipping companies on the price and carriage of coal on the coastal trade. The matter was heard in 1911 before Isaacs and eventually the defendants were found guilty under the Australian Industries Preservation Act, fined, and ordered to break up the cartel. They appealed to the full bench of the Court, which overturned Isaacs’s decision on the grounds that the agreements did not have detrimental effects on the public interest. The Colonial Sugar Company held a milling monopoly on raw sugar and was accused by growers and workers alike of not paying enough for their crops. A royal commission investigating the industry attempted to inquire into the company’s affairs but was thwarted when the general manger refused to co-operate. Hughes had an amendment passed to the Royal Commissions Act to overcome this problem. This was challenged in the High Court and, in October 1912 it ruled that, while the amendment was valid in itself, it could not be used in this inquiry as this royal commission was investigating matters across states that were not within federal jurisdiction.21 So annoying did the government find both of these judgments that they ignored party policy by appealing to the Privy Council in London on both issues.22 In late 1912, the government introduced a new Judiciary Act to increase the size of the High Court from five to seven judges, given the workload and the need for judges to also sit on the Arbitration Court. The government then had to appoint three new judges, since a replacement was also needed for Richard O’Connor, who had recently died. Most of the legal profession was from a fairly conservative background

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and there were few judicial candidates that the government could be confident would be sympathetic to its views. Labour had been fortunate that both Higgins and Isaacs had left parliament in 1906 to take High Court appointments, because their radical-liberal views fitted in with many labour beliefs. Fisher was quite open in the House in November 1912 over this issue: ‘I hope and believe that the Court will not only deal with new questions, but will be prepared under new circumstances and on new evidence, to review any previous decision that may have been given it’.23 Fisher had recognised back in his Queensland parliamentary days that the legal system favoured the better off and in 1908 told parliament that it was a conservative system that looked after the rights of those in possession. Yet he thought it still possible for such bodies to provide a framework for giving workers a fair wage. He was inspired by the nineteenth century US Chief Justice, John Marshall, who had been able to interpret the American constitution in new ways that enhanced federal power. It did not seem unreasonable that a High Court might not do the same in Australia in the future. Since Labour was the rising national party of the Commonwealth, its views on federal powers should be heard and represented in institutions lagging behind popular sentiment. Of course, politically it was probably not helpful to be so open on such matters when Fisher’s government was about to appoint three new judges to the High Court.24 Hughes, as Attorney-General, was left with the task of filling the positions and quietly sounded out Isaacs on possible candidates, with Charlie Frazer acting as a go- between. His first appointment was Frank Gavan Duffy, a KC in the Victorian Bar, who was well received. Hughes, hoping that he had disarmed critics, then appointed Charles Powers, the Commonwealth Crown Solicitor since 1903 and the former leader of the Liberal Opposition in Queensland. Fisher typically had not held their former rivalry against Powers and had come to admire his abilities as Crown Solicitor. Hughes’s final appointment was AB Piddington, a Sydney barrister, who had conducted the 1911 royal commission for the NSW government on labour shortages. These two appointments set off a storm of abuse and accusations of court stacking. The Bars of NSW and Victoria formally resolved to withhold any congratulations

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to the two judges when they took their seats. The newspapers attacked their apparent lack of qualifications for the job. Powers, used to political drama, was not easily browbeaten and weathered the storm to make a successful career in the Arbitration Court. Piddington, however, was shattered by the attacks and resigned, claiming private reasons unrelated the controversy. As the government was nearing the end of its term, Hughes quickly offered his post to George Rich, a Sydney KC and justice of the NSW Supreme Court, who proved to be more acceptable.25 The attempt by Fisher and Hughes to at least influence the decisions of the High Court with suitable appointments does not seem, at first glance, to have been very successful. In September 1913, Malony quoted a letter from Fisher to the House on the Swiss constitution, which Fisher had looked into, whereby judges in that country were elected by the Federal Assembly from among any citizens and for a six-year period.26 Although Fisher was fairly cautious and respectful of institutions and traditions, the news that he had been checking out a system of electing judges for limited terms (who were not even necessarily members of the legal profession) was clearly meant to send another message to the High Court. Although Fisher did not realise it in 1913, time and circumstances were very much on his side. All three of his appointments would serve on the Court for years (Rich, the last to retire, was there until 1950) and would certainly contribute to changing interpretations of the constitution. The war years, for a range of practical reasons, saw the Commonwealth exert more power than it had in peace time and by the postwar period, the Griffith/Barton principle of federal balance was under challenge. It was seriously undermined by the 1920 Engineers case, in which the Court decided that the Commonwealth Arbitration Court could set awards and conditions for the engineering industry across the nation, irrespective of state awards. It heralded the gradual incremental increase in federal powers over the next eighty years. In the end, it was never the Australian people, despite Fisher’s great hopes, that enhanced federal power by voting for constitutional change. Rather, it was the accumulated judgments made by his old nemesis, the High Court, which achieved what he failed to gain.

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The 1913 general election On 25 April 1913, the federal parliament was dissolved for the general election. Labor (with its new-look spelling) had every reason to be confident. It held a good majority in both the House and the Senate and the Fisher ministry had an impressive record of achievements since 1910. In July 1912, well before the election, the federal caucus, for the first time, established a committee to plan a co-ordinated national campaign although, in the end, the state organisations still ran the election.27 On 6 November 1912, the federal caucus approved the six referendum questions which Hughes had unpacked from the two questions put in 1911. Copies were sent to the state parties and a federal committee was appointed to meet with the troublesome NSW branch to smooth out relations on these issues. The government also prepared a statement outlining both the ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ cases for the referendum that would be sent to electors, and all party members were urged to put in a maximum effort to ensure the government was returned and the referendum items were passed. The booklet’s ‘Yes’ case emphasised the points Fisher had long been making, that the federal constitution was a flawed document because it adopted the US model and not the more centralised Canadian one. It therefore did not give enough powers to the Commonwealth and so it could not effectively deal with monopolies and trusts nor protect fair and reasonable wages.28 After a torch-light procession through the streets of Maryborough, Fisher delivered the opening speech of the campaign to an audience of 3000 at the picture theatre on 31 March. He began by recounting the financial stability and good management of his government and stood on the record of his achievements. For the future, he promised he would encourage the economic development of the Northern Territory, develop greater naval co-operation with New Zealand and Canada, establish a Commonwealth line of steamers that would benefit Tasmania, introduce the American system of the initiative referendum and recall, develop a uniform railway gauge across the continent, and seek public ownership of the Atlantic cable system rather than leaving it in private hands. He had already committed his government to

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another ambitious naval program and he repeated the need for the Commonwealth government to have the power to make New Protection work and get rid of trusts and monopolies, otherwise it would not be possible to protect workers.29 The election was significant in that Alfred Deakin, in declining health, finally retired at the end of the parliament and for the first time since Federation took no role in the campaign. Joseph Cook, the new Liberal leader, gave the Opposition a sense of energy, ran a vigorous campaign and developed a good series of strategies. For a start, he claimed virtually all the main ALP national policies as also being the work of his party, in order to undermine any credit Fisher might claim for his government. He largely ignored defence issues, although did attack the rising costs associated with its spending, but concentrated on other issues such as increasing migration, investigating compulsory social insurance, controlling monopolies through existing legislation and handing over the tariffs to a board of experts. He then adopted scare tactics, opposing the referendum in a series of attacks claiming it meant the end of the states and a move towards unification that was really centralisation of power under one government in one place. He even suggested that the proposed question on monopolies could be used by a future government to undermine trade unions.30

The election results The results of the election on 31 May were a disappointment for Fisher, despite his safe re-election in Wide Bay. He had been worried after the Liberals endorsed Arnold Wienholt, a prominent local, to run against him, and the anti-Labor press predicted the Prime Minister would lose his seat over the referendum issues. Fisher campaigned strongly in his electorate during the final days of the election and, with a record 84 per cent voter turnout, held the seat with 55.6 per cent of the popular vote. An election night telegram to Margaret, back in Melbourne, announcing ‘Wide Bay All Right’ indicated something of Fisher’s probably unnecessary concerns. On the national front, however, the election results were mixed. The referendum questions

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were all lost, although by a considerably smaller margin than in 1911. In fact, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia supported them and the total ‘Yes’ vote across the Commonwealth reached 49.5 per cent. The Senate results were quite good. Although the ALP’s national vote was down on 1910, the party won eleven of the eighteen possible seats. Therefore, twenty-nine Labor senators faced a mere seven Liberals on the opposite side of the chamber. In the House of Representatives, small losses and gains in five of the states meant the total number of seats remained exactly the same, with the addition of one seat in Queensland balancing out the net loss of one in Victoria. But NSW again proved a weakness for the party, with a decline in the state of over 4 per cent of the vote and the net loss of five seats. This reduced the ALP to a total of thirty-seven seats in the House compared with thirty-eight for the Liberals.31 It has been hard to make sense of the 1913 election vote, given the ALP’s apparently strong performance in the Senate. However, overall, its national vote for the Senate was only 48.7 per cent compared with 48.3 per cent for the House. There were two reasons for its Senate success. Firstly, in South Australia, Sir Josiah Symons, an anti-Socialist senator seeking re-election, picked up 10.1 per cent of the vote and thus allowed Labor to gain all three Senate places. A smaller split in Victoria among non-Labor candidates may have also cost the Liberals a second seat for that state. Secondly, there was clearly voter discrimination in some states. The ALP Senate vote in Victoria and Western Australia was three to five percentage points higher than the state averages for the House of Representatives. Some electors did not, for a variety of reasons, vote for Labour in the House but wanted them returned to the Senate, which was a pattern not completely unknown in later federal elections. Fisher’s problem lay with the House returns, and even here it was uneven. Overall, there had been a swing against the government in much of rural Australia (Mahon, for example, lost his seat) and not enough of a swing towards it in the urban areas. The informal vote was much higher than in past elections (although less than in 1914) and may have been partly because voters had so many things to handle in the polling booths. The lack of enthusiasm in the

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NSW party over the 1911 referendum questions was still evident in 1913 and this had its effects. NSW voter turnout at 69.3 per cent was lower than any other state except South Australia. Although turnout would be lower on a national average in 1914, it was higher in key NSW electorates and that helped the party to victory in that year. This suggests that potential supporters in that state in 1913 abstained from going to the polls or were not organised to do so by the party. The issue of state rights, along with the Liberals’ attractive campaign promises had their effects on the electorate. By putting all of the referendum questions forward as a key part of his election campaign, Fisher ran the risk, especially in NSW, of alienating Labor voters, and this in the end, cost him dearly.32

Political manoeuvrings The narrow defeat left the government in a quandary. Fisher at first was inclined to try to continue to govern. However, after further consultation with colleagues, it was decided that the government would resign and allow Cook to form a ministry. This meant that the Liberals would have to supply the Speaker and this would leave them deadlocked with the Opposition on the floor of the House. They could still rely on the Speaker’s vote on important issues, but it did make day-to-day business difficult and legislation could easily be blocked by the Senate. Although the FPLP was willing to allow supply in the short term, there was no guarantee even this would continue in the future. Thus, for twelve months the two parties conducted parliamentary manoeuvres. The FPLP used its numbers in the Senate to introduce bills that it believed would be popular but unlikely to be passed by the government. These included bills for widow’s pensions, representation for the people of the ACT and creating a Commonwealth shipping line with special services to Tasmania. In April 1914, McGregor also moved six bills for altering the constitution and these were carried in the Senate on 11 June and also sent to the House. Cook’s tactic was largely the same. He put up legislation which also had reasonably popular appeal, but which he knew that the Senate would block. This

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would provide him, as Prime Minister, with the grounds for a future double dissolution. The legislation he chose for this purpose was to restore postal voting and to prohibit preference being given to unionists seeking government employment. These measures were brought before parliament in late October and Cook needed them (or any one of them) to be rejected twice before he could seek a double dissolution. Since the parliament adjourned in December and did not reassemble until April 1914, it was not until June that the Senate finally rejected both bills for the second time and Cook then sought the dissolution of both Houses.33

A leadership challenge Meanwhile, for the first and only time in his term as leader, Fisher’s position came under challenge. When the caucus assembled for its second post-election meeting on 8 July 1913, it conducted the usual election of officers. Fisher was challenged for the position of Chairman (and effectively party leader) by Higgs and also Hughes. The result of the election was forty-two votes for Fisher, eighteen for Higgs and one for Hughes. McGregor was also challenged for leadership of the Senate by five other colleagues but won with an outright thirty-five votes. William Higgs was an interesting choice to stand against Fisher. A printer and one time editor of the Brisbane Worker, Higgs had been elected as a senator for Queensland in 1901 but lost his seat in the 1906 debacle in that state. He had to wait until 1910 to be returned as a MHR for Capricornia. He was regarded, because of his earlier history, as being on the radical side of the party. While he was elected to an expanded caucus executive in 1913, it was with the seventh highest vote out of the eight successful candidates and he had to wait until the 1915 cabinet reshuffle before he had enough support to secure a post. It seems unlikely, therefore, that he could have been a serious threat to Fisher. Almost certainly, his nomination was a protest vote by a section in the caucus over aspects of Fisher’s leadership rather than any serious attempt to remove him. A minority were clearly upset over his failure to win the general election and by what they saw as

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Fisher’s emphasis, while in office, on defence and nation building measures rather than social and industrial legislation. Although Fisher easily survived the challenge, the caucus did flex its muscles by insisting on an expanded executive comprising Fisher and McGregor, plus a Secretary (Watkins), Assistant Secretary (De Largie), plus eight elected members. This weakened Fisher’s previous dominance over this body.34 Hughes’s nomination and his failed bid are also interesting because it seems such an embarrassing result. Hughes was never a particularly popular figure in the caucus. On the same day as he contested the leadership, he also stood for the expanded caucus executive in a huge field of some fifty-five candidates. As a former cabinet minister, twice Acting Prime Minister and unofficial deputy leader, it might have been expected that he would easily stand out in such an election. In fact, on the first ballot he was equal fifth, tying with the former Speaker, Charles McDonald. He did much better in the second ballot when he came in second to Senator Edward Russell but these results do not suggest a man who enjoyed overwhelming popularity. He certainly had little support from the discontented group that had chosen Higgs to challenge Fisher. A substantial majority of the party lined up behind Fisher so Hughes, who might have received some of these votes, had no real power base. He had nominated last, once it was clear that there would be a leadership challenge, but how far this was calculated and how far it was a last-minute bid to throw his hat in the ring is unclear. Hughes is usually seen as a political plotter, but there was an impetuous streak to his character. What the 1913 results did confirm was that, if Hughes had any hope of party leadership, it would not be in a caucus challenge. The dissatisfied had no reason to give him their vote, since they regarded him as more conservative than Fisher, while the bulk of the caucus preferred the status quo. If he wanted to be leader, he would have to wait until Fisher stood down.35

Success or failure? Despite some grumblings and the leadership challenge, Fisher remained firmly in control of his party in 1913. Yet, his pursuit of

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greater Commonwealth powers revealed a serious flaw in his character and political judgment. Although sometimes seen, quite rightly, as being cautious, when Fisher finally made up his mind about something, he would, as Boote later remembered, ‘push forward to the consummation of advanced measures with a resolution that made some of his more ardent followers gasp and hesitate’.36 On many occasions this served him well, but it could also produce a degree of obstinacy bordering on an obsession to get his way. Seeking amendments to the constitution was one such venture that did not do himself or his party any great favours in 1913. That Fisher may have been right, as judged by more recent generations, in seeking the extra powers that he wanted for the Commonwealth, does not lessen the fact that he showed a poor sense of timing in the way that he went about pursuing these issues. It undermined the view that he was a man of astute political tactics and weakened his control over the party room once the government failed to be re-elected. Some historians have suggested that Fisher would have been wise to have retired from the leadership after his defeat in 1913 because his career was then on a downhill spiral and he was not suited to heading a nation at war. Just how far this is a valid judgment of his wartime leadership is the next issue to be considered.37

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Once the parliament had been dissolved on 27 June and the general election set for 5 September, both sides began the campaign, expecting it to be waged on domestic issues. Yet Fisher would soon find himself Prime Minister for the third time in the midst of a European war. This term in office has, like his later period as High Commissioner, usually been seen as unsuccessful and he has been regarded as being out of his depth. Yet, by most criteria, a case can be made that Fisher was quite successful in leading his nation for more than fifteen months. If there is a criticism of him, it is that he let the nation down by leaving rather than staying in office.

The 1914 election The FPLP had left Fisher and Hughes to work out its 1914 campaign strategy and the two men recast the list of priorities from the previous election although they were not restricted to it. Fisher opened this campaign at Bundaberg on 6 July, once again pointing to his financial responsibility and the fact that the Cook ministry appeared to have run up a ‘deficit’ on their budget. He also discussed constitutional reform, arguing that the federal government clearly needed powers to deal with trusts and monopolies. He then promised a range of other reforms including general tariff protection, the initiative referendum,

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adjustments for the old age pension, protecting the Commonwealth Bank, a set of steamers for Tasmania, creating government agencies to market primary products, improving trade with New Zealand, creating a public service superannuation scheme, supporting a state-owned Atlantic cable system, and developing uniform railway gauges from Fremantle to Townsville.1 Although not as extensive as the Gympie program, it was still a substantial set of promises that would enhance national development and provided hip-pocket benefits. The policy of Northern Territory development which Fisher had given prominence in 1913 was downplayed, but not forgotten, while protecting the new Commonwealth Bank and marketing primary products were given a greater emphasis. The two issues that had caused the double dissolution attracted little comment from Fisher, nor did it seem, interest the electorate.2 However, the expectation of an election fought on domestic issues was soon overtaken by the mounting crisis in Europe following the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife at Sarajevo on 28 June. As the campaign wore on, it became obvious that whoever won would be governing a nation at war and this was the real interest of the people. By 1914, there was little real difference between the two main political parties on their attitude towards a possible conflict in Europe. They both accepted the principle that should Britain declare war, Australia would de facto be at war and be expected to do its share, whatever that might involve. Fisher, still not confident of success, wrote to Margaret that even if he was not returned in the election, Labor might not miss much because of the war. Yet he was also determined to seek the opportunity of being Prime Minister for at least one more time, telling his wife, ‘I am ready for any responsibility the country may impose upon me.’ 3 Fisher was also conscious, as the Austro-Hungarian Empire prepared to invade Serbia that the Liberals, as the government, might benefit in such a crisis from being in power. Equally the outcry over his 1911 Stead interview could rebound on his party despite the party’s excellent defence record: Hughes had wired that the Liberals were publishing statements saying that Fisher would pull down the flag in Australia.4

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By 31 July, cables from London indicated that war preparations were necessary and all the leaders spoke for the first time on the impending crisis. Fisher, in his first comments on a possible conflict, pledged that Australia would stand by the mother country and defend her to ‘our last man and our last shilling’.5 This phrase obviously went down so well with the audience at Colac that he repeated it at Benalla and in his Wide Bay electorate, then in the parliament in October and again in the following August and even in Britain in early 1916.6 At the time it seemed an easy thing to promise. Most Australians thought of the war commitment as requiring not much more than what had been done in the past. They would place their navy under the Admiralty and raise some type of military expedition. The Liberals in 1913 had made some political capital out of criticising the costs of Fisher’s defence spending and had reviewed it when coming into office. They had less credibility on this matter than normally would have been expected of a conservative party. This also favoured Fisher, after he had made such a firm and apparently popular commitment to the war and could also point out the success of his previous ministry in its defence preparations.7 With conflict imminent, Hughes suddenly pursued the impractical proposal to call off the election, reassemble the old parliament and support the Liberal government in a united war effort. In part he could envisage such a scheme because the war was not expected to last for very long. These views were put to Fisher in telegrams and letters on 4 and 5 August, but showing his usual commonsense, he rejected it. Yet, the patriotic fervour with which Hughes had promoted such plans to support the war effort, even against his party’s interests, seemed alarming.8 On 5 August (a day earlier still in London), Britain formally declared war on Germany and Austria-Hungary and the last month of the Australian election campaign was conducted in that light. A shock for Fisher and the party occurred on 13 August with the sudden death of McGregor after he had been renominated for the Senate. He had been one of the true stalwarts of the party since 1901 and had often been a companion for Fisher on his various tours around the nation, providing good company as well as entertaining audiences.9 His passing only added to the FPLP’s mounting death toll. The previ-

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ous November, Charlie Frazer died from pneumonia, at age thirtythree, and a week later Ernest Roberts collapsed and died of a heart attack, shortly after leaving the House, having had a fiery encounter with the chairman of committees. Frazer’s death, in particular, ended a brilliant career. Fisher had long regarded him as a star of the future and entrusted him with various cabinet responsibilities.10 The September election overturned the results of 1913. Once again, Fisher comfortably held onto Wide Bay, after spending the last few days before the poll campaigning in the electorate. The ALP did very well in the Senate, securing a massive thirty-one of the thirty-six seats. Only 61.4 per cent of the total electorate turned out to vote for the House of Representatives, with the ALP gaining three rural seats in Victoria (Corio, Grampians and Indi) and two in New South Wales (Riverina and Werriwa), to give it a small but comfortable majority. Possibly the drought had something to do with gaining some of these rural seats, although all five seats experienced increased voter turnouts, that were much larger than their state or the national averages. This suggests the ALP may have attracted its voters to the polling booths more effectively than it did in 1913 especially in New South Wales. Fisher had campaigned solidly in that state in late 1913 for the return of the Holman government and this helped mend fences with the NSW party. Also, more Liberal voters, disenchanted with Cook’s lacklustre performance, probably decided to stay home in 1914 compared to the previous year. Overall, the majority of the electorate clearly trusted Fisher with the task of taking the nation into the war. He had now led his party for three consecutive general elections, in which he had gained the largest share of the popular vote on two occasions and only a fractionally smaller percentage than the Liberals in 1913. These voting trends confirmed Fisher’s view that his party was increasingly the natural voice of the Australian people. As in 1910, Fisher refused to consider accepting a commission from the Governor-General until he had formal confirmation of being re-elected party leader by the caucus.11

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The new ministry The caucus met between 16 and 18 September, and unanimously re-elected Fisher as the leader. It also expressed its condolences to Mrs McGregor on the death her husband, of whom Fisher spoke ‘feelingly’ before the meeting. George Pearce was selected as his replacement to lead the Senate. For the first time since 1907, the deputy leader’s position was recreated and Hughes was elected to it. Although Hughes probably lobbied for such a formal role, the position could only have been created if it was acceptable to Fisher. The senators attempted to obtain four cabinet positions but this was defeated and the caucus then began the process of selecting the new ministry.12 Beneath the surface of party unanimity, there were tensions between emerging factions and personalities as portfolios were fought over by a record number of candidates. The Age reported at least two ‘tickets’ were being circulated. Fisher unofficially backed what was called the ‘moderate ticket’, while a more ‘radical ticket’ advocated supporting Fisher, Hughes and Pearce and then several more members on the party’s left. There had been tickets before in caucus elections for the ministry but these had been relatively quiet and were often personal groupings. The emergence of open tickets with labels such ‘moderate’ versus ‘radical’ in the press did not bode well for future party unity, given the subsequent strains imposed by the war.13 Three ballots were needed before the ministry was finalised, and Fisher again took the offices of Prime Minister and Treasurer, Hughes was Attorney-General, Pearce was Minister for Defence and Frank Tudor was Minister for Trade and Customs. There were three new ministers, with John Arthur as Minister for External Affairs, William Archibald as Minister for Home Affairs and Spence the new Postmaster-General. Albert Gardiner became Vice-President of the Executive Council, and there were three new assistant ministers: Hugh Mahon (who had returned to parliament by taking over Frazer’s seat), Jens Jensen and Edward Russell. This would be the cabinet that survived until Fisher’s own resignation in October 1915, except that Arthur died in December 1914 of kidney failure at the age of only thirty-

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nine (another promising figure lost to the party), and was replaced by Mahon while Jensen became Minister for the Navy in July 1915, when it received its own portfolio.14 The main losers from the previous ministry were O’Malley, Thomas and Findley. O’Malley was, and continued to be, an idiosyncratic character whose popularity waxed and waned with his colleagues and whose handling of the national capital development had been controversial. Findley had only served as Minister without Portfolio in the Senate and was therefore vulnerable to the ambitions of those around him. Thomas had just made it into the ministry in 1910 over Mahon and, while a competent administrator, suffered by comparison to Batchelor when he took over the external affairs portfolio in 1911. Among the newcomers, Gardiner was a surprising choice as he was regarded as the most radical member of the Senate. (This did not stop him being a long time admirer of Fisher.) The rest were a combination of older members such as Mahon and Spence and some potential rising stars such as Arthur (elected in 1913) and Russell (only thirty-six). The senior levels of the government were again in the hands of the men who had been ministers since 1908 or even earlier. Fisher was, at least outwardly, at the height of his powers. Only those men who remembered Chris Watson accepting a deputy in 1905 to help with his workload might have wondered over the reasons why Fisher was apparently happy to re-create this post.15

Organising the war effort The first tasks for Fisher in September were to plan the Australian war effort, as well as deal with any effects the conflict might have on Australia. The Cook ministry had made a number of decisions already that included automatically placing the ships of the Royal Australian Navy under the command of the Admiralty and then offering to the British government a volunteer force of 20 000 men for overseas service. When this offer was accepted on 6 August, William Bridges, the former commandant of Duntroon, was appointed to organise this force. Bridges was responsible for drafting the rules and conditions

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under which it would serve and its name (the Australian Imperial Force), which he recommended to the government for authorisation. A smaller force of some 2000 men had also been hastily assembled by the Chief of the General Staff, Colonel JG Legge, and on the 19 August, the Australian Naval and Military Expedition, guarded by the RAN, sailed out of Sydney harbour. Before the end of September, it had captured all of German New Guinea and the island of Nauru. The Australian losses in this first engagement of the war were six dead and four wounded. The main German naval squadron in the Pacific sailed away to the east rather than face HMAS Australia or the Japanese navy and was eventually destroyed by a British naval force in the south Atlantic, off the Falkland Islands.16 By the beginning of October, Australia had secured control over nearby German possessions and largely removed the threat from the German naval squadron to any of its coastal cities. By the terms of the German surrender, the Australian government expected that it would also acquire the German islands north of the equator. However, Japan had declared war on Germany on 23 August and its forces swiftly occupied the Caroline and Marshall Islands. Fisher was eventually informed by the British Government, via the Governor-General, in January 1915, that these would most likely pass into Japanese hands.17 He largely kept this matter to himself, only hinting to the parliament in April and the cabinet in May that this matter would have to wait until the end of the war before it could be resolved. In fact, by early 1917, in return for Japanese naval assistance against German U-boats, the British government effectively agreed to support Japan retaining future control of these islands.18

Creating the AIF In organising the AIF, Bridges had deliberately suggested a force of 20 000 men to ensure it had one main infantry division and a brigade of cavalry or light horse. In this way, it was large enough to operate as a distinctive Australian unit rather than being broken up to serve within the British Army as in the Boer War. Bridges also imposed a

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quota from the various military districts of Australia to ensure that the force was national in character. At least half the men were to be drawn from those already serving in the defence forces, while the rest were expected to have had some military experience or training.19 Bridges always expected that his force would undergo its final training nearer to the battlefront in Europe, and by the end of October had managed to organise enough ships to assemble in Western Australia at Albany. They were joined there by a New Zealand contingent and then headed across the Indian Ocean to Egypt. Lord Kitchener recommended that, because of a shortage of suitable training grounds in England, the troops train in Egypt before moving on to France in 1915.20 Fisher was concerned over the lack of adequate naval protection for the troops and despite Admiralty urging, refused to allow the force to sail until this was provided by the British, Australian and Japanese navies.21 His concerns were quite justified. The convoy left on 1 November 1915, and nine days later near the Cocos Islands, encountered the light cruiser Emden which had detached itself from the German naval squadron in order to raid merchant shipping. It was destroyed by HMAS Sydney, one of the escorting cruisers, in the first naval engagement by a warship of the Australian navy. Fisher thought this victory demonstrated ‘the value and necessity of Dominion Fleets’ and was pleased that the New Zealand government was now in favour of the Pacific Fleet, having originally opposed the creation of a separate Australian navy.22

Funding and fighting the war Organising the military forces was one issue, but paying for the costs of the war represented another problem. During the election campaign, Cook had called a Premier’s Conference for 11−14 August (which Fisher and Hughes also attended) to discuss the financing of the war plus the problem that the state governments normally relied on British loans, now uncertain, to finance many of their public works projects. It was agreed that the Commonwealth would concentrate on the costs of the war but would also try to assist the states to carry out their public works. The states would also pass legislation to control prices that were

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expected to rise with wartime restrictions and shortages. The federal budget, however, had to wait until after the election when Fisher set out to review Commonwealth finances. The Cook government had left a much smaller surplus than Fisher in 1913. He now faced the prospect of declining Commonwealth income in the coming year due to an expected fall-off in customs revenue, so it was unlikely the costs of the war could be met out of normal revenue. Fisher informed the Governor-General, just before budget day, that he thought the financial situation was good but that the costs would be enormous compared to previous years.23 However the only new revenue raising measures in Fisher’s budget were to increase land tax by altering its graduation and placing succession duties on all estates of more than £1000. If these seemed rather unrealistic measures for paying for the war, its length and expense could not have been imagined in the last few months of 1914.24 Of more immediate concern to Fisher was the promises made to the states to bail them out of their public works dilemmas. This bill ran into millions of pounds and was beyond the revenue base of the Commonwealth. It was because of these earlier promises of Cook that Fisher sought a loan from the London money market. At first this met with little success, as the British Exchequer had strong objections to money being lent for public works projects in time of war. A series of telegrams in October 1914 between Fisher and the British government achieved nothing. Then Fisher hit on the idea of proposing that the British government include in their loans raised for the Dominions, a war loan of £18 million for his government. This was acceptable to the British, and Fisher, at the subsequent Premier’s Conference in November, agreed to lend all the states (except Queensland, which did not need it) the full £18 million for their public works, provided they did not borrow any further money over the next year.25 All these measures only solved the financial problems in the short term, because the war continued unabated throughout 1915 with increasing costs. In his last budget presented on 3 December 1914, Fisher estimated expenditures of nearly £37 million, including nearly £12 million directly on the war. The revenue for the coming year was

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expected to be around £24 million, so the mounting deficit would have to be met by a £10.5 million loan from the British government and a £2.5 million advance out of treasury bills. In fact, the total war costs for 1914−15 were just over £15 million and the Commonwealth ended with a deficit of nearly £18 million. Still, Fisher’s estimates were quite good, considering that when Higgs took over from him in late 1915 he estimated Commonwealth expenditures for the next twelve months to be a staggering £89 million. In reality, he badly miscalculated and the expenditure for that year was only £76 million, leaving £13 million to be put towards the costs of the war for 1916−17 (where it was still put to good use). Fisher remained annoyed that the various states during 1915 were still seeking London loans for their projects. He felt that it was unfair that the Canadian, New Zealand and South African governments could deal as single entities with London on funding issues, while Australia had seven competing voices. He and Hughes tried, with mixed success, to have all the states agree to only seek overseas loans through the Commonwealth. Fisher also decided that the Commonwealth would go directly to the Australian public for a series of war loans to the value of £38 million. It was here that the Commonwealth Bank came into its own, by helping organise the loans as well as underwriting costs for the Australian government for war payments to Britain. The final details of the war loans were not finalised until Fisher had left office but the first one, in late 1915, intended to raise £5 million, was over-scribed to £13 million. Over time and through a series of loans that extended past the war years (the last in 1924), the Commonwealth government raised several hundred million pounds from the public to help meet the enormous costs of the war.26 There were also obvious matters of national security that the government needed to enforce once war had broken out. In October 1914, Hughes introduced the War Precautions Act into parliament. Although he was later criticised by sections of caucus for not consulting with them beforehand, the legislation was enacted in record time, with little debate or any real opposition from either side of the chamber. Hughes was certainly the drafter of the Act but Fisher clearly supported him, arguing that the government needed such powers to

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deal with a potential clever and cunning enemy.27 Supporters of Fisher later saw his support of this measure as something of an embarrassment and against his usual liberal views on individual rights, because the Act gave the Commonwealth sweeping powers. Among other things, the Commonwealth imposed control over newspapers and general censorship in the community, it could penalise the spreading of reports likely to cause public alarm and its regulations allowed for restriction and internment of enemy aliens, and later prevented them from holding shares or leases on land. As well, a host of other regulations were proclaimed, ranging from failing to close premises selling liquor when requested to do so by the military, tearing down recruiting posters, spreading false rumours or harbouring deserters There were to be nearly 3442 prosecutions under the Act, with penalties ranging from a caution or small fine to terms of imprisonment for between three and six months. What couldn’t be quite covered by these regulations was supplemented in 1914 by a Trading with the Enemy Act and an Enemy Contracts Annulment Act. Fisher and Hughes had certainly legislated to protect Australia from potential enemies but just how necessary most of these measures were is problematic.

Domestic problems Fisher, of course, wanted his government to continue with normal business as far as possible.28 When parliament met on 8 October, the Governor-General had outlined a series of war measures but also included many of Fisher’s previous domestic election promises, including constitutional reform, tariff protection, the initiative referendum, adjustments of pensions, protecting the Commonwealth Bank, changes to the arbitration system, new marriage and divorce laws, steamers for Tasmania, and uniform railway gauges. Yet the costs of the war, its effects on the economy and the amount of ministerial time it took up made most of this program increasingly unlikely. Even in April 1915, Fisher was still hoping to start work on a uniform railway gauge between Brisbane and Adelaide but this never eventuated.29 The Cook government and then Fisher had tried to maintain the nation’s

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wartime gold supply for overseas debts and so restricted gold exports. To further build up gold supplies and to finance public works, they persuaded the banks and the states to lodge their gold reserves with the Commonwealth in return for its paper currency. In the twelvemonth period from June 1914, there was 300 per cent increase in note issues and while some of this may have been justified, much of it also contributed to inflation, given wartime shortages. Prices for many basic commodities rose by up to 50 per cent in this period and state legislation, often emasculated by conservative upper houses, proved useless in preventing this.30 The government was kept busy dealing with a range of immediate problems. Although the war disrupted shipping and trade, the demand for Australia’s raw materials soon led to increasing export prices but this put further pressure on domestic prices as well as problems with marketing the goods overseas. During 1915, the government effectively took control of the wheat crop via a new Commonwealth Wheat Board which pooled all the state wheat crops and made advances to farmers on the future sales, as well as arranging shipping and marketing. The sugar crop was normally below national needs but by 1915, with rising international prices that made exports attractive, this threatened to skyrocket domestic prices. It was dealt with by placing an embargo on exports and the local sugar crop was taken by the Queensland government and milled for a fixed price, while the Commonwealth then set a retail price only slightly higher than the pre-war level. Finally, the federal government intervened to rearrange the base metals industries of lead, copper and zinc, which before the war had been under the control of a small number of German firms. Under Hughes’s energetic guidance, the whole industry was reordered and, as we shall see, new international agreements with the British government were negotiated. These efforts did not prevent shortages nor always keep prices down, but they were sensible approaches to immediate problems and in some cases, such as the sugar system, proved attractive to farmers and consumers alike for decades after the war.31

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A New Zealand holiday On 23 December 1914, an exhausted Fisher left Melbourne with a small party for Sydney to catch the liner Makura to Auckland and a New Zealand visit. He was away for nearly two months, during which time Hughes served as Acting Prime Minister for the third occasion. Officially, Fisher wanted to visit New Zealand to consult with his closest ally on the war effort. He believed there was a need for the Dominions to be consulted by London, and present a united front on matters of mutual interest. He hoped to convince the New Zealand government to create a joint defence fleet and talked about future co-operation of the two countries by holding annual meetings of the two prime ministers, along with the premiers of the Australian states.32 But perhaps the main reason for the visit was that Fisher’s health was clearly giving way. Even during the election campaign, he had written to Margaret that, despite drawing good crowds, he was in poor health and suffering from the strain of mastering facts and putting these over to the people. This suggests that he had started to face difficulties with his memory.33 The task of organising a wartime budget and overseeing legislation to place the nation on a wartime footing only added to this strain. Hughes, also not very well at this time, urged Fisher to rest for as long as possible and reminded him of the fate of Batchelor, who kept too much to a busy schedule.34 Whether this represented a genuine concern by Hughes over Fisher’s health or simply his wish to continue as Acting Prime Minister is difficult to judge. Fisher arrived in Auckland on 30 December, where a Labour delegation greeted him and complained about the failure of the New Zealand arbitration system. Perhaps to their surprise, Fisher pointed out that the system in Australia was worse, being expensive and laborious, especially with the dual system of government: ‘The difficulties here are not as great as in Australia, where people have spent half their time trying to circumvent a weak and difficult Constitution’. 35 After several days in Rotorua where Fisher was ceremoniously made a Maori chief, his party visited Hamilton and then enjoyed a Wanganui River trip before moving onto Wellington.36 Fisher was interviewed

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by the press and took pride the performance of the Australian navy in recent actions, while suggesting that Canada and South Africa could have done more for Pacific naval defence. He also raised the issue of wanting to hold the expected Imperial Conference in London during 1915, even though he was largely alone in this view among the Dominions. In subsequent talks in Wellington with William Massey, his New Zealand counterpart, they both agreed that a conference was needed to settle Pacific naval defence issues and foster Imperial unity. Massey also hoped that there could be closer economic ties with Australia, although both men recognised that these would need to wait until after the war.37 Fisher also found the time in New Zealand useful to catch up with an old friend. Hugh Murdoch had migrated to New Zealand from Crosshouse and met up with Fisher in Auckland, as well as spending time with him in Rotorua. Murdoch also got along famously with Keith Murdoch, no relation, who was part of the small group travelling with Fisher.38 Before the outbreak of the war, Chris Watson had been busy, with Fisher’s support, organising a company to establish a national labour daily newspaper and Murdoch had agreed to join the Sydney office as one of the news editors. Fisher’s official program in New Zealand was not a particularly demanding one. Once he moved down to Queenstown on the South Island, most of his time was spent on holidays. He eventually returned to Sydney to be met by Hughes, who had provoked a mini-crisis with the Governor-General by deciding to move the entire cabinet to Sydney where they could also greet Fisher on his arrival. However, Hughes had neglected to inform Munro-Ferguson of this decision and the Governor-General thought this move might breach the constitution, although it seems he was actually miffed at the lack of courtesy from Hughes. Fisher finally returned to Melbourne by train from Sydney on 3 February and, while much improved in health, increasingly during the next few months he tended to turn over more of his day-to-day administrative duties to his deputy. Already there was talk that Fisher would not stay on in his position but would soon be taking a post in London.39

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19 Resignation

Fisher, along with Edmund Barton and Robert Menzies, are so far the only Australian prime ministers to resign at a time of their own choosing. In Fisher’s case, however, there has been controversy as to how far this was voluntary and how far he was pushed. As we shall see, the evidence suggests that an unhappy Fisher largely chose the timing of his retirement and in his usual shrewd way, had been laying out the options for such a move well in advance.

Controversy over Deakin While still on holidays in New Zealand, Fisher was to find his government caught up in a controversy over Alfred Deakin. By the outbreak of war, Deakin had recovered enough of his strength to once again undertake public duties. The Cook government appointed him to head a Royal Commission into Food Supplies and Trade and Industry during the war. Labor was never particularly supportive of the inquiry, which met thirty-six times, before Deakin was requested to resign in November. He had also accepted, again at Cook’s request, chairmanship of the Australian Pavilion at the Panama-Pacific Exposition to be held in San Francisco in 1915 to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal. The Fisher government decided that it would go ahead with the Pavilion, despite the war, since so much money had already been

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spent on the project. Fisher also liked the idea of being able to further Australian–US ties via the Exposition. He agreed to Deakin continuing as chairman despite some grumblings within the party. But in late 1914, it was brought to the government’s notice that the Secretary of the project, then in San Francisco, had twice urged Deakin to cancel it because of the war. For whatever reason, Deakin had failed to mention this in his report on the future of the Exposition. Hugh Mahon, the responsible minister, was enraged by what he considered to be Deakin’s deceit and seriously thought of sacking him. The cabinet, at a meeting in January, were also firmly of the view that Deakin had misled them and referred the matter to Fisher. He thought it would be a ‘costly blunder’ not to support the Exposition or Deakin’s chairmanship. The Governor-General had also written to him, expressing his concerns over the dispute and claiming, with some degree of justice, that, ‘the tone adopted by the Minister for External Affairs was, I think, open to criticism’.1 There the matter rested, although when Deakin left Sydney for North America on 21 January, contrary to custom, no cabinet minister or senior official was there to see him off. Hughes, as an afterthought, cabled Fisher and suggested he tell the New Zealand government that Deakin would be in Auckland by the following Monday and they might wish to meet him. Presumably Mahon, who would normally take care of this matter either refused to do it or Hughes preferred not to ask him.2 Deakin’s time in North America went badly, as Mahon, after a short break, resumed his vendetta. In April he recalled the Secretary and had a personal acquaintance take over the post. Deakin found this interference intolerable and resigned from his position in early May. He and Mahon then engaged in acrimonious correspondence for several months over Deakin’s expense account. While Fisher expressed sympathy to Deakin, he made no effort to sort out the mess with Mahon and had refused to read any of the letters that passed between the two men.3 Mahon had pursued Deakin in his usual vindictive manner, but knew he was on safe grounds because the entire cabinet felt they had been deceived. Behind these events lay the memories of May 1909 and the fact that many, including Mahon, had never forgiven Deakin

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for what they regarded as his betrayal. While Fisher would never have pursued anyone in the same way, his comments over the years suggest he continued to share this distrust of Deakin and he clearly did not go out of his way to assist him in this dispute. Failing health meant Deakin never again held a public position before his death in 1919. It was a sad ending for a man who had once been an admired friend of many in the labour movement.4

Gallipoli In early March 1915, both the Australian and New Zealand governments were informed by London that their troops in Egypt would no longer be despatched to France but were destined for the Dardanelles campaign in Turkey. After that time, Fisher heard nothing more until after the landings had taken place on 25 April. He was able to inform the House of Representatives four days later of the landings and that the progress of the troops was satisfactory but neither he nor the Governor-General had any real information on the campaign.5 Fisher remained proud of the performance of the AIF throughout the Gallipoli campaign but this initial pride was tempered by the long lists of casualties that began arriving in Australia from 3 May and his frustration at the limited information supplied by London on what was happening on the peninsular. The government encouraged and, to some degree, rode on an upsurge in patriotic pride with the events at Gallipoli to ensure an increase in voluntary enlistments for the AIF. It also gave homecoming wounded veterans preference in employment, all things being equal, even over unionists (although they were encouraged to join one). So successful was the flood of new volunteers that in the middle of June, the government felt it prudent to ask the British government whether it could actually accept as many men as Australia could recruit. When it was obvious that every man was needed, Fisher decided in July to institute a survey through the War Census Act (passed on 23 July) which would ascertain the resources of Australia − mainly its male resources − to maximise recruitment.6 Yet Gallipoli also spurred the creation in September of the Univer-

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sal Services League that called for the introduction of conscription for overseas service. Chris Watson was one of the key organisers of this body in New South Wales, and its proposals seemed to have widespread community support. However, such calls raised alarm among many trade unionists, as they feared it would lead to industrial conscription as well. After all, many Australian workers were volunteering to work in England in the munitions industry during the war, and if soldiers could be conscripted then so could labouring men. The union movement was particularly suspicious of the purposes of the War Census, which was collected during this month. Fisher went on public record at a meeting with trade union leaders on 24 September irrevocably opposing conscription, as did Hughes. The information from the War Census became available to the new Hughes ministry in November and would lead to a tireless recruiting campaign, along with a direct appeal to every male of military age asking them if they were prepared to enlist now or give reasons why they would not. As the Gallipoli campaign came to an end and the recruiting drives gathered momentum, AIF forces were far larger by early 1916 than twelve months previously.7 Fisher remained frustrated by the lack of real information from London on either the general progress of the war or on what was happening at Gallipoli. As early as February 1915, when Chris Watson had left on a business trip, Fisher had asked him to report on the London situation. Keir Hardie had been of no help when Fisher wrote to him, telling Fisher that he might have better luck, as a Prime Minister, in getting information.8 Fisher also asked Watson to press the case in London for some type of meeting of the Dominions, even an informal one, during 1915. Watson reported in May that he had raised this matter at a parliamentary luncheon and would also discuss it with the Canadian government when he reached Ottawa.9 In September, Fisher then asked Keith Murdoch, who was being sent by Pearce to Gallipoli to report on inadequacies in mail services for the troops, to secretly report back to him on the situation. Murdoch’s controversial and sometimes inaccurate twenty-five page letter was received by Fisher in October and it denounced the whole campaign as a disaster.10

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He blamed the failure on incompetent British military leadership and he outlined the serious problems facing the troops, including their urgent need for adequate munitions, food, water and warm clothes. Fisher showed the letter to Hughes and Pearce and eventually another copy went to Asquith, who had it printed for the British cabinet. In December, the troops were finally withdrawn without any casualties − almost certainly the most successful part of the whole operation. The Australian troops returned to their training base in Egypt where they were joined by thousands of fresh reinforcements and prepared for their new destination − the Western Front in France.11

The Adelaide Conference Although Fisher’s third term was often stressful, it was not all gloom and doom. On 31 May 1915 he attended his final Federal Conference, held in Adelaide just a week after TJ Ryan led Labor into power in Queensland for the first time. The ALP now held power in every state but Victoria as well as controlling the national government. In Adelaide, Fisher quickly squashed attempts by Holman to sidetrack the referendum issue and delegates passed a motion, strongly backed by Hughes (attending his first and only conference), urging the placing of the referendum before the people at the earliest opportunity. In October 1914, Fisher had told the House that it was a disgrace that the referendum questions had not been put to the people at the recent general election.12 When taunted that it had been rejected twice before, he pointed out that the last time it was rejected by such a narrow vote that he was sure that public opinion had since then come around to Labor’s point of view. However, this statement was probably for caucus consumption, as Fisher wanted to wait for the next federal conference to again try to bring the states, especially NSW, into line. Although the conference was critical of the slowness of some government departments in providing preference for unionists and other wartime problems facing workers, on the positive side, it finally established the long discussed Federal Executive. It also supported the concept of an international tribunal designed to prevent war by having

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sufficient powers to settle international disputes. This was carried not merely by the left of the party but by Fisher and Hughes who were equally supportive of such international mediation. Overall, despite criticisms of his government, Fisher had every reason to be pleased with his last conference, which had been held in such difficult circumstances. In his usual manner, he took its deliberations seriously and within a few days of its meeting had announced to caucus that he would introduce the legislation for the referendum into parliament. He did this on 18 June, and eventually set the poll for the following December.13 To further ease some of the caucus discontent on war issues, Fisher also agreed to expand his ministry to allow the navy to have its own portfolio (and take pressure off Pearce), and created a War Committee that would have twelve members, six from each party, plus a presiding minister to consider all questions relating to the war that were referred to it by the government. The six Labor members were elected by caucus from the backbench, thus giving them at least the appearance of being consulted over war matters. Fisher certainly continued to govern his party with the knowledge that he had the backing of most of his colleagues, and tried to alleviate the worst internal stresses and strains within party ranks. Yet this did not stop the growing rumours that he would soon be resigning as Prime Minister, to take the post of High Commissioner in London.14

Resignation Sir George Reid had been appointed to a five-year term as High Commissioner by Deakin but in 1913, Reid briefly returned to Australia for a wedding and to lobby for an extension of time. The Cook government agreed to a twelve-month extension but Reid also received verbal assurances that he could expect at least another two years on top of this. Even with the return of the ALP in 1914, Reid still hoped for extra time and eventually offered to serve until the end of the war without any salary.15 Fisher rejected advice that Reid be retained and had Mahon write back to him in April 1915, dismissing his requests

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for any further time. Although the position of High Commissioner was already a political appointment, the role played by Reid had been that of an activist public servant on behalf of whichever party was in power. He had performed this bipartisan task quite well and publicly defended Fisher’s land tax despite considering it a socialist measure. But Fisher, from as early as 1909, had argued that the High Commissioner should be a direct conduit to the British government on behalf of the ministry of the day and familiar with local developments.16 As time went on, his view seemed to harden, probably due to his frustrations with other institutions such as the High Court failing to reflect the government’s views in its judgments.17 By June 1915, Mahon told parliament that Reid was not being reappointed because he had been away for so long from Australia that he was out of touch with local opinions and in early October Fisher told the Age that it was right that a member of the ruling party should hold the position.18 In December 1914, the Governor-General reported to London of unrest in caucus because some members preferred the more activist Hughes to Fisher as leader. In fact the source of the story appears to have been Hughes. He had even suggested that Fisher would consider taking the post of High Commissioner, although Munro-Ferguson doubted that he had any desire to move.19 In the following April, the Governor-General reported that Fisher had dispelled any suggestion of his leaving in an interview with him, even though more rumours were circulating in the press. Watson, in London, certainly heard these stories and wrote to Fisher in May, inquiring as to their veracity and urging him to stay as Prime Minister unless he felt too ‘knocked out in health’.20 The source of these continuing rumours into 1915 remains unclear. Munro-Ferguson believed that they were probably being circulated by Fisher’s cabinet colleagues. It is likely that it was still Hughes, who was using the rumours as a way of pressing Fisher to take the London post. Despite some grumblings in the party over Fisher’s health and leadership style, he remained unchallenged as leader, so it was clearly in Hughes’s interest for Fisher to leave voluntarily. But it is also possible some of the rumours were now being started by Fisher’s allies in

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cabinet. They were opposed to him making such a move, expected adverse public reaction from such an obvious political appointment and feared there might be a cabinet spill on his departure. As time went on they may even have been encouraged to circulate them by Fisher. He certainly did little, if anything, to quash the mounting rumours when he could easily have done so. In August, he told parliament in an answer to a question that all he knew about the matter was what he read in the press. This suggests that he was quite willing to have them circulating so he could gauge reactions in the party and among the public. It then left open the option of him taking the post before the end of the year. After all, he was the one, not Hughes, who had firmly opposed giving Reid any further extension of time and thus opened up the possibility of a new appointment being made before the end of 1915.21 When Fisher’s appointment was finally announced at the end of October, the Governor-General reported that it had been an open secret for months. Indeed, George Lochran from the Gympie branch of the party had already sent a letter of congratulations to Fisher even before his formal appointment.22 This was not surprising since Fisher and Margaret had recently visited Queensland before returning to Sydney to launch the new cruiser, HMAS Brisbane, then toured the Canberra site and inspected the Jervis Bay naval facilities before returning to Melbourne. The trip had all the hallmarks of a final official tour of duty.23 At a full meeting of the caucus on 30 October, Fisher announced his resignation and his appointment as High Commissioner (this was made public after the meeting) on the grounds of the strains on his health. Fisher had clearly judged the mood well, for the decision was generally welcomed within Australia and Britain. Hughes was then nominated as replacement leader, clearly with Fisher’s firm endorsement, and he was unanimously elected. Hughes had hoped that Fisher’s resignation would mean only one new minister needed to be elected. Instead, the vacancy led to a spill for all the cabinet positions. Archibald and Spence lost their posts, although all other ministers were returned, along with Higgs, William Webster and O’Malley. Spence and Archibald had previously some difficulties with various

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union officials, some caucus members and the recent Adelaide conference over their apparent slowness in granting preference for unionists in employment. O’Malley appears to have been one of the main agitators in caucus on this matter and particularly over Archibald’s handling of Home Affairs, but the main reason for their defeat had less to do with industrial principles than the ambitions of so many fellow members of the caucus.24

Why resign? A long-standing interpretation of Fisher’s resignation has been that he resigned because he was engaged in a bitter confrontation during 1915 with his deputy and was shunted aside by Hughes.25 This seems unlikely, although the origins of this view partially began with Fisher on his return to Australia in 1921. He told Norman Makin that he had had a violent argument with Hughes in 1915 and offered him the High Commissionership but when he refused, Fisher announced he would take it and immediately told the caucus and parliament. Fisher’s notebook indicates he had an ‘important conversation’ with Hughes but gives no indication of what was said; and it took place on 17 September, over a month before his resignation. At the time, Fisher was upset with Hughes that he had broken an agreement Fisher had made with Cook not to raise certain legislation in the parliament. He probably did exchange harsh words with his deputy and may have even suggested the London post to Hughes, knowing full well he would never take it. It seems unlikely, however, that Fisher made a spur of the moment decision to go to London in the manner he later described or that Hughes was able to simply push him into it.26 Indeed, the evidence suggests that Fisher had been mulling over a possible move to London for some time although it is possible that he told Hughes of his decision to resign at the September meeting. Why then would Fisher tell such a story to Makin? One obvious explanation was that, by 1921, Fisher did not want to have been seen to have planned to leave Australia for London and hand over his leadership to Hughes. In light of what happened in 1916, this looked like a very poor decision. At least the

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explanation that he lost his temper and on the spur of the moment rashly decided on the move was a better option. His failing memory may have convinced him that this had really happened in 1915. Yet the more likely explanations for his resignation were a combination of personal issues and political factors associated with the war effort. Fisher’s health problems were mounting under the pressure of the war and the extra work load. Although he returned in better health after his holiday in New Zealand, the next few months would be a difficult period for him. The casualty rates at Gallipoli and the campaign’s lack of success added to Fisher’s level of stress. Malcolm Shepherd noted that Fisher had soon developed that tired feeling that had been seen during his last term as Prime Minister.27 He need to rest at Oakleigh Hall for long periods and Shepherd brought over official papers for him to sign. He developed a severe winter cold that led to a lingering chest infection and his recovery was certainly hindered by the stresses of the job.28 When Fisher did appear in parliament on 12 August the Age commented upon the lack of robustness in both his appearance and his voice. Munro-Ferguson reported in late August that Fisher was suffering from ‘overstrain’ and this might see him take the High Commissionership.29 In 1919, Fisher confided to Higgs that ‘I was more run down in health when I left the Commonwealth than my friends knew’.30 Back in Australia in 1921 Fisher, commenting on the sudden death of TJ Ryan, publicly admitted, for the first time, that the stress of leadership was a problem. ‘I felt it when I led the party. If I had not gone to England when I did, I suppose I would have also gone under before now.’31 Such health concerns were quite significant issues for Fisher, especially as he had by 1914 noticed the first signs of lapses in his memory and his ability to master details. In the past, he had found travel, and his removal from the day-to-day strains of his office, alleviated these problems. He probably hoped that a new role in London might provide the circuit-breaker on his deteriorating health. At the same time, the reality was that the post in London would be financially rewarding for the Fisher family. He was now a man of fifty-three but because of his late marriage had to support a family of six young children, the eldest then only thirteen, and another was on

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the way. The costs of buying Oakleigh Hall were still stretching the family budget. His position as Prime Minister was secure from Hughes but not necessarily from the next election in only two years. He had narrowly lost the election in 1913, and with the problems resulting from wartime disruptions, there was no guarantee he would win again in 1917. In contrast the High Commissionership guaranteed Fisher a comfortable annual income of £3000 for a minimum of five years along with another £2000 a year in order to maintain his official residence. He also appears to have had an expectation that, like Reid, he would probably get a one- or even two-year extension to his term, making it even more attractive. This financial security was an important factor for a man who had diligently worked to acquire financial success and expected his children would enjoy a better start in life than he had in Ayrshire.32 More importantly, there was the problem of holding both the nation and his party together in a time of increasing divisions. The party’s left, reflecting many in the trade union movement, were increasingly critical of the way in which the war was diverting resources away from social reforms and rising prices were lowering living standards. These criticisms were strongly voiced at the Adelaide Federal Conference, and while Fisher shared these concerns, he did not put them ahead of the need for a major war effort. Yet the increasing focus by many on the left on class divisions and differences, which the war exacerbated, also disturbed and challenged Fisher because he had long thought of the working class, the national interest and his party’s interests as all being as one. He also made two tactical mistakes in September/October 1914 by not reinstituting the caucus committee system of legislative review that had worked so well during his previous term, and in accepting the continuation of an enlarged caucus executive first adopted in 1913. No doubt, the need for urgent war legislation meant less time for legislative reviews but it also led to mounting grievances within caucus at being shut out of this process. Fisher’s previous control over caucus while in government was eroded by the new and larger executive system and therefore the caucus itself became less manageable.33 During the first part of 1915, many in

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caucus vented their frustrations by engaging in what one historian has aptly described as ‘guerrilla warfare’, directed, not against Fisher, but against Hughes and Pearce, the senior ministers dealing with most of the important war-related issues. Hughes received considerable criticism over the lack of consultation over the War Precautions Act, as well as the nature of the Act itself, despite few in the party voicing any objections to the bill at the time. Pearce was also questioned over ongoing problems over the treatment of Australian troops courtmarshalled over earlier incidents in Rabaul. McDougall resigned from the caucus executive on 10 June in protest at government policies, while Anstey claimed to have temporarily left the party as a protest even though he still attended a number of caucus meetings. Fisher found it necessary on 26 August to admonish caucus over the lack of party discipline after a number of members attacked and even moved amendments in the House on the government’s proposed Widows and War Mothers Pensions Act.34 In reality, despite the criticisms, the more radical members in caucus stood by Fisher during 1915, as it was obvious that the alternative leader would be Hughes and he was a known hardliner on the war effort. However, it should also be recognised that these mounting criticisms made the task of governing more difficult. Pearce ran into an agitated Fisher in the corridor after one stormy parliamentary session, and pointing to the House told him he would never go back in there again. For Fisher, the master of compromise and consensus, the task of preserving party unity became increasingly difficult. He also took much criticism to heart, which also made life unpleasant. During the year he and Pearce instituted court action for libel against a John Spencer who had claimed in public they were both in the pay of Germany and had stopped munitions production. The two had to pay court costs when Spencer subsequently denied making such claims and the jury believed him, perhaps because he had lost a son at Gallipoli.35 To add to Fisher’s problems, while he praised the volunteer efforts in his speech in August on the first anniversary of the outbreak of war, by September the newly-formed Universal Services League was increasing its campaign for the introduction of conscription to support

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the AIF. After all, Labor had supported and enlarged the universal training scheme, a form of domestic conscription, and the leap to the idea of conscription for overseas service did not seem a large one for many to make anymore. As the party itself began to divide over the war and its direction, it required a pro-active prime minister to lead the government. Fisher probably sensed that he lacked such a drive because of temperament, the leadership model he had adopted and his health problems. His solution was to turn the leadership of the party and nation over to Hughes because he hoped that his more dynamic and energetic deputy would give the nation a better sense of direction. In the meantime, Fisher could still play his part by representing Australia in London and possibly improve levels of communication that he had previously found so frustrating.36

Wartime Prime Minister: An evaluation George Pearce, even after the bitterness of the ALP split, still felt Hughes had made a better wartime leader than Fisher.37 This has been the view of many historians who have seen Fisher as out of his depth and have admired Hughes’s tenacity in pursuing the war effort. There were also probably a large number of FPLP members in October 1915 who felt that Fisher had stayed too long as leader. Yet these same people, within less than twelve months, would look back with fondness on Fisher’s leadership and wished that he had stayed at his post. Pearce was forced to concede that Hughes, for all his energy and drive, was an individualist who rarely consulted his colleagues, was chaotic in his administration and enjoyed keeping power close to his chest. This was almost the antithesis of the way Fisher ran his government. It is also hard to see how bitterly dividing his party and the nation over conscription but actually producing no more men for the AIF than the volunteer system made Hughes a better wartime leader. Indeed, a case can be made that, Fisher, as in other areas of his career, has been underestimated in his role as wartime prime minister. It was never a happy period for him, yet when he retired in October 1915, he had done an excellent job, in trying circumstances

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and with increasing health problems, in conducting the war effort. As in the past, he set out his wartime agenda for preparing the nation and got his cabinet minsters to work together, even if he was not able to produce the same team spirit that existed in his previous ministry. The navy, which he helped create, had performed well; the German possessions in New Guinea were in Australian hands; and the AIF had been created, rapidly reinforced and had conducted itself admirably under the difficult conditions of Gallipoli. At home, the nation’s finances were in fairly good shape, army camps were being constructed, government factories were already established for various war production and even a steel industry was about to begin at Newcastle. Many of Hughes’s later achievements in shipping, metals, wheat sales and even the treatment of the AIF could just as easily been carried out by him in his role as Deputy Prime Minister (as he was doing in 1915) or by Fisher. Indeed, in some of these areas, such as the care of the soldiers, Fisher performed an admirable role while serving as High Commissioner. Hughes as the new Prime Minister was at pains to emphasise that his ministry would be continuing the policies which Fisher had put into place. He might pursue these policies with more vigour but essentially it was business as usual which, in itself, represented a tribute to Fisher’s previous leadership. As Donald Horne pointed out, the test for any wartime leader is his prudence and humanity and in these areas Fisher was exceptionally able.38 Of course, neither Fisher nor anyone else, Hughes included, could have predicted in 1915 the depth of the bitterness that would be unleased over conscription in 1916. But in realising his limitations, Fisher also underestimated his strengths as leader. He was able to hand over office to his successor with the outward unanimity of the caucus, with a comfortable majority in the House, a huge majority in the Senate and with his party in control of five of the six state governments. As Weller (the editor of the Caucus Minutes) rightly points out, by the time he resigned, Fisher ‘was clearly frustrated and unsettled by the criticism within caucus, but it is a tribute to his ability to manage caucus that, directly he resigned and Hughes became leader, the unity of caucus began to

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crack’.39 In that sense, for all of his unhappiness with the situation, Fisher had let the party and the nation down. It was unlikely that, had he stayed, the subsequent bitter divisions of 1916−17 would have occurred under his commonsense and steadfast leadership.

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20 High Commissioner

Andrew Fisher’s term as High Commissioner, like his period as wartime Prime Minister, has been seen, at best, as moderately successful and at worst, a failure. Yet, although his term ended in a degree of controversy, by most criteria associated with the office of high commissioner, Fisher conducted a very successful administration at least in the war years. He did this despite increasing family and health problems along with the political difficulties of dealing with Hughes especially after the ALP split of 1916. It is important to examine and evaluate Fisher’s achievements before considering the criticisms of his period in London.

Preparing for England The move to London involved considerable family preparation and it was decided that Gran would accompany them, although the government refused to pay for her fare as she was not an immediate dependent. Fisher offered Oakleigh Hall for use as a convalescent hospital for returned soldiers while he was away but this was refused since the government had plenty of accommodation. It was then agreed that Margaret’s sisters and their husbands would live there (the Albert Park house had long been rented out for extra income). Annie, at first, was going to come to England, but then changed her mind and decided to get married. This added to the rush because she held her wedding

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while her mother and sister were still in Australia.1 On the evening of the 20 December, Fisher was a guest at a banquet hosted by the federal ministry and was presented with an album of photographs of all the federal ministers who had ever served with him. Hughes said there was no better man than Fisher for the job of representing Australia in London. In reply, Fisher noted that his role was now an ambassadorial one and continued his argument that, while Reid had done a good job, a representative needed to be changed every five years, especially when there was a great deal of ignorance about Australia in Britain.2 The Fishers, accompanied by Andrew’s private secretary, Allen Box and his wife, left Melbourne on 22 December on board the Omrah. They were farewelled by Hughes, who had had forgotten to obtain the necessary military pass and was initially refused permission by the guard to board even if he was the Australian Prime Minister. The party crossed the Indian Ocean and visited a returning hospital ship carrying Gallipoli veterans before passing though the Suez Canal. The Mediterranean was now subject to a growing menace from German U-boats and the Omrah needed to take evasive action before reaching Naples. Fisher then sent a cable to Melbourne indicating his safe arrival, and the ship sailed on to France where they were welcomed at Toulon by the mayor and other dignitaries. The party made their way to Paris for more receptions and then to London, via Dover, where they arrived on the morning of Sunday, 30 January 1916.3

The London reception The preparation for Fisher’s arrival in Britain had been well organised by his London staff, led by the Secretary for the Commonwealth Office, Robert Muirhead-Collins. For at least a week beforehand, a series of favourable articles appeared in the British press, extolling the virtues of the new High Commissioner. Keith Murdoch, now head of the United Cable Service, contributed a long article in The Times portraying Fisher as an able statesman and a valuable addition to the British political scene. The Fishers were met at Waterloo Station by an official delegation led by Arthur Henderson, President of the Board

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of Education in the wartime coalition government. They were also surrounded by enthusiastic crowds of Australian civilians and members of the AIF. An elated Fisher gave a brief speech, again promising to assist Britain to the last man and last shilling. Overcoming his usual reticence for doing business on the Sabbath, he held an afternoon press conference. The reporters were delighted by his forthright answers and subsequently gave him extensive news coverage.4 Some of this British reporting, using official biographical material, reinforced his labour background, portraying him as ‘Andy Fisher’ and as ‘the pride of the Australian worker’. Other coverage focused on his arrival, opening speeches and answers to the press interviews. Common headlines quoted him on ‘Our job is not to talk but to act’ or ‘the last man and last shilling’ statement. The press reports also gave space to Fisher’s thoughts on the Australian war effort (excellent to date), the military prowess of the ANZACs (they had fought well despite the difficult circumstances of Gallipoli), the general characteristics of the Australian nation (a free and democratic people) and even his visions for the future, since there would be ‘a new heaven and new earth’ and the war would bring closer imperial ties and greater British migration to Australia.5 Fisher then faced a very busy week. The next day, he visited his Commonwealth office in Victoria Street, Westminster. On the Tuesday, he was guest of the Empire Parliamentary Association at a lunch in the House of Commons attended by the Colonial Secretary, Bonar Law, and Lord Kitchener. Here he warmed again to the theme of the need for the British people to become more familiar with their Empire and especially the Dominions, which, he pointed out, he knew better than almost anyone in London. On the Thursday, he was guest of the Imperial Industries Club at a lunch presided over by the Lord Mayor of London. On the Friday morning, Fisher had an audience with the King to present his credentials and, after some warm recollections by the monarch of his own visit to Australia, was given a rare audience with the Queen. In the evening, the Australian Agents-General played host at a welcoming dinner. He had also announced that his focus would be on the needs of the AIF and, on the Saturday morning, he

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and Margaret paid the first of many hospital visits to see wounded soldiers at Wandsworth, as well as inspect various clubs and other social amenities that had been set up in London for the Diggers. So positive were these beginnings that Fisher had Collins organise a series of press clippings on his reception in England to be sent back to the Department of External Affairs. These included articles from more than fifty papers from all over the United Kingdom. More than half a dozen papers also featured a large photograph of Andrew and Margaret on their first hospital visit, while a number also carried a photo of the Fisher children. Historians have made much of the subsequent visit of Hughes to England and the effectiveness of his press campaign at the time, but much of this had been rehearsed in the flurry of publicity that surrounded Fisher’s arrival.6

Organising the High Commission Fisher’s first role in 1916 was to organise the work of the High Commission, which he did with considerable energy. There have been mixed evaluations by historians of Reid’s performance as the first High Commissioner. Certainly, he expanded his staff from three to twentythree and performed valuable work in encouraging immigration. He also attended with due diligence to semi-diplomatic work in Canada and the United States before the war.7 Yet Reid’s last two annual reports for 1914 and 1915 reveal little serious policy activities being conducted by the High Commissioner, even though he became involved, out of necessity, with early military administrative issues. Fisher came to the Commission with a determination to make it a more effective operation.8 He began by establishing new administrative sections, including a Pensions Branch to deal with payments to Australian servicemen and their dependents and other matters related Australian munitions workers employed in Britain. Since he thought there was a great deal of ignorance about Australia in Britain, he organised an Intelligence Branch, which despite its name, was akin to the Publicity section in accumulating material and distributing it to government,

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business and the ordinary public on aspects of Australia. This led to an expansion of the Commission’s library to around ten thousand volumes and soon included relevant Australian census data, government reports, historical records and reference works. By 1917, the increasing war demands and shortages led to the creation of a Priority Branch that arose out of the normal Supply Section. No critical war materials could leave England at that stage without permits issued from Melbourne’s Director of Munitions and then approved by the British government. The Priority Branch, as the name implied, sorted though claims wanting the necessary priority certificates that enabled goods to be produced and shipped. Although there were often supply problems with some of these goods, the branch achieved over a 93 per cent final success rate in its recommendations for such certificates.9 Fisher also expanded or reinvigorated a number of existing sections. In 1916, he established a new procedure for dealing with the shipping lines. They now directly billed the High Commission on each freight charge instead of working through a shipping agent. Although this involved the Branch employing more staff, it only cost another £430 in salaries, while saving thousands of pounds in agents’ fees. He also, through the Commonwealth Bank, regularly floated loans on behalf of the Australian government on the London financial market and established an excellent working relationship with the bank and its staff that lasted until his death.10 As well, many representatives from other Commonwealth departments, including military staff from the AIF, were grouped for administrative convenience under the High Commissioner’s oversight and in his offices. Over the war years, the High Commission’s administration became so complex that, by 1918, Fisher had to draw up an organisational chart so that he could explain its structure to the Australian government. In that year, there were sixteen branches and over 400 staff under Fisher’s general guidance, while he was directly responsible for nearly 300 High Commission employees. He had initiated, with Hughes’s approval, a system of employing Australians (many of them ex-servicemen) on three- to five-year contracts on the grounds that they brought with them ‘the competitive spirit and new ideas so necessary

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in an office of this kind’. At least during the war years this expansion of staff was seen as necessary for the demands of the war effort.11 Fisher also served on a large number of committees during the war years, including the Australian Wheat Committee, the Pacific Cable Board, the Empire Cotton Board, the Committee on Flax Production, the Committee on Wool Production, and the Imperial College of Science and Technology. These were not at the centre of the war effort but they were important parts of the overall administrative machinery of government. He was also involved in a number of other committees in his capacity as High Commissioner although these were not government bodies as such. The most important was his chairmanship of the Finance Committee of the Australian branch of the Red Cross, which collected money from Australia to spend on food parcels for Australian prisoners of war in Germany and those interned in Switzerland. He also consulted with other similar bodies, such as the Australian War Compatriots Fund and the Australian Branch of the YWCA. By 1918, the number of committees continued to grow to the point where he could no longer serve on all of them and other staff had to be delegated to represent him.12

The Dardanelles Commission In July 1916, Fisher, then in Scotland, received telegram from Asquith inviting him to join a Special Commission of Inquiry established by the British Parliament to investigate the ill-fated Dardanelles campaign. The Prime Minister asked for an immediate reply. Fisher had long been interested in this issue and quickly accepted the offer, subject to the Australian government’s approval. This placed the government in a predicament, since it could hardly have refused his appointment. Yet it was wary of such an inquiry because its findings might be critical of the performance of Australian troops and damage the ANZAC image. The cabinet agreed in principle to Fisher’s appointment but noted that since the British government had not consulted them beforehand, they could not consider him to be their representative on the Commission. Pearce, as Acting Prime Minister, abruptly told anyone who

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inquired that the government was not taking part in the Commission, nor would it accept any responsibility for its findings. In a friendlier letter to Fisher, he explained that the government had to be brusque in public because it had not been consulted by Asquith beforehand. He didn’t say, but Fisher was politically astute enough to realise, that this position would distance the government from the Commission’s findings if it was critical of the Australian troops. In turn, Fisher only briefly mentioned the Commission in the covering letter for his 1916 annual report and acknowledged that this work was not part of his normal duties.13 The work of this body, initially chaired by Lord Cromer, would take up a great deal of Fisher’s time for several months. The first report, signed off by the Commission in February 1917, only dealt with planning for the campaign and this was a British issue. It listed a number of factors that contributed to the failure, including the under-estimation of the difficulties posed by the terrain and the strength of the Turkish resistance. As a result, the invading force was too small to undertake the tasks assigned to it. The inner war council of Asquith, Churchill and Kitchener, in particular, were criticised for poor planning. Fisher dissented against criticisms in the report of various ministerial advisors who had not expressed their misgivings about the scheme to the War Council. As a former Prime Minister, he thought the duty of an advisor was to express options and views to their relevant minister. It was the minister who was responsible to pass on this advice. Fisher also intervened to assist Keith Murdoch, who had been hastily summoned as a witness and attacked by Sir Ian Hamilton as a liar for having arrived at Gallipoli claiming to be a correspondent for The Times. He was also criticised for not submitting his report on the Gallipoli campaigns to military censorship. Fisher’s support enabled Murdoch to regain his composure and refute at least the worst allegations against him. The second report of the Commission was only tabled in the House of Commons in November 1919. It investigated the actual land campaign itself. It criticised a number of the British military officers in the field, especially Hamilton, who had led the invasion but had been replaced in October 1915 after several failed operations. Fisher had no problems

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with the Commission’s overall findings since it largely confirmed his suspicions on the incompetence of British military leadership.14 Fisher lobbied to have a copy of the second report made available from the British Government to Charles Bean. In 1914, Bean had been appointed an official correspondent to accompany the AIF and served in that capacity throughout the war before being appointed Australian Official War Historian. He received his copy just after it had been tabled in the Commons in 1919, with the proviso that he did not quote directly from it in his official history.15 Fisher did not attach his name to the second report because he had hardly ever attended the Commission’s meetings allegedly because of his other official duties. Given the fact that the second report dealt with most of the military operations at Gallipoli, an issue near to his heart, this absence seems strange. Certainly his workload was heavy and his health often parlous after 1917, but perhaps there were deeper reasons for his absence. Fisher became increasingly identified with promoting the AIF in these years. He could not prevent any possible adverse findings on their performance at Gallipoli by the Commission so it was easier for him not to be associated with it. There seems little evidence that he might have been responsible for mitigating any criticism by the Commission of the Australian military performance because he appears to have hardly attended its meetings.16

Promoting the ANZACs In September 1917, Keith Murdoch described Fisher to Hughes as ‘a straight-going and honest Australian, and expresses Australian sentiment better than Reid did. He has a certain following here with the public…’.17 In fact, Fisher performed an exceptional amount of work, in various ways, for Australians in London, especially the servicemen. In early 1917, for example, he and Murdoch successfully lobbied the AIF on behalf of soldiers of the 4th Division who were being overused on the front line. During the summer of that year, he visited the little known number of Diggers interned in Switzerland and arranged for more suitable accommodation away from the colder mountain areas.

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On the same journey he spent several weeks visiting troops on the Western Front to assess their needs as well as meeting with French government officials and military leaders. In 1918, he lobbied both General Birdwood and Pearce over the severity of field punishments for troops. He regularly toured troop entertainment facilities in England to make sure they were of an acceptable standard. By 1918, he decided that Australia House could also be used in this regard and made the basement area available as an AIF reading and writing room and a club room that included a billiards area. He also organised a series of functions for the troops and other Australians living in London, so virtually every night of the week Australia House hosted a concert or tea/reception or a dance. His sense of fair play also made him popular and he was regularly approached at home or in the streets by Diggers wanting his assistance or even the odd coin, which he never refused.18 But more significantly, Fisher was pro-active from the time he arrived in London in wanting to promote the image of the ANZACs by working closely with the AIF administration as well as through his own initiatives. The Publicity Section began to produce an ANZAC Bulletin which became a weekly, with a print run of 15 000−20 000 copies and was popular with the troops, who were charged a penny each issue. It also published larger Christmas annuals as well a popular book, Australia in the Great War, which was sold in monthly parts. It received regular reports from war correspondents such as Bean and others at the Front and distributed these, though the High Commission, to the local media. This well-organised distribution system often resulted in more press coverage of Australians in Britain than in newspapers back home. Fisher personally helped organise sympathetic editors, writers and reporters (many of whom were Australian) to go to France in the last few months of 1918 to watch the troops in action so they would report favourably on the AIF securing the final victory.19 The War Records Branch also began to collect a range of material which now forms an important part of the nation’s war memorabilia. When Birdwood acquired German artillery captured by the AIF at Pozières in 1916, he handed it over directly to Fisher to have it transported back to Australia. After May 1917, a more formal system of

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allocating these ‘war trophies’ was instituted by the British and the AIF but many of these captured trophies continued to be exhibited at Australia House. Another aspect of this promotion was the collection and preservation of visual images. After the appointment of an Official War Photographer to the AIF in late 1916, photographs from France arrived in the War Records section to be catalogued for the archives. They were also copied and made available for official distribution to the press or in book form. In 1918, the High Commission directly financed the production of a number of these photos, enlarged up to 6.7 metres long, for a special London exhibition. Although this was an expensive exercise, the crowds through the gallery more than covered the costs.20 Fisher also directly organised, through the High Commission, artists to tour France as well as Palestine and later, at the war’s end, Gallipoli, in order to sketch and paint these areas for posterity. Many of the most prominent Australian artists of the period, including Will Longstaff, WS Lambert and Will Dyson, were commissioned as official war artists and allowed to paint particular battle scenes after receiving approval from a High Commission art committee. By the end of 1918, Fisher had built up an impressive collection of over 500 oils, watercolours and lithographs, with more still to come, that were shown in exhibitions in Australia House and in other London galleries before being sent home, where he hoped they would be lodged in a suitable place. Most are now part of the National War Memorial, although some are displayed in the National Portrait Gallery.21

Protecting the ANZACs Since the Gallipoli campaign, both the Australian and New Zealand governments had been concerned over the need to protect the ANZAC name and image from any crass commercial exploitation. Just a few months after taking over as High Commissioner, Fisher wrote to the British Board of Trade pointing out that use of the word ANZAC for commercial purposes was prohibited in Australia under the War Precautions Act. He expected similar protection in Great Britain. When

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the Board appeared to vacillate, he wrote to the Colonial Office and then directly to Bonar Law in September, who immediately gave his support. This led to the British government passing a law in December 1916 forbidding the use of the term ‘ANZAC’ without the authority of representatives of the Australian or New Zealand governments. Over the next few years, Fisher was kept busy preserving the ANZAC name from its use on a range of products such as paper ware, linen, wine and the ANZAC motor company selling imported American automobiles. Mrs Margaret Green from Newcastle on Tyne even wrote to Fisher worrying if she was right to call the family home ‘ANZAC House’ in honour of her three brothers serving in the AIF, including one who had been killed at Gallipoli. In 1918, and again the following year, there were calls for adjudication by Australian Customs as to whether to allow the British books The ANZACs Pilgrim Progress and The ANZAC Bride into Australia. Fisher advised they were acceptable as they dealt with serious matters and did not exploit the name. Although sometimes apparently trivial, protecting ‘ANZAC’ was part of Fisher’s determination that the image of the troops would be honoured.22 Fisher was also one of the first members to serve on the Imperial War Graves Commission to bury and later rebury the war dead and attended its first meeting in November 1917. At the end of the war, the AIF transferred all administrative functions for the burial of its dead to the High Commission as well. In November 1920, Fisher visited France to oversee a memorial service in Amiens Cathedral to commemorate Australian troops who had fallen defending the city. A tablet of white marble edged with black was placed in the south transcript of the cathedral opposite one to the Canadian troops. The guests for this ceremony and the subsequent luncheon included the French President and Premier as well as Marshall Foch and over fifty English and Australian guests (see figure 11). It gave Fisher great satisfaction that one of his last functions as High Commissioner was to honour the war dead.23

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Australia House Within twenty-four hours of arriving in London, Fisher had thought it important enough to tell Hughes that he had not yet had a chance to visit the construction site of Australia House. Fisher had authorised construction work to begin on this building, to be based on the design of Scots architect Marshall Mackenzie and his son, which was selected in February 1912. Australia House was to be built on a piece of vacant land between Aldwych and the Strand, which had been left after a redevelopment project. The Fisher government had acquired part of this land in December 1911, along with the nearby Victoria Building. Australia House included a large central ground floor area intended for the staging of exhibitions, plus six floors for government offices, as well as tenanted space. In July 1913, the foundation stone was laid by the King but work was delayed by the war. Fisher spent a considerable effort during 1916 pushing along the builders and architects by proposing that the building could be finished in stages. Concentrating on the first, fourth and fifth floors meant these could be ready for temporary occupation by the end of 1916. In early January 1917, over three days, he and his staff completed the move from Victoria Street into these offices. He also leased out the second and third floors to the British government on the condition they clean and furnish them on a temporary basis. By July 1917, Fisher was able to move into his permanent office on the first floor, while the sixth floor was also ready for occupation by the Technical Section. He also leased space to the Commonwealth Bank and the Orient shipping line. Given the state of progress, or lack of it, in early 1916, it was an impressive effort by Fisher in difficult conditions.24 Eventually, the King officially opened the building on 23 August 1918. At the opening ceremony, Fisher reminded his audience that the new building was a tangible sign to the peoples of the United Kingdom that their interests and that of their kinsfolk in the grand Commonwealth overseas ‘are common alike in peace and war’ (see figure 9). After much lobbying, most of the Agents-General moved their offices into the building, adding to the rental income, and the

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Commonwealth Bank also expanded its rental space. However, the final furnishing of all areas of the building continued even after the official opening, adding to the mounting costs of the project that, with land and construction, came to just under £1 million by the end of 1919. As well, office space for regular employees became quite cramped towards the end of the war due to the rapid increase in staff numbers. Some of the previously leased areas had to be taken back for staff use and other staff had to be housed elsewhere in temporary rental accommodation. Fisher also successfully lobbied Hughes for all his staff to be paid an extra war bonus to compensate for the rising costs of living in London. Although he was soon to face criticisms over the mounting costs of Australia House, if any one person can lay claim to having established the construction, furnishing and occupation of this important London building it was clearly Fisher.25

Postwar adjustments As the war came to an end, the French government wanted to award Fisher the Legion d’Honneur for his work on the Dardanelles Commission and in recognition of Australia’s role in the war. He declined in front of the French ambassador. Unfortunately, the ambassador did not understand Fisher’s Scottish brogue and thought that he had accepted it. The news was then published only to have him announce it had been a mistake. The High Commission during 1919 and 1920 was less productive than in the war period, partly because its work needed to be redirected but suffered from government inertia as well as financial cutbacks. There was a net loss of forty-one staff during 1919, and some areas such as publicity and war records were at a loose end on limited budgets trying to adjust to the postwar situation. The AIF facilities in the basement of Australia House were closed down, although a cinema was opened to publicise Australia to British schoolchildren in the mornings and the general public in the afternoons. In evenings and on weekends it was also possible to book this area for social functions which brought in some extra revenue. (These schemes were criticised by some at home as inappropriate.) In

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1916, Fisher had indicated he would give consideration to planning British migration to Australia for the postwar period and Hughes did set up a Board in July 1919 to work with the states on this issue. However, its members soon left and the Board was quickly downgraded at a time when Australia House was receiving thousands of inquiries each week regarding migration. Although Fisher was later criticised in Australia for not doing more in this area, it was the Commonwealth and state governments that needed to put in the resources. As he pointed out, aside from the practical problems of limited shipping being available for journeys to Australia, the states had suspended their previous assisted passage scheme for migrants. Until a new subsidy scheme was agreed to in 1920 and then implemented in 1921, thousands of migrants continued to be lost to Canada and the United States and there was little the High Commission could do to prevent this.26 Fisher also travelled to Europe on a series of peace missions for Australia in these final years. On 26 November 1919, in Paris, he signed the peace treaty with Bulgaria on behalf of his country. The following year he acted as Australia’s representative in signing the final treaties and conventions at Slesvig (governing northern Denmark) and Sevres (the peace treaty with Turkey). He had played very little, if any, role in the development of any of these documents. He also assisted in the work of negotiating and signing the final 1920 agreement over access to phosphate deposits on the island of Nauru that was of great use to Australian agriculture, although Hughes had previously done most of the hard bargaining.27

Evaluation Fisher had taken over the administration of the High Commission in 1916, expanded it to efficiently meet war demands, spurred along the completion of Australia House and played a significant role helping perpetuate the ANZAC legend. Bean in 1921 paid tribute to those who had done so much in this regard, and these included Hughes, Pearce and Fisher while serving as High Commissioner.28 The view of some historians that Fisher was a failure as High Commissioner clearly

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needs to be re-considered, especially in light of the war years. It was true that during 1919 and 1920, the quality of his administration at Australia House was criticised and some of this was due, as we shall see, to his health but most of it was due to problems of postwar adjustment. Yet Fisher conceded to George Pearce near the end of his term that his ‘memories of office here will always fall short of love’s sweet dreams’.29 The Times in its 1928 obituary, probably written by Keith Murdoch, went so far as to wonder whether Fisher had ever really been happy at Australia House compared to his earlier life in the cut and thrust of the Australian parliament. There was clearly another side to this story.30

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21 Problems in London

When Fisher came to his London post it was as a recently retired prime minister who believed he could speak for the Australian government. Yet, while he did a good job running his office, he certainly made little impact on British political circles, and over time his influence in London waned. Fisher was not, by nature, a born diplomat because, while generally well liked, he lacked the skills in lobbying and flattery that were necessary for such a role. Since May 1915, a coalition government had been in power and Fisher could not expect the same entrée to conservative politicians as Sir George Reid. Socially, Fisher would have been uncomfortable with much of the English establishment where class differences were more rigidly observed than in Australia. His bluntness was noted at his first press conference, where a reporter claimed that he ‘says what he thinks without beating around the bush’.1 On occasions, as he later reported to Pearce, this was not always appreciated. On the other hand, Fisher was obviously not without political contacts. He had, of course, visited England in 1911 and been entertained by Lloyd George, now Minister for Munitions, who would replace Asquith as Prime Minister before the end of the year. He was friendly with Arthur Henderson, and after the fall of Asquith, Henderson was appointed into the smaller and important war cabinet. Fisher also enjoyed good relations with Bonar Law, Lord Kitchener and the

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Secretary of State for the Colonies, Walter Long. He would also establish contacts with many in the London business community through his work with the Commonwealth Bank. He was a friend of Keith Murdoch who had already shown his skills in developing British media contacts. Why then did Fisher fail to develop his role?

The Hughes factor A major problem for Fisher in London was that he had supported Billy Hughes to replace him as Prime Minister. Barely sworn into office, Hughes informed caucus and parliament in November 1915 that he had been invited to London to discuss the war situation. Such a visit became increasingly attractive to Hughes, given his mounting problems. He had postponed the referendum Fisher had set for early December after a Premiers Conference in November agreed to transfer the relevant powers to the Commonwealth for the rest of the war plus one year afterwards.2 But the states dragged their feet on the transfer and by early in 1916 it was obvious that the compromise had failed. The new federal executive condemned the government for not consulting it before cancelling the referendum. Hughes was so angry that he forced the executive to rescind the motion, on the threat of resigning from the party.3 To add to Hughes’s woes, the government lost the December by-election in Wide Bay to Edward Corser.4 Billy Demaine, who had acted as a campaign manager, explained to Fisher that the wartime disruptions, the changing composition of the electorate and Corser’s popularity, led to defeat. Fisher, now technically a public servant, was also unable to campaign for the ALP in Wide Bay and this was another factor in the loss.5 Although Demaine was confident that the party could win back the seat, Corser and then his son maintained a firm grip on Wide Bay for decades. When Hughes left Australia for England in January 1916, he was anxious to make a good impression in London. He would spend more time in England, while in office, than any other Prime Minister in Australian history. Of the sixty months that Fisher was High Commissioner, Hughes was present for nearly one-quarter of the time often, at crucial periods.6

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The 1916 visit Within a month of arriving in London, Fisher found himself assisting with Hughes’s visit. Having met him at the docks in Liverpool, Fisher accompanied the Prime Minister to various functions in London, including a newly named ‘Anzac Day’ morning service on 25 April in Westminster Abbey. The two then hosted a thousand Gallipoli veterans at a luncheon at the Hotel Cecil. That evening, along with Mrs Hughes, daughter Helen, Keith Murdoch and two nurses, they left London for a tour of Scotland. Hughes received honorary degrees from Edinburgh and Glasgow and the party spent the weekend as guests at the estate of Lord Linlithgow (the former Lord Hopetoun). In May, the two men set off again on a six-day whirlwind tour of northern England, and in early June went to France where they spent the night at Douglas Haig’s headquarters.7 Although close to the front line, they both declined to visit the trenches; however, Fisher later reported that Hughes felt he should have gone.8 They inspected a march-past by some of the 2nd Division of the AIF and Hughes addressed men of the 1st Division standing on a wagon. A poignant moment occurred when Hughes recognised William Johnson, a former Labor federal parliamentarian for Robertson until his defeat in 1913, and now serving in the ranks. Fisher joined the two men and they laughed and reminisced together. Sadly, Johnson was to be killed in battle just weeks after this meeting. Although Hughes was the butt of a popular AIF joke at the time, that Andy Fisher had just sent them the last man, he always got along well with the soldiers.9 Hughes and Fisher subsequently visited Paris and met with members of the French government and military before returning to London. There were a number of further functions and banquets before the prime minister sailed for home on 29 June. On the surface, the two men enjoyed themselves during these months together. Yet there was a growing sense of distance developing between them owing to the way in which Hughes, once Fisher’s deputy, effectively undercut his role in England. Hughes became the centre of considerable public attention with his rousing ‘win the war’ speeches. He also took a major role with

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three main issues during his visit; namely, the marketing of Australian zinc, the transporting of Australian wheat, and ensuring an acceptable leadership and general support for the AIF. It was not unusual that a visiting prime minister would have taken such a lead. However, by not allowing Fisher to be at the centre of the lobbying so soon after his arrival, it immediately diminished any hopes that he had that his office would be treated more seriously by the British government. As William Higgs later noted, there was ‘no room in London for more than one man to get into the limelight while the Prime Minister is there’.10 The metals area was one for which Hughes had been largely responsible since 1914, and had helped create a single zinc producers conglomerate in Australia. In London he worked with WS Robinson, an advisor, in negotiations with the British government to reach an agreement for the production and sale to England of Australianproduced electrolytic zinc. Hughes also spent long hours trying to arrange for ships to be made available to transport Australian wheat to England. In May, he had £3 million made available through the Commonwealth Bank in London and got HB Larkin to act as transport officer and work with Fisher to purchase fifteen tramp ships. On the military issue, Hughes and Fisher lobbied Haig for the AIF divisions to be kept together and for General William Birdwood to be given administrative command of it. They were half successful in that Birdwood got his command, but it was not until late 1917 that the five AIF divisions were placed under a single field command.11

New channels of communication More significantly for Fisher was the changing nature of the imperial structures due to the war and, of course, Hughes’s desire to keep power in his own hands. Since the bulk of the AIF was moving to France, new lines of communication with the British government needed to be established. Fisher took part in a series of discussions in late April and had to deal with the insistence by the British government that it would not consult with a multitude of representatives of the Dominions on military matters. The result was, on General Birdwood’s suggestion,

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Australia’s chief representative would be a military one from his office, who would merely keep the High Commissioner informed of what was going on. As military matters were a major focus in these years, Fisher was sidelined, to some degree, in this important area. Nevertheless, he was to enjoy excellent relations with Birdwood and had enough tasks as High Commissioner, including military matters, that this was not a significant problem in its own right. Hughes, however, didn’t want to be kept out of the loop and so lobbied, on Keith Murdoch’s suggestion, to have RMC Anderson, a businessman, posted to the War Office as a liaison officer for the Australian government (and his contact person) and to be in charge of the AIF Administrative Headquarters in London. Then, in late 1916, Hughes also took over responsibility for the High Commission itself, and Fisher reported directly to the Prime Minister’s Department and not to External Affairs.12 Being directly responsible to Hughes might have helped enhance Fisher’s standing in London but the Prime Minister had taken a liking to Keith Murdoch, who had a good newspaperman’s contacts, and was soon being used as a conduit to the British establishment, especially to Lloyd George. As Bean noted, there were several matters referred from Hughes to Murdoch and vice versa that ‘were really in the province of the High Commissioner’. Part of the reason for this was Hughes’s tendency ‘to keep vital communications in his own hands’.13 The advantage of using Murdoch was that Hughes could bypass all the old official channels of the Governor-General, Colonial Office and High Commissioner and deal directly with the British Prime Minister. Murdoch also shared with Hughes a belief in the need for a stronger war effort from Australia and was willing to support the drive to introduce conscription for overseas service. He received assistance in these matters from several senior AIF officers, as well as Charles Bean and Allen Box, who, in early 1918, became chief of the High Commission staff. This created a lobby group, especially on crucial war matters, that often bypassed Fisher or only formally kept him abreast of matters while others did the lobbying work.14 There was almost certainly a lingering jealousy of Fisher by Hughes over their former relationship in the FPLP. It was unlikely Fisher

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would have been allowed to outshine him in London, especially when Hughes had found alternative conduits. In the later years of the war, Fisher was usually not allowed to make any major decisions without cabling Melbourne, so he was kept under a tight rein. Although he dutifully sent off his annual reports to the government, these were filed away and were never tabled in parliament. Sometimes he sent two copies and one ended in the parliamentary library and was left out for interested members to peruse, but most parliamentarians had no idea what Fisher was doing in London.15 It says much about Fisher’s character that, except for Hughes, he never became hostile towards the men who took roles he might have carried out in London. Several of them would fall out badly with Hughes in later years but one of the striking features of the letters from Anderson, Bean and Murdoch was their friendship with Fisher.16 They held him in the highest regard and were seen by outsiders as having considerable influence with him.17 Box, for example, played an important role in organising his daily routine and keeping an eye on Fisher’s personal finances.18 At worst, Murdoch justified his behaviour because he thought Fisher was in illhealth, out of his depth and that the High Commission was full of inefficient staff. Of course, Murdoch had his own interest in painting such a picture to Hughes because he was then able to suggest that he, rather than Fisher, could deal with important business. On the other hand, Murdoch could also be quite bold in openly defending Fisher and his achievements against Hughes and other critics, and remained grateful for Fisher’s support at the Dardanelles Commission hearings.19

The conscription issue The real catalyst for the collapse in Fisher’s attempt to extend his influence in London was the crisis over military conscription in Australia. By the time Hughes arrived back in Melbourne on 8 August, the AIF had been in action on the Western Front participating in the British summer offensive. At Fromelles, on 19 July, the 5th Division suffered 5533 casualties in a single day of fighting. Another 23 000 Australians were killed, wounded and missing when three divisions were engaged

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for about six weeks, around the village of Pozières, from 24 July onwards.20 These casualty rates were such that if they continued, the volunteers would not be sufficient to replace the losses even though, in April, Pearce had thought the 233 000 volunteers to date had been a good effort.21 In fact, the casualty rates tapered off, and by the end of 1916, with a very cold winter halting most military operations, the AIF divisions had recovered their numbers. However, this later decline in casualties was not obvious in August 1916. Hughes had come home convinced that Australia needed to do more for the war effort, even though he had already substantially increased the total size of the AIF commitment since 1915. He was encouraged by the fact that England had recently imposed military conscription without any serious dissent. Pearce also supported the idea, believing that the voluntary system had come to an end. Unfortunately for Hughes, large sections of the Australian trade union movement and members of his own party had hardened their attitude against conscription in the months he been overseas.22 The deterioration in living standards, the problems of the brutal English suppression of the Irish rebellion the previous Easter and the abandonment of the 1915 referendum, now came against Hughes. He was faced with a divided cabinet and caucus and little prospect of getting the legislation through the Senate. In the end, he convinced the FPLP caucus to place the issue before the people in a referendum to be held on 28 October.23 On 2 September, Fisher received orders to take overall responsibility for conducting the voting of the AIF forces in France and England. In the last week of September, he dutifully went to France to help organise the voting, even though he privately told Bean he was opposed to conscription. Anderson was left to carry out the practical duties of returning officer among the troops.24 Murdoch, with Hughes’s urging, devoted his energies to acting as a publicist for the ‘Yes’ case among the AIF. The Prime Minister hoped that a strong vote for conscription by the troops, who were voting early, would strengthen his position at home. Much to his chagrin, the entire AIF only narrowly voted in favour of the proposition and the actual front-line troops appear to

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have voted ‘No’ by a small margin. About three weeks before the referendum, Fisher received a cable asking him to join with other Australian ex-prime ministers in a public appeal for conscription. Although the cable actually came from an Australian newspaper, it certainly fitted with Hughes’s known strategy of seeking prestigious support for his cause. This cable placed Fisher in a difficult position since he opposed overseas conscription and considered Hughes’s referendum to be unwise. Unlike other ex-prime ministers, he was holding office as public servant and was normally not in a position to comment on the politics of the day. He eventually cabled back ‘Am unable to sign appeal. Position forbids.’25 This would be his stance for the rest of 1916 and during the subsequent 1917 referendum. He neither endorsed the campaign nor openly opposed it, although his silence was correctly read by many as not supporting Hughes’s position.

The ALP split On 28 October 1916, the ‘No’ vote carried the day by just 72 476 out of 2.3 million votes cast. It had been a bitter campaign, during which three members of the cabinet resigned while Hughes was expelled from the NSW Political Labor League and from the two trade unions in which he had been prominent for so many years. His critics in the party now gathered in strength in the caucus. On the morning of 14 November, a no-confidence motion was moved against his leadership and heated debate began before the adjournment for lunch. A short time after the meeting re-assembled, Hughes, rather than waiting for the vote, stood up and left the party room, followed by those willing to go with him. Some twenty-six members formed themselves into the National Labor Party with Hughes remaining in power with Liberal backing.26 Frank Tudor was elected the new federal leader and the ALP went into opposition. Tudor had always been a loyal party member, but as Pearce earlier reported to Fisher, ‘a somewhat weak man’ and no match for Hughes in the public arena.27 Tudor’s own letter to Fisher in late November also indicated his lack of confidence but he said he would do his best.28 The caucus split became permanent when the

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NSW state executive called upon the new federal executive to convene a special conference in December. It formally expelled all members who had supported conscription or had left the party with Hughes. The following February, the ministry was expanded to include the Liberals and in the May general election, a new Nationalist coalition won fifty-three seats to the ALP’s twenty-two, as well as a comfortable majority in the Senate. For Fisher, these events were a source of despair. The old party which he had led to triumph was now hopelessly and irretrievably divided. Part of the split was generational. Older members with backgrounds as bush workers or small businessmen and who had served in the diverse labour movement from the 1890s were more likely to have left with Hughes. Pearce noted to Fisher, ‘it is interesting to see how nearly all the old stalwarts have stood by Hughes and myself ’.29 In contrast, those remaining were younger and tended to be urban workers who had been elected after 1903, and especially since 1910. Both groups came from trade union backgrounds in almost equal proportions but the National Labor group would be expelled from their unions. As Fitzhardinge has noted, from the ashes of the old party a new one emerged, which had been taking shape anyway, but was precipitated by the conscription crisis.30 The NSW action in calling a federal conference in December 1916 represented another watershed for the party. Without realising it, that state, in wanting to punish dissenters, made ‘itself into a branch of an indivisible national Labor Party and, however grudgingly, would have to accept the consequences’.31 Ironically, Fisher almost certainly approved of the organisational direction in which the ALP was heading, but was appalled by the calamity that achieved it. In this major realignment of Australian politics, the ALP found itself labelled as anti-war, while Hughes and his supporters depicted themselves, and were certainly seen in London, as the true patriots. Initially, Fisher remained for both sides a tangible link with the past. Hughes, just two days before polling day, found time to pour out his feelings in what was to be the last personal letter between the two men. He reflected on the intensity of the campaign and the divisions in the party which could never be repaired. ‘I often think of you

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in the great world, remote from this dear Australia of ours and envy you.’32 Pearce also justified the need for the conscription referendum and for the old party members to leave. He believed that the ALP was now under the control of radicals dominating the state executives and intimidating the parliamentarians. Despite their differences over conscription, Fisher was to maintain good relations with Pearce and he remained genuinely fond of Fisher.33 But Fisher was also aware of the feelings of other friends who remained within the party. William Higgs wrote just after Pearce, denouncing Hughes as ‘a petty little tyrant having but one idea − the glorification of his own name’.34 Maloney also denounced Hughes as suspiciously corrupt, while Billy Demaine described him as eaten up ‘with vanity and conceit’ and reminded Fisher of the ruction he had had with Hughes over the Navigation Acts: ‘and I was not therefore too much surprised when he turned dog and wanted to enslave us all’. 35 Mat Reid, now back in the political arena and actually supporting conscription, nevertheless thought that it was Hughes who had lost the vote as people had no confidence in anything he said because of ‘the lack of trust that has always existed about him’. 36 Many, of course, wished that Fisher was still the Prime Minister as the consensus, on both sides, was that Hughes had clearly made a mess of things. Hugh Paterson passed on a message from George Pearce’s wife wanting Fisher back in the leadership and Pearce probably felt the same even if it was not possible for him to put such a thing in writing.37 However, there is no indication that Fisher ever thought of making such a return to Australia. At best, all he could do was write to friends expressing his hope that the issue of conscription would pass and that his former comrades could either stay together or, after the split, at least seek reunification of the party.38

A fractured relationship As time went on, Fisher’s relationship with Hughes was increasingly fractured and he was seen in London as no longer enjoying the confidence of the Australian government. In December 1916, Lloyd

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George proposed holding an Imperial War Conference in London in early 1917, composed of the Dominion prime ministers and other ministers. Hughes was also promised a temporary seat on what was to be the Imperial War Cabinet that would meet parallel with the conference. However, Hughes was in the middle of negotiations with the Liberals over the future of his government and then faced a general election, so he could not afford to leave Australia. Murdoch quietly sounded out Lloyd George on these problems and raised Fisher’s name as a substitute at the conference. He reported back to Hughes that Lloyd George had indicated that Fisher, or another minister, could represent his country, although this would not be as effective as having Hughes present. Since Hughes could not be spared, there was no reason why Fisher could not have attended and Murdoch thought, quite rightly, he would have more authority than an ordinary minister. The Governor-General reported that Hughes never gave this serious consideration. Cook informed parliament in March that neither Fisher nor Reid, another possible substitute, would, as public servants, be suitable to adequately represent Australia at the conference. Such comments finally undercut any hope that Fisher might once have had that his post could be treated differently than it had been in the past. In the end, the meetings went ahead without any Australian presence, and when the Imperial War Cabinet met in March, Hughes was accepted as being the Australian delegate and was sent the minutes of its meetings.39 In May 1917, the growing distance between the two former colleagues was further exposed when Hughes curtly cabled Fisher, asking whether he had used his influence to prevent two soldiers, David McGrath and Alfred Ozanne (both Labour MHRs), from being sent to the Western Front. McGrath had been serving as a staff sergeant in England and was promoted to Warrant Officer. He was transferred to the 1st Army Service Corps in France in early 1917, so he was near, but not directly on, the front line. In Ozanne’s case, he had been declared unfit to fight when his regiment had been ordered to the Front. Fisher certainly intervened to get him on a regular passenger ship for home in late March instead of his waiting for a troopship. This enraged Hughes because Ozanne might then have been home in time to participate in

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the 1917 general election (in fact, he arrived home too late and also lost his seat). McGrath, a strong opponent of conscription, had strongly objected to aspects of the AIF ballot papers for the 1917 general election and ran foul of both Anderson and Murdoch. Rumours then circulated that McGrath had tried to have Fisher intervene to stop his transfer to France. Fisher replied formally to Hughes on 31 May that he had no recollection of any such conversations on these matters but left unanswered whether he had got Ozanne on the earlier ship.40 McGrath was soon sent back to Australia because of illness and later medically discharged. He believed that Anderson and Murdoch were hostile towards him (which Anderson subsequently admitted) and that it was Murdoch who had put around the rumours.41 By September, Hughes was complaining to Murdoch that Fisher had negligible influence in Britain and, somewhat inaccurately, ‘has not sent me a line even officially since I left England’. He put this down to the fact that Fisher was against him since he did not support conscription and had stayed loyal to the ALP.42 Fisher had, of course, arrived in London with the supposed advantage that he was a recently retired prime minister who could speak for the Australian government. By 1917, he could no longer claim such a role and instead retreated behind the façade of being a non-partisan public servant. That position was acceptable if Fisher kept to the activities of his High Commission, and this he did fairly well, but he clearly had failed to establish any broader role in British political circles. Interestingly, there is no evidence Hughes ever contemplated sacking Fisher during this time. This may have been due to some sense of old loyalties or because of the technical difficulties involved with such a dismissal. More likely, as we shall see later, the last thing Hughes wanted was Fisher, dismissed from his post, coming back as a rival in the Australian political arena.

Family and health problems Fisher’s problems in London also need to be considered in the context of his significant family and health problems. He was unusual as a man in his mid-fifties in 1916, arriving to his post with a family of

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young children none of whom had even finished high school. The High Commissioner had no official residence in London, although after Australia House was finished, the complex included a flat on the top floor for the High Commissioner’s use, but this was not meant as permanent accommodation. Fisher would need to house three adults, up to six children and a new dog, ANZAC or Zac, who had been at Gallipoli as a mascot. On arriving in 1916, the family went to stay for about six weeks with his friend the shipping magnate Andrew McIlwraith in his spacious home at St Albans, about 35 kilometres north of London. They eventually found a house in Haverstock Hill, Belsize Park, having chosen the area because they deemed it healthy as it was near Hampstead Heath.43 The family later moved to 27A Roselyn Hill, Hampstead, but spent the summer months of 1917 at the Scottish seaside town of Prestwick. Most of the family settled in Torquay in early 1918 and Fisher joined them for part of the time, and they again spent several summer months in Prestwick before leasing a house at Bath over the winter period of 1918−19. They went back to the Roselyn Hill house during 1919−20 although there were more visits to Scotland in the summers of 1919 and 1920. This movement between homes was probably partly for financial reasons in that rentals outside of London were cheaper, and Bath, Torquay and Prestwick were considered healthy places to live, but in 1918 Fisher also reported to his wife that he was having problems even finding houses to rent in London. Fisher was with the family whenever possible in all of these moves, but his work also meant travelling back and forth and time spent alone in London hotels or later in the flat at Australia House. These domestic movements alone disrupted his time as High Commissioner.44 When they had left Australia, Margaret had been expecting their seventh child. After Robert’s difficult birth, she had delivered most of her other children with few complications. However, their second daughter, Jean, was still-born in August 1916 and buried in the Hampstead cemetery. This affected both of them very badly but particularly Margaret, who was unwell for the rest of the year. Gran also created difficulties within the family. She openly favoured young John over the

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other boys because she had minded him in 1911 and he was less rough and tumble than his brothers. As the boys grew older, this caused serious sibling rivalry and tensions in the home. For a man who had long been the centre of family attention, these problems created new dynamics for Fisher. The fact that only Margaret and an aging Gran were available to look after the family meant that more responsibilities fell upon him than had been the case at Oakleigh Hall. When, for example, two of the children came down with scarlet fever, he had to take other children away and look after them so that Gran and Margaret could care for those who were ill. These serious demands from his family drained his time and affected his emotional well-being.45 Perhaps much more seriously for Fisher, was that his hope London would relieve his mounting health problems proved to be an illusion. After a period of good health in 1916, he was ill over the winter months. Birdwood in February 1917 even wrote and suggested he come to the Western Front for a rest − an interesting reflection of the life lived by generals. In January 1918, Keith Murdoch reported to Hughes that Fisher was ill again and suffering a nervous tiredness that required considerable rest. Fisher suffered from some form of mental fatigue, which Bean later described as a collapse in his mental powers. As suggested earlier on, it is possible that hereditary heart problems were the cause of much of this illness although the colder climate, the effects of his mining days on his lungs, and the strain of his wartime workload may have exacerbated his problems.46 Keith Murdoch reported to Birdwood in February 1918 that Fisher’s health had not only been poor for some time but he was simply no longer the man he had known in Australia when he had been so solid in his judgments and resolute in his actions.47

Conscription again In November 1917, Hughes again attempted to convince the Australian public to introduce conscription to bolster an AIF that had suffered heavy casualties during its summer offensives on the Western Front. This second campaign saw both sides hardening their positions and the

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government making freer use of its censorship laws to stifle opponents. Malony shrilly described Hughes as ‘our little Dictator’ who was asserting power ‘greater than Caesar in old Rome’.48 Fisher remained out of the debate but thought that this time the ‘Yes’ case might be carried by a small majority. In fact, he had misread the situation and the ‘No’ side increased its majority to 166 588. The AIF then remained reliant on the volunteer system, which declined during the last two years of the war. With mounting casualties from the military operations of 1917 and 1918, most of the five Australian infantry divisions were at barely half strength by the time of the Armistice. In an interview with Bean in January 1918, Fisher astutely saw the problem Hughes refused to face. He pointed out that conscription as a system was logical in terms of its efficiency. However, men are not ruled by logic and conscription had obviously raised fierce emotions. For the sake of getting a few extra troops, Hughes had divided the nation, created enormous antagonism among the Australian people and drove many of those opposed to conscription to then oppose the war.49 The contrast between the political skills and approach to governing of the two men could not have been more obviously drawn. Yet, it was Fisher who suffered most from his fall-out with Hughes. While he achieved a considerable amount as High Commissioner during these crucial war years, if he came to London hoping to enhance the office by acting as an important conduit between the British and Australian governments then he clearly failed. The fact that a jealous and ambitious Hughes spent a considerable amount of time in London in 1916 overshadowed Fisher from almost the start of his term. Within twelve months of arriving in London he found it harder to gain entry to inner political circles because he no longer enjoyed the confidence of the Australian government. Hughes preferred to use Murdoch in this capacity and Fisher reverted to a public servant role in his post. By necessity, his position became something of a sinecure, given his family situation and his declining health. As the war entered its final year and then came to an end, Fisher’s role in London was further eroded by Hughes and also came in for greater scrutiny in Australia.

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22 A high commissioner under attack

On 11 June 1918, Fisher read in The Times that it was being claimed in Melbourne he was to be transferred to New York as Australia’s new trade representative. This had been suggested by Hughes in a cable to the Australian government while on his way for another visit to England via North America. In fact, Hughes had never mentioned Fisher’s name and eventually in October, Henry Braddon, who was mentioned, was appointed for two years.1 A US posting would have suited Fisher in that his friendly informality would have been better appreciated than in London and he was, of course, increasingly admiring of the United States. Later in the year, Fisher hosted a dinner for visiting Australian editors on the eve of their return home from touring the Western Front. He noted that it was a great compliment to the British race that the Americans had returned to Europe. He felt that American hearts were always in the war but German brutality had finally driven them into the actual conflict.2 All that Fisher knew about this possible US posting in June was what he read in the press. He immediately wrote to Margaret, on holiday in Scotland, to tell her the news and thought it a plot by Hughes to get him out of London while he was visiting. By now Fisher had lost all respect for Hughes and the two men were estranged.3 Unlike the 1916 visit, they would only meet on formal occasions and then things

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could become tense. At one of these functions when they arrived late, Hughes abused Fisher claiming, without justice, that it was his fault. Fisher was also obviously shut out from all official business by Hughes, compared to his involvement two years earlier. This led to a confrontation at the Savoy between Hughes and a mutual friend over the Prime Minister’s treatment of Fisher. Despite promising that he would keep his High Commissioner better informed in future, Hughes continued to ignore him. However, it also seems likely that Fisher found it easier, and perhaps expedient, to stay out of his way.4 But his obvious low profile led one Nationalist MP to complain in December 1918 that ‘The High Commissioner in London, if not dead, must be asleep’.5

England and conferences As well as attending the meetings of the Imperial Conference. Hughes and Joseph Cook arrived in London as the two Australian representatives on the Imperial War Cabinet, with Hughes also a member of an inner cabinet known as the Committee of Prime Ministers. Despite some tensions with the British government over various matters, Hughes enjoyed being in London. He also now formally proposed ending the Colonial Office (and therefore the governor-general) acting as a filter for communication between Australia and Britain by having the prime ministers of both nations communicate directly. This suggestion not only upset the Colonial Office but Munro-Ferguson seriously contemplated resigning since he regarded his position as untenable under such an arrangement, even though this was what Hughes had been doing unofficially, via Murdoch, since 1917. In the end, a compromise was reached whereby the existing channels would be maintained but the prime ministers were given the right to direct communication on cabinet matters of importance. At the same time, they were also given the right to nominate a ‘resident minister’ who could represent them at meetings of the Imperial War Cabinet when they were not able to attend, as these meetings were envisaged as extending into the postwar period.6 Hughes can, of course, be praised for his attempts, however personally motivated they may have been, of pushing the

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status of both Australia and its prime minister beyond the old pre-war Dominion model. He liked the idea of direct Australian representation in London but it left unresolved the issue of the future role for any High Commissioner, whose office seemed to run parallel to this new arrangement. When most other Dominion leaders left for home by mid-August, Hughes busied himself with other matters to justify staying on in England. He visited Australian troops and naval personnel, lobbied for the sale of various Australian primary products and spent time on AIF administration including making sure the surviving volunteers of 1914 received leave to Australia. Although he made much of his activities, these were largely tasks that he could have conducted from Melbourne or left in the hands of his High Commissioner. In this case, it seems that Hughes was undertaking this work, not because of his problems with Fisher, but simply because he preferred life in England away from the turbulence of Australian politics.7 After the November Armistice, Hughes also took it upon himself to work through Monash and oversee the repatriation to Australia of some 167 000 AIF troops then in France and England. George Pearce also arrived in early 1919 to assist in this work, even though his visit was widely criticised in the Australian press as unnecessary. Fisher was personally delighted to see Pearce and helped him with many of the details associated with war costs that had to be calculated with the British government.8 Hughes also insisted on staying for the peace conferences at Paris as both a member of the British delegation as well as representing Australia in its own right. Fisher strongly supported this idea of an independent voice for the Australian Prime Minister, even if it was Cook and not he who accompanied Hughes on the delegation. The peace deliberations would last until the final treaty with Germany was signed on 28 June 1919. Hughes signed this document on behalf of Australia while Pearce later signed the subsequent peace treaty with Austria. Australia achieved a mandate over German New Guinea but, as expected, Japan received the old German islands north of the equator. Hughes made much of his apparent show of independence at Paris in pushing for Australian interests, especially in heading off a Japanese

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proposal for inserting a racial equality clause in the treaty for the new League of Nations. Yet, his erratic behaviour in dealing with other members of the Australian delegation caused both JG Latham, Cook’s secretary, and Murdoch to be increasingly alienated from him by the time the conference ended. Fisher graciously hosted a farewell dinner on 2 July 1919 for Hughes after his final return to London and the following day the Prime Minister caught a train from Paddington to Plymouth and then his ship for home.9

A new political career In April 1919, Fisher was sent an extract from the Sydney Sun discussing the Australian political scene, and saw his name still included on the list of political heavyweights. The paper, obviously using Murdoch’s reports, conceded that while Fisher’s faculties were not as forceful as they once were, he had carefully handled Hughes while the latter was in England. It also accurately noted that Fisher had kept in touch with his old political colleagues, avoided serious errors while in office and had a positive image with the Australian public.10 Even before the end of 1918, a number of people in the ALP expressed their hope for Fisher’s early return to Australia. William Higgs was one who suggested to Fisher that, given his health problems, he come back to Australia for a holiday while Hughes and Cook were in England, since they were going to take over his role anyway. Of course, back home Fisher might then be tempted to stay and once again lead the party. Almost certainly, part of the reason why Hughes so obviously ignored Fisher during his time in London (aside from their earlier estrangement over conscription) was the suspicion that he might soon be returning to Australia as a political rival. In July 1919, with the next federal election getting closer, Higgs now openly urged Fisher to return to Australia, win back Wide Bay and lead the party to victory.11 Fisher quickly dampened down any such suggestions. He thought it folly, because of his health, to try to tour Australia for some years to come and hoped that younger men would come forward to lead the nation. He expected that he would be retiring from public life at the

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end of his term.12 Yet Fisher clearly continued to remain a possible leader of a revived Labor party. Even King O’Malley wrote urging him to return before the next election and replace Tudor, who would surely stand aside for him to lead the party.13

More health and family worries In May 1919, the family was rocked by the sudden death, from pneumonic flu, of Annie at Oakleigh Hall. While heavily pregnant, she came down with the flu and delivered twin boys prematurely three days before she died. One of the boys, Robert, managed to survive but the other, Henry, died before his mother.14 The next year, Gran, who had been unwell for a long time, was diagnosed with both heart and kidney problems and put on a strict diet. Although she managed to cope, she was no longer the robust woman of earlier years. Even Zac died in 1919, adding to family unhappiness. Fisher’s health had partially recovered by early 1919 and that probably added to Hughes’s concerns while in London that Fisher might make his rumoured political comeback, since he did not appear to be as ill as earlier reports to Australia had indicated. However, as late as September 1919, Fisher indicated to Higgs that his health still remained ‘precarious’. Then, in early 1920, he suffered a serious bout of influenza. He was so ill that the family took him on a holiday to France and Italy in order to recuperate. This had to be cut short by the need for him to help organise the Prince of Wales’ visit to Australia in the middle of the year. From then on, Fisher struggled to perform many of his duties at Australia House. While reporters had commented favourably on how young Fisher looked when he arrived in London in early 1916, by the end of 1920, not yet sixty, he now looked like an old man (see figure 11).15

Controversy From the end of 1918 until 1920, Fisher faced ongoing criticism in the Australian parliament and the press regarding his London post. This criticism was really the result of three inter-related issues. The first,

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which the government itself defended, was over the construction costs associated with Australia House. Completion work was recommenced in 1919 and Fisher checked all the accounts sent to his London office and passed them onto the government. There was never any charge of malfeasance, but simply unease at the final costs associated with the project. There were many, on both sides of the parliament, who felt that, given Australia’s mounting war debts, the building was an expensive pre-war luxury that the nation could no longer afford. Considerable efforts were made by the relevant ministers and in official reports to show that the building more than paid for itself in saved rental space and in capital appreciation. Fisher, when he returned in 1921, pointed out that the building was now estimated to be worth at least £1.5 million and so represented a good investment by the nation. Malcolm Shepherd, who replaced Fisher in London, made the same point, tabulating how much money was saved in rental space. Still the idea that Australia House was a financial white elephant took years to overcome.16 The second and third issues were more directly serious for Fisher. There were concerns over the rising costs of the actual administration of Australia House and the need to save money by reorganising the staff structures. Even ALP members were uneasy about these costs. They thought too many non-Australians were being employed and that the military side of the administration should be reduced now the war was over. While sympathetic to Fisher, they also felt that he needed to be more business-like in running the administration and in standing up to the military. Of course, their views on these issues were hampered by the fact that in 1918 and 1919 they did not appear to have any access to Fisher’s annual reports and relied on people like McGrath to give them his impression on how the High Commission had been run while he was in London. This was not always informative, as he noted, for example, that the British government had taken over space in Australia House but had no idea if they paid rent, nor of any of the other arrangements Fisher had actually negotiated.17 In late 1919, Hughes made use of Henry Braddon to advise him on ways of promoting publicity and trade at Australia House, and he recom-

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mended a major re-organisation of the staff and its administrative structures. From then on, there was a steady stream of discussion in the parliament and in the press on this topic.18 This question of restructuring led to the third issue of how effective the role of the High Commissioner in London was, and whether the nation’s representation would now be better served if a more senior minister was placed in charge. When Pearce went to London in 1919, it was reported in the Australian press that either he or Cook might be staying on as a Minister-in-Residence, as accepted by Hughes in 1918. Part of their task would be to take over the running of Australia House if Fisher decided to retire early. In fact, both Cook and Pearce returned to Australia during 1919, but the idea of a minister performing such a role in London continued into the following year. The Treasurer, WA Watt, was alarmed by Australia’s mounting foreign debt and the failure of Hughes to deal with this while he had been in England. By 1920, the federal government’s war debt alone stood at £335 million and borrowing in London had to be curtailed, given the size of the debt and the rising interest rates.19 In early 1920, Watt persuaded the cabinet that he should be sent on a financial mission to London. It seems that Watt, as a minister, expected he would also take greater control over the administrative reorganisation of Australia House since he believed Fisher’s term of office would expire in October. He also decided to institute yet another investigation into the administration of the High Commission by the Economies Commission, whose task was to study government departments for waste. General Ramaciotti, who was travelling to England on other business, carried out this inquiry. Later, the government would distance itself from his work, insisting Ramaciotti carried out the inquiry on the Commission’s directions, not on government instructions. This was undoubtedly technically true, but the press and ALP thought of him as acting under Watt’s instructions and it seems likely the Treasurer pointed the Commission in this direction because he wanted ideas on how to re-structure the High Commission.20 Once he arrived in London, Watt publicly proposed having a cabinet minister as the nation’s representative, either in their own right or in some

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type of dual role with the High Commissioner. This seemed to have some support within the government, and similar proposals continued circulating in Australia both in the parliament and the press. In midApril, the Country Party member, Earle Page, also claimed that the nation’s interests would be better served by having a cabinet minister stationed in London.21 The worst part of this crisis soon blew over for Fisher. Watt, upset by decisions Hughes continued making in Melbourne without consulting him, stunned everyone by announcing, in June, his resignation from his London mission and as Treasurer. In the end, Hughes weathered the storm of this resignation, as most parliamentarians thought that Watt had been irresponsible in simply abandoning his London mission. Eventually, Cook was named as replacement Treasurer but most of the London business was left in abeyance until later in the year when Senator Millen arrived to attend the first meeting of the new League of Nations.22 The crisis caused by Watt’s resignation at least seemed to kill off any proposal for a resident minister. In July, Cook indicated that the government had no interest in using a minister to fill such a post. Nevertheless, it was later stated that Millen, when he arrived would have the necessary backing to carry out a re-structuring of staff at Australia House.23 For Fisher, this debate again became personal in September 1920, when Major General Sir Charles Rosenthal, in a speech in Sydney over problems suffered by new migrants, accused him of being a non-entity in his post and in not taking any interest in Australia since living in England.24 Rosenthal had commanded the 2nd Division of the AIF, was known to be outspoken and later became a Nationalist party member of the NSW parliament. He was also a close friend of Monash, who later lent him money that an embarrassed and insolvent Rosenthal could not repay.25 In mid-1918, Fisher had briefly supported Murdoch and Bean in their unsuccessful campaign to oppose Monash being appointed as field commander of the five AIF divisions in France. Fisher may have had some previous difficulties with Monash but was more likely influenced by Bean and Murdoch’s views that Monash was wasteful of his men’s lives.26 Fisher seems to have had no obvious

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problems with Rosenthal but during 1920, a fellow Nationalist party organiser, Percy Hunter, had been appointed as the new Immigration Officer to Australia House and was subjected to ALP parliamentary criticism for being a political appointment. Rosenthal, in dealing with the failure of immigration policies, probably wanted to take some heat off Hunter (and partially get some payback over the Monash issue) by throwing the ineffectiveness of the ALP’s political appointment of Fisher back in their faces.27 Tudor quickly raised the matter in the House only to have Hughes defend Rosenthal’s right to freedom of expression and make a lukewarm defence of Fisher’s record. His behaviour was partly to do with the politics of his own government, as Hughes’s strongest critics came from conservatives (to whom Rosenthal appealed) who found it hard to accept being led by an ex-Labor prime minister. Any criticism of Rosenthal (who he knew and with whom he was on good terms) and a defence of Fisher would have further weakened Hughes’s standing with that faction. But Hughes also had one eye on the fact that Fisher would soon be retiring from his London post and did not want to be singing the praises of a potential political rival. Of course, Tudor, whatever his faults, had a good head for parliamentary tactics and probably enjoyed embarrassing Hughes by raising the Rosenthal speech in the first place.28 Still, Hughes was quite content with this criticism of Fisher continuing in parliament. In October, a government member, George Bell, objected to the costs of salaries in the High Commissioner’s office, stating it was ‘a monument of inefficiency’. He hoped that Millen would re-organise the office since the High Commissioner was not energetic enough to do it.29 Five days later, WJ McWilliam took up the same theme, claiming that the present High Commissioner should be allowed to take an early leave of absence from his post, given the reports of Fisher’s ill-health. Hughes added to the negativity, claiming in late October that he had not received a constructive suggestion from the High Commissioner’s office in the past six months except for wanting to pay a war bonus to its staff.30 Fisher was not without support in this controversy. Labor colleagues such as Albert Gardiner continued to defend his performance and later

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denounced the way that he was harassed by the government and Ramaciotti. He thought giving Ramaciotti authority to carry out his investigation ‘was one of the most degrading things the Government could have done’.31 The Sydney Sun probably using Murdoch as its author, also asked whether Fisher had ever had a fair deal as High Commissioner, since in his social work and in representing Australia publicly he had done an excellent job. He had, however, often been ignored or overridden on more important issues by the government, so it was unfair to blame him for not representing the nation’s interests. Still, the paper thought that any future appointee should have more powers to deal with crucial issues such as wool and financial negotiations.32 Thus, at the very time when Fisher’s term was drawing to a close, there were mixed feelings about his performance and the nature of his role in London.

E xtra time Suddenly, in November 1920, Fisher inquired of Hughes as to whether he might be given a six month ‘extension’ of his term, and this would include an immediate leave of absence. Given his family expenses and the lack of any future pension, Fisher was clearly trying to extend his income. The cabinet had still not chosen his replacement and since the taxpayer would not be paying the salaries of two high commissioners in the foreseeable future, Fisher obviously seized the moment. He also claimed that he had expected an extension of his term when he had taken the post, especially since Reid had received an extra twelve months (conveniently ignoring the point that Reid had actually served in the post in London for all of that time). The request for an immediate leave of absence also confirmed the rumours that Fisher’s mounting health problems had finally got the better of him.33 Fisher had chosen the timing of this request with special care. On 24 November, Hughes was to receive £25 000 from a public subscription in both England and Australia in recognition of his services during the war and the peace conference. This was a controversial gift but Hughes justified it on the grounds that he was not a rich man and his salary

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as Prime Minister was small in relationship to the work that he had done. Fisher’s arguments over his reduced salary and extra expenses during the war seemed similarly justified.34 Fisher knew of the Hughes subscription from virtually the beginning because Andrew McIlwraith had been asked to be involved in the fund-raising in England. He had not expected Fisher to take part in it because of his poor relations with Hughes and indeed Fisher refused to contribute any funds to the cause.35 At first, Hughes was reluctant to grant such an extension and offered various excuses while also reminding Fisher that he had been the one that had refused to extend Reid’s term. However, he also had his department look over Reid’s case history and discovered that he had been granted a six-month leave of absence when he came back to Australia in 1913, and had actually stayed for seven months. More relevant, in 1915, when Mahon had refused to extend Reid’s appointment, he was offered an extra three months paid leave from 22 October, while Fisher was on his way to England. There was a precedent for giving paid leave of absence to a high commissioner both during and at the end of their terms, and Hughes ended up being quite sympathetic to Fisher’s plea. Perhaps the end of the war and its bitterness plus the needs of an old comrade changed something in Hughes’s attitude. Another explanation could be that if Fisher was contemplating a return to Australian politics, a favour of this kind would put him in debt to the Prime Minister.36 Hughes, without consulting cabinet, which was not all that unusual (and to Cook’s public surprise) offered Fisher three months ‘paid leave’ from the end of January. Fisher was also allowed to give up official duties straight away in early December. Millen, then in Geneva, dispatched his secretary, JP Collins, to take over Fisher’s role in an acting capacity. Hughes subsequently agreed to pay for Gran’s fare back to Australia and obligingly arranged various transport and welcoming functions for the Fishers upon their arrival. Although the two men never again shared the same level of friendship that had existed before 1915, they at least repaired the open rift that had developed between them during the later years of the war.37

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In early 1921, Malcolm Shepherd was appointed to go to London and take over the role of Acting High Commissioner from Collins. He was specifically told to cut costs at Australia House. Shepherd reduced the size of several departments, consolidated them into just two floors and let out the vacant office space. By the end of 1921, savings had been made to the running costs of Australia House, although some of this was due to the natural winding down of the military staff.38 Meanwhile, the issue of Fisher’s permanent replacement remained unclear. Cook wanted to retire from parliament and the London post was an attractive position for him. But he was needed in Australia to look after the government because Hughes was again visiting England to attend the Imperial Conference in mid-1921. Once he returned home at the end of September, the matter could finally be settled. Proposals for changing the system of representation in London were ignored as Hughes had been able to win the idea of annual conferences of Dominion prime ministers, so a resident minister in the capital was superfluous. Although Page continued to push for a re-consideration of representation in London, this was ignored by Hughes and the cabinet confirmed Cook’s appointment as the new High Commissioner.39 As one newspaper noted, the office was now ‘reserved for distinguished politicians who have outlived their usefulness in Australia’.40 The various criticisms of Fisher in the period after 1918 were partially due to events beyond his control such as the mounting construction costs of Australia House. In terms of the High Commissionership, he certainly played a limited role in London, but of course never possessed the institutional powers needed to represent his nation and Hughes would never consider giving him these. Indeed, he kept Fisher under tight control and possibly Fisher, in turn, retaliated by not making even small decisions without checking with Melbourne, thus making the post even less significant. The plans to establish resident ministers from 1918 onwards recognised that there were deficiencies in the high commissioner’s office but once the postwar world began to settle down, the demands for such radical solutions began to die away. The final collapse of his health also meant that Fisher in

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effect did not even serve out his full term. By the beginning of 1921, he was anxious to return to Australia, and for the first time since reentering the Queensland parliament in 1899, faced life without any public office.

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23 Final years

Fisher’s time as High Commissioner came to an end when, on 29 January 1921, he, Andrew, Margaret, Gran, Peggy and John set sail for Australia on the Omar, a former enemy liner. It had been handed over in the aftermath of the war and stripped of virtually all of its fittings and furnishings by the embittered Germans. So run-down was the ship that rats could be seen scurrying around on the main decks at night.1 Fisher was returning for a variety of reasons and it is not clear if he even knew exactly what he hoped to achieve. Gran, her health seriously failing, was eager to come home and see the rest of her family. Andrew and Margaret, for other reasons, wanted her back in Melbourne. Originally, Fisher had booked passage on the Omar for four of his sons (Robert was already working at the Commonwealth Bank in London) but, in the end, left three in England to be cared for by relatives in Liverpool. Peggy later recalled that her parents were unsure whether they would stay in Australia and so David and Janet agreed to look after the boys until Andrew and Margaret decided on their future. Without any pension from his time either as Prime Minister or High Commissioner, Fisher was eager to explore his options in Australia or possibly, as Sir George Reid had done, obtain a seat in the British House of Commons. He was also anxious to report directly to the government and defend his recent record as High Commissioner. Although he did not realise it at the time, his public career had really come to an end.2

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Back to Melbourne While till at sea off Fremantle, the Fishers received and accepted an invitation from Hughes to attend a formal luncheon with the cabinet when they arrived in Melbourne. Hughes had also arranged for Fisher and the two children to cross Australia by rail, as Fisher wanted to inspect the trans-Australian railway that had been completed in his absence. At Fremantle, there were large welcoming crowds and a change of plans. Everyone decided to stay on the ship until it docked in Adelaide and take the much shorter overnight train journey to Melbourne. Perhaps the children did not want to undertake such a long rail trip or Andrew was worried about Gran and decided not to leave Margaret with the responsibility of looking after her. Although the government rearranged the bookings for the party on the train at Adelaide, they had not issued passes for them and Fisher had to pay for the fares from his own pocket, though the government quickly reimbursed him the money.3 They arrived in Melbourne at Spencer Street station on the morning of the 15 March and were greeted by Cook, Pearce, Tudor, Miller and Maloney as well as various representatives of the local ALP branches and another large crowd. After being driven to Oakleigh Hall, the Fishers attended the promised luncheon and were welcomed by the cabinet and a mellower Hughes. After lunch Fisher spent the afternoon with Frank Tudor and was later treated to an FPLP reception.4 Fisher soon reported to friends that it was ‘great to see Australia again’ but remained vague over his plans.5 In an Adelaide interview, he claimed that he would not be re-entering politics because he wished to travel and had simply come back to Australia to report to ministers and renew old friendships. By the time he reached Melbourne, he refuted the claims about not re-entering politics but he still did not know what he would be doing. There had been talk that he had come back to contest the seat of Bendigo against Hughes but Fisher said this was untrue and claimed he personally had nothing against the Prime Minister. He also quashed rumours of being treated badly by Hughes, claiming he had no complaints about anything that had happened to

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him during his term as High Commissioner. Australia House, however, remained a sensitive issue and in his Melbourne interview, Fisher was quick to point out that the construction cost of the building was far below its current resale value. The vagueness his plans and his remarks about Hughes confirm that Fisher had not returned to Australia to once again lead the ALP.6 Although it is unclear what Fisher reported to the cabinet in his discussions, it seems likely he spent most of the time defending the costs and administration associated with Australia House.7 The Fishers soon settled back home at Oakleigh Hall and John was sent to attend the local St Kilda state school. The family also met the four surviving nephews and nieces that had been born to Margaret’s three sisters since 1917, with another due the following October. By April 1921, only Elsie and her husband were still living at Oakleigh Hall and Fisher organised for Annie’s husband to pay a visit with his new wife, Gladys, who had been a family friend. Elsie had found her brother-in-law’s quick remarriage distasteful but eventually recognised that, with two small children to care for, he was probably right to quickly remarry.8 Fisher also began to regularly visit his old friend Frank Tudor who he had known since entering federal parliament with him in 1901. So serious were Tudor’s heart problems that he ceased to attend any caucus meetings from the end of April, and died in January 1922.9 Although it recovered some seats in the 1919 general election, the ALP was not in good electoral shape. It had lost the by-election for Kalgoorlie the previous December after Hugh Mahon had been expelled from the House of Representatives on 11 November for making inflammatory speeches (outside parliament) critical of British policies in Ireland. Since 1917, the party had only gained between 44 per cent and 46 per cent of the national vote in the two general elections and now only held power in Queensland.10 Fisher’s nationalism, which had seemed so radical in the Gympie speech and led to the prewar ALP nation-building program, had been transformed in two ways in the postwar world. Fisher had so successfully created many of the important federal institutions by 1914, that these were now

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simply part of the establishment landscape. More seriously, Hughes had attached himself firmly to the war effort and then the postwar Digger myth and its sense of Australian patriotism. At times this sat uneasily with imperial loyalties but more often than not the two concepts seemed to complement one another. The conservatives, once derided for being imperialists, now identified closely with the nationalist label that Fisher had once promoted for the ALP. In turn his party, torn by differing interests and now more inward-looking, struggled to recapture its patriotic image. While the party soon managed to win back power in several states on bread-and-butter issues, it remained for years in the wilderness at the federal level. Fisher sensed the party had lost its edge and direction but all he could do was point it back to his prewar policies.11

More deaths Fisher and Margaret had already decided that once Gran returned to Australia she should stay and live with her daughters if they decided to go back to England. This was partly because her health problems had noticeably worsened by the time she arrived back in Melbourne and partly because of the family tensions she had created over favouring young John. Yet Gran had been with them for so long and looked forward to returning to the cooler weather of London, that it was a very difficult decision to make. Then on the late morning of 7 May, the family was shaken by Gran’s sudden death. Fisher was heartbroken, and on the night of her death insisted on sleeping in the same bedroom with her coffin.12 His old friend James Page, the member for Manoa, was one of the main comforters for him at Gran’s funeral, but just a few weeks later, Page also died unexpectedly. Fisher, Margaret and Peggy, who now assumed an important supporting role for her parents, left for Brisbane to attend Page’s state funeral. Fisher had always liked Page, who had been a member of the original Commonwealth Parliament and attended the Fishers’ wedding, but found it disturbing that he had always raised the issue of his being a Barnardo’s boy. Fisher thought there was neither shame nor anything to boast about being an orphan

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but found it distasteful that someone would dwell on his past in that way. This ran counter to his optimistic nature.13 While in Queensland, the Fishers spent time with members of the Irvine family and other old friends in the Gympie area. However, he missed out on seeing Walter and Irene Herron as he refused to pay the extra cost of his family’s train fares to visit them. Fisher was also given a civic reception by the Brisbane City Council on 13 June, attended by large numbers of local and state dignitaries. In his speech, he claimed he was proud to have established the Australian navy and while he thought that the quality of parliamentarians was now fairly poor, he also believed that the sacrifices of the war had created higher ideals for the next generation. He looked back to when he had first entered parliament and had brought with him Labour ideals which ‘were now practically, the sentiment of the Australian people’. It was a typical Fisher speech for this period, with his past achievements (especially the navy) noted, his offering some mild criticisms of the existing political culture, his equation of the ideals of Labour with national sentiment and his looking towards a brighter future.14

The struggle for West Sydney If Fisher had hopes of renewing his political career in Australia, he would have to find a parliamentary seat, and it was not clear which one he could contest. While he no longer had a strong power base in Queensland, his old seat of Wide Bay might have been a possibility, since he remained well known in the area and had only resigned in 1915. Against this was that the seat was firmly in the hands of Edward Corser, who was proving to be a popular member in an electorate that was slowly changing as the mining industry declined. The distance between Wide Bay and Melbourne, always a problem in his younger days, now made this seat even less attractive to Fisher. On his way to Brisbane for Page’s funeral, he had attended a meeting of Labor leaders in Sydney to discuss the possibility of him running for Manoa. In the end, he decided not to run, much to Margaret’s relief, because the party faced a strong challenge for the seat from the newly emerging

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Country Party and, again, the size of the electorate and its distance from Melbourne made it an unattractive prospect.15 The FPLP had a rising star in the person of TJ Ryan, the former Premier of Queensland, who had prominently opposed conscription to the point of being threatened with prosecution by the federal government. Ryan had been hailed as a party champion for his stance on this issue. He had been overwhelmingly invited by the party’s federal conference in 1919 to contest Hughes’s old seat of West Sydney. He was then quickly elected deputy leader of the FPLP, although his abilities in parliament proved to be less skilful than those of the more experienced Tudor. However, with Tudor’s illness, Ryan was, by early 1921, de facto party leader despite his own parlous health. On 1 August 1921 after a long train journey from Melbourne to Queensland and the rigours of an unsuccessful by-election campaign to save Page’s old seat from the Country Party, Ryan died in the Barcaldine hospital, at the age of forty-five, from pneumonia.16 His seat of West Sydney now became vacant and seemed to fit nicely into any plan Fisher might have had to get back into parliament. It had been filled in 1919 by a Queenslander, despite it being in Sydney. It was also an overwhelmingly safe seat for any Labor candidate, required little solid campaigning and was small enough for a man of Fisher’s walking renown to quite comfortably stroll around. Unlike Manoa or Wide Bay, this electorate could be reached by an easy day or overnight train trip from Melbourne. The fact that it had been Billy Hughes’s old seat only added to its attraction. The major drawback in this scheme was that William Lambert had immediately emerged as the local frontrunner in the pre-selection campaign. He had the advantages of being NSW President of the ALP, President of the NSW branch of the powerful Australian Workers Union, a member of the Sydney City Council and Lord Mayor for the previous twelve months. He also had strong rank and file support within the West Sydney branches of the party. On 4 August, Lambert supporters tried to head off any real contest in West Sydney by stacking the evening meeting of the West Sydney Electoral Council. This meeting narrowly recommended to the ALP State Executive that

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Lambert be should be selected by it rather than going to a pre-selection ballot. This ruse received widespread and unfavourable media coverage. Lambert, usually happy with such rough and tumble behaviour, quickly realised that such publicity was not to his advantage and disassociated himself from these events. Instead, he publicly stated he was quite happy to have a pre-selection ballot.17 Lambert did not, however, have everything his own way. The NSW ALP was faction ridden at the time and JH Catts was a personal enemy of Lambert and critical of the corrupt practices within the AWU. Indeed, so serious were the differences between the two men that in February 1922, Lambert had Catts expelled from the NSW party on charges of disloyalty. Catts would likely give Fisher his support, despite the fact that they had never been close while Fisher had been the party leader. Fisher also seems to have had the support of Matthew Charlton, now effectively the acting leader, who clearly wanted Fisher back in parliament, not as leader, but as a senior advisor. Higgins, who was also on the NSW ALP Executive, was more open in wanting Fisher back as leader and was likely to have been the first person to formally ask him to nominate.18 Fisher’s own role in these events changed over time. The day after Ryan’s death, he simply paid tribute to him and pointed out the stress that all Labor leaders were often under. He said nothing to indicate he would be re-entering federal politics. When the first reports of him possibly seeking West Sydney began circulating he denied any communication had taken place. As late as 5 August, the Argus listed the possible candidates for West Sydney and Fisher’s name was not mentioned. However, by 8 August, ALP headquarters in Sydney indicated that Fisher had signalled his willingness to be a candidate and he indicated to the Melbourne press that he was willing to offer himself for preselection if his colleagues desired him to do so. He made no move to travel to Sydney but did send Senator Albert Gardiner as an unofficial campaign manager to assess the situation. He wanted the party to invite him back rather than enter into the pre-selection ballot.19 Even at the height of his powers, Fisher had never enjoyed a natural political influence in the New South Wales branch of the party. Although

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he had been a very successful leader, Fisher had come from Queensland and now lived in Melbourne, making him very much an outsider in Sydney. Unlike Ryan, Fisher had been silent over the conscription issue while serving as High Commissioner. The newer generation of party members, embittered by the split, were not indebted to him. If he was not willing to assure the NSW State Executive that he wanted to come back into parliament to take on the party leadership, and he clearly did not intend to do that, then he had little bargaining power. When Gardiner arrived in Sydney, he found that the state executive had already decided on a pre-selection ballot and he therefore did not go any further with Fisher’s nomination. Fisher had plenty of time to come to Sydney and lobby branch members and Gardiner believed that he could have easily won the ballot, although this remains uncertain. Contrary to some beliefs, he never entered the pre-selection ballot and by 10 August had publicly indicated that he would not be proceeding. Some eight candidates did contest the ballot and Lambert easily won, being 400 votes ahead of the next candidate, the former member before Ryan, Con Wallace. Lambert was then elected to parliament and served for several undistinguished years before the firebrand, Eddie Ward, took over the seat.20

Back to England Since there was no other federal seat obviously available, it was decided, after much family discussion, to return to England. Margaret, who wanted to be near her sons, certainly liked the idea of going back, and the death of her mother removed a major tie to Australia. Some of Fisher’s lack of determination to gain the West Sydney nomination was possibly due to Margaret’s unhappiness over his resumption of a political career in Australia. It also seems likely (according to Peggy Fisher) that her father had already been approached to seek pre-selection for the Scottish seat of Kilmarnock, and this career option was discussed by her parents while deciding whether or not to stay in Melbourne. Oakleigh Hall was obviously no longer going to be needed by the family and was put up for sale in 1922. It eventually

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became the private Oxford Club. It would make one last public claim to fame when the movie On the Beach was filmed in Melbourne in 1959 and the club leased its premises for location shots. In 1960, the property was sold and the house demolished to make way for a suburban housing estate as Melbourne’s population exploded in the post−World War Two decades.21 In October 1921, the Fishers were farewelled for the last time at a luncheon reception hosted by the FPLP. Fisher advised the party, as he had at his Brisbane reception, to always keep to its ideals and to trust the people. This was an expression of his fear that the party had become too inward looking and had lost the edge that had made it the natural majority party under his leadership. He noted that his movements were uncertain, although he hoped to return to Australia in the future, and his services were always at the disposal of the party. Acting leader Matthew Charlton expressed the hope that Fisher might return and re-enter federal politics. If the rumours that he might be gaining a seat in the Commons were true, Charlton thought it would be real a loss to Australia. There were probably many in the FPLP who would have welcomed Fisher’s presence in the parliament given Tudor’s illness and the lack of leadership qualities in the amiable Charlton. Although they were selling Oakleigh Hall, the family still had the home in Albert Park so they had not entirely broken all ties with Melbourne. Margaret had also inherited the Gympie house in Maori Lane from her mother, although she later sold it to a relative in 1926. Still, given the fact that they were selling their main Melbourne home, packing off their furniture and library to London and would be educating their children in England, it seemed unlikely that a man turning sixty in 1922 would be returning to Australian federal politics in the foreseeable future. The hope some had clung onto while he was in London of Fisher returning and leading the party to victory, was seen as an illusion. On his return to England, the letters from old friends on political happenings, that had been characteristic of his time as High Commissioner, quickly dried up and he rapidly began to lose his Australian contacts.22 On 21 October, Margaret and the children boarded the relatively new Orient liner, Ormonde, in Melbourne. Fisher left shortly afterwards

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for his delayed train ride across the Nullarbor and picked up the ship in Fremantle for the remainder of the journey to England. The Times again recorded Andrew Fisher’s English arrival at Plymouth but this time in a small item tucked away on page 13. The family returned to London and initially rented a home at 37 Langdon Park Road, Highgate.23

Kilmarnock and pre-selection In early March 1922, Fisher travelled up to Scotland to try and win Labour pre-selection for the seat of Kilmarnock, then held by the Liberals’ Alexander Shaw. The pre-selection interview went badly, and Fisher later told his daughter that his support for the British royal family (a cause not popular with the local Scottish party) had probably cost him endorsement. A meeting of union and co-operative delegates in Kilmarnock on Saturday 11 March voted not to adopt Fisher as their candidate ‘on the grounds that his views were not in conformity with the policy of the National Labour Party’. It is likely that the royal family was only one of several ideological differences that led to his failure and the Argus later claimed, probably quite rightly, that Fisher would have been found to be too moderate for ‘the militant socialists of the Clyde’. There were also many practical difficulties with him securing the pre-selection. Although he was widely welcomed in Scotland as a local son, it was because he had been the Australian Prime Minister not because he had close ties to his old community. He had left Crosshouse in 1885, and had no real influence within the Scottish labour movement. As in West Sydney, the party members were being asked to endorse someone who was very much an outsider.24 Another problem for Fisher was that, although not yet sixty, his health was clearly failing. A photo of him, hatless and standing to attention at the Amiens ceremonies in l920 (see figure 11), reveals an old man compared to the way he looked on arrival in London in early 1916.25 This aging was confirmed by press reports just a few months later, when he stepped off the train in Melbourne. Reporters described him as having snow-white hair, being much thinner and his voice as

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having lost its deep resonance.26 However, these physical changes were not the only things that old friends and colleagues noticed. Hughes later reported that he had found Fisher quite mentally ‘unbalanced’ during this visit and the fact that he constantly changed his mind in press interviews only added to this sense of a man who was suffering mental confusion.27 He had failed to meet Henry Boote in Melbourne because he stood outside the Public Library while Boote waited inside. While this might have been confusion on the part of either man, the evidence suggests it was more likely that Fisher had forgotten the details of the meeting place.28 A colleague meeting him in the Strand in London in 1922 was at first delighted by his reminiscences on his time as Prime Minister, only to be embarrassed and horrified as Fisher soon drifted off into disjointed inanities.29 Such behaviour would almost certainly have been obvious in his pre-selection interview. If Fisher really did stumble over the issue of royalty it was an indication that he had not understood local political feelings, which he would have astutely judged when he was younger. Another pointer to his health at least being a factor was that Fisher was so traumatised and exhausted by the pre-selection ordeal that he was unable to return to London. He managed to get back to relatives in Liverpool, but Robert had to come up and physically escort him home.30

The final years In August 1922, Fisher hosted an informal luncheon at Australia House for chess masters who had played at a recent international championship in London. He saw the game as producing camaraderie and contributing to improving world conditions. It was the last time any reports of Fisher’s public activities would appear in the English press until his death six years later.31 The family now purchased a threestorey, four-bedroom, home at 57 South Hill Park, Hampstead (see figure 12) and settled in to it in early 1923.32 Fisher regularly attended the Trinity Presbyterian Church in High Street and various commercial and honorary functions in the City. He was president of the London Caledonian Society and remained popular with many of the staff at

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Australia House and the Commonwealth Bank. He and Peggy went for a brief tour of Central Europe later in 1923 and this appears to be the last time that he left England. The decline in Fisher’s memory, first noticed in 1914, had become so obvious by 1924 that he could not be trusted to take his long walks without someone going with him, as he was in danger of losing his way home. By 1926, he was usually restricted to his house, unless accompanied by a family member, because he would now get lost walking around the block. He began trying to get into parked cars, claiming they were his, and would only be dissuaded by Peggy, his usual walking companion, who appealed to his sense of chivalry by claiming she was tired and needed to be ‘taken’ back home. Peggy also took him on a holiday to Hastings in 1925, while James accompanied him on a school holiday to Scotland in 1926. These vacations were less about increasing the bonds between Andrew and his children and more about giving Margaret a break from the demands of constantly looking after her ailing husband. In May 1927, he went back to Scotland, accompanied by Peggy, to visit Crosshouse for the last time, and stayed with relatives. However, Herbert Campbell-Jones heard stories that Fisher was sometimes found in the village, hatless and without his shoes and socks, bailing up passers-by with meaningless mutterings such as, ‘I told them so, I told them so...’. 33 Up to the mid-1920s, Fisher was still capable of reading his correspondence but dealt with it more slowly than in the past. He then found it harder to answer his mail because he had difficulty composing even a short reply. His last major letter was to Stanley Bruce in August 1927, when he presented the Australian government with the first one pound note of the Commonwealth government and another of the earliest notes printed according to the first Commonwealth design. Bruce replied graciously and had the money lodged in the National Library. Fisher’s typewritten letter was very likely composed by one of the family.34 By the time of his death, Fisher’s mental deterioration was such that he was no longer capable of even writing his own name.35 Aside from this mental decline, Fisher’s physical health began to fail. Attacks of influenza became common in the 1920s as his breathing

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difficulties made him more susceptible to English winter flu and colds, and he suffered a loss of appetite and of weight. His brother and sister, as well as other cousins and their families, came to visit regularly and the Fisher household, on occasions, would be, as in the past, a very busy place. But Fisher now lost contact with most of his Australian political friends and colleagues. Only George Pearce, on his way to attend a League of Nations meeting, came to visit in 1927. He found Fisher’s health obviously failing, although he was still interested ‘in the progress and development of the Commonwealth’. It was possibly Pearce’s visit that sparked Fisher to write to Bruce within a month, sending him the Australian banknotes. With most of his sons absent at school or university, Margaret and Peggy were his main company. For the first time in his life, he began to have periods of depression and a sense of loneliness from the lack of male company and of abandonment by his old political friends.36

The end In mid-October 1928, Fisher fell ill again with one of his bouts of influenza, but this time pneumonia developed. The doctor ordered regular doses of whisky as a stimulant and Fisher’s previous teetotalism seemed to make it effective in the short term. Eventually he lapsed into a three-day coma and Henry Fisher reported that his father died peacefully at 9 am on the morning of 22 October in his bedroom on the first floor of his home.37 All the family were at his bedside, except for Robert. He had resigned from the Commonwealth Bank and in 1925, achieved first class honours in Modern Greats at Oxford. He won a Commonwealth Fund scholarship to the United States to attend Columbia University for three years and the family thought he should not interrupt his studies to return to London. The Australian government quickly announced that it would pay for a state service and for Fisher’s internment costs.38 Hughes was one of the first to offer a public evaluation of Fisher’s career, describing him as ‘upright and incorruptible’ in his devotion to the service of his country and the welfare of others.39 The Australian press gave Fisher’s death extensive

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coverage, with the major papers emphasising his kindness, honesty, and sincerity as well as his stability, hard work and sound political judgment. His achievements were usually described in terms of his contributions to national development, including the creation of the Australian Navy and the Commonwealth Bank, as well as his support for the Empire with his last man and last shilling speech. The Age summed up Fisher’s life, describing him as a self-made man whose career was ‘one of the great romances of Australian politics and shows what rewards await talent and industry applied to steady determination and unswerving loyalty to public causes’.40 Fisher’s London burial was according to customary Scottish rites. A morning service was conducted for the immediate family in the Fisher residence. At its conclusion the coffin was lowered from the first floor through the window of his house, draped in the Australian flag. While the women remained at home, it was carried to the graveside at Hampstead cemetery by the men who were responsible for his committal. The pallbearers were drawn from Australians living in London, especially those working for Australia House, the Agents-General and the Commonwealth Bank. In the afternoon, a memorial service was conducted for the general public at St Columbia’s Church of Scotland in Pont Street. This took place in the presence of his immediate family, friends and representatives of the King, the British Prime Minister, the various High Commissioners, Agents-General and representatives of the Commonwealth Bank, British Empire League and Salvation Army. The formalities were what one would have expected for an exPrime Minister and ex-High Commissioner, but revealingly, Arthur Henderson was the only significant political figure to personally attend the service.41 A public subscription, organised by the Commonwealth government through a trust fund, raised money largely from among Australians in London (although George Pearce generously gave two guineas) to pay for a memorial to be erected over Fisher’s grave.42 The granite obelisk was unveiled in February 1930 by Prime Minister Ramsay McDonald (see figure 13). This memorial noted only Fisher’s imperial and national contributions, since ‘Privy Councillor’ and ‘Prime Minister’ were the only two achievements listed on the stone;

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however, his leadership of the ALP for eight years was inscribed on the base. The memorial is now rarely ever seen by the large number of Australians who visit London. In a sense, it symbolises the historical obscurity into which Fisher has fallen.43

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24 An underestimated man

The eulogies for Fisher did not end in October 1928. When the Commonwealth Parliament sat again on 6 February 1929, there were further tributes in both Houses. Bruce, who hardly knew Fisher, emphasised his contribution to the British Empire, citing the 1911 Imperial Conference, his prewar defence preparations and, of course, his last man and last shilling speech.1 Pearce also emphasised the defence preparations and the famous speech but also cited Fisher’s personal virtues, noting that ‘his integrity, his sincerity, his obvious honesty of purpose’ had gained him the respect of his colleagues and the electorate.2 Edward Corser, now holding Wide Bay, pointed out that Fisher only had political opponents and never personal enemies. Billy Hughes thought Fisher’s two major contributions were creating the Commonwealth Bank and the Australian Navy and then went on to claim that he had never had a more loyal colleague or faithful friend. Even when they had disagreed, he said he had never ceased to respect him and that no man had done more for the labour movement.3 Hughes had also written a long and personal note to Margaret, offering his condolences on the loss of a man he clearly admired. Hughes was virtually without any close friends in the parliament after the death of Batchelor and over the years he increasingly looked back with genuine fondness (if not always accurately) on his early relationship with Fisher.4

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It was his ALP colleagues who tended to focus on Fisher’s domestic achievements. Needham thought the Fisher government between 1910 and 1913 was the only one that could claim to have put its election platform into effect during one parliamentary term. James Scullin, first elected in 1910, recalled Fisher in the old Melbourne parliament, denouncing what he believed to be wrongs and how they would need to be righted for the Australian people. Maloney, long attached to Fisher, cited his generosity in extending the old age pension. Several noted that while Fisher was often slow at coming to a decision, once convinced of it he would doggedly see it through to the end. Everyone thought of him as a highly respected and much liked individual. Yet, except for Pearce, no one in the parliament had obviously had any recent contact with Fisher. Hughes, for example, ended his speech wanting to know whether Fisher’s family might need financial assistance, while Frank Anstey was under the impression that they were living in England in considerable poverty.5

The family scattered Following Fisher’s death, Margaret Fisher decided to remain in Hampstead. Margaret still owned two houses outright and the Fishers had always been good savers. Andrew had invested in shares since his Gympie days, although by the postwar period he tended to place his savings in government and public authority bonds. In 1922, for example, he placed £1000 in his wife’s name in Water Board bonds.6 This frugality enabled Margaret to put James, the youngest son, through Cambridge University after his father’s death. During 1939, Margaret and Peggy, who never married, returned to Australia for a visit. Margaret planted a tree in the NSW Blue Mountains’ Prime Minister’s Avenue in memory of her husband, visited family and friends in Victoria and stayed at the old Irvine house in Red Hill, Gympie. At Maryborough, an aging Billy Demaine had her piped into the Town Hall where she urged the audience to vote for a federal Labor government at the next election. She was also a guest of honour at the opening of the Queensland parliament and a car was provided for her during her

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stay in Brisbane.7 The Fisher women eventually returned to London and resumed residence in Hampstead. Margaret lived there until the afternoon of 15 June 1958 when she passed away, aged eighty-three, in the same bedroom where her husband had died. Following family tradition, Henry and James attended to her committal alongside her husband in Hampstead Cemetery while Peggy remained at home.8 The Fisher children, while less closely knit than Andrew and his siblings, at least maintained some sense of responsibility towards one another in later life. Robert went back to the United States in the 1930s to work as an economist. He eventually married in 1942, settled in Connecticut and died in 1979. Andrew and John returned to Australia to jobs provided by Keith Murdoch. John was the first in 1930 and was employed for a time at the Melbourne Herald, while Andrew went to Adelaide to work on the Advertiser. John became the Canberra correspondent for the Daily News and the communist Tribune and a 1938 Canberra photograph shows both John and Andrew working in the parliamentary press gallery. John later worked for the ABC as a correspondent in Moscow but after the war was deemed a security risk. He found it hard to obtain regular employment and even worked as a mail sorter in the Sydney GPO to sustain himself. The only Fisher male to be divorced, John died of heart problems in Adelaide in 1960, at the age of fifty, while on a visit to Andrew and his family. Andrew worked on the Murdoch paper all his life and died in the 1970s after several years of ill health. Henry had won a medal in civil engineering and a two-year scholarship in the United States, saw service in India during the Second World War, married a woman from Gympie and settled in England. James became an industrial chemist after graduating from Cambridge and also remained in England.9 Peggy Fisher proved to be the most colourful, if difficult, member of the family. A nervous child and, as the only girl, spoilt to some extent by both parents, she clearly doted on her father but her relationship with her brothers was sometimes strained. She claimed to have once studied to be a physiotherapist but failed her final exams and then had no other real career.10 In the 1930s, Robert, already doing well in his profession, renounced any share in his mother’s estate but

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after Margaret died, the London home, the main family asset, needed to be sold. However, a family trust, set up by her parents in 1925, had given Peggy use of the Albert Park home for the rest of her life.11 There were some problems in her moving there immediately and she came to Adelaide to live for a while with Andrew and his family. She also did some house-minding before she moved back to the old family home, and eventually received the old age pension once she reached the eligible age.12 She was responsible for keeping the Fisher papers which were handed over to the National Library, and in 1962 wrote her memories of her father (in a glowing but interesting way) in a series of exercise books. She also arranged functions in Melbourne in 1963 and 1973 among ALP dignitaries to commemorate the seventieth and eightieth anniversaries of her father’s first election to the Queensland parliament. In 1972, she returned to Gympie as guest of honour for the restoration of the Maori Lane cottage.13 She was keen to accept a proposal that her parents’ remains be removed from the Hampstead cemetery and reburied in Gympie as part of a new memorial to them. However, this was strongly opposed by all of her surviving brothers and the scheme lapsed.14 By 1979, Peggy was the only Fisher child still alive in Australia and Tamie Fraser, wife of Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, had visited her at Albert Park and was responsible for obtaining a grant for her to travel back to Crosshouse. The village had decided in 1978, the fiftieth anniversary of Fisher’s death, to build a memorial cairn to him (see figure 14). This was unveiled by Sir Gordon Freeth, the Australian High Commissioner, on 29 August 1979, which was Fisher’s birthday. (Like many Fisher monuments, the little park and cairn have currently fallen into neglect.)15 In 1983, Peggy also made the journey to Canberra, where she was a guest at the ceremonial unveiling of the foundation stone for the new parliament house. A Melbourne Sun photographer captured the moment of her shaking hands with Prime Minister Bob Hawke. Yet Fisher’s daughter was upset on her visit to discover that her father’s official portrait was not hanging in King’s Hall of the old Parliament but had been relegated to a non-public area. Even in the new Parliament House, it was sometimes absent, allegedly because of

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its size, from the row of official prime ministerial portraits. This would not be permanently remedied until the new National Portrait Gallery was established in the old Parliament House and Fox’s portrait was once again hung in the King’s Hall. Peggy Fisher remained in Albert Park until early 1988, just a few months before her death, when ill health forced her into a nursing home. Despite her efforts, by the time she passed away most Australians had forgotten her father and his contributions to the nation’s development.16

The historical evaluation Outwardly, Andrew Fisher claimed a sceptical view of history, saying half of it was untrue and the other half didn’t matter. But behind such bravado, he was very conscious of telling his story to put himself in the best possible light. Historians, however, have long been divided in their evaluation of this early prime minister and this was clear in the first forty years after his death. AJ Jose, who had been a friend of Deakin, thought Fisher to be fairly mediocre compared to Watson, let alone Deakin, but did appreciate that he had worked well with his caucus. Ernest Scott, no great friend of the ALP, considered Fisher to be a competent leader of limited abilities compared to the dynamic Hughes.17 In contrast, Brian Fitzpatrick in A Short History of the Australian Labor Movement (1940) argued that the 1910−13 government was an important reformist Labor government and saw Fisher as the most outstanding Labor prime minister of the previous four decades.18 Norman Makin shared this view of Fisher as a strong leader and an excellent prime minister.19 Crisp also regarded Fisher’s 1910−13 administration as a period of major reform only equalled by John Curtin’s wartime government. He echoed Needham’s tribute in 1929 that Fisher’s government was one of the few Labor ministries where federal conference policies and election platforms were actually enacted in the one parliamentary term.20 By 1955, Gordon Greenwood in his standard volume, Australia, thought Fisher at least a capable prime minister, perhaps a little uninspiring, but compared his administration quite favourably with the Curtin−Chiefly governments in terms of its achievements.21

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The blemish on Fisher’s reputation for many of these historians, even the sympathetic ones, was his record as a wartime leader. Scott felt that Hughes, for all his faults, was better equipped for the harder decisions of a nation at war. This view was shared by George Pearce in his memoirs, despite his warm feelings towards Fisher.22 Crisp only briefly discussed this period but was uneasy over the fact that Fisher had introduced and supported wartime legislation such as the War Precautions Act.23 Charles Bean was one of the few earlier historians to deal with the later period of the High Commissionership, since he knew Fisher while they were both in England. He commented on the decline of Fisher’s mental powers while High Commissioner to partly explain his apparent ineffectiveness in this role.24 The 1960s saw a different perspective on Fisher, commencing with a highly critical portrait of him by MH Ellis, a journalist and historian, in a 1962 issue of the Bulletin. Ellis was old enough to have remembered Fisher from Queensland and rated him as one of the most inarticulate prime ministers to ever govern Australia. He also thought him an essentially mediocre party man and that he should have left the task of leadership to the more brilliant Hughes.25 Not surprisingly, these views flowed over into what are now standard biographies of Hughes by LF Fizthardinge and Deakin by JA La Nauze. Fitzhardinge had known Hughes in his later years and had interviewed him on several occasions. Hughes revealed a genuine fondness for Fisher in these recollections but, of course, portrayed himself as the real power within the early Labor government. Fitzhardinge in his 1962 biography which covered Hughes’s career to 1913, tended to take such views at face value. He therefore followed the Ellis line, depicting Fisher as possessing limited abilities and being a fairly dour and unimaginative leader, controlled by the caucus and heavily reliant on the more able Hughes. He briefly dealt with the remaining years of Fisher’s political life in his second volume The Little Digger: 1914−1952 (1979), where he noted that the two men became estranged during the period of the High Commissionership. However, Fisher largely disappeared from the book from that point onwards.26 La Nauze, in his 1964 biography on Deakin, also portrayed Fisher

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as ‘a slow thinker, shrewd in his own careful way, not without vanity, a man of integrity whose public reputation and place in the Labor party depended on his rock-like lack of brilliance’. He also presented Fisher as being in awe of Deakin and unable to match his eloquence or intellect. The 1910 general election was hardly covered by him, even though it was the turning point in Deakin’s political career. Relying on Fitzhardinge’s account, he gave credit for the victory, not to Fisher, but to Hughes, who certainly played an important part in the election in NSW. La Nauze didn’t really analyse the work of the 1910−13 Fisher government, since he claimed that it was just completing Deakin’s earlier nation-building program.27 By the 1970s a revision of these views began to emerge when Denis Murphy presented a more sympathetic view in Prelude to Power: The Rise of The Labor Party in Queensland, 1885−1915 (1970), and in his entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography. Geoffrey Marginson, a student of Murphy’s, contributed a chapter on Fisher in Prelude to Power and Murphy began researching a biography of Fisher but did not complete it before his death. Murphy regarded Fisher’s political career from 1901 to 1915 as outstanding, regrettably cut short by ill health and the ambitions of Hughes. He also thought highly of the Fisher ministries and rated Fisher as one of Labor’s greatest prime ministers. He gave his career after 1915 a polite but rather limited treatment. John Malkin, an Ayrshire journalist and local historian wrote Andrew Fisher 1862–1928 (1978) for the local celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of Fisher’s death. The book was only a brief account of Fisher’s life and times but was important in revealing how positively Fisher was still viewed in Scotland. Malkin saw Fisher’s government as outstanding but relied heavily upon Murphy and Marginson for these evaluations28 Neville Meaney’s The Search for Security in the Pacific 1901−1914 (1976) dealt with Australian foreign and defence policies during the formative years 1901 to 1914, which were often only briefly touched on by these other historians. Meaney thought highly of Fisher’s role and the soundness of his overall defence preparations before 1914. He also presented perhaps the most balanced view of Fisher the man and politician, when he argued:

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Fisher lacked the quick wit and platform eloquence of a Deakin or Hughes… Nevertheless his simple honesty in dealing with men and measures won him a trust and respect which no other Australian of his time was able to command… Too often historians have undervalued in a politician the virtues of common sense, common decency and common language. He (Fisher) was a man of such virtues.29

David Day in his recent study (2008) has certainly restored Fisher’s credibility in terms of noting how important he was as a nation builder and a man interested in a social agenda for the nation. Whether he headed the world’s first socialist government is debatable but certainly Day was right to note that Fisher liked to think of himself as a socialist, however vaguely and even inconsistently he used such a term. He prepared the nation well for war, partly because he feared Japan, and this certainly meant Fisher had to maintain close support for the British Empire.30 If there are criticisms in these later evaluations, they are often of Fisher’s performances as wartime Prime Minister and then High Commissioner. John Murdoch argued that Fisher would have been better to have retired after his defeat in 1913 than trying to lead the nation during the war years. Like Scott, Murdoch considered that Fisher lacked the decisiveness needed in such a situation. Day’s portrayal of Fisher by 1915 is one of a man suffering increasing ill health, out of his depth due to events beyond his control and worried over being called to account for the problems associated with the Gallipoli campaign. Donald Horne, in contrast, defended Fisher because of the prudence and humanity he brought to the wartime office but remains very much in a minority in this evaluation.31 Attard, in examining Fisher’s London years, saw them as unsuccessful due to the decline in relations between Fisher and Hughes after the Labor split and then the suspicion in London that the ALP was not sympathetic towards the war (which was true for some sections of it). Anderson, while sensing that Fisher achieved more in London than Attard conceded, also argued that Fish-

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er’s long physical and mental decline after 1915 was partly responsible for his failure as High Commissioner (along with his estrangement from Hughes). This is a view shared by Day in his account of this period.32 There may be other reasons to explain this long-term underestimation of Fisher in Australian history. For many in the ALP and its supporters, the years after 1916 have always been a painful historical period. Even the more recent histories of the party, while all noting and praising the achievements of the 1910 Labor government, do not spend a great deal of time on Fisher himself.33 There is much to Fitzhardinge’s view that the party, embittered by the 1916 split, demonised Hughes and all associated with him. It lost sight of many of the significant Labor figures of the earlier period: Watson, Pearce, Spence and even Fisher. It was not until the early 1940s that the federal party emerged from the doldrums and, since that time, the wartime leadership of John Curtin, the reformed alcoholic who led Australia to the brink of victory despite it breaking his health, has assumed heroic proportions. Labor’s most successful leader, Bob Hawke, took comfort from Curtin’s career, regarding him as Labor’s greatest prime minister. Curtin, and to some extent, his successor Ben Chifley, still hold sway today along with the Hawke/Keating leadership of the 1980s and 1990s. In that revision of the past, Andrew Fisher has largely faded away, remembered, if at all, only by his jingoist phrase of 1914.34

A final evaluation It is strange that a number of historians have rated Fisher as such a mediocre leader, given his record in transforming Australia in so many ways. Certainly, he was no great thinker and his ideas were largely derived from others, but this in itself is no sin. He was willing to pick up many progressive ideas and run with them. From the time he first entered the Queensland parliament in 1893, he revealed himself receptive to new ideas, which were often at the cutting edge of reform. Often his commonsense approach to problems turned out, in the end, to be the right course to follow. Although not a brilliant orator, Fisher

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nevertheless enjoyed the cut and thrust of parliamentary debates and proceedings. Yet, he also showed that in a culture of ambitions and clashing egos, it was possible to remain a decent man who sincerely sought power in order to change the world for the better. He may not always have been quick at coming to a decision, but he knew how to set out his government’s agenda and then see it through to completion. His calmness, shrewd insights and friendly nature brought out the best in those around him and created a team spirit in his cabinet among often difficult personalities. Henry Boote rightly claimed that Fisher was widely admired, not because of his intellectual brilliance, but for ‘a steadfastness of character that made him an immoveable rock in the midst of shifting and not infrequently dangerous currents’.35 Australians today take for granted the presence and power of the institutions of their national government without giving much thought to how they were called into being. Yet, the national capital was established by Fisher’s government. Much of the armed forces and their training academies owe their existence to his work. Australia House, the coat of arms and even the origins of the national art and library collections are all part of his legacy. The creation of a national currency, uniform postal services and Australia’s largest bank were due to his efforts, as was the linking of the continent, east to west, by rail. If some of his visions were unrealistic, such as making the deserts bloom, he advocated policies of national development that captured the imagination of later generations of Australians and increased their sense of national identity. Many direct government welfare programs such as old age and invalid pensions and the maternity allowance had their origins, in some form or another, in Fisher’s leadership. He certainly shared, with most Australians, concerns over the rising power of Japan but, while organising the nation’s defences and supporting the British Empire, also thought in terms of closer ties to the United States and greater regional responsibilities for Australia. Fisher was the first leader to openly declare the ALP to be the real voice of the Australian people and a genuinely national party. His victory over Deakin in 1910 confirmed that an ordinary working miner could aspire to lead the nation at the highest level. This in itself was a

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significant event in Australian political history. The victory also meant that the ALP, free of any coalition or alliances (which Fisher opposed) confirmed its own culture within the parliamentary system. Fisher, of course, had helped create this party culture. He respected the collective decision-making of caucus, took resolutions of the federal conferences seriously and pushed the ALP into creating its first federal executive. Fisher was also the first ALP Prime Minister to openly advocate his party being entitled to having its views and ideas reflected in all of the institutions that make up the nation because it was the natural and moral voice of the Australian people. At times Fisher could be too dogged in pursuit of his goals. He tried, unsuccessfully, to extend federal powers in order to deal with what he perceived to be the deficiencies of Federation. Although the ideological descendants of the conservatives who opposed this quest have largely come around to his way of thinking one hundred years later, it doesn’t detract from the criticisms of the tactics he adopted at the time. He was also very much a man of his time and his vision of Australia, and indeed the British Empire, was always a racially selective one. He was not personally unkind to non-Europeans but he was a firm supporter of White Australian values and never thought in any other terms. Finally, having prepared his nation for war, he chose at a crucial period not to continue to offer the leadership that the crisis required. Almost certainly, his health problems were a major factor in giving up office when he was one of the few men who might have kept the situation in check. When Fisher left office it was, he believed, to continue important war work in London, yet he also handed over power to Billy Hughes who he knew was much more of a hardliner on winning the war and had often revealed considerable failings in dealing with caucus. Through what was a long career, Andrew Fisher tried to remain true to his moral vision of creating a fairer world for ordinary men and women. In the end, the First World War swept away many of his bright hopes for the future as it divided the nation and tore his party apart. His final years were unhappy ones as he became increasingly an isolated and forgotten figure. Yet Fisher retained, even in this period, a

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sense that the ALP remained the real hope for creating a better world. Many colleagues were less consistent in this belief than Fisher. Of the twenty-four members of the 1901 parliament who founded the FPLP, half would eventually desert the party. It says much about the character of Andrew Fisher that he remained to the end faithful to his visions.

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Notes

Introduction 1

On the life of Fisher in general, see Jose, AJ (1937) ‘Fisher, Andrew’ in Weaver, JHR (ed.) Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, London, 306–08, and also Jose’s papers and letters at University of Melbourne Library (hereafter cited as AJP); Makin, Norman (1961) Federal Labor Leaders, np, Sydney; Ellis, MH (1962) ‘Andrew Fisher. The Most Inarticulate P.M. in Australia or Any other Country’, Bulletin, 22 September, 19–21; Whitington, Don (1972) Twelfth Man?, Jacaranda Press, Brisbane; Murphy, DJ (1981) ‘Andrew Fisher’ in Nairn, Bede & Serle, Geoffrey (eds) Australian Dictionary of Biography, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, vol. 8, 502–07; Malkin, John (1987) Andrew Fisher, A Short Biography, Walker and Connell, Ayrshire; Brodie, Scott (1984) Statesmen, Leaders and Losers: The Twenty Three Prime Ministers of Australia, Dreamweaver Books, Sydney, 65–66; Murdoch, John (1998) A Million to One Against: A Portrait of Andrew Fisher, Minerva, London; Lloyd, Clem (2000) ‘Andrew Fisher’ in Gratton, Michelle (ed.) Australian Prime Ministers, New Holland Publishers, Sydney, 73–86; Anderson, WK (2002) ‘Andrew Fisher: “A Proud, Honest Man of Scotland”’, JRAHS, vol. 87, part 2, 190–208; Edwards, Peter (2004) ‘Andrew Fisher’ in Matthews, HCG & Harrison, Brian (eds) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 660–62 and Day, David (2008) Andrew Fisher, Australian Prime Minister, HarperCollins, Sydney. Fisher’s early life and career in Queensland has been covered by Marginson, Geoffrey (1970) ‘Andrew Fisher – The Views of a Practical Reformer’ in Murphy, DJ, Joyce, RB & Hughes, Colin A (eds) Prelude to Power: The Rise of the Labour Party in Queensland 1885–1915, Jacaranda Press, Brisbane, 189–92 and in ‘Andrew Fisher: The Colonial Experience’, unpublished BA Thesis, University of Queensland, 1967 and by Steven, Margaret (2001) ‘“Wandering on a Foreign Strand”: Andrew Fisher (1862–1928) and his Brothers’ in Priest, Wilfrid & Tulloch, Graham (eds) Scatterlings of Empire, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 65–73. Aspects of the middle years of his career can be found in Quayle, Victor. ‘A Study in Labor Leadership: Andrew Fisher, 1862 to 1910’, unpublished BA Thesis, Australian Catholic University, 1999 and Humphreys, Edward William, ‘Some Aspects of the Federal Political Career of Andrew Fisher’, unpublished MA Thesis, University of Melbourne, 2005. Also

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2 3

4

see Crisp, LF (1955) The Australian Federal Labor Party, 1901–1951, Longmans, London; Fitzhardinge, LF (1962) William Morris Hughes: A Political Biography, Volume I. That Fiery Particle 1862–1914, Angus and Robertson, Sydney; La Nauze, JA (1979) Alfred Deakin, A Biography, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne; and Meaney, Neville (1976) The Search for Security in the Pacific, Volume One: A History of Australian Defence and Foreign Policy, Sydney University Press, Sydney. Fisher’s time as wartime prime minister is partly covered by Scott, Ernest (1936) Official History of Australia in the 1914–1918 War: Volume XI Australia During the War, Angus and Robertson, Sydney; while his time as High Commissioner is directly covered by Attard, Bernard (1995) ‘Andrew Fisher, the High Commissionership and the Collapse of Labor’, Labour History, no. 68, May, 115–31. The Hughes quote is in CPD, CXX, 25, 6 February 1929. See PFM, I, 47–53, 67; II, 59 ff. For the unveiling of the monument, see The Times, 8 February 1930; Peggy Fisher’s life is briefly recounted by Noye, Larry (1989) ‘Peg Fisher: Part of Labor’s History’, Lobby, Autumn, 24–25; Whitlam’s reference to Fisher being all but forgotten is from Anderson, 190; the neglect of the Hampstead Monument is found in Melbourne Herald, 12 January 1987 and in a video recording by Clare H de Robilant in June 1987 found in the Australian National Library: de Robilant, Claire H, Manuscript, MS7726; there are two other memorials to Fisher with his house being relocated to the Mining and Historical Museum in Gympie, Queensland and a memorial cairn in the village of Crosshouse. These are discussed in later chapters. Interview of Kevin Rudd by Kerry O’Brien, 21 November 2007, 7:30 Report, (accessed 23 November 2007).

1 Ayrshire beginnings 1

2 3

4

5 6 7

On Ayrshire, see New Statistical Account of Scotland 1834–45, (1845) W. Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh, vol. 5, 769–73; Foster, John (1910) Ayrshire, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and the Scottish Census for 1861, 1871 and 1881 . On the Fisher family, see ADB, 8, 502; Malkin, 4–7 and PFM, I, 41–43 and II, 5. On differing views of Robert Fisher, see the positive images in David Fisher to AJ Jose, January 1934 in AJP; Hugh Murdoch to Andrew Fisher, 12 July 1888 in AFP MS2919/1/1–105 and PFM, I, 111, 135, and compare these with Hugh Murdoch’s later views to AJ Jose, 12 November 1933 in AJP. On Robert’s mother’s education, see PFM, I, 41; the view that Robert could not write at all has been repeated by several authors but he clearly signed John’s birth certificate and would have had difficulty preparing accounts for the co-op in the 1870s without some basic writing skills. PFM, I, 95 talks of young Andrew’s interest in singing and dancing. ibid.; I, 111 on James Garven’s small business venture. Steven, 72–73.

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8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

22 23 24 25 26

27 28 29

Jane Garven lived to one hundred and outlived her daughter, see Hugh Murdoch to AJ Jose, 12 November 1933 in AJP. PFM, I, 135 for the family story on Andrew’s naming and James Garven’s reaction. On Andrew’s childhood accident, see PFM, I, 123–24 and PFI has a longer version. On Andrew learning to swim, see PFM, II, 65. Hugh Murdoch to AJ Jose, 12 November 1933 in AJP and PFM, II, 27. ibid.; II, 87. Jane Fisher’s death certificate (copy held by author) indicates the new address and the 1881 Census lists them at Kilmaurs. On Thorniehill, see David Fisher to Hugh Craig, 12 October 1910, NAA, A2, 1911/3154. Malkin, 15. On the Education Act and the quote by John Boyd Orr, see Smout, TC (1986) Century of the Scottish People, 1830–1950, Fontana, London, 214–15. On Fisher attending night school, see W Sanderson to AJ Jose, 27 October 1933, AJP; while the claim of Fisher being illiterate is made, second-hand, in a 1934 letter in AJP. Although Henry Boote later claimed, somewhat kindly, that Fisher was given to metaphysical speculation, this is not the view of almost anyone else who has described his outlook, Australian Worker, 31 October 1928. Smout, 185–86. On Burns, see Douglas, Hugh (1976) Robert Burns: A Life, Hale, London, and McGuirk, Carol (1985) Robert Burns and the Sentimental Era, University of Georgia Press, Athens, Ga; that Andrew knew Burns by heart, see PFM, I, 187. On Scottish Chartism in Ayrshire, see Wilson, Alexander (1970) The Chartist Movement in Scotland, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 70. On the popularity of these writers, see Smout, 249 and on the Fisher boys being well read in radical literature, see Thomas Dunstan to AJ Jose, 15 November 1933, AJP. Smout, ch. VIII. Prentis, Malcolm (2008) The Scots in Australia, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 13–28. PFM, I, 187; Fisher’s admiration for Judaism and the Salvation Army are mentioned in PFI and, Peggy correctly remembers, the disproportionate number of people from the Salvation Army who attended the public memorial service for Fisher in London, see The Times, 27 October 1928. See PFI on his belief in prayer and PFM, I, 40 on his speech. Smout, 182–83; PFM, II, 7. Fisher’s declaration regarding his abstinence can be found in QPD, 11th Parliament, 1st Session, 707, 7 September 1893 and PFM, I, 95; Fisher in 1894 did observe that a reduction in drinking houses would be desirable in order to reduce the level of drinking, see QPD, 11th Parliament, 2nd Session, 635, 21 September, 1894. There are many examples of Fisher

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notes to pages 15–25

later serving guests alcohol, but see the invoices for the dinner that he hosted in South Africa in December 1910 found in the file at NAA, A2, 1911/3154. 30 John’s abstinence is found in his obituary, and job references for Robert indicate the same. Both documents are in the same folder in AFP 2919/1/1–105. 31 The co-op savings of the Fisher family are reported by John Fisher to Andrew and James Fisher, 29 December 1887, ibid. and the same folder has copies of the annual reports of this body sent to Andrew and James by the family.

2 Mines, unions and politics 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

On Margaret Fisher’s view of Andrew starting work, see PFM, I, 111, while Andrew reported this to the Gympie Times, 3 May 1893. ibid. Compare Murphy’s view in ADB, 8, 502 with Murdoch’s account in his letter to Jose, already cited, on why the boys were sent to work. The 1881 census lists the sixteen-year-old Robert and the fourteen-yearold James as coalminers. In the 1930s, David Fisher insisted (in his letter already cited) that his brother had been wholly employed as an underground miner, as did Margaret Fisher to AJ Jose, 4 January 1934, AJP. Malkin, 10–11. On Fisher’s later health problems, see PFM, I, 89; II, 15. Even before Andrew was born, the Fishers may have avoided a mining company home since, according to the 1861 census, they lived among a shoemaker, ploughman and carter, although nearby houses were clearly part of a mining row. On Hardie, see Reid, Fred (1978) Keir Hardie: The Making of a Socialist, Croom Helm, London and Morgan, Kenneth O (1987) Keir Hardie: Radial Socialist, Oxford University Press, London; the quote regarding Burns is found in McLean, Ian (1975) Keir Hardie, Allen Lane, London, 13. Malkin, 12–13 ADB, 8, 502. On John’s love interest, see Hugh Murdoch to AJ Jose, 12 November 1933 in AJP. John Fisher Dunlap to AJ Jose, 27 November 1933, AJP and PFM, I, 75 mention both Andrew and his father doing contract work. The Fisher family photo is in AFP, MS2919/12/173–240. The quote on Hardie is from Morgan, 9. The Wallace notation is found in Anderson, 189. On Fisher’s ideas about the division of society, see Marginson, ‘Views of a Practical Reformer’, 189–92. Lawrence, Elwood P (1957) Henry George in the British Isles, Michigan State University Press, East Lansing, ch. 1. On Hardie’s divisions of society, see McLean, 20–22 especially.

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notes to pages 26–33

20 Fisher’s problem with the Gympie mine managers is discussed by Marginson, ‘Colonial Experience’, 125, 127 especially. 21 Fisher is quoted in ASAFI. 22 On the issue of emigration, see PFM I, 87 and Steven, 67. 23 On Andrew’s frustration with David Fisher’s lack of ambition, see PFM, I, 77. 24 Robert Fisher to Andrew and James Fisher, 3 December 1891, AFP, 2919/11/1–105. 25 A list of emigrants is found in PFM, who was uncertain if Heron’s wife was part of the group. David Fisher to AJ Jose claimed the emigrants were all men and Irene Heron to AJ Jose in March 1934 (both in AJP) confirms this, stating that she arrived in Queensland two years after her husband. 26 The journey is covered by Steven, 68.

3 A new life in Queensland 1

On Queensland in this period see Johnston, W Ross (1982) The Call of the Land: A History of Queensland to the Present Day, Jacaranda Press, Brisbane. 2 On the industrial and political background, see various articles later cited in Murphy, Prelude, 111–24, 143–77, 187–98, 246–62, Murphy, DJ (1973) ‘Queensland’ in Murphy, DJ (ed.) Labor in Politics, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 129–228. Fisher’s career in this period is directly covered by Marginson, in ‘Colonial Experience’, from 24 onwards. 3 Waterson, DB (1978) ‘Thomas McIllraith: A Colonial Entrepreneur’, and Joyce, RB (1978) ‘Samuel Walker Griffith’, in Murphy DJ and Joyce RB (eds), Queensland Political Portraits 1859–1952, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 119–42 and 143–77. 4 Murphy, Labor in Politics, 132–38 especially and Bernays, CA (1919) Queensland Politics During Sixty Years, Government Printer, Brisbane, 294–96; Palmer, Vance (1954) The Legend of the Nineties, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 80 especially. 5 Steven, 68. 6 Hugh Murdoch to Andrew Fisher, 19 October 1886 and 12 July 1888, in AFP 2919/1/1–105. Copies of the co-op reports from this period are also found in ibid., 2/1–115, while New Year and Birthday greeting cards are found in ibid; 2919/11/1–105. 7 On Robertson’s expected visit to Thorniehill, see Hugh Murdoch to Andrew Fisher, 12 July 1888, in AFP 2919/1/1–105. 8 ADB, 8, 503. 9 Steven, 70. 10 On the history of Gympie, see Mulholland, WE (1983) The Town That Saved Queensland, National Trust of Queensland, Brisbane, 1 and Gympie Historical Society (1992) The History of Gympie and Districts, vol. 1, no. 2, np, Gympie. 11 On the colonial goldmining, see Blainey, Geoffrey (2003) The Rush that

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notes to pages 34–38

12

13 14 15 16 17 18

19

20 21 22

23

24 25 26

Never Ended: A History of Australian Mining, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 5th edn, 297–99; Murphy, ‘Andrew Fisher’, ADB, 8, 503. See Stoodly, June (1970) ‘Labour and Gold-Mining’, in Murphy, Prelude, 164–76, who takes issue with Blainey’s generalisation of a conservative mining community across the whole gold industry, but she is forced to concede the Gympie miners were fairly conservative although willing to consider labour reforms. Fisher recounted these experiences to the Queensland parliament, QPD, 11th Parliament, 2nd Session, 1036, 24 October 1894. Marginson, ‘Colonial Experience’, 35. On Henry Irvine’s death, see PFM, I, 37. PFI repeats the view of PFM that Fisher was proud of his engineer’s certificate and on Robert’s birth certificate he listed his profession as ‘engine driver’. The explanation for leaving Howard was given in 1911, Steven, 70. Hugh Murdoch to Andrew Fisher, 12 July 1888, in AFP, 2919/1/1–105; Fisher’s quest for self-improvement in Gympie is found in Malkin, 14; many of the documents for this period were also proudly kept by Fisher, see AFP, 2919/11/1–24; W Sanderson to AJ Jose, 27 October 1933, AJP, records regularly playing draughts and chess against Fisher at the School of Arts. On Fisher’s thoughts on the ministry, see Hugh Murdoch to AJ Jose 12 November 1933 and Irene Heron to AJ Jose March 1934, in AJP; PFM, I, 187 indicated her father’s interest in Unitarianism, which he thought made a lot of sense. PFI mentions her father’s talks with Wallace on his health and marrying. The brothers received a letter from John Fisher dated 29 December 1887, informing them of their father’s death, the subsequent funeral and the problems with Aunt Janet, AFP, 2919/1/1–105. The family dispute was dealt with at length in a second letter from John on 30 January 1890, yet Peggy Fisher later reported spending time with Aunt Janet while on holidays in Scotland in 1917 and found she possessed a baby photo of her brother, Robert, most likely given to her by Andrew just after his son’s birth. See David Fisher to Hugh Craig, 12 October 1910, NAA, A2, 1911/3154; Hugh Murdoch to Andrew Fisher, 12 July 1888; and Robert Fisher to Andrew and James Fisher, 3 December 1891, in AFP, 2919/1/1–105; there are claims that the Fishers left Thorniehill for Liverpool sometime in 1890 rather than 1892. This is possible as they are not listed there for the 1891 census, but David Fisher claimed in 1910 that they left in 1892. See James Fisher to Andrew Fisher, 7 July and 23 September 1893, AFP, 2919/1/1–105. A letter forwarded by John Fisher from the mine manager on 6 December 1893 informed Andrew of James’s death. The photo of James with Andrew’s comments is still in the Fisher papers, AFP, 2919/1/1–105. PFM, I, 27 and PFI incorrectly dated Robert’s death as 1896, which is

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notes to pages 39–49

27 28 29 30 31 32

33

34 35 36 37

repeated in many Fisher accounts, but Steven, 72 correctly noted it as 1900; Robert Fisher to Andrew Fisher, 4 April 1899 in DMP, 21/8. On William Lane, see Ross, Lloyd (1980) William Lane and the Australian Labour Movement, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney. Guyatt, BJ (1970) ‘The Publicists: The Labour Press, 1880–1915’, in Murphy, Prelude, 250–51. Marginson, ‘Colonial Experience’, 48 especially. Fisher’s copy of the ALF manifesto is AFP, 2919/8/1–32. Fisher’s photo of the jailed strikers is found in AFP, 2919/12/ 316–379 and see his comments in CPD, LXXVII, 4198–9, 18 June 1915. For a discussion on the great strikes in Queensland, see Fowler, John (1970) ‘The 1890s – Turning Point in Queensland History’ and Keney, H (1970) ‘The Pastoral Strikes of 1890 and 1894’ in Murphy, Prelude, 45–55 and 111–24; the quote is from Keney, 111. For a discussion of the debate on the origins of this political movement, see Scates, Bruce (1997) A New Australia: Citizenship, Radicalism and the First Republic, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2–11 especially. On Glassey, see Roper, SA (1970) ‘Thomas Glassey – First Labour Member’ in Murphy, Prelude, 194–98. Bernays, 294–95. Fisher’s welcome to Glassey is found in Marginson, ‘Colonial Experience’, 53. Kilmarnock Standard, 20 May 1911 in DMP, 20/3; Andrew was still clean-shaven in a photo of 1889 (AFP, 2919/1/1–105) but had the moustache when he entered the Queensland parliament in 1893.

4 Colonial politician 1 2 3 4

Marginson, ‘Views of a Practical Reformer’, 192. Murphy, Labor in Politics, 150–52. Gympie Times, 30 March and 4 April 1893 on the pre-selection votes. The occupation list is from Murphy, Labor in Politics, 152; on the diversity of support for the new Queensland party, see McKinlay, Brian (1988) A Century of Struggle: The ALP Centenary, Collins Dove, Melbourne, 19–20 and McMullin, Ross (1991) The Light on the Hill: The Australian Labor Party, 1891–1991, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1–8, 23–29. 5 Gympie Times, 22 April 1893; the Manifesto, delivered by Glassey in March was reported, somewhat belatedly, in this issue at the same time that it gave blanket coverage to Smyth and Stumm’s opening campaign speeches. 6 Gympie Times, 29 April 1893. 7 ibid.; 2 May 1893 on the election results and 31 March 1896 on later views that Fisher’s win in 1893 was ‘a fluke’. 8 Marginson, ‘Colonial Experience’, 67–69 analyses the votes. 9 Gympie Times, 6 May 1893 on the temperance issue. 10 ibid., 2 May 1893 and see also 30 March 1896 on Fisher recalling his

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notes to pages 49–60

urgent summons to Brisbane. 11 Bernays, 139. 12 The 1893 election is covered in Murphy, Labor in Politics, 153–54; Tommy Ryan may have decided not to stand again or failed to get endorsement. Either way he was replaced by George Kerr. 13 Hoolan informed the House of his election as leader of the PLP on 26 May, see QPD, 11th Parliament, 1st Session, 4, 26 May 1893. 14 ibid., 22–24, 26 May 1893. 15 ibid., 24. 16 Marginson, ‘Colonial Experience’, 77–78. 17 Murdoch, Million to One, 42. 18 QPD, 11th Parliament, 2nd Session, 36–41, 18 July 1894. 19 See Charles Powers to Andrew Fisher, 29 March 1892, AFP, 2919/9/49 for his reply to the letter and support for ‘Kanaka’ labour which Fisher had questioned. 20 The survey of PLP speeches is found in footnote 51 in Murphy, Labor in Politics, 225. 21 See the motion for adjournment debate in QPD, 11th Parliament, 3rd Session, 592, 15 August 1895, for Fisher’s obvious mastery of British parliamentary procedures and practices. 22 Murphy, Prelude, 156–63 deals with Glassey’s problems as leader; Fisher’s comments on the bar are found in QPD, 11th Parliament, 1st Session, 707, 7 September 1893. 23 Bernays, 139–40. 24 See QPD, 11th Parliament, 2nd Session, 1036, 24 October 1894, regarding the mines debate and 1189, 7 November 1894, on Fisher’s comments on the salaries of chief inspectors; he returned to the problem of mining accidents in ibid., 3rd Session, 1228, 11 October 1895. 25 Waterson, ‘McIlwraith’, 141. 26 Fisher pushed for a bank inquiry less than a month after entering parliament, see QPD, 11th Parliament, 1st Session, 113, 22 June 1893. 27 On his scepticism regarding protection, see ibid., 3rd Session, 223, 12 July 1895. 28 ibid., 11th Parliament, 2nd Session, 506–07, 511, 11 September 1894; the need for an Arbitration Bill was raised by Fisher in the same session, 701, 27 September 1894. 29 QPD, 11th Parliament, 1st Session, 22, 26 May 1893; aside from Fisher’s support of democratic principles cited in May 1893, see his comments on voting in ibid., 1021, 6 October 1893 and 2nd Session, 36–41, 18 July 1894. 30 Fisher’s support for a daily Hansard is found in ibid., 3rd Session, 156, 9 July 1895. 31 On shorter shopping hours, ibid., 3rd Session, 223, 12 July 1895. 32 On gambling, ibid., 261, 17 July 1895. 33 ibid., 2nd Session, 684–85, 9 September 1893 and 527, 11 September 1893.

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notes to pages 61–71

5 Hard times and recovery 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

24 25 26

Murphy, Labor in Politics, 156–157. The voting figures for Gympie in the 1896 election are found in Gympie Times, 31 March 1896, which compared them to the 1893 figures. ibid., 4 February 1896. On the accusations of Fisher being a captive to outside forces, see ibid., 5 March and 17 March 1896. Fisher’s responses to the questions about socialism and the ALF platform are found in ibid., 24 March 1896. Andrew Fisher to Henry Boote, May 1896, in AFP, 2919/2/116–90. ibid., 31 March 1896. ibid. The papers relating to the early history of the Gympie Truth are found in AFP, 2919/2/116–90 and 191–93. See especially the meetings of 15 and 17 April and 31 August 1896, and Henry Boote to Andrew Fisher 17 May 1896, and also see PFM, I, 63 for the view that Fisher was assisted by friends; Boote’s work in Bundaberg is covered in Nolan, Janette (1978) Bundaberg: History and People, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 144. The survey of Queensland papers is taken from Murphy, Prelude, 325–27. On his illness, see PFM, II, 31. On later problems with the paper, see George Ryland to Andrew Fisher, 2 November 1905 in AFP, 2919/1/1–105, and Thomas Dunstan to Andrew Fisher, 3 December 1912 in AFP, 2919/2/116–90. On Fisher’s problems in Gympie after 1896, see Thomas Dunstan to AJ Jose in AJP and Boote in Australian Worker, 31 October 1928. ibid. PFM, I, 35; evidence for Fisher’s improved finances by the end of 1901 was his marriage and the fact that he gave his bride an expensive broach as a wedding present as a substitute for the engagement ring. Murphy, Prelude, 195–96. The 1898 Convention Manifesto is found in ibid., 276–78. Gympie Truth, 1 March 1899. Marginson, ‘Colonial Experience’, 135; Gympie Truth, 22 February, 1 March 1899. Gympie Truth, 15 March 1899. ibid., 13 May 1899 was able to tell readers what had happened in the caucus to Glassey, presumably from reports by either Fisher or Ryland. See for example, QPD, 13th Parliament, 1st Session; Fisher was content to wait three weeks before he spoke at length on the issue of federation (391, 9 June 1899) but he did raise procedural issues from the first day of the sitting on 16 May 1899. See Gympie Truth, 14 October 1899 on Fisher’s tactics. QPD, 13th Parliament, 1st Session, 275–78, 5 October 1899; Gympie Truth, 14 October 1899. Marginson, ‘Colonial Experience’, 84–89 on Fisher’s views on alliances

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notes to pages 72–83

and the negotiations in 1899. 27 ASAFI. 28 On Baron Falls, see Marginson, ‘Colonial Experience’, 134 and PFM, I, 157. Although the latter’s account is not very accurate in recounting what happened, it was obviously an issue that Fisher thought well of and retold to his children. 29 Bernays, 506–34. 30 QPD, 13th Parliament, 1st Session, 391, 9 June 1899. 31 Gympie Truth, 29 July, 2, 8; 25 August, 2; 6 September 1899. 32 On the views of the labour movement in general regarding Federation, see McKinlay, 23–24 and McMullin, 43.

6 A new Commonwealth and party 1 2 3

4 5

6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

The Sydney Morning Herald, 2 January 1901. Fisher was almost certainly the anonymous author of ‘Jottings from Sydney’, which appeared in the Gympie Truth on 5 January 1901. On the history of the 1900 conference and the creation of the federal party, see Crisp, 22 ff; McKinlay, Century of Struggle, 23–27 and Faulkner, John and Macintyre, Stuart (eds) (2001) True Believers: The Story of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party, Sydney, 17–46. Crisp, 26. On Hughes see Fitzhardinge, 1–77 and on Watson see Grassby, Al and Ordonez, Silvia (1999) John Watson, Pluto Press, Melbourne, and McMullin, Ross (2004) So Monstrous a Travesty: Chris Watson and the World’s First National Labour Government, Scribe Publications, Melbourne. On Fisher’s public meeting, see Gympie Times, 7 November 1900. On Dickson’s death, see Gympie Truth, 12 January 1901. Gympie Times, 7 and 26 February 1901. Gympie Truth, 6 and 13 March 1901; Fisher made the point of his believing the new federal government would need revenue from a tariff in his opening campaign speech and never veered from this position, see Gympie Times, 7 February 1901. ibid. For the Bundaberg meeting, see Johnstone, 131. Gympie Times, 28 March 1901. On Fisher’s actions on election night, see Marginson, ‘Colonial Reformer’, 169. Gympie Times, 2 April 1901 for an evaluation of Fisher’s victory. The election breakdown figures in Wide Bay can be found in AFP, 2919/8/1–32. Barton was quoted in Gympie Times, 7 March 1910; La Nauze, 219. Data for all federal elections can be found on the website: http:// psephos.adam.carr.net/countries/a/australia/ hereafter cited as AEA and relevant year of election. On the composition of the labour party, see Faulkner and Macintyre, 21–25.

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notes to pages 83–96

19 ibid.; the quote from Watson is found in Grassby and Ordonez, 67; the ages of the first Watson ministry are listed in McMullin, Travesty, 31. 20 Fisher’s resignation from the Queensland parliament was formally accepted on 25 June 1901 and he was replaced by his friend Dan Mulcahy as the new PLP member for Gympie. 21 Caucus Minutes, I, 43, 7 May 1901; I, 44–45, 8 May 1901. 22 Pearce, George (1951) Carpenter to Cabinet, Hutchinson, London, 50. 23 Caucus Minutes, I, 45–47, 20 May 1901. 24 Watson’s account of these early days was in a series of interview/articles in Sydney Sun, 8, 9, 10 May 1927. 25 Caucus Minutes, I, 44, 8 May 1901 and I, 51, 12 June 1901; Pearce, 59. 26 Murdoch, 47 makes the case that Fisher only sought the leadership to enhance his prestige with the Queensland members. 27 Herbert Campbell-Jones, Cabinet of Captains, NLA, MS8905. 28 Caucus Minutes, I, 45–46, 20 May 1901. 29 CPD, VI, 8124, 3 December 1901. 30 For a criticism of Watson’s tactics see Pearce, 48–49; however, McMullin, Travesty, 31 rightly points out Watson’s relatively weak bargaining position. 31 CPD, I, 740, 5 June 1901; Bolton, Geoffrey (2000) Edmund Barton, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 307–08. 32 CPD, IV, 5345, 27 September 1901. 33 ibid.; VI, 7, November 1902; the later figures for labourers on the sugar fields are found in CPP, Session 1909, II, 850–51. 34 On the FPLP attitudes to the defence regulations, see Caucus Minutes, I, 57, 25 July 1901. 35 On the tariffs, see ibid., I, 69, 6 November 1901.

7 Marriage, England and cabinet minister 1

On John Fisher’s death, see Robert Wallace to Andrew Fisher, 12, 13, July 1901, AFP, 2919/1/1–105 and PFI. 2 Caucus Minutes, I, 73–74, 11 December 1901. 3 On the Fisher wedding, see PFM and Gympie Times, 2 January 1902. 4 ibid. 5 The Gympie Historical and Mining Museum also contains written source books for the debate over the Maori Lane home but also see Gympie Times, 20 January 1973; PFM, II, 109. 6 Fitzhardinge, 108–11. 7 The documents on the Gympie Engine Drivers’ Association are in AFP, 2919/11/25–63. 8 Bolton, 197, 231 argues that Barton was a reluctant convert to women’s suffrage around 1899 and thought the 1902 bill necessary for electoral uniformity rather than out of any great sense of conviction. 9 The passenger list for the Miowera can be found in ibid., 2919/11/25– 63. Fisher’s address book from this visit still survives and is found in 2919/11/1–24. 10 Keir Hardie to Andrew Fisher, 17 June 1902 in ibid., 2919/1/1–105.

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notes to pages 97–111

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

PFM, I, 50. Day, 124 and 433, endnote 33. PFM, II, 34 and AFP, 2919/11/25–63. Robert’s birth certificate (copy held by author); postcard from Margaret Fisher to Miss M Thompson, 20 December 1902 in AFP, 2919/1/1– 105; passenger list for the Teutonic found in 2919/11/64–84. PFM, I, 70 on the death of Jane Fisher; and David Fisher to Hugh Craig, 12 October 1910 in NAA, A2,1911/3154 on the death of William Fisher. For the various Fisher homes in Kew and St Kilda, see AFP, 2919/2/116– 90. The platform and pledges of the 1902 federal conference are found in Official Report of the Australian Labor Party Conference. Held at Sydney NSW in December, 1902, Sydney 1903. Batchelor’s election is found in Caucus Minutes, I, 53, 26 June 1901. ibid., I, 116, 22 February 1904. AEA (1903) for the election results. CPD, XIX, 1243, 21 April 1904. McMullin, Travesty, 67. La Nauze, 362–80 deals with Deakin’s problems in 1904. Caucus Minutes, I, 125–26, 23 April 1904. The list of ministers is found in McMullin, Travesty, 31. Fitzhardinge, 160; Watson’s bank reference for Fisher, dated 24 August 1901, is in AFP, 2919/1/13. Argus, 18 May 1904. Watson’s formal letter to Deakin can be found in Caucus Minutes, I, 130– 31, 1 June 1905. CPD, XIX, 1247, 18 May 1904 and McMullin, Travesty, 32ff. On Victorian politics, see McQueen, Humphrey (1970) ‘Victoria’, in Murphy, Labor in Politics, 291–339. George Kerr to Andrew Fisher, 7 May 1904, AFP, 2919/1/1/1–5. See Murdoch, 52 on Fisher’s ministerial work in his period, and see CPD, XX, 2539, 22 June 1904 and 2959, 6 July 1904 and XXI, 3311, 2 August 1904 for his answers to parliamentary questions. The dispute with Hughes is covered in McMullin, Travesty, 113. La Nauze, 378–79. CPD, XXI, 4264, 12 August 1904. Caucus Minutes, I, 139–43, 6, 7, 14 and 15 September 1904; a copy of the terms of the alliance can also be found in ibid., Appendix I, 468–70.

8 Leadership 1 2 3 4 5

McMinn, WG (1989) George Reid, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 219–23. JC Watson to Alfred Deakin, 22 June 1905 quoted by La Nauze, 390. Ford, Patrick (1966) Cardinal Moran and the ALP, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 266–70. CPD, XXV, 27–35, 29 June 1905. Murphy & Joyce, Queensland, 169–70.

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notes to pages 111–120

6 7

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

31

Ford, 270. The 1905 federal platform and the relevant resolution on recommending the ministry can be found in McKinlay, Brian (ed.) (1979) A Documentary History of the Australian Labor Movement, 1850–1975, Drummond, Adelaide, 41–44 but it incorrectly cites Fisher as the mover of the motion. ibid., 44. JC Watson to Andrew Fisher, 21 April 1904, AFP 2919/1/238. Caucus Minutes, I, 150, 2 November 1904. Gibbney, HJ (1973) ‘Western Australia’, in Murphy, Labor in Politics, 356–58. Caucus Minutes, I, 159, 27 July 1905. The letter from Watson to his caucus colleagues is found in Caucus Minutes, I, Appendix 2, 482–84. ibid. ibid., I, 158, 2 August 1905. ibid., I, 161, 9 August 1905. The details of the ‘election contest’ are found in Fitzhardinge 169–70 and based on an interview with Hughes in the 1940s but Caucus Minutes show Fisher was elected unanimously since there was no other candidate. The comment on Fisher’s popularity is from the Perth Daily News, AFP, 2919/10/7105. Campbell-Jones in Cabinet of Captains, MSS 8905. See Caucus Minutes, I, 45–46, 20 May 1901 for the recommendations for a seven man executive; at the annual caucus election of 26 May 1903 the four members of the executive remained unchanged, ibid., I, 95. CPD, XLVII, 128–29, 17 September 1908. ASAFI. See Caucus Minutes, I, 172–75, 6 and 7 June and 20 June 1906. Gollan, RA (1960) Radical and Working Class Politics: A Study of Eastern Australia, 1850−1910, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 209−11. CPD, XXVIII, 3603–08, 17 October 1905; the 1906 policies are discussed in the next chapter. Caucus Minutes, I, 161–62, 16 August 1905. Age, 18 October 1906. Daily Telegraph, 24 October 1906. Watson’s campaign can be followed in ibid. between 17 October and 7 November 1906. AEA (1906) contains the election results; Hughes in 1909 gave the Governor-General a breakdown of the 1906 general election results which were slightly different to these numbers among the non-Labour members of the House of Representatives. This difference partly reflected changes in allegiance by some members by 1909 and also the problem of members only loosely adhering to party labels in 1906. Murphy, Labor in Politics, 165–76; Watson is quoted in McMullin, Travesty, 159; and also see Thomas Dunstan to Andrew Fisher, 9 November 1905, AFP 21919/1/1–105 over his fears regarding the splits in Queensland.

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notes to pages 121–30

32 Murphy, Labor in Politics, 165–76. 33 ibid.; on the dinner dispute between Fisher and Kidston, see AFP, 2919/11/1–24. 34 On these leadership issues and Watson’s resignation, see Caucus Minutes, I, 301, 23 and 30 October 1907. 35 Grassby & Ordonez, 109–10; and Pearce, 49. 36 Caucus Minutes, III, 296, 19 November 1941. 37 The election is found in ibid., I, 201–02, 30 October 1907. Although it might have been at this time that Hughes made the famous cup of tea for Fisher while waiting for the ballot results, realistically he would barely have had time to boil the kettle before the votes were counted. Despite this story being endlessly repeated by historians as factual, it is more likely a later concoction by Hughes who was well known for spinning such tales. 38 Age, 31 October 1907. 39 Caucus Minutes, I, 203, 6 November 1907, and I, 204, 13 November 1907; Spence’s views on alliances can be found in Spence, WG (1909) Australia’s Awakening, Thirty Years in the Life of an Australian Agitator, The Workers Trust, Sydney, 429–30. He also briefly mentions Watson’s resignation (402) but gives no indication that he was even a candidate in the subsequent leadership ballot. 40 PFI on Hughes sometimes borrowing Fisher’s car. 41 Day, 142−43 argues that the leadership vote was very close but then wonders why Hughes never subsequently attempted to undermine Fisher. It is more likely that the final ballot was not particularly close and that Hughes had little hope in the short term of gaining the leadership. 42 Anderson, for example, on 196–97 suggests without any real evidence that Fisher despised Hughes, while Fitzhardinge, 171 suggests that there was never any great level of intimacy between the two men and also accepts later arguments from Hughes that he was the real power in the Fisher governments.

9 Minority Prime Minister 1 2

3 4 5 6 7

The trip around Queensland is described in MSP, Part 2. PFI; the mortgage repayments are in DMP/8 and AFP, 2919/2/116–90; Day, 140-1, points out that Fisher borrowed money for the property from Lady Elizabeth Gillott whose husband, Sir Samuel Gillott, had recently fled to London in disgrace. This may have been another factor in having the legal documents in Margaret’s name. La Nauze, 428. The alliance proposals are found in Caucus Minutes, I, 210, 10 April 1908. The note regarding the royal commission into the postal service is found in ibid., I, 214, 27 May 1908. La Nauze, 434. The Royal Commission Report on Old Age Pensions is found in CPP, 1906 Session, III, 1435ff. CPD, XXXIII, 7017–18, 17 August 1906, XXXIV, 4337–38, 11 September 1906, 4765, 18 September 1906 and XXXV, 775, 23 July

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notes to pages 130–40

8

9 10 11 12

13 14 15

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

1907; Caucus Minutes, I, 193, 24 July 1907. The issues of revenue and naval defence are discussed in more detail in later chapters; the old age pension legislation allowed women over sixty to receive the pension in the future subject to approval by the GovernorGeneral. CPD, XLVI, 11666–67, 28 May 1908. Federated Australia, 16 November 1907, 209–11. La Nauze, 412–14 and CPD, XXXIV, 4114–15, 6 September 1906. Amongst other legislation that could be included as part of New Protection were the Conciliation and Arbitration Act 1904, the Sugar Bounties Act 1905, the Trades Mark Act 1905, the Excise Tariff (Spirits) Act 1906, the Excise Procedure Act 1907, the Bounties Act 1907 and the Manufactures Encouragement Act 1908, as well as the Customs Tariff Act 1908 and Excise Tariff Act 1908. The court decisions are dealt with in Fitzhardinge, 271–90; Fisher’s comments are in CPD, XLVII, 128–29, 17 September 1908. Caucus Minutes, I, 216, 15 September 1908. On Fisher’s concepts of socialism see for example CPD, XXXI, 1707, 24 July 1906 where his views on the co-existence of public ownership with private business were quite similar to the later Blackburn Declaration accepted by the ALP in 1921 and on the ethical side see Argus, 21 January, 1909. Fisher’s conference speech is found in McKinley, Documentary History, 552–53. Proceedings can also be found in Official Report of the Fourth Commonwealth Political Labour Conference, with Preface by Secretary, Trades Hall Brisbane, 1908. ibid. Crisp, 51. Age, 17, 21 October 1908 and CPD, XLVIII, 1402, 21 October 1908. Caucus Minutes, I, 223, 4 November 1908, and La Nauze, 438. CPD, XLVIII, 2136, 6 November 1908. Caucus Minutes, I, 223–24, 10 November 1908; La Nauze, 438 depicts Fisher as inept in ending Deakin’s ministry yet he is quite aware of the custom of the leader of the opposition moving the no confidence motion, as his subsequent discussion of the events of May 1909 reveal about the fall of the Fisher government. CPD, XLVIII, 2140, 10 November 1910. Caucus Minutes, I, 224–25, 12 November 1908. ibid. The claims of an election and Fisher’s denial are found in Age, 13 November 1908, but also see Sydney Morning Herald, 13 November 1908 on this issue. ibid., 15 May 1908. McMullin, Travesty, 163–64. Caucus Minutes, I, 225, 17 November 1908. CPD, XLVIII, 2141, 17 November 1908. Humphreys, 24.

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notes to pages 140–55

33 ibid.; MSP, Part I. 34 On Shepherd’s view of the Gympie speech, see MSP, Part I; Brisbane Courier, 31 March 1909. 35 The defence issues of this period are covered in detail in chapter 13. 36 Brisbane Courier, 31 March 1909. 37 Spence, 409. 38 Argus, 1 April 1909. 39 Brisbane Courier, 31 March 1909. 40 Sydney Morning Herald, 3 April and also 31 March 1909. 41 Argus, 1 April 1909.

10 A triumphant struggle 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Sydney Morning Herald, 10 November 1908. Argus, 11 November 1908. Reid, George (1917) My Reminiscences, Cassells, London, 345. Sydney Morning Herald, 9 and 11 March 1909. Argus, 8 and 14 May 1910. MSP, Part I; Argus, 26 May 1910; in fact most of the opponents of Fusion came back into line and supported Deakin. CPD, XLIX, 5–7, 26 May 1909. La Nauze, 564–65. CPD, XLIX, 114–26, 27 May 1909. Kelly’s motives are discussed by La Nauze, 566–67. CPD, XLIX, 169–227, 27 May 1909; and see also Fitzhardinge, 456–58. A copy of the paper can be found in MSP, Part I. ibid. Lord Dudley to Andrew Fisher, 31 May 1909, DMP/22. Argus, 1 and 6 June 1909. Sydney Morning Herald, 12 June 1909; Fisher kept a small diary for 1909 which is patchy in parts but clearly he thought these public meetings important enough to note them in some detail, see AFP, 2919/11/1–24. Spence, 410. ibid., 429. La Nauze, 572. Argus, 1 May 1909. MSP, Part I. CPD, XLIX, 359 ff, 24 June 1909; and MSP, Part I; the final vote is found in CPD, LX, 1291, 16 July 1909. La Nauze, 577. Humphreys, 48ff. On Deakin’s main achievements in this period, see La Nauze, 576–04. ibid. Melbourne Herald, 19 August 1909. Federated Australia, 12 July 1909, 258–59. Argus, 8 February 1910. Sydney Morning Herald, 10 January 1910. Brisbane Courier, 9 February 1910.

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notes to pages 155–64

32 Melbourne Herald, 9 and 11 February 1910. 33 Sydney Morning Herald, 10 February 1910, and Daily Telegraph, 10 February 1910. 34 See Cook’s defence of his speech as late as the commencement of the Great War in CPD, LXXXV, 178ff, 14 October 1914. 35 Brisbane Courier, 12 April 1910. 36 The election data is from AEA (1910). 37 The quote is from La Nauze, 615, and Argus, 14 April 1910. 38 Brisbane Courier, 14 April 1910. 39 CPD, CXX, 26–29, 6 February 1929; the Bulletin in 1908 had used a similar cartoon when Fisher had first formed his minority government. 40 CPD, XXXI, 1709, 24 September 1906.

11 Portrait of a Prime Minister 1 2 3. 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

The quote on his lack of fat is from Kilmarnock Standard, 20 May 1911; Pearce, 69. PFM, I, 19. For comments on Fisher’s age in 1916, see Westminster Gazette, 31 January 1916, and Daily Mirror, 2 February 1916 for the photo at Wandsworth Hospital. PFM, II, 15. ibid., I, 19, 151, 185. The description of his dress in 1893 is from Ellis, 19. PFM, I, 150. Ellis, 19. Pearce, 69. MSP, Part I. Murdoch, 69. PFM, II, 7. On the Queensland parliament incident, see extract Perth Daily News (nd), AFP, 2919/10/7105. Fisher obviously thought the story amusing enough to keep it among his press cuttings. On Fisher walking out of the cinema, see PFM, II, 167. DMP, 20/2. PFM, I, 107; II, 63. The car is described in Fitzhardinge, 248. On the stationery and attire, see CPD, LX, 107, 6 September 1911. On the travelling cases, see MSP, Part I. ibid. Day, 264−65 PFM, I, 133; II, 45–47, 119 and DMP, 21/7. PFM, I, 126–27; II, 54. The well-known story of Hughes and the compass is told in MSP, Part I, by Shepherd, who was also present on the tour of the house. Anderson, 207. Fisher’s photo on a camel is in AFP 2919/12/339. PFM, I, 75, 139, 141.

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notes to pages 164–75

28 ibid., 75. 29 Henry Boote thought Fisher had a good grasp of English literary classics while in Gympie, Australian Worker, 31 October 1928; on the submarine cables, see CPD, LXI, 1478, 17 October 1911. 30 A horrified Peggy Fisher observed her father take a gadget from a young boy while on a visit to Crosshouse and pull and twist it. She thought he had broken it but Fisher handed it back to the boy completely mended. PFM, II, 131; Henry Boote also described how Fisher loved machinery, Australian Worker, 31 October 1928. 31 MSP, Part 1. 32 PFM, I, 27. 33 ibid., I, 179. 34 MSP, Part I. 35 PFM, I, 95, 179; II, 7. 36 His singing is reported in PFM, I, 71, 95, 109, 137; invoice for piano, 1 February 1912, AFP, 2919/2/116–90; Perth Daily News, (nd), AFP, 2919/10/7105. 37 MSP, Part I. 38 PFM, II, 71; James Fisher is quoted by Anderson, 199. 39 PFM, I, 123–24; II, 23. 40 MSP, Part I. 41 PFM, I, 47. 42 Murdoch, 21 points out that Fisher could be quite cold towards those who hurt him but also never really expressed his real feelings over the issue; William Morris Hughes to Malcolm Shepherd, 28 March 1923 in MSP, Part 2 on evaluations of Fisher’s mental health. 43 ibid., Part I: Shepherd often took papers to Oakleigh Hall for Fisher while he rested.

12 Governing Australia 1 2 3 4 5

6 7 8 9

Caucus Minutes, I, 254–55, 26 April 1910. ibid. ibid., I, 29 April 1910; MSP, Part I, believes it was Mahon’s personality that led to his not being elected to cabinet. Lord Dudley to Andrew Fisher, 19 June 1910, in MSP, Part I. On the fight with Kidston, see Lord Dudley to Andrew Fisher, 3 April 1909; Andrew Fisher to William Kidston, 13 April 1909; William Kidston to Andrew Fisher, 4 May 1909; Lord Dudley to Andrew Fisher, 13 May 1909; Andrew Fisher to William Kidston, 14 May 1909; William Kidston to Andrew Fisher, 27 May, 1909; Andrew Fisher to William Kidston, 2 June 1909 all in DMP, 22/1. MSP, Part 2. ibid. Frank Anstey went so far as to later propose to cut Shepherd’s salary by £50 but this was overwhelmingly defeated, CPD, LXII, 4622–26, 18 December 1911. MSP, Part I.

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notes to pages 175–84

10 11 12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

Humphreys, 7. MSP, Part I. ibid., Part II. Pearce, 109 claims Fisher found O’Malley ‘trying’. George Pearce to Andrew Fisher, 26 July 1916, AFP, 2919/1/106–92; O’Malley and Hughes had a lifelong dislike of each other. In the early 1950s O’Malley told a young Barry Jones that he was delighted that he had outlasted Hughes, who had died the year before. On his breakdown, see Pearce, 114; on Hughes and his health problems, see Fitzhardinge, 253; Shepherd’s comments are in MSP, Part I. ibid. George Inglis Hudson to Andrew Fisher, 8 July 1912, AFP, 2919/1/1– 105. Hudson claimed to have been a friend for ten to fifteen years. The lamp story was recalled by James Fisher in 1987 and is cited in Anderson, 198–99. Spence, 380–81. Caucus Minutes, I, 227, 25 November 1908. ibid., I, 266–67, 18 August 1910. Hughes still managed not to tax these leases, Pearce, 65. Caucus Minutes, I, 261, 6 July 1910. This attendance was calculated by the author from the Caucus Minutes but also see the introduction where the attendance of Fisher and other ministers is partly confirmed by a separate count. Caucus Minutes, I, 27. ibid., and I, 318, 18 December 1912. Argus, 22 October 1910. Caucus Minutes, I, 273–74, 27 October 1910. ibid., I, 274, 9/10 November 1910 and I, 276–77, 17/22 November 1910. George Cockerill’s relations with Fisher are recorded in his (1943) Scribblers and Statesmen, J.R. Stevens, Melbourne. MSP, I. CPD, LXII, 3450, 30 November 1911. Lord Dudley to Andrew Fisher, 4 and 17 January 1909, DMP, 22/1. Cook’s corridor story is found in his ‘Memoirs of a Pioneer Pressman’, NLA, MS1453. Usually federal leaders of the main political parties have a ‘bounce’ or extra margin of 2 to 4 per cent of votes in their electorates compared to ordinary members of parliament. Fisher’s travels in early 1913 can be found in AFP, 2919/11/1–24 and 150–76 as well as newspaper reports from this period. Keir Hardie’s view that Fisher represented the ‘rule of the common people’ is reported in DMP, 20/4. ASAFI. Truth, 17 April 1910, in AFP, 2919/12/Folder I. ibid.

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notes to pages 185–97

13 Defending Australia 1 2 3

4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Argus, 1 August 1914. On Fisher’s problems with the local Queensland militia, see QPD, 1st Session, 23, 26 May 1893; 2nd Session, 469, 5 September 1894; and 3rd Session, 741, 28 August 1895. The issue of the control of nearby islands is covered by Meaney, 16–22; the French presence in the New Hebrides remained a source of contention well into the first decade of Federation, see La Nauze, ch. 19 on this issue. On Fisher opposing a federal military but supporting a naval force, QPD, 1st Session, 391, 9 June 1899. Bolton, 275–77. CPD, IV, 7416, 19 November 1901; ‘Notes on Naval Defence’, AFP, 2919/6/86–168. Meaney, 58–59 has a good evaluation of Hutton’s character and subsequent behaviour in Australia. Caucus Minutes, I, 57, 25 July 1901. CPD, IV, 7416, 19 November 1901. ibid., XV, 3103–05, 5 August 1903. McMullin, Travesty, 93, 103–09. ibid. On the Dreadnought race, see Massie. RK (1991) Dreadnought: Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War, Random House, New York. La Nauze, Chapter 22. Meaney, 163–75, 211–12. On Fisher’s view of US poverty, see CPD, XXXIV, 4185, 6 September 1906. Humphreys, 17–18 on Fisher’s aversion to government borrowing; Official Report of the Fourth Commonwealth Political Labour Conference, with Preface by Secretary, Trades Hall Brisbane, 1908. Fisher had relented on the control of the navy after Dudley objected to the first draft letter, see NAA A6661,1325 for the letter to the British Admiralty; Pearce, 102. Age, 19 March 1909. Humphreys, 27, and Brisbane Courier, 31 March 1909. See Argus, 8 April 1909 for Deakin’s speech. La Nauze, 553–55. Argus, 3 April 1909. Meaney, 180. Lord Dudley to Andrew Fisher, 30 April 1909, DMP, 20/1. Argus, 27 April 1909. Humphreys, 29–31. Argus, 27 April 1909. Humphreys points to the problems of Deakin over his naval policy and the different ways of viewing his naval achievements, 48; cf. with La Nauze, 584. Fisher’s defence in building the cruiser in Australia can be found in CPD,

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notes to pages 197–207

LXXV, 1432–33, 14 December 1914. 31 Henderson’s report can be found in CPP, 1911, Session, II, 87 ff; Pearce, 100 on the government’s reaction to it. 32 Meaney, 239, 242–54. 33 Pearce, 71. 34 Meaney, 261. 35 Typical of Fisher’s push for his place in naval history can be found in the parliamentary debates in late 1914, see CPD, LXXXV, 179, 14 October 1914.

14 Fisher and the world 1 2

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15

16 17 18 19 20 21 22

Hugh Murdoch to Andrew Fisher, 19 October 1886, AFP 2919/1/1– 105. Edwards, PG (1983) Prime Ministers and Diplomats: The Making of Australian Foreign Policy, 1901–1949, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1–12. QPD, 13th Parliament, 1st Session, 467–68, 18 October 1899. CPD, VII, 9002–30, 22 January 1902; cf. QPD, 13th Parliament, 1st Session, 467–68, 18 October 1899. The train trip is covered by Shepherd in MSP, Part 1 and in NAA, A2, 1911/3154. MSP, Part I ibid. A copy of the speech is in NAA, A2, 1911/3154. Argus, 31 December 1909. MSP, Part I. NAA, A2, 1911/3154. ibid., and Fisher’s later belief in the British Empire being the best in the history of the world is found in CPD, LX, 130, 6 September 1911. On Deakin’s views on the exclusion of the tropical African colonies from the imperial system, see La Nauze, 480–81. The book was Pratt, Ambrose (1913) The Real South Africa, G. Bell and Sons, London; Fisher’s introduction is also found in MSP, Part I. The National Library of Australia’s copy of the book has a signed dedication to Fisher from the author. Day, 44−45, 424, footnote 33 points out that Fisher’s view of recent Australian history did not involve the Aboriginal peoples except for one reference to them in the Queensland parliament in 1894. MSP, Part 1 on the fancy dress party. ibid., and PFM, I, 139 on the European trip. The Times Index for Fisher in 1911 reveals nearly double the number of British news items on him compared to Deakin on his 1907 visit. Kilmarnock Standard, c.May 1911. The Times and MSP, Part I. Pearce, 80, 87. ibid., 88–89.

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notes to pages 207–23

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

The Times, 4 June 1911. ibid., 18 June 1911. PFM, I, 169. Anderson, 202. Kilmarnock Standard, c.June 1911. MSP, Part I; Margaret Fisher would subsequently attend the coronations, with her daughter Peggy accompanying her, in 1937 and 1953. Hancock, IR (1956) ‘The 1911 Imperial Conference’, Historical Studies, 12, October, 356–65. CPP, 1911, Session, II, 1ff for minutes of the 1911 Imperial Conference. CPD, LIX, 6871, 25 November 1910. DMP, 20/6, and AFP 2919/12/Folder I has a photo taken of Angell and Batchelor by Fisher; Meaney, 207. Sydney Morning Herald, 29 December 1909 and 31 March 1911. Meaney, 211–12. Hancock, 358. ibid. CPP, 1911, Session, II, 35ff. Meaney, 222–23. MSP, Part I. Pearce, 94. The events of the Stead interview are covered in Meaney, 226–28. JC Watson to Andrew Fisher, 11 August 1911 in MSP, Part 2; and Hughes is quoted in Meaney, 227 CPD, LX, 131, 6 September 1911. Pearce, 94. Fitzhardinge, 253. CPD, LX, 130–31, 6 September 1911, and Fisher’s call for closer union with New Zealand was strongly supported by Deakin; Official Report of the 5th Commonwealth Conference, 46.

15 Finance and national development 1 2 3 4

5 6 7

The three Fisher budgets and related papers can be found in CPP, 1910 Session, II, 789ff; CPP, 1911 Session, II, 295ff; CPP 1912 Session, II, 359ff. CPD, LV, 8, 1 July 1910. ibid., and CPP, 1913 Session, III, 407ff. On the decimal currency issue, see Fisher’s support for this and metric weights in CPD, XXVIII, 1135, 4 August 1910, and his discussion of the role of the ten shilling note in ibid., LVI, 1982, 24 August 1910; Souter, Gavin (1992) Lion and Kangaroo, Sun Books, Sydney, 181–82. For Fisher’s criticism of Cook’s budget, see his opening campaign speech in 1914 reported in Brisbane Courier, 7 July 1914. This debate can be found in Noye, O’Malley, 141–44 especially. Noye, O’Malley, 124 on Fisher’s secret approaches; it was the banks who asked for the Melbourne meeting with Fisher and no formal notes were released of the meeting although Fisher claimed he had no problem with

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notes to pages 223–36

8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

the banks giving their version of events, see CPD, LV, 401, 14 July 1910. Noye, O’Malley, 105, and PFI. William Morris Hughes to Andrew Fisher, 4 March 1912 in MSP, Part 2. On the Queensland scheme, see Bernays, 457. Caucus Minutes, I, 280, 30 August 1911. ibid., I, 286–87, 5 October 1911. CPD, LXII, 3282, 29 November 1911 and LXXV, 31–32, 8 November 1914. On the early development of the bank, see Gollan, RA (1960) The Commonwealth Bank of Australia: Origins and Early History, Australian National University, Canberra; and Childe, Verne Gordon (1923) How Labor Governs, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne. Noye, O’Malley, 149. Souter, 168–77. ibid. The newsreel of the laying of the foundation event in March 1913 is held by the National Film Library, Canberra; stories on the naming of Canberra are from Noye, ‘Peg Fisher’, 24; and Pearce, 61–63. Argus, 13 March 1913. CPD, LXII, 3437, 30 November 1911. ibid., LVII, 3664, 23 September 1910. Age, 14 February 1913. CPD, LXV, 2599, 22 August 1912; compared to the problems with the transcontinental railway, this legislation passed its second reading in the Senate with no divisions, ibid., LXVI, 3703, 2 October 1912. Langfield, Michelle (2001) ‘Peopling the Northern Territory Part One: A White Elephant in a White Australia? The Northern Territory, 1910– 1920’, Journal of Northern Territory History, Part 2, 1–4; Powell, Alan (1982) Far Country: A Short History of the Northern Territory, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne; and Abbott, CLA (1950) Australia’s Frontier Province, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, Chapter IV. La Nauze, 592–93. Fisher is quoted in ASAFI; Pearce, 104. There are three letters from Chris Watson to Andrew Fisher on this subject: 11 January, and 11 and 18 February 1911; and Fisher to Watson, 13 February 1911, in MSP, Part 2. George Ryland to Andrew Fisher, 22 December 1912, AFP, 2919/1/1–105. Powell, 144–47. Langfield, 7–8. On his views on Queensland’s development, see CPD, LXXXV, 407–08, 28 October 1914; and on the Northern Territory, 1349–51, 3 December 1914; and government policy ibid., 1606, 11 December 1914. PFM, II, 85; Fisher’ trip across the Nullarbor is recorded in NAA, A1.1916/17/188; and see his comments on this subject in Argus, 22 December 1915. Powell, 162–64. General Policy in Regard to Aborigines, CPP, 1913 Session, III, 276ff. MSP, Part I.

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notes to pages 237–47

16 Enhancing the Commonwealth 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

PFM, I, 69 on Fisher’s pride in the Maternity Allowance. CPD, LXVI, 3286, 20 September 1912. The Queensland miner story is told by Noye, ‘Peg Fisher’, 24. CPD, LXVI, 3321–24, 24 September 1912. ibid., 1907 CPP, 1910 Session, II, 1347ff. CPD, LXVI, 3326, 24 September 1912. ibid., LXVI, 4659, 24 October 1912. Weller, Patrick & Lloyd, Beverly (eds) (1978) Federal Executive Minutes 1915–1955, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, I, 19. Report of the Royal Commission on Postal Services, CPP, Session 1910, IV, 10, 25, 58. ibid., 21, 45, 47, 122, 136–39. CPD, LX, 5623–3, 3 November 1910 and the penny postage rates are also found in NAA A11804.1912/284. CPP, 1920 Session, IV, 1091ff. CPD, LXXV, 7–9, 8 October 1914. See the lively debate over these measures at the second reading, CPD, LXIII, 3919ff, 7 December 1911; because the 1915 referendum was cancelled by Hughes, compulsory voting was never used and had to wait until the 1924 federal election CPD, LXXV, 7–9, 8 October 1914; the ALP moved in the Senate in 1914 for residents in the ACT to be given representation but they never considered it for the Northern Territory and in response to a question on this issue back in 1911, it was clear Fisher had given the matter little consideration, see ibid., LXI, 1983, 31 October 1911. Fitzhardinge, 282−83. CPD, LXVII, 6808, 11 December 1912. Official Report of the Sixth Commonwealth Conference of the Australian Labor Party, Adelaide, 1915, 24−25 CPD, LV, 38, 6 July 1910. On the lighthouses, see ibid., LXI, 1478, 17 October 1911. Fisher introduced this measure, see ibid., LXVI, 4590, 23 October 1912. Fisher’s comments on the flag can be found in the Melbourne Herald, 17 September 1910. On the amended coat of arms, see Souter, 193–94, NAA, A60006.1911/2/17, and CPD, LXVII, 5304, 12 November 1912; on Fisher disliking ‘Advance Australia Fair’, see PFM, I, 179. The card is in AFP, 2919/11/151–76. Day, 364. On the work of the committee, see Fisher’s explanation in CPD, LXXV, 1245, 2 December 1914. ibid., LXI, 1456ff, 17 October 1911.

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notes to pages 250–60

17 Defeats 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23 24 25

26 27 28 29 30

Official Report of the 5th Commonwealth Conference, 10. ibid. Caucus Minutes, I, 258–61, 21 June 1910. Brisbane Courier, 12 December 1910. ibid., 8 December 1910; Kidston is quoted in Day, 212; Argus, 9 December 1910; Age, 19 October 1910. Caucus Minutes, I, 273–74, 27 October 1910. La Nauze, 613–16. Age, 1 March 1911. Brisbane Courier, 3 March 1911. Fitzhardinge, 63; but Humphreys, Chapter III, rightly shows that Fisher conducted an extensive, rather than just an opening, campaign, before he left for England. Joyner, Conrad (1960) ‘Attempts to Extend Commonwealth Powers, 1908–1919’, Historical Studies, 9, 35, 295–306. As early as January, Fisher was reported to be mildly surprised by the resentment expressed by many voters against the proposed referendum, Sydney Morning Herald, 21 January 1911; Andrew Fisher to William Morris Hughes, 19 April 1911, WMHP 1538/15/90/3. The figures on votes are from AEA (1911). The Times, 4, 16, 19 May 1911. CPD, LX, 139, 6 September 1911. Joyner, 303. Official Report of the 5th Commonwealth Conference, 9–11, 15, 18, 46 especially. ibid. ibid. ibid. Fitzhardinge, 264–70. The appeal to the Privy Council was opposed by some members at a special caucus meeting, but the motion to withdraw the appeal was lost by twenty-eight votes to twelve, Caucus Minutes, I, 311–12, 23 October 1912. Argus, 27 November 1912. CPD, XLVII, 128–29, 17 September 1908. Fitzhardinge, Chapter XVI; Fisher’s ruling on appointments not being submitted to caucus was challenged by James Stewart, but the caucus backed the Prime Minister against a motion of dissent against the chair, Caucus Minutes, I, 318, 18 December 1912. CPD, LXX, 826, 3 September 1913. ibid., I, 302–03, 18 July 1912. ibid., I, 312–13, 6 November 1912; AFP, 2919/11/Folder 10 has a copy of the booklet for and against the referendum. Brisbane Courier, 1 April 1913. Age, 3 April 1913, and Sydney Morning Herald, 4 April 1913; AFP, 2919/11/Folder 10 and see 48 of the booklet on the definitions of

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notes to pages 261–73

unification and centralisation. 31 Andrew Fisher to Margaret Fisher, 31 May 1913 in AFP, 2919/ 1/1/– 105; the election data is from AEA (1913). 32 ibid. 33 Both pieces of legislation were tabled on the same day, see CPD, LXX, 2834, 2835, 31 October 1913. 34 Caucus Minutes, I, 321–25, 8 July 1913. 35 All the standard biographies on Hughes ignore this leadership bid. 36 Australian Worker, 31 October 1928. 37 See Murdoch, 84 for the claim Fisher should have retired in 1913.

18 Australia at war 1 2

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

17 18 19

Brisbane Courier, 7 July 1914. Fitzhardinge, LF (1979) The Little Digger 1914−1952: William Morris Hughes A Political Biography, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1, claimed Fisher made few campaign promises in 1914 beyond those of 1913 and while it is true many were a re-statement of 1913, the list of his policies was actually more extensive than in 1913. Andrew Fisher to Margaret Fisher, 28 August 1914, AFP, 2919/1/1–105. ibid. Argus, 1 August 1914. CPD, LXXXV, 144, 8 October 1914; LXXVII, 5557, 4 August 1915; and Daily Mail, 29 January 1916. Pearce, 113, thought the ALP defence policies helped win the election since the Liberals had dragged their feet on this issue. Fitzhardinge, Little Digger, 3–6. MSP, Part I recounts the good company of McGregor on his journeys with Fisher. Frazer had been Acting Treasurer while Fisher was in London in 1911 and went on to assume responsibility for the post office, see Fisher’s tribute to him in CPD, LXXII, 3437, 25 November 1913. The votes from the election are from AEA (1914). Caucus Minutes, I, 375–76, 16 September 1914. Age, 17 September 1914. Caucus Minutes, I, 376–78, 17 and 18 September 1914. Gardiner’s later admiration and support of Fisher is found in chapters 20 and 21. Accounts of the early months of the war in Australia can be found in Scott, Ernest (1936) Official History of Australia in the 1914–1918 War. Volume IX, Australia During the War, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1–37. Munro-Ferguson to Andrew Fisher, 24 January 1915 in DMP, 22/1. CPD, LXXVI, 2371, 15 April 1915; and Spartalis, Peter (1983) The Diplomatic Battles of Billy Hughes, Hale and Iremonger, Sydney, 12–13, 46–54. Bean, CEW (1921) Official History of Australia in the 1914–1918 War. Volume I, The Story of ANZAC, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 20–63.

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notes to pages 273–84

20 21 22 23 24 25 26

27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

Kitchener’s recommendations are found in NAA, A6006.1914/11/18. Andrew Fisher to Munro-Ferguson, 28 November 1914, DMP, 22/1. ibid., 16 November 1914. ibid., 28 November 1914. Caucus Minutes, I, 387–88, 26 November 1914. Scott, 484–87. CPD, LXXV, 1338ff, 3 December 1914 and compared with CPP, 1914–15–16–17 Session, III, 155ff for Higgs’s budget; it is difficult to put a final estimate of the true costs of the 1914–18 war, given the need to provide pensions and repatriation services to veterans for years after the conflict. Estimates vary between £400 and 700 million, depending on what is included in the final costs. Fisher strongly supported the bill when it was introduced, see CPD, LXXV, 369ff, 28 October 1914. ibid., LXXV, 7–9, 8 October 1914. ibid., LXXVI, 2299, 14 April 1915. Scott, 633–57. Fitzhardinge, Little Digger, 18–30. Day, 106−07. Andrew Fisher to Margaret Fisher, 28 August 1914, AFP, 2919/1/1–105. Fitzhardinge, Little Digger, 39. Argus, 31 December 1914. PFM, I, 122. Argus, 2 January 1915. Hugh Murdoch to AJ Jose, 12 November 1933 in AJP. ibid.

19 Resignation 1 2

Munro-Ferguson to Andrew Fisher, 18 January 1915, in DMP, 22/1. The correspondence between Hughes and Fisher on this affair during January 1915 can be found in NAA CP290/1, Bundle 1/2. 3 See Munro-Ferguson to Andrew Fisher, 5 March 1915 and Fisher’s noncommittal reply in DMP, 22/1; his admission that he had never read any of the Mahon-Deakin letters is in CPD, LXXVII, 4188 ff, 18 June 1915. 4 For sympathetic views on Deakin in this episode, see Murdoch, Walter (1923) Alfred Deakin, Constable, London, 274–75, and La Nauze, 632–33. 5 CPD, LXXVI, 2723–24, 29 April 1915; on the same day Munro-Ferguson wrote to Fisher, praising the troops but reported this was the first he had also heard of it, DMP 22/1. 6 Robson, LL (1970) The First AIF: A Study of its Recruitment, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 46–61. 7 ibid. 8 Keir Hardie to Andrew Fisher, 11 April 1915, AFP, 2919/1/106–92. 9 ibid.; JC Watson to Andrew Fisher, 11 May 1915. 10 Younger, RM (2003) Keith Murdoch: Founder of a Modern Empire, HarperCollins, Sydney, 56ff. 11 Bean, CEW (1924) Official History of Australia in the 1914–1918 War.

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notes to pages 284–96

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

35 36 37 38 39

Volume II, The Story of ANZAC, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 781–2, 853–910. CPD, LXXV, 175–176, 14 October 1914. Official Report of the Sixth Commonwealth Conference of the Australian Labor Party, Adelaide, 1915 and Caucus Minutes, I, 403, 10 June 1915. CPD, LXXVIII, 5172, 22 July 1915 for formation of the war committee. The issue of what had been promised to Reid was debated at length in the parliament, see CPD, LXXV, 1180ff, 27 November 1914. Attard, 117. The problem with the High Court is discussed in chapter 17. CPD, LXXVII, 3793, 9 June 1915; Age, 6 October 1915. Attard, 120. JC Watson to Andrew Fisher, 11 May 1915, AFP, 2919/1/106–92. CPD, LXXVIII, 6073, 25 August 1915. George Lochran to Andrew Fisher, 18 October 1915, AFP 2919/1/106– 92. Fisher’s trip to Canberra is found in NAA, AZ07, G1915/2007. Caucus Minutes, I, 426–28, 30 October 1915. See Horne, Donald (1983) The Little Digger: A Biography of Billy Hughes, Macmillan, South Melbourne, 63 who argues that ‘Hughes forced Fisher’s resignation’. Makin, 34–35; and Notebook, 17 September 1915, in AFP 2919/11/1– 24. MSP, I. Day, 328−29 Age, 13 August 1915; Munro-Ferguson is quoted by Attard, 120. Andrew Fisher to William Higgs, 5 September 1919, in AFP 2919/1/426–534. Sydney Morning Herald, 2 August 1921. NAA, AZ1916/159. Caucus Minutes, I, 382–83, 22 October 1914 saw the election of a new executive of fifteen members plus Fisher, Hughes and Watkins ex-officio. None of these members were in the cabinet except Fisher and Hughes. Although Anstey caused problems, Pearce, 126–27 recounts a story, with much glee, of Fisher calmly dealing with criticism by Anstey of the 1915 budget. Anstey then left the meeting in a huff because he received no support from the rest of caucus. Pearce, 127–28; some of the papers on the libel case are in AFP, 2919/2/116–90. CPD, LXXVIII, 5556–57, 4 August 1915. Pearce, 64. Horne, 61. Caucus Minutes, ‘Introduction’, I, 29.

20 High Commissioner 1

PFM II, 46; Albert Gardiner to Andrew Fisher, 1 December 1915, AFP, 2919/1/106–19.

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notes to pages 296–304

2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15

16 17 18 19 20

Argus, 21, 23 December 1915. The trip to England is covered by PFM, II, 46–47, PFI and in NAA, AZ1916/159. NAA, A1, 1916/17188 contains press cuttings from over fifty English newspapers on Fisher’s reception in England. Typical of the coverage was Daily Mail, 29 January 1916, Westminster Gazette, 31 January 1916, Birmingham Post, 31 January 1916, Daily Mirror, 3 February 1916, Morning Post, 5 February 1916, and Manchester Guardian, 9 February 1916. Daily Mail, 29 January 1916. Andrew Fisher to William Morris Hughes, 1 February 1916, in NAA, AZ1916/159; The Times between 31 January and 9 February 1916 reported on all of Fisher’s main activities. On the differing views of Reid’s work, see a sympathetic McMinn, 251– 60 and a more critical Meaney, 191. Reid’s 5th Report (1914) and 6th Report (1915) are found together in CPP, Sessions 1914–17, 241–325. Details relating to Fisher’s work are largely derived from the four annual reports he wrote to the Australian government for the years 1916 to 1919 inclusive. These are held in NAA, Series A458, F108/8PART3 (1916), F108/8PART4 (1917), F108/8PART5 (1918) and F108/8PART6 (1919). Except for the 1918 report, they also contain a covering letter by Fisher, often adding further information. Hereafter they are referred to as HCR and the relevant year; HCR (1916) covering letter and HCR (1917), 20–23, 24–31 esp. HCR (1916), 2–6, 8–12. Covering Letter; HCR (1918), Organisational Chart Appendix, Covering Letter, 2. HCR (1917), 4 and HCR (1918), 3. HCR (1916) Covering Letter; George Pearce to Andrew Fisher, 26 July 1916, AFP 2919/1,193−291. The first report of the Dardanelles Commission, including Fisher’s dissenting page, can be found in NAA, A3934. SC/5/24; Day, 378−79 on Murdoch appearing before the Commission. Malcolm Shepherd to Charles Bean, 27 October 1919, Fisher had received the report in July and sent it on to Hughes by 15 October. Bean signed the agreement and received the report in mid-November. NAA, A3934.SC/5/24. Argus, 20 November 1919, like many papers, had a long article summarising the report’s findings after it had been tabled in the House of Commons. Murdoch is quoted by Attard, 122. HCR (1916), Covering Letter and HCR (1917), Covering Letter, 5–6; HCR (1918), 27. On the publicity branch’s activities, see HCR (1916), 16, HCR (1917), 18–19 and HCR (1918), 21–23. On war trophies, see General Birdwood to Andrew Fisher, 31 July 1916, in AFP 2919/1/106–92 and HCR (1916); Covering Letter and HCR

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notes to pages 304–15

(1918), 28. 21 On the collection and display of visual images, see HCR (1916), Covering Letter, HCR (1917), 18–19 and HCR (1918), Covering Letter and 27. 22 Fisher’s role in protecting the ANZAC name and image is found in NAA, A2910.413/212. 23 The unveiling of the Amiens monument can be found in NAA, A2909. A656/1/11. 24 Andrew Fisher to William Morris Hughes, 1916; on Fisher’s work on it, see HCR (1916), Covering Letter, 3–4, HCR (1917), 1–2, HCR (1918) Covering Letter, 5 and Appendix M and HCR (1919), Covering Letter. 25 A copy of the 1916 Christmas card is found in AFP, MS2919/11/150– 76; HCR (1918) has details of the history of Australia House. 26 HCR (1919) and the reports by the various branches; on the problems of migration, also see Fisher’s Covering Letter. 27 ibid. 28 Bean, CEW & Gullett, HS (1921) History of Australia in the 1914–1918 War. Volume XI: Photographic Record of the War, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, viii. 29 Andrew Fisher to George Pearce, 17 May 1920, quoted by Attard, 127. 30 The Times, 29 October 1928. Murdoch seems the most likely author of the obituary, given his links to the paper and the fact that the writer clearly knew Fisher in both London and in prewar Australia.

21 Problems in London 1 2 3 4 5

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Daily Mail, 29 January 1916. Caucus Minutes, I, 430, 4 October 1915. Weller & Lloyd, Federal Executive Minutes, I, 25–26; and Fitzhardinge, Little Digger, 54–58. Argus, 20 December 1915. Although Fisher’s term in London did not begin until January 1916, he was paid from October and was therefore a public servant when the byelection was being conducted. The issue of when Fisher’s term began and ended would create confusion in later years. William Demaine to Andrew Fisher, 17 December 1915, AFP, 2919/8/1–32 The Times, 26 April 1916; Fitzhardinge, Little Digger, 90–94. Andrew Fisher to George Pearce, 6 June 1916 quoted in Bean, CEW (1929) Official History of Australia in the 191 –1918 War. Volume III: The AIF in France, Part I, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 471. ibid. The Higgs quote is from CPD, LXXXVII, 9611, 17 December 1918. Fitzhardinge, Little Digger, 105–20. Bean, The AIF in France, Part I, 155. ibid., 7, 8. Fitzhardinge, Little Digger, 105–20. HCR (1919) contains covering letters from the prime ministers department and Parliamentary Library indicating that none of Fisher’s

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notes to pages 315–23

reports had been tabled in parliament but were waiting to be typed up. 16 WS Anderson to Andrew Fisher, 25 April 1919, AFP 2919/1/426–534. 17 David McGrath to Andrew Fisher, 16 July 1917, ibid., 21919/1/292– 415, had heard that Anderson and Murdoch (who were strong supporters of Hughes) also had enormous influence with Fisher. 18 Keith Murdoch to William Morris Hughes, 22 November 1917, WMHP, 1538/20/343−45. Box, a solicitor by profession, later resigned to take up an appointment with a legal firm in Edinburgh. 19 Keith Murdoch to William Morris Hughes, 22 November 1917, WMHP, 1538/20/343−45. 20 Carlyon, 143–244. 21 George Pearce to Andrew Fisher, 19 April 1916, AFP, 2919/1/106–92. 22 ibid., James Page to Andrew Fisher, 20 July 1916, AFP 2919/1/192– 291. 23 Caucus Minutes, I, 435, 28 August 1916. 24 Scott, ch. IX. 25 Attard, 123. 26 Caucus Minutes, I, 438–39, 14 November 1916. 27 George Pearce to Andrew Fisher, 26 July 1916, AFP, 2919/1/195–291. 28 Frank Tudor to Andrew Fisher, 27 November 1916, ibid. 29 George Pearce to Andrew Fisher, 21 November 1916, ibid. 30 Fitzhardinge, Little Digger, 231. 31 Freudenburg, Graham (2000) Cause for Power: The Official History of the NSW Branch of the ALP, Pluto Press, Sydney, 112. 32 William Morris Hughes to Andrew Fisher, 26 October 1916, AFP, 2919/1/195–229. 33 ibid., George Pearce to Andrew Fisher, 21 November 1916. 34 ibid., William Higgs to Andrew Fisher, 23 August 1916. 35 ibid., William Maloney to Andrew Fisher, 26 December 1916, and William Demaine to Andrew Fisher, 1916. 36 ibid., Mat Reid to Andrew Fisher, 25 November 1916. 37 ibid., Hugh Paterson to Andrew Fisher, 3 November 1916. 38 See, for example, Andrew Fisher to George Pearce, 9 October 1918 and 7 November 1918, quoted in Attard, 124. 39 Attard, 125; CPD, LXXXI, 11078–79, 7 March 1917. 40 William Morris Hughes to Andrew Fisher, 30 May 1917 and Andrew Fisher to William Morris Hughes, 31 May 1917, AFP 2919/1/292–425. 41 ibid., DG McGrath to Andrew Fisher, 16 July 1917. 42 Hughes is quoted in Attard, 125. 43 On staying with McIlwraith, see PFM, I, 81. 44 The movement of the Fisher family in these years can be traced partly in PFM and DMP but also in letters and photos in AFP, 2919/1/106–92 especially; on the tight London rental market, see Andrew Fisher to Margaret Fisher, 14 September 1918, ibid.; The Times, 30 November 1918, reported that the Fishers had leased a house in Bath for the winter. 45 PFM, II, 74. 46 General Birdwood to Andrew Fisher, 2 February 1917, AFP, MS2919/1/292–425; Murdoch’s report to Hughes is quoted by Attard,

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notes to pages 323–31

122, but also see General Birdwood to Andrew Fisher, 2 February 1918, AFP 2919/1/426–534 on hearing Fisher had been ill again. 47 Murdoch is quoted in Day, 387−88. 48 William Malony to Andrew Fisher, 4 December 1917, AFP, 2919/1/106–92. 49 Part of Bean’s interview with Fisher is recorded in Scott, 299, and also see Attard, 125.

22 A High Commissioner under attack 1 2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9 10 11

12 13 14 15

16

17 18

Fitzhardinge, Little Digger, 316–17 and The Times, 11 June 1918. The editors’ dinner is reported in ibid., 20 October 1918. Andrew Fisher to Margaret Fisher, 11 June 1918, in AFP, 2919/12/426– 534. Campbell-Jones, ‘Cabinet of Captains’ recorded the Savoy confrontation. It is likely to have been with someone Hughes respected and who had a degree of independence. George Pearce, then visiting London, was one possibility but it could also have been Keith Murdoch who, in his letters to Hughes, would sometimes defend Fisher even when he knew Fisher was out of favour with Hughes. CPD, LXXXVII, 9607, 17 December 1918. Spartalis, 116–21. Fitzhardinge, Little Digger, 329–38 covers Hughes’s activities in England in late 1918. Pearce, 149–50. Spartalis, ch. 6 to 9. Sydney Sun, 27 April 1919. William Higgs to Andrew Fisher, 8 July 1919, AFP 2919/1/426–534; in late 1918 Higgs admitted his plan to have Fisher come home, see CPD, LXXXVII, 9611, 17 December 1918; the next federal election was due in 1920 but Hughes actually went to the polls at the end of 1919. Andrew Fisher to William Higgs, 5 September 1919 in AFP 2919/1/426–534. Noye, O’Malley, 248. MSP, Part II, on Annie’s death. PFM, II, 43 only mentions Fisher being in the south of France but he also holidayed in Italy as well; Andrew Fisher to William Higgs, 5 September 1919 in AFP 2919/1/426–534; later rumours regarding Fisher’s health are in CPD, XCIV, 5757, 19 October 1920; Fisher’s rapid aging is discussed in later chapters. See the government’s defence of Australia House and its costs in CPD, XCIV, 5752, 19 October 1920 and XCVIII, 13055, 22 November 1921 and Report of the Acting High Commissioner for the Year 1921, CPP, Session 1922, I, 1599–1613. CPD, LXXXVII, 9606–11, 17 December 1918; by 1920−21 ALP members gave the impression during debates that they had access to some of Fisher’s later reports in the parliamentary library. Day, 397−98.

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notes to pages 331–39

19 Attard, 127; Sydney Sun, 25 April 1919; and WS Anderson to Andrew Fisher, 25 April 1919, AFP 2919/1/426–534 who thought Pearce might stay in London for years; Pearce was still defending his 1919 trip from criticism thirty years later, see Pearce, 150. 20 CPD, XCVI, 9362, 28 June 1921. 21 ibid., May 1920. 22 Fitzhardinge, Little Digger, 447–51. 23 CPD, XCII, 2931, 22 July 1920. 24 Rosenthal’s speech is found in Daily Telegraph and The Age, 30 September 1920. 25 Serle, Geoffrey (1982) Monash, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 486. 26 ibid., 321–28, 397–403 covers the conspiracy. 27 CPD, XCIV, 5757, 19 October 1920; Hughes’s comments from late October 1920 are quoted in Day, 401. 28 CPD, XCIV, 30 September 1920. 29 ibid., XCIV, 5667–68, 14 October 1920. 30 ibid., XCIV, 5757, 19 October 1920, 31 CPD, XCVI, 9363–64, 28 June 1921. 32 Sydney Sun, 23 October 1920. 33 The correspondence between Hughes and Fisher over extra time is found in NAA A457 1/73, Part. 1 34 Fitzhardinge, Little Digger, 456–57. 35 Andrew McIlwraith to Andrew Fisher, 17 September 1920, AFP 2919/1/426–532. 36 NAA, A457 1/73, Part 1. 37 ibid.; Cook’s views are found in CPD, XCXV, 7091, 26 November, 1920; on Gran’s fare home, see NAA, A457 1/73, Part 1. 38 Fisher reported employing 229 civilian staff at the end of 1919 and this was a reduction of forty-one over the year, while Shepherd claimed he had 246 staff at the end of 1921 but had reduced the numbers by over seventy during the year. However, Fisher was probably only counting staff he directly employed, while Shepherd seems to have included staff across all departments within the building. Report of the Acting High Commissioner 1921, CPP, Session 1922, I, 1599–1613. 39 CPD, XCVII, 11866, 12 October 1921. 40 Melbourne Herald, 26 October 1920.

23 Final years 1 2 3 4 5

The voyage home on the Omar is described in PFM, II, 44. Andrew Fisher to William Morris Hughes, 11 December 1920, NAA, A457 1/73 Part 1, regarding his booking plans; the reason why the children were left in Liverpool was recalled by Peggy Fisher in PFI. NAA, A457 1/73, Part 1. Argus, 16 March 1921. Andrew Fisher to Littleton Groom, 18 March 1921, quoted by Attard, 127.

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notes to pages 340–50

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

36

The Adelaide comments appeared in the Argus, 15 March 1921, and his Melbourne interview on 16 March 1921. Fisher, of course, did not have time to put together the 1920 High Commissioner’s Annual Report before he left England and the next one submitted by Shepherd in 1922 was for 1921. On family matters, see PFM, II, 46. Caucus Minutes, II, 132, 4 April 1921. Mahon’s expulsion is in CPD, XCIV, 6472, 12 November 1920; and see Fitzhardinge, Little Digger, 456 for Hughes’s motives. On the issue of changing roles in nationalism, see Horne, chapter 5 and MacIntyre, Stuart (1986) The Oxford History of Australia: Volume 4 1901– 1942, The Succeeding Age, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 190–91. PFM, II, 156. On Fisher’s view of Page, see ibid., I, 117. Brisbane Courier, 14 June 1921. PFM, I, 117. On Ryan’s background, see Murphy, DJ (1990) T.J. Ryan: A Political Biography, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane. Sydney Morning Herald, 5 August 1921; in the same issue Fisher declared he had no intention of re-entering federal politics. ibid., 4 August 1921. On Fisher’s tribute to Ryan, see ibid., 2 August 1921; on his now being ready for pre-selection, see ibid., 8 August 1921. Fisher’s withdrawal was announced in ibid., 10 August 1921, and Lambert’s pre-selection victory was reported in the same paper on 21 August 1921. PFI; on the fate of Oakleigh Hall, see PFM, I, 120. Argus, 27 October 1921. The Times, 1 December 1921. ibid., 13 March 1922, on Fisher’s failure to gain pre-selection; PFM, II, 53 recounted the problem over the royal family; Argus, 23 October 1928. The photo at Amiens is in DMP, 21/1. Argus, 16 March 1921. William Morris Hughes to Malcolm Shepherd, 28 March 1923, in MSP, Part 2. PFM, I, 45. Day, 408. PFM, I, 59−61. The Times, 26 August 1922. The Hampstead house and location is found in DMP, 21/1. PFM, II, 54, 57. The 1927 correspondence between Fisher and Bruce over the banknotes is contained in NAA, A458–AC370/5. PFM, II, 61; Campbell-Jones, ‘Captains’ recounts the story of Fisher’s odd behaviour in a Scottish village, but without any date. He does claim it is near the end of Fisher’s life and, if the story is true, then it seems certain it would have been during the final Crosshouse visit. PFM, II, 61; Pearce’s visit to Fisher in London was later recounted by

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notes to pages 350–56

him in CPD, CXX, 11, 6 February 1929. 37 PFM, II, 59 ff; Henry Fisher is reported in Daily Telegraph, 23 October 1928. 38 Letters and official business regarding Fisher’s funeral arrangements are contained in the file in NAA A461.700/1/105. 39 Age, 23 October 1928. 40 See the following papers, all on 23 October 1928, for their obituaries on Fisher: Argus, Brisbane Courier, Daily Telegraph, and Sydney Morning Herald; Age, 23 October 1928. 41 PFM, II, 59 ff; the afternoon service was reported in The Times, 27 October 1928. 42 ibid., 27 November 1928, reporting that a memorial would be erected from funds raised by friends of Fisher in London. Pearce was able to forward his donation via the Australian government, NAA A461.700/1/105. 43 The Times, 8 February 1930.

24 An underestimated man 1 2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

13

CPD, CXX, 11–12, 25–27, 6 February 1929. ibid. ibid. William Morris Hughes to Margaret Fisher, 11 December 1928, AFP 2919/1/535–651. While it took Hughes six weeks after Fisher’s death to write, he was often disorganised in such matters. He may also have hesitated because it remains unclear whether Margaret Fisher was as forgiving as her husband over Hughes’s behaviour during the war years. Keith Murdoch was more tardy, not writing for nearly six months, but also offering the Fisher boys employment, which two eventually took up. CPD, CXX, 11–12, 26–29, 6 February 1929. Day, 409. Some of Margaret Fisher’s activities on her return to Australia are found in AFP, 2919/10/1–16. Margaret’s death is recorded by PFM, I, 45 and in DMP 22/1; by 1958 Henry and James were the only sons still in England. On the later activities of the Fisher family, see PFM, I, 118 and PFI; a 1930 family photo is in DMP, 22/1; John Fisher Dunlap to AJ Jose, 27 November 1933, in AJP. On Peggy Fisher studying physiotherapy, see her undated letter to Denis Murphy, DMP, 21/7. The copy of Margaret Fisher’s will and Robert’s refusal to be a beneficiary is found in AFP MS2919/11/185; Day, 409 on the trust. Peggy’s comments in PFI, that she hadn’t done anything with her life and now lived on the old age pension. She also gives some background information on her returning to Australia and initially living in South Australia. On Peggy Fisher’s later life, see Noye, ‘Peg Fisher’, 24–25; the Victorian functions for her father are in AFP, 2919/12/Folder 1; some who met

399

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notes to pages 356–62

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

her in Gympie during her visits thought her a little odd, see Elaine Brown to Denis Murphy, 24 April 1982, DMP, 21/12. Peggy Fisher to Denis Murphy, undated letter, DMP, 21/7, on her brothers opposing the possible removal of the remains of Andrew and Margaret to Gympie. Melbourne Herald, 1 August 1979, on Peggy Fisher’s departure for Crosshouse. Noye, ‘Peg Fisher’, 24–25; the size of the Fisher portrait being the reason why it was not always hung in the public gallery seems strange as it was no larger than several other portraits including that of Reid. Scott, 253, 68. Fitzpatrick, 77. Makin, 51. Crisp, 43–44. Greenwood, 222–25. Scott, 69; Pearce, 64. Crisp, 44. Bean, The AIF in France, Part I, 8. Ellis, 19–21. Fitzhardinge, 169–71 and Little Digger, 73–74, 90–93, 232–34; the author’s accounts are often based on Hughes’s later recollections and contain several inaccuracies. The quote is from La Nauze, 430, and also see 604–09. A list of these historians and their works is in the Introduction at endnote 1. Meaney, 177. Day, chs 9 and 10 on Fisher’s main policy achievements; also see 191 for his claim that Australians in 1910 had elected the world’s first ‘avowedly socialist government’. Murdoch, 84–86; Day, ch 12; Horne, 61. Attard, 124–26; Anderson, 205–06; Day 380−402 especially. Faulkner & Macintyre, 30–46; McKinlay, Century of Struggle, 35–46; McMullin, 71–90. Fitzhardinge, Little Digger, 233. Australian Worker, 31 October 1928.

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Bibliography

Manuscript collections

Australian National Library, Canberra Baxter Cook, BS, Memoirs of a pioneer pressman, MSS 1453. Campbell-Jones, Herbert, Cabinet of Captains: The Romance of Australia’s First Federal Parliament, MSS 8905. Fisher, Andrew, Papers, MSS 2919. Fisher, Margaret (Peggy) interviewed by Catherine Santamaria, ID 1740398. Hughes, William Morris, Papers, MSS 261, 950. Mahon, Hugh, Papers, MSS 937. de Robilant, Claire H, Manuscript/Videotape, MSS 7726. Watson, JC, Papers, MSS 451.

Fryer Library, University of Queensland Murphy, Denis, Papers, UQFL129.

Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne Jose, AJ, Papers.

National Archives of Australia Annual Report of the Australian High Commissioner, Series A458, F108/ 8PART3 (1916), F108/8PART4 (1917), F108/8PART5 (1918) and F108/8PART6. Brisbane Strike, A6006, 1912/2/2. Description of new Coats of Arms A6006, 1911/2/17. Dardanelles Commission, ‘Gallipoli Expedition 1915–1920’, A3934, SC/5/24. Fisher, Andrew – gift of banknote, A458, AC37045. —— policy on naval defence, 1909, A6661,1325. —— records of Prime Minister’s Department on Fisher in London, AZ1916/159.

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—— visit to Canberra, AZ07,G1915/2007. —— funeral arrangements, A461,700/1/105. —— visit to South Africa, NAA, A2,1911/3154. —— High Commissioner in London, A457 1/73 Part 1 —— Lord Kitchener’s recommendation for training in Egypt, A6006,1914/11/18. Shepherd, Malcolm, Unpublished Manuscript, A1632. Press Cuttings related to arrival of High Commissioner in London, A11916/17/188. Protection of ANZAC Image, A2910,413/212. Report on Imperial Penny Postage Rates, A11804,1912/284. Unveiling of Amiens Cathedral Monument, A2909, A656/1/11.

State Library of New South Wales AG Stephens interview with Andrew Fisher, MS A1494.

Parliamentary sources Commonwealth of Australia, Parliamentary Debates, 1901–1928, vols I–CXX. Commonwealth of Australia, Parliamentary Papers, Sessions 1901–1922. Debates of the Council and Legislature of the Colony of Queensland, 1892– 1900.

Australian Labor Party Papers Official Report of the Commonwealth Political Labour Conference, Held at Sydney NSW in December 1902, Worker Office, Sydney, 1902. Official Report of the Commonwealth Political Labour Conference, Worker Office, Brisbane, 1905. Official Report of the Fourth Commonwealth Political Labour Conference, with Preface by Secretary, Trades Hall Brisbane, 1908, Worker Office, Brisbane, 1908. Official Report of the Fifth Commonwealth Conference of the Australian Labor Party, The Worker Trade Union Printery, Hobart, 1912. Official Report of the Sixth Commonwealth Conference of the Australian Labor Party, Adelaide, 1915. Weller, Patrick & Lloyd, Beverly (eds) (1978) Federal Executive Minutes 1915– 1955, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne. Weller, Patrick (ed.) (1975) Caucus Minutes, 1901–1949, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne.

Newspapers Argus Age Australian Worker Brisbane Courier

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Bulletin Daily Telegraph Kilmarnock Standard Gympie Times Gympie Truth Melbourne Herald Sydney Morning Herald Sydney Sun The Times

Websites Scottish census, births, deaths and marriages: (accessed 18 August 2007). Australian federal election data: (accessed 28 July 2008).

Unpublished theses Humphreys, Edward William (2005) ‘Some Aspects of the Federal Political Career of Andrew Fisher’, MA Thesis, University of Melbourne. Marginson, Geoffrey (1967) ‘Andrew Fisher: The Colonial Experience’, BA Thesis, University of Queensland. Quayle, Victor (1999) ‘A Study in Labor Leadership: Andrew Fisher, 1862 to 1910’, BA Thesis, Australian Catholic University.

Secondary books and articles Abbott, CLA (1950) Australia’s Frontier Province, Angus and Robertson, Sydney. Anderson, WK (2001) ‘Andrew Fisher: “A Proud, Honest Man of Scotland”’, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, 87, Part 2, 190–208. Attard, Bernard (1995) ‘Andrew Fisher, the High Commissionership and the Collapse of Labor’, Labour History, 68, May, 115–31. Bean, CEW (1921) Official History of Australia in the 1914–1918 War. Volume I: The Story of ANZAC, Angus and Robertson, Sydney. —— (1924) Official History of Australia in the 1914–1918 War. Volume II: The Story of ANZAC, Angus and Robertson, Sydney. —— (1929) Official History of Australia in the 1914–1918 War. Volume III: The AIF in France, Part I, Angus and Robertson, Sydney. Bean, CEW & Gullett, HS (1921) History of Australia in the 1914 –1918 War. Volume XI: Photographic Record of the War, Angus and Robertson, Sydney. Bernays, CA (1919) Queensland Politics During Sixty Years, Government Printer, Brisbane. Blainey, Geoffrey (1978) The Rush that Never Ended: A History of Australian Mining, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne. Bolton, Geoffrey (2000) Edmund Barton, Allen & Unwin, Sydney.

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Broadhead, HS (1962) ‘JC Watson and the Caucus Crisis of 1905’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 8, 1. Brodie, Scott (1984) Statesmen, Leaders and Losers: The Twenty Three Prime Ministers of Australia, Dreamweaver Books, Sydney. Carlyon, Les (2006) The Great War, MacMillan, Sydney. Childe, Verne Gordon (1923) How Labor Governs, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne. Cockerill, George (1943) Scribblers and Statesmen, J.R. Stevens, Melbourne. Cowen, Zelman (1993) Isaac Isaacs, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane. Crisp, LF (1955) The Australian Federal Labor Party, 1901–1951, Longmans, London. Day, David (2008) Andrew Fisher Prime Minister of Australia, HarperCollins, Sydney. Douglas, Hugh (1976) Robert Burns: a life. Hale, London. Edwards, P.G. (1983) Prime Ministers and Diplomats: The Making of Australian Foreign Policy, 1901–1949, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne. Ellis, MH (1962) ‘Andrew Fisher. The Most Inarticulate P.M. in Australia or Any Other Country’, Bulletin, 22 September, 19–21. Faulkner, John & Macintyre, Stuart (eds) (2001) True Believers: The Story of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party, Allen & Unwin, Sydney. Fitzhardinge, LF (1962) William Morris Hughes: A Political Biography, Volume I. That Fiery Particle 1862–1914, Angus and Robertson, Sydney. —— (1979) The Little Digger 1914–1952: William Morris Hughes A Political Biography, Angus and Robertson, Sydney. Fitzpartick, Brian (1940) A Short History of the Australian Labor Movement, Rawson’s Bookshop, Melbourne. Ford, Patrick (1966) Cardinal Moran and the ALP, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne. Foster, John (1910) Ayrshire, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Freudenburg, Graham (2000) Cause for Power: The Official History of the NSW Branch of the ALP, Pluto Press, Sydney. Garran, Robert (1958) Prosper the Commonwealth, Angus and Robertson, Sydney. Gollan, RA (1960) Radical and Working Class Politics: A Study of Eastern Australia, 1850–1910, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne. —— (1968) The Commonwealth Bank of Australia: Origins and Early History, Australian National University, Canberra. Grassby, Al & Ordonez, Silvia (1999) John Watson, Pluto Press, Melbourne. Gratton, Michelle (ed.) (2000) Australian Prime Ministers, New Holland, Sydney. Greenwood, Gordon (1955) Australia: A Social and Political History, Angus and Robertson, Sydney. Gympie Historical Society (1992) The History of Gympie and Districts, vol. 1, no. 2, np, Gympie. Hancock, IR (1956) ‘The 1911 Imperial Conference’, Historical Studies, 12, October, 356–65. Horne, Donald (1983) The Little Digger: A Biography of Billy Hughes,

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Macmillan, South Melbourne. Johnston, W Ross (1982) The Call of the Land: A History of Queensland to the Present Day, Jacaranda Press, Brisbane. Jose, Arthur J (1928) Official History of Australia in the 1914–1918 War. Volume IX The Royal Australian Navy, 1914–1918, Angus and Robertson, Sydney. Joyner, Conrad (1960) ‘Attempts to Extend Commonwealth Powers, 1908– 1919’, Historical Studies, 9, 35, 295–306. La Nauze, JA (ed.) (1968) Federated Australia: Selections from Letters to the Morning Post, 1900–1910, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne. —— (1979) Alfred Deakin, A Biography, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne. Langfield, Michelle (2001) ‘Peopling the Northern Territory Part One: A White Elephant in a White Australia? The Northern Territory, 1910– 1920’, Journal of Northern Territory History, Part 2, 1–15. Lawrence, Elwood P (1957) Henry George in the British Isles, Michigan State University Press, East Lansing. McGuirk, Carol (1985) Robert Burns and the Sentimental Era, University of Georgia Press, Athens, Ga. MacIntyre, Stuart (1986) The Oxford History of Australia: Volume 4 1901– 1942, The Succeeding Age, Oxford University Press, Melbourne. McKinlay, Brian (1988) A Century of Struggle: The ALP Centenary, Collins Dove, Melbourne. —— (ed.) (1979) A Documentary History of the Australian Labor Movement, 1850–1975, Drummond, Adelaide. McLean, Ian (1975) Keir Hardie, Allen Lane, London. McMinn, WG (1989) George Reid, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne. McMullin, Ross (1991) The Light on the Hill: The Australian Labor Party, 1891–1991, Oxford University Press, Melbourne. —— (2004) So Monstrous a Travesty: Chris Watson and the World’s First National Labour Government, Scribe Publications, Melbourne. Makin, Norman (1961) Federal Labor Leaders, np, Sydney. Malkin, John (1987) Andrew Fisher, A Short Biography, Walker and Connell, Darvel Ayrshire, Scotland. Massie, RK (1991) Dreadnought: Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War, Random House, New York. Matthews HCG & Harrison, Brian (eds) (2004) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Meaney, Neville (1976) The Search for Security in the Pacific, Volume One: A History of Australian Defence and Foreign Policy, Sydney University Press, Sydney. Morgan, Kenneth O (1987) Keir Hardie: Radial Socialist, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Mulholland, WE (1983) The Town That Saved Queensland, National Trust of Queensland, Brisbane. Murdoch, John (1998) A Million to One Against: A portrait of Andrew Fisher, Minerva, London. Murdoch, Walter (1923) Alfred Deakin, Constable, London.

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Murphy, DJ (1990) T.J. Ryan: A Political Biography, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane. —— (ed.) (1973) Labor in Politics, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 129–228. Murphy, DJ & Joyce, RB (eds) (1978) Queensland Political Portraits 1859– 1952, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane. Murphy, DJ, Joyce, RB & Hughes, Colin A (eds) (1970) Prelude to Power: The Rise of the Labour Party in Queensland 1885–1915, Jacaranda Press, Brisbane. Nairn B & Serle G (eds) (1981) Australian Dictionary of Biography, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne. New Statistical Account of Scotland 1834–45 (1845) W. Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh. Nolan, Janette (1978) Bundaberg: History and People, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia. Noye, Larry (1985) O’Malley MHR, Neptune, Geelong. —— (1989) ‘Peg Fisher: Part of Labor’s History’, Lobby, Autumn, 24–25. Palmer, Vance (1954) The Legend of the Nineties, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne. Pearce, George (1951) Carpenter to Cabinet, Hutchinson, London. Pratt, Ambrose (1913) The Real South Africa, G. Bell and Sons, London. Prentis, Malcolm (2008) The Scots in Australia, UNSW Press, Sydney. Priest, Wilfrid & Tulloch, Graham (eds) (2001) Scatterlings of Empire, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane. Powell, Alan (1982) Far Country: A Short History of the Northern Territory, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne. Reid, Fred (1978) Keir Hardie: The Making of a Socialist, Croom Helm, London. Reid, George (1917) My Reminiscences, Cassell, London. Rickard, John (1976) Class and Politics: New South Wales, Victoria and the Early Commonwealth, 1890–1910, Australian National University Press, Canberra. —— (1994) J.H.B. Higgins: The Rebel as Judge, Allen & Unwin, Sydney. Robson, LL (1970) The First AIF: A Study of its Recruitment, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne. Ross, Lloyd (1980) William Lane and the Australian Labour Movement, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney. Scates, Bruce (1997) A New Australia: Citizenship, Radicalism and the First Republic, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne. Scott, Ernest (1936) Official History of Australia in the 1914–1918 War. Volume XI Australia During the War, Angus and Robertson, Sydney. Serle, Geoffrey (1982) Monash, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne. Smout, TC (1986) Century of the Scottish People, 1830–1950, Fontana Press, London. Souter, Gavin (1992) Lion and Kangaroo, Sun Books, Sydney. Spartalis, Peter (1983) The Diplomatic Battles of Billy Hughes, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney. Spence, WG (1909) Australia’s Awakening: Thirty Years in the Life of an

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Australian Agitator, The Workers Trust, Sydney. Turner, Ian (1965) Industrial Labour and Politics: The Dynamics of the Labour Movement in Eastern Australia, 1900–1921, Australian National University, Canberra. Watts, Rob (1980) ‘The Origins of the Australian Welfare State’, Historical Studies, 19, (75), 175–98. Weaver, JHR (ed.) (1937) Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, London. Whitington, Don (1972) Twelfth Man? Jacaranda Press, Brisbane. Wilson, Alexander (1970) The Chartist Movement in Scotland, Manchester University Press, Manchester. Wright, DI (1969) ‘The Politics of Federal Finance: The First Decade’, Historical Studies, 13, (52), 460–76. Younger, RM (2003) Keith Murdoch: Founder of a Modern Empire, HarperCollins, Sydney.

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Index

Attard, Bernard 360 Australia House 247, 306–07, 330, 332, 336, 340, 348, 351, 362 Australian Capital Territory 139, 226–229 see also Canberra Australian Coat of Arms 246 Australian High Commissioner, London 105, 153 then see Fisher, Andrew or Reid, Sir George Australian Imperial Force 272–73, 312–316, 320–21, 324 Australian Industries Preservation Act, 1906 132, 256 Australian Labour Federation 39–41, 43, 45–46, 61–61, 67, 95 Australian Labor Party see federal caucus or federal conferences or federal elections or federal referendums or Fisher, Andrew or Hughes, William Morris or Watson, John Christian Australian Natives Association 194, 209 Australian Naval Squadron 187–88 see also Royal Australian Navy Australian Naval and Military Expedition 272 Australian Notes Act, 1910 221–22 Australian War Memorial 304 Australian Workers Union 30, 49, 78, 343 Ayrshire Examiner 11 Ayshire, Scotland 5, 24 Ayrshire Miners Association 21

Aboriginal peoples 205, 231, 234– 35 Age, The 130, 138, 151, 155, 157, 251, 270, 289, 351 Agents General 297, 306, 351 Albert Park, Victoria 128, 162–63, 167, 180–81, 194, 295, 346, 356–7 American Revolution 10–11 Amiens Cathedral 305, 347 Anderson, WK 360–61 Anderson, RMC 314–316, 321 Angell, Norman 209 Anglo–Japanese Alliance 191, 210– 12, 215 Annear, John 79–82 Anstey, Frank 291, 354 Anti-Socialist Party 110–11, 119 ANZAC see also Australian Imperial Force or Dardanelles Commission or Gallipoli forces 297, 300 deeds promoted 302–04 name protected 304–05 ANZAC Day 312 Archibald, William 227, 270, 287– 88 Argus 142, 154, 180, 251, 344, 347 Art Advisory Board 247 Arthur, John 270–71 Ashton, Will 162 Asian Immigration 34, 81, 88–89 see also White Australia Policy Asquith, Herbert 207, 214, 301, 310

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Bundama, Queensland 42 Burnett 40 Burns, Robert 11, 23, 206 Burrum coalfields 31

baby bonus see Maternity Allowances Barcaldine, Queensland 41–42 Barron Falls, Queensland 72 Barton, Edmund 76, 79, 81, 87–88, 90, 96, 100, 129, 187–88, 247, 249, 258, 280 Basedow, Herbert 234 Batchelor, Egerton 85, 90, 99, 103– 04, 107, 11, 123–24, 131–32, 139, 172, 175–76, 205–06, 213, 216, 232, 271, 278, 353 Batchelor, Rosin 207 Bean, Charles 302–03, 308, 314–16, 323, 324, 332, 358 Bell, George 333 Belsize Park, England 322 Bellamy, Edward 26, 83 Birdwood, General Sir William 303, 313, 323 Boer War 80, 104, 188, 203 Bonar Law, Andrew 297, 305, 310 Boomerang 39 Boote, Henry 62, 64–66, 68, 74–75, 265, 348, 362 Borneo 37–38 Bowman, David 121 Bowthorn Colliery 37 Box, Allen 296, 314–315 Braddon Clause 90, 152, 218–19, 235 Braddon, Henry 325, 330–31 Bridges, Colonel William 198, 271–73 Brisbane, Queensland 28–29, 31, 42, 46, 49, 75, 94, 97, 133, 157, 173, 182, 342, 354 Brisbane, Courier 142, 155, 251 Brisbane Trades and Labour Council 30, 39, 42 Brisbane, Worker 39, 51, 65, 263 British Empire 2, 185, 200, 204, 217 Browne, William 120 Bruce, Stanley 349–50, 353 Bulletin, The 74, 155, 180 Bundaberg, Queensland 40, 42–43, 52, 63, 81–2, 182 Bundaberg Guardian 42

Calvin, John 12 Campbell, Mary 215 Campbell-Jones, Herbert 85, 115, 349 Canada 9 6–97, 196–197, 204, 212, 215, 259 Canberra 226–229 Cape Colony Women’s Enfranchisement League 202 Catts, JH 344 Carlyle, Thomas 11–12 Caroline and Marshall Islands 272 Chapple, James 47–48, 63, 68 Charlton, Matthew 344, 346 Charters Towers, Queensland 33, 40, 54, 64 chartism 11 Chillagoe Railway and Mines Company 72 christian socialism 12 Central Political Executive (Queensland) 46, 61, 68 Church of Scotland 12 Churchill, Winston 206, 361 Colac, Victoria 185, 268 Collins, Charles 66 Collins, Captain Charles Muirhead 296, 298 Collins, JP 335–36 Colonial Sugar Company 256 Commonwealth Bank 222–226, 306–07, 311 Commonwealth Bank Act, 1911 222 Commonwealth Electoral Act, 1911 242 Commonwealth Workmen’s Compensation Act, 1912 239 Committee of Imperial Defence 211 Commonwealth Liberal Party 145, 253, 260–63, 267–69,271, 274, 281 see also Fusion Commonwealth Wheat Board 277 conciliation and arbitration 59, 80–

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Declaration of London 209–210 Defence Act 1903 189 Demaine, William (Billy) 311, 319, 354 Denman, Lord 172–74, 228 Denman, Lady 228 Dennis, CJ 167 Dickson, James 79 Doyle, Arthur Conan 205 Dreadnought Crisis 191, 193–95 Dudley Coal and Investment Company 33 Dudley, Lord 146, 148–49, 172–73, 181, 195 Duffy, Frank Gavan 257 Duke of York 84 Dumas, Lloyd 181 Dunstan, Thomas 65–66 Duntroon Military College 179, 198 Dwyer, Kate 135 Dyson, Will 304

81, 86, 87–88, 98, 100, 102, 108, 132, 134, 245 258 Connaught, Duke of 168, 201, 202 constitutional amendments 120, 152–53, 251–54, 259–62 see also federal referendums continental railway construction 229–230, 259, 267, 276 continuous ministry, Queensland 45, 51, 71 co-operative stores 6, 8, 15–16, 18 Cook, Bert 180–81 Cook, Sir Joseph 144–45, 149, 155, 222, 238–39, 244, 260, 262–63, 266, 274, 288, 320, 326, 327, 331–32, 335–36, 339 Cockerill, George 180 Corser, Edward 311, 353 covenanters 10 Crawford, Andrew 7 Creswell, Captain William 187–88, 190, 193 Crisp, LF 77, 357 Crosshouse, Scotland 5, 9, 15, 17, 25–26, 31, 41, 97, 159, 208, 347, 349, 356 Cromer, Lord 301 Crown Road, Red Hill 35, 93–94, 354 Curtin, John 123, 189, 357, 361 Customs Tariff Act 1906 132 Cuthbertson, John 37

Edinburgh, Scotland 97, 164 Edward VII 96 Ellerslie 5 Ellis, MH 358 Emden 273 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 11–12 England 11–12, 25, 125, 158, 161, 168, 170, 273, 289, 295–96, 298, 313, 316, 327–28, 332, 334–35, 338, 341, 345, 358 Excise Tariff (Agricultural Machinery Act) 1906 132

Daily Telegraph 125, 155, 180 Dalgety, NSW 227 Dardanelles Commission 300–02, 315 Darwin, Northern Territory 231 Dawson, Anderson 51, 54, 69, 71– 72, 75, 84, 86, 104, 119, 190 Day, David 97, 360–61 Deakin, Alfred 82, 87–88, 100–08, 110, 118–19, 122, 128–32, 135– 37, 139–41, 144–47, 149–61, 174–75, 191–96, 198–99, 204, 206, 209–10, 217, 219–21, 231, 238, 244, 250–51, 260, 280–82, 357–59

France 211, 284, 303–05, 307, 312–16, 320–21, 327, 329 federal caucus 84–86, 101–103, 113–16, 122–126, 129, 136–139, 177–180, 259, 263–64, 270–71, 28586, 290–94, 316–17 see also Fisher, Andrew or Hughes, William Morris or Watson, John Christian federal conferences (1900) 77–78 (1902) 98–99 (1905) 110–113, 171

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advocates democratic society 50, 58, 160 and Alfred Deakin 128–30, 150–51, 280–284 appearance 158, 347–48 and Australia House 306–07, 329–30, 340, 348–49, 351 birth and early childhood 5–10 and cabinet 175–77, 270–71, 286–87, 293 cabinet minister 71–72, 104–07 and caucus 84–86 101–103, 113–16, 122–126, 129, 136–139, 177–180, 259, 263–64, 270– 71, 285–86, 290–94, 316–17 changing attitudes towards Federation 50, 69, 73–75, 132, 244, 249–255 and Charles Powers 52–53, 257 and Chris Watson 83–88, 99–107, 109–115, 117, 122, 127, 129, 134, 138, 158, 175, 214, 230, 271, 279, 283, 286, 357, 361 constitutional reforms 152–53, 251–54, 259–62 deputy roles 51–52, 113–15 early political activities 23, 42–43 education and self improvement 9–10, 35–36, 99–100, 164–65 electoral appeal of 182–184, 328–29 electoral defeats 61–63, 259–62 emigration to Queensland 26–28 family in Scotland and England 27, 32, 92, 36–38, 97–98, 206, 215, 338, 348–49 federal party leadership 123– 25, 263–64 finances 7, 32, 65–66, 162–63, 289–90, 334, 354

(1908) 133–35, 224–25 (1912) 239, 250, 254–55 (1915) 242–43, 284–85, 290 (1916) 318 (1919) 343 Federal Parliamentary Labour Party see federal caucus or federal conferences or federal elections or federal referendums or Fisher, Andrew or Hughes, William Morris or Watson, John Christian federal elections (1901) 82–83 (1903) 101 (1906) 119–20 (1910) 155–56 (1913) 259–62 (1914) 269 (1917) 317–321 (1919) 340 federal referendums (1906) 120 (1910) 152–53, 155 (1911) 251–54 (1913) 259–62 (1916) 315–17 (1917) 323–24 Federation 73–76 Ferguson, Matt 32 Ferguson, Munro 1–82, 286, 289, 320, 326 Findley, Edward 137–38, 172, 271 Findley, Lily 237–38 First World War outbreak of war 267–68 German New Guinea taken 272 AIF organised 272–73 Gallipoli 282–84, 300–302 Western Front 312, 315–16, 323–24 conscription 315–17, 323–24 peace conferences and treaties 308, 327–28 Fitzhardinge, LF 318, 358, 361 Fitzpatrick, Brian 357 Finn, Major General Henry 190 Fisher, Andrew

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Queensland legislative efforts 55–60, 70–71 racial attitudes 34, 50, 68–69, 80–82, 88–89, 161, 192, 202–205, 217, 234–235, 363 religious beliefs 12–14, 36 resignation in 1915 285–92 speaking ability 159–60 support for Commonwealth Bank 2, 222–226, 306–07, 362 support for conciliation and arbitration 59, 80–81, 100, 102, 108, 132, 134, 245, 258 support for continental railway construction 229–230, 259, 267, 276 support for old age pensions 129–130, 237 support for women’s suffrage 31, 50, 59, 69, 95, 202, 207 support for worker’s compensation 56, 70, 239–40 temperance 14–15, 54, 164, 350 travels around Australia 127, 182 treasurer 177, 218–26, 273– 275 tributes and evaluations 1–4, 350–51, 357–64 union activities 20, 22, 26, 39–40, 52, 66, 94–95 views on British Empire 185, 200, 204, 217 views on class structures 24, 26, 58, 183–84, 290 views on defence and compulsory service 50, 52, 74, 129, 134, 141, 152–53, 185–89, 192–99, 210–217, 267–68, 271–73, 282–84 316–17, 321, 324 views on free trade 57–58, 80, 90

and Governors-General 172– 174, 286–87 Gympie speech 140–43 health 8, 47, 65, 289, 323, 323–24, 342–45, 349–50 High Commissioner 298–08, 329–34 and High Court 132–33, 239, 244–46, 256–58 hobbies and interests 163–66 and Irvine family 35, 84, 98, 128, 295, 321–23, 319, 340 and James Keir Hardie 20–26, 96, 206–07, 283 and Keith Murdoch 163, 180, 279, 283–84, 296, 301–02, 309, 311–12, 314–16, 320– 21, 323, 328, 332, 334, 355 and King O’Malley 15, 123, 126, 138, 176, 222–28, 287–88, 329 ‘last man and shilling’ speech 3 –4, 185, 268, 297, 361 managerial skills 174–76 marriage and family 66, 92–94, 128, 165–68, 268, 297, 321–23, 329, 340, 349, 354–56 maternity allowances 2, 237–39 mechanical skills 22, 164, 236 member for Gympie 47–48, 67–69 member for Wide Bay 79–82, 101, 118–20, 156, 260–61, 269 mining career 17–20, 31–34, 43 minority prime minister 135– 150 and national identity 2–3, 188, 237, 246, 340–41, 362 pre-selection contests 47, 61, 68, 79, 342–45, 347–48 and the press 47–48, 62–65, 81, 140–42, 154–55, 180–81, 251, 296–98, 328, 350–51

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Fisher, John (son) 166, 169, 322– 23, 338, 340 Fisher, Margaret (née Irvine) 17, 35, 66, 84, 93–94, 96–98, 128, 177, 181, 202, 205, 207, 260, 267, 278, 287, 322–23, 325, 338, 339–41, 345–47, 349–350, 353–55 Fisher, Margaret ‘Peggy’ (daughter) 94, 166, 167–68, 223, 228, 233, 338, 341, 345, 349–50, 354–57 Fisher, Robert (father) 5–8, 14–15, 17–18, 20, 22, 27, 36, 37 Fisher, Robert (brother) 5, 15, 18, 27, 37–38, 66 Fisher, Robert (son) 97–98, 166, 168, 205, 322, 338, 348, 350, 355 Fisher, William (brother) 5, 7, 98 Fisher, John (‘Jackie’) 196 Foch, Ferdinand 305 Forrest, Lord John 96, 108, 119, 145, 222 Fowlds, George 201–02 Fowler, James 103, 138 Fox, E Phillip 152, 247, 357 Franco–Prussian War 18 Fraser, Malcolm 356 Fraser, Tamie 356 Frazer, Charles 109, 112–13, 136, 138, 172, 176, 257, 269, 270 Free Church of Scotland 12 Free Trade Party 82, 86–87, 90, 101 free trade vs protection issue 57–58, 77–78, 86–87, 90 Freeth, Gordon 356 French Revolution 10–11 fusion 110, 144–51 154–55, 157

views on New Protection 57– 58, 130–134, 260 views on politics and alliances 23–24, 41–42, 52–53, 71, 117, 128–29, 135 views on regional development 56, 231–234, 236, 250 views on socialism 24–26, 58–60, 66, 133 views on United States 192, 210, 325 visit to New Zealand (1914/15) 278–79 visit to South Africa (1910) 201–04, 249–50 visits/trips to England (1902) 96–98 (1911) 205–14 (1916) 296 (1921) 346–47 wartime prime minister 266– 94 and William Morris Hughes 99, 114–15, 123–26, 175– 76, 179–80, 189–90, 205, 215, 263–64, 278, 286–88, 292, 311–27, 333–35, 339, 350–51, 354–55, 357–58 Fisher, Andrew (son) 166, 169, 356 Fisher, David (brother) 5, 7, 9, 27, 37, 98, 339 Fisher, Henry (son) 166, 168, 350, 355 Fisher, James (brother) 5, 18, 26– 28, 31–32, 36–38 Fisher, James (son) 166, 168, 174, 349, 354–55 Fisher, Jane (mother) 5, 7, 27, 92, 97–98 Fisher, Jane (sister) 5, 8 Fisher, Janet (grandmother) 6 Fisher, Janet (sister) 5, 7, 37, 98, 215, 338 Fisher, Jean (daughter) 166, 322 Fisher, John (grandfather) 5–6, 11, 20 Fisher, John (brother) 5, 7, 15, 17, 22–23, 27, 36–38, 92, 169

Gallipoli 282–84, 297, 301–02 see also Dardanelles Commission Gambling Act 1895 60 Gardiner, Albert 270–71, 333–34, 344–45 Garven, James 7 George V 205, 252, 297 George, Henry 24–25, 39, 83 George, Lloyd 206–07, 310, 314,

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354 Hampstead Cemetery 3, 322, 351– 2, 355 Harbour and Coastal Defence (Naval) Appropriation Act, 1908 130 Harcourt, Lewis 21–23 Hardacre, Herbert 51 Hardie, David 22 Harvester Decision 131 Hawke, Robert J 356, 361 Henderson, Arthur 206, 296, 310, 351 Henderson, Reginald 197 Herron, Irene 28, 342 Herron, Walter 28, 342 Higgs, William 103, 263–64, 275, 287, 289, 313, 319, 328–29 Higgins, Henry 104, 112, 131–32, 257 High Court of Australia 249, 256–58 Historical Memorials Committee 247 HMAS Australia 196, 272 HMAS Brisbane 287 HMAS Sydney 273 Holder, Frederick 152 Holman, William 253, 255 Hoolan, John 43, 49, 51, 53, 83 Hopetoun, Lord 76, 312 Horne, Donald 293, 360 Horton, George 205 Howard, Queensland 31–32, 35, 169 Hughes, William Morris 78, 85, 90, 94, 99, 103–04, 107–08, 112, 114–15, 117, 123, 134, 139, 141, 147, 149, 151, 162–63, 169, 172, 175–76, 179–80, 189, 191, 195, 200, 205, 209, 214–16, 223–24, 251–52, 255,–58, 263–64, 268, 270, 275, 278–79, 283, 284–85, 288, 290, 291–92, 296–99, 307– 08, 311–15, 317–19, 324, 326, 353–54, 358–59, 361 Hutchinson, James 139 Humphreys, Edward 174

320 German naval threat 192, 272 German New Guinea 186, 188, 272, 327 Giruth, John 232–233 Gorst, Sir John 62 Great Britain 15, 24, 191, 200–01, 204, 207, 210–14, 230, 268, 296–97, 304 Great White Fleet 192, 196, 210 Green, Margaret 305 Gladstone, William 23 Glasgow Saturday Post 11 Glassey, Thomas 42, 48–49, 51–54, 57–58, 63, 67–69, 73–74, 83 Greenwood, Gordon 184, 357 Grey, Sir Edward 211–12, 216 Grennan, Hugh 47 Griffith, Sir Samuel 30, 39, 43, 46, 249, 258 Griffin, Walter Burley 227–28 Gympie, Queensland 32, 33, 39–40, 61, 76, 79, 81–2, 182 Gympie Amalgamated Miners’ Association 40 Gympie Chess Club 35 Gympie Engine Drivers’ Association 95 Gympie Industrial Cooperative Society 36 Gympie Joint Labour Committee 40 Gympie Mine Manager’s Association 62 Gympie Miner 48 Gympie Mining and Historical Museum 94, 356 Gympie Presbyterian Church 36, 93 Gympie Times 47–48, 64–65, 69, 74, 81 Gympie Truth 63–63, 68, 70, 74–75, 81, 180 Gympie WPO 43–47, 68 Haig, Field Marshall Douglas 312– 13 Hall, GJ 43 Hamilton, Sir Ian 301 Hampstead, England 322, 348, 351,

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Kanakas see South Pacific Labourers Keating, Paul 3, 361 Keir, Mary 20 Keir Hardie, James 20–25, 96, 183, 206, 283 Kelly, WH 147 Kerr, George 49, 106, 121 Kidston, William 120,–22, 174, 251 Kilmarnock, Scotland 9, 11, 13, 25, 28, 37, 97, 206, 345, 347 Kilmaurs, Scotland 5, 9, 13, 15 King vs Barger, 1908 132 Kingston, Charles 100, 104 Kitchener, Field Marshal Lord Horatio 198, 229, 273, 297, 301, 310 Knibbs, George Handley 238–39 Kolar goldfields, India 38

Hunter, Percy 333 Hutton, Edward Thomas 188, 190, 229 Hyndman, HM 25 Industrial Workers of the World 117 Inter-State Commission 87, 243–44 Immigration Restriction Act, 1901 88–89 Imperial Defence Conference (1909) 196 Imperial Conferences (1911) 208–13, 242 (1917) 320 (1918) 326 (1921) 336 calls for in 1915 279, 283 Imperial War Graves Commission 305 Imperial War Cabinet 320, 326 initiative and referendum 243 Inter–Colonial Trade Union Congresses 30, 74 Invalid and Old Age Pensions Act 1908 130, 153, 237 Irish Home Rule 200 Irish strike breakers 19–20 Irvine, Scotland 7 Irvine, Annie 93, 166, 295–96, 329, 340 Irvine, Christine 93, 166 Irvine, Elsie 93, 98, 128, 166, 340 Irvine, Henry 35, 93 Irvine, Margaret (Gran) 35, 97, 124, 162, 166–67, 205, 322–23, 329, 335, 338–39, 341 Isaacs, Isaac 108, 131–32, 256–57 Isis Investment Company 32, 52

Labor-in-Politics Conventions (Queensland) (1892) 46 (1898) 67, 71 (1905) 120–21 (1907) 121 Labor Electoral Leagues NSW 45 Ladywell Tollhouse 8 Lake Ontario 96 La Nauze, JA 358 Lamb, George 201 Lambert, WS 304 Lambert, William 343–45 Lanarkshire, Scotland 20 land tax 24, 219–20 Lane, William 39 de Largie, Hugh 78, 264 Larkin, HB 313 Latham, JG 328 Legge, JG 272 Lib-Labs 23–24 Liberal Party (Scotland) 23 Lighthouse Act 1911 164, 245 Lister Lister, William 162 Liverpool, England 22, 27, 37, 92, 96–97, 215, 338, 348 Llewellyn, Harry 66 Lochran, George 287 London, England 28, 152, 165,

Japan 192, 199, 210–11, 272–3, 327–28, 362 Jensen, Jens 270–71 Johnson, William 312 Jose, Arthur J 357 Judiciary Act, 1912 256 Kalgoorlie to Port Augusta Railway Act, 1911 229–30

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Maternity Allowance Act, 1912 237–38 Massey, William 216, 279 Meaney, Neville 359–60 Melbourne, Victoria 84, 94, 105, 98, 110, 117, 128, 149–150, 157, 205, 278, 296, 339, 346 Members Expenses Act, 1886 31 Menzies, Sir Robert 280 Millen, Edward 332, 335 Miller, Denison 225–26, 339 Miller, Emma 134 mining, general descriptions of 19– 20, 32–34, 55–56 Mining Act 1898 55–56 Monash, General Sir John 327, 332 Moran, Cardinal Patrick Francis 111 Moroccan Crisis 215 Mount Morgan, Queensland 33 Mulcahy, Daniel 65–66, 68–69 Murdoch, Hugh 6–8, 17, 22, 31, 35–36 279 Murdoch, John 52, 360 Murdoch, Keith 163, 180, 279, 283–84, 296, 301–02, 309, 311– 12, 314–16, 320–21, 323, 326, 328, 332, 334, 355 Murdoch, Reverend Patrick 163 Murphy, DJ 359

175–76, 197, 205, 217, 268, 279, 283, 286, 288, 303–04, 310–12, 315, 319, 322, 324–27, 330–33, 336, 346, 350–51, 355–56, 360 London Colonial Conferences (1887) 186 (1902) 187 (1907) 191–92 London Morning Post 82 Long, Walter 311 Longstaff, Will 304 Lynch, Patrick 181 Lyne, Sir William 129, 145–47, 151 McCay, Adam 202–03 McCormick, Charles 62, 65–66 McDonald, Charles 85, 100–02, 118, 264 McDonald, Ramsay 206, 351 McDougall, JK 291 McGrath, David 320–21 McGregor, Gregor 78, 84–86, 88, 103, 105, 118, 138–39, 172, 262–64, 268 McGhie, Charles 93 McIlwraith, Andrew 322, 335 McIlwraith, Thomas 27, 30, 46, 51, 56 McKay Harvester Company 131–32 MacKenzie, Marshall 306 McMullin, Ross 138 McWilliam, WJ 333 Mahon, Hugh 104, 139, 172, 227, 270–71, 281–82, 286, 335, 340 Makin, Norman 288, 357 Malkin, John 359 Maloney, William 114, 123, 258, 319, 324, 339, 354 Manchester Independent Order of Oddfellows 35 Mann, Tom 117 Maori Lane, Gympie 35, 94, 346, 356 Marginson, Geoffrey 359 Marshall, John 257 Maryborough, Queensland 31, 40, 82, 154, 182, 259, 354 Marx, Karl 25, 83

Nash, James 33 National Defence League 191 national insurance proposals 238–40 National Library of Australia 247, 356 National Portrait Gallery 247, 304, 357 Nationalist Government, Australia 318, 333, 341 National Labor Party 317 see also William Morris Hughes Nauru 272, 308 Naval Loans Act, 1909 220 Navigation Act (1910) 244–45 New Guinea 186, 188, 200 New Guinea 28 New Hebrides 186 New South Wales 45, 76, 82, 87,

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283–85, 291–92, 303, 309–10, 316–19, 327, 331, 339, 350–51, 353–54, 358, 361 Petherick, Edward 247 Philp, Robert 72 Piddington, AB 244, 257–58 Pine Creek to Katherine Railway Survey Act, 1912 230 pneumoconiosis (‘black lung’) 19 Porter, Rab 9 post office reforms 240–241 Power, Francis 68 Powers, Charles 51–52, 63, 69, 257–58 Pozieres, France 316 Pratt, Ambrose 204 Premier’s Conferences (1909) 140,152 (August 1914) 273–74 (November 1914) 274, 311 Presbyterianism 12–14, 36, 160 Prime Minister’s Department 174– 75 Protectionist Party 82, 86–87, 90, 101–02, 105–06, 108, 118–19, 128–30, 135–37

119, 124, 127, 129, 139, 227, 244, 246, 252, 256–57, 261, 268, 283 New South Wales labour movement 45, 77–78, 82, 84, 99, 111, 155– 56, 253, 258, 284, 318, 343–44 New Protection 130–134, 142, 154, 249–50, 260 New Zealand 27, 81, 204, 212, 216–17, 255, 259, 278–79 Newcastle Coal Vend 256 Northcote, Lord 108 Northern Territory 231–35, 243 Nullarbor 163, 233–34 Oakleigh Hall 162–63, 167, 289, 290, 295, 323, 339–40, 345–46 O’Conner, Richard 256 O’Keefe, David 78, 118, 224 old age pensions 129–130, 237 Old Age Pensions Appropriation Act, 1908 130 O’Malley, King 15, 78, 123, 126, 138, 172, 176, 222–28, 230, 255 271, 287–88, 329 Omar 338 Omrah 296 Ormond College 36 Ormonde 346 Orr, John 9 Ozanne, AJ 224, 320–21

Queensland 3, 14–15, 26–27, 38, 73–75, 82–85, 89, 159, 101–04, 116, 119–21, 123–24, 127, 133, 156, 160, 167, 173, 180–812, 185–87, 201, 229,231–33, 235, 236, 238, 248–52, 261, 263, 274, 277, 287, 342, 354, 356 Queensland Labour Party see Parliamentary Labour Party, Queensland Queensland National Bank 56–57, 223 Queensland Railway Construction 56, 72 Queensland Regional Development 56

Pacific Cable 241–42 Pacific Island Labourers Act, 1901 88–89 Page, Earle 332, 336 Page, James 341–42 Panama–Pacific Exposition 280–82 Parliamentary Labour Party, Queensland 43, 46, 49–50, 53– 54, 58, 60–62, 67, 69, 70 Paterson, Esther 246 Paterson, Hugh 246–47, 319 Paine, Thomas 11 Pearce, George 78, 85, 87, 112, 118, 125, 139, 147, 158–59, 163, 165, 172, 176, 189, 191, 195–98, 205–06, 213, 215–16, 232, 270,

Ralston, AV 223 Ramaciotti, General Gustave 331, 334 Reform Bills (1832) 11, (1867) 23

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Steel, Agnes 38 Stephens, AG 48, 116, 183 Stephenson, James 28 Stewart, Janet 37 Stewart, James 84, 118 Stumm, Jacob 47–48, 61–64, 68, 74, 156 Surplus Revenue Act, 1908 130 sugar industry 29, 34, 50, 80–81, 89, 231–32, 277 Sydney, New South Wales 52, 76– 79, 98–99, 117,150, 157, 182, 226, 279, 287, 342, 355 Sydney Morning Herald 142, 144, 153–55 Sydney Sun 328, 334 Symons, Josiah 261

Reid, Sir George 82, 87, 100, 102–03, 105, 110–11, 119, 129, 135–36, 139, 144, 190, 285–87, 290, 296, 302, 310, 319–20, 334–35, 338 Reid, Mat 39, 51, 53 de Robilant, Clare 3 Rich, George 258 Roberts, Ernest 176, 269 Robinson, WS 313 Rosenthal, General Charles 332–33 Royal Australian Navy 197, 271 see also Australian Naval Squadron Rudd, Kevin 3 Russell, Edward 254, 270–71 Russo–Japanese War 191 Ryan, TJ (Tommy) 42–43 Ryan, TJ 70, 121, 284, 289, 343–44 Ryland, George 40, 47, 48, 52, 62, 66, 68–70, 74, 81, 232

Tasmania 78, 82, 104, 123–24, 139–40, 181–82. 226, 229, 234, 253, 261 Thomas, Josiah 85, 139, 164, 172, 176, 271 Thomson, John 97 Thorniehill Farm 8–9, 32 Times, The 32, 51, 347 Torbanlea, Queensland 32 Trade Unions Act, 1886 30 trade union movement, Scotland 5–6, 19–22 trade union movement, Queensland 30, 38–42, 68 Trading with the Enemy Act 1914 276 tributing 33 Tudor, Frank 84, 99, 118, 139, 172, 270, 317, 329, 333, 339–40, 343, 346 Turley, Harry 49, 52

Salvation Army 14 Scottish Radicalism 10–12 Scott, Ernest 357–58, 360 Scott, Robert 201 Scullin, James 157, 354 Seat of Government (Administration) Act 1910 227 Shaw, Alexander 347 shearer’s strikes 41–42 Shepherd, Malcolm 141, 147–48, 151, 159, 161, 163–5, 167–69, 174–75, 177, 180–81, 201–02, 205–06, 213, 235, 289, 330, 336 Smith, WE 206 Smyth, William 47–48, 62, 68 Solomon, William 28 South Australia 78, 82, 85, 95, 104, 124, 131, 140, 226, 229, 231, 233, 262 South Pacific Labourers 34, 52, 68–69, 80–82, 89 Spence, William Guthrie 117, 123–24, 142, 150, 177, 270,–71, 287, 361 Spencer, Baldwin W 232, 234–35 Spencer, John 291 Stead, WT 213–14, 267

United Presbyterians 12–13 Unitarianism 36 United States of America 56, 192, 194, 196, 210, 280–81, 325 Universal Service League 282–83, 291–92 Vancouver Island, Canada 38

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West Drumgray Colliery 37 West Sydney 342–45, 347 Western Australia 75, 78, 82, 87, 95, 124, 140, 181–82, 226, 229, 234, 253, 261 White Australia Policy 88–89 Whitlam, Gough 3 Wide Bay 79, 81, 91–92, 101, 120, 128, 181–82, 260, 268, 311, 328, 342, 353 Widows and War Mothers Pensions Act (1915) 291 Wienholt, Arnold 260 Wilson, James 9, 208 Wilson, John 11 women’s suffrage Queensland 31, 50, 59 Australia 95 South Africa 202 Great Britain 207 worker’s compensation 70, 239 Workers’ Political Organisations 43, 61 Woodburn, Hugh 8 Wren, John 104

Victoria, Australia 57, 82, 104, 123–24, 129–31, 156, 182, 252, 257, 261, 268 Victorian Labour Movement 102, 106, 11–12, 116–17 Wages Board 131–32 Wallace, Con 345 Wallace, Reverend Robert 36, 92–93 Wallace, William 5, 23 War Census Act, 1915 282–83 War Precautions Act, 1914 275–76, 291, 358 Ward, Eddie 345 Ward, Joseph 211 Waterside Workers Federation 95 Watkins, David 264 Watson, Ada 123 Watson, John Christian (Chris) 78, 83–88, 99–07, 109–19, 122, 127, 129, 134–40, 158, 175, 189–91, 214, 230, 271, 279, 283, 286, 357, 361 Watt, WA 331–32 Webster, William 197, 287 Weller, Patrick 293–94

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