“We have reason to be proud”

We are truly proud that we have some members of the Filipino Australian community who are members of the Order of Australia Association. One of them is Ms Lolita Farmer OAM who forwarded below address of Mr David Flint during the association’s Australia Day meeting celebration last Monday 26 January 2009.

Ms Farmer emailed in:

“Last Australia Day celebration of the Order of Australia Association had David Flint AM, who read law and economics at University of Sydney, London and Paris, Emeritus Professor of law, Chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Authority and Associate Member Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, 1997-2004, President English Speaking Union and national Convenor of Australians for Constitutional

“I found his address informative and interesting so I asked him permission to have it printed in … The Filipino Australian website.”

Reprinted below is the full text of the address with permission of Mr Flint:

We have reason to be proud

by: David Flint AM

Australia today, our Commonwealth of Australia, evolved from the settlement in 1788. So the 26th January is very much our birthday.

As with any birthday, this is a day for celebration and for commemoration. This is the day on which we look to the things which unites us, and not those which divide us.

This was the when Captain Arthur Phillip RN brought to this land what would become four of the six foundation pillars of this nation.

These four were our national language, English, the rule of law, our Judeo-Christian values and the Crown.

All were Australianised and made ours. To them were added, later, the other two foundation pillars of our nation.

One was yet another gift of the British, self government under the Westminster system.

Federation was our sixth foundation pillar. While given legal effect by the British, it was all our own work.

The decision to federate and the form of federation were Australian achievements. That did not mean that our founding Fathers did not look to the experience of other countries.

An extraordinary and erudite group, they did. They understood history; they understood the way other people had been governed, and indeed misgoverned.

The result of their deliberations, and our consent freely given, was the success story of the twentieth century.

This is our indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the Crown and under the Constitution.

This was designed in Australia by Australians, and approved by the Australian people.

The seed of this were laid on the 26th of January, 1788.

Before I come to those six pillars let me say some words about the people involved in the Australian venture and the way the British acquisition of this land.

The people

First let me mention two of those intimately involved in the settlement.

Let me say at the outset that Australia has been fortunate in the calibre, the quality, of so many of those involved in the early governance of this nation.

It is worth mentioning Lord Sydney, whom too many have glibly dismissed as being of no consequence.

He took a crucial decision which would have a fundamental effect on the colony. Instead of just establishing it as a military prison, he provided for a civil administration, with courts of law.

Phillip and Sydney came out of the same enlightenment in Britain which was to bring forth William Wilberforce who was to lead the world’s first successful campaign against slavery.

Wilberforce used an image of such power it told a thousand words: a kneeling, powerful black slave, whose pleads “Am I not a Man and a Brother?”

Lord Sydney’s enlightened approach reflected very much the views of Captain Arthur Phillip, who was to govern the first colony in the only continent of this world which has never known slavery.

Phillip wrote, before leaving England:

“In a new country there will be no slavery and hence no slaves.”

In an essay on the subject of our early leaders was published in the April 2007 edition of Quadrant, Dr Keith Winschuttle wrote:

“The idea that slavery was an affront to humanity that had no place in a free land was part of the original definition of what it meant to be an Australian… although NSW founder Arthur Phillip’s original anti-slavery declaration was once well known to earlier generations of students, historians today rarely mention it.”

The acquisition

So much for the people; let me say some words about the acquisition or as some say the invasion.

When the British came to Australia, they did not find a country in which there was anything recognizable to Europeans as a government.

To say that is to denigrate neither the Aboriginal history of this continent nor the Aboriginal people.

Modern Australia began with the British settlement, which had both harsh and good consequences for the indigenous people.

Some form of European settlement was inevitable, and the fact that the acquisition was British was, on all historical evidence and comparisons with other places, preferable.

Much has been said about international law. International law of the time was little more than the established customs under which the European powers conducted their relations.

Under this, territory could be acquired in three principal ways, occupation, conquest or cession.

And unlike today, conquest was a perfectly lawful way of acquiring territory.

The British were not at all shy about acquiring territory by conquest. Now were the other powers. It is just that they, but they did not regard their involvement here as a conquest.

Incidentally they did not actually use the word terra nullius –this term began to be used in the nineteenth century.

The concept did not only mean land without inhabitants, it also included land where there was no state that is a territory without a recognizable government.

There was one consequence of conquest which did not apply to occupation or settlement, at least for the British.

In a conquered territory, for example Quebec, the law of the conquered people continued until the colonial power changed it.

Accordingly, French civil law continued in Quebec and continues to this day. But in an occupied or settled territory there was a vacuum.

So the British brought their law with them. They were of course not as myopic as not to see that something regulated relations within the Aboriginal tribes, but they regarded this as no more than tribal custom.

This brings me to the first four pillars of this nation.

1st pillar: The Rule of Law

Philip brought the rule of law with him.

To speak then of the colony as a gulag is completely erronoeus. The Soviet Gulags were brutal and lawless concentration camps for political prisoners.

Even under the broadest definition, few of the convicts sent to Australia could be called political prisoners.

Now the rule of law has, according to Sir Guy Green, two elements.

First, everyone, including and especially the executive arm of government, is subject to the law.

Second, while citizens may do anything not prohibited by the law, the executive government may only do those things authorised by the law.

So defined, every government in this country since 1788 has been under the rule of law.

Every government.

By way of contrast, the rule of law was foreign to the Soviet gulags, and indeed to the whole Soviet Union.

The Governor, Captain Phillip, came with a Charter of Justice, which unlike the provisions of the Soviet Constitution, was actually applied.

Just consider one example.

A civil action very early in the life of the colony was brought by convicts against a ship captain for theft. The captain defended this on the ground that at common law felons could not sue.

The court required the captain prove that the complainants were indeed felons. This he could not, because the records were in England.

The court allowed the action to proceed.

Can those who say the penal colony was a gulag give us a similar example of litigation by prisoners in a Soviet or Nazi gulag, particularly one where the Soviet or Nazi judges upheld the prisoners’ assertions?

Of course they can’t.

The penal colony of New South Wales, harsh as it was by modern standards, was one of the most successful experiments in criminal rehabilitation the world has ever seen.

The rate of recidivism, or return to crime, was extraordinarily low, as far as we can tell.

The slander on Phillip and the British that New South Wales can be equated with a Soviet or Nazi gulag should be withdrawn before it is taught in the schools – if it is not already being presented as the truth.

2nd pillar :The English language

The benefit that English language would bring to the new land was not fully understood in 1788.

A language dominates not so much for its quality or the quality of its literature. It is a question of power.

For two and a half centuries the English speaking countries have dominated, and they will for the foreseeable future.

The full realisation of the remarkable vocation of our language came from the extent of the British Empire, and its dominance over France.

In addition, for the very first time in the history of the world, the dominant power was immediately succeeded by another power, its former colony, which spoke the same language.

This was of course the United States. ( Admittedly some maintain that they don’t speak the same language.)

I would not predict which country will surpass the United States. But of the contenders, remember the place of English in India.

3rd pillar ; our Judeo Christian values

Our Judeo Christian values came with the settlement of Australia. They permeate our laws, our language, our institutions and even our federation.

This is merely to state the irrefutable fact that Australia was founded on those values.

This does not mean Australia should not welcome those from other religions, nor does it mean that there is any obligation for an Australian to belong to any of these religions, nor indeed any religion.

In fact this openness to others was stressed in the very first sermon preached in this land on Sunday 3 February, 1788.

This was not far from where we have assembled today. This first public service was well attended, due no doubt to the direction by the governor that “no man to be absent on any account whatever.

The service was to begin at 10 am under “a great tree” close to the harbour, now the corner of Castlereagh and Hunter Streets.

The Rev Richard Johnson chose as his text Psalm 116:12:

” What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me? I will take the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord.”

He began:

“I do not address you as Churchmen or Dissenters, Roman Catholics or Protestants, as Jews or Gentiles…But I speak to you as mortals and yet immortal…

The gospel…proposes a free and gracious pardon to the guilty, cleansing to the polluted, healing to the sick, happiness to the miserable and even life for the dead.”

That influence was to continue, although undermined by the so called Rum Corps.

Over one century later , in the public consultations on the draft of our Federal Constitution, more supporting petitions were received than for any other concerning a proposal that the preamble recognize what one delegate called the “invisible hand of providence “ in the Federation of Australia.

So we find in the preamble a provision which summarises, succinctly, the very pith and substance of that great act of unity.

This is that the people of each of the several states:

”… humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God, have agreed to unite in one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the Crown…and under the Constitution hereby established.”

This, it should be noted, led to the insertion of the somewhat superfluous clause against the establishment of any religion, section 116.

4th pillar: The Crown

The institution which Phillip represented is our oldest. It has since evolved and been Australianised so much so that our High Court has ruled that the Australian Crown is an institution separate from the British Crown and that allegiance to the British Crown is allegiance to a foreign power.

( Sue v Hill, 1999 )

All that the Australian Crown has in common with the New Zealand Crown, the Canadian Crown or the British Crown is that they are worn by the same person and there is a common law of succession.

The Australian Crown is now a significant part of the Australian constitutional system. Providing leadership beyond politics, it is a significant check and balance against the improper exercise of political power. It is under challenge.

If the Australian people decide to dispense with the Australian Crown, thta is their prerogative.

But those who wish to remove are duty bound to do three things. If they don’t they will fail.

First they must understand the role and function of the Crown. It is surprising how often reformers do not understand what they want to change.

Second, they must provide details of what is proposed to replace the institution in all its aspects.

Third they must, in the words of those great Founding Fathers Sir John Quick and Sir Robert Garren, persuade the people in a referendum that the change proposed is “desirable, irresistible and inevitable.”

5th pillar: Parliamentary Democracy

The French, the Spanish, the Portuguese did not transmit the parliamentary concept to their colonies, as the British did to their American colonies long before independence, and as they did to Australia.

Why?

Because they could not.

The Dutch excepted, they did not have this concept at home. And the Dutch showed no interest in granting self-government to their colonies.

So parliament, self-government and the Westminster system the fifth pillar of our nation came very early to Australia within our one generation of the founding of the penal colony.

And Australians quickly adapted these institutions, making them even more democratic and thus, more Australian.

There is one important point.

This had absolutely nothing to do with the Eureka Stockade. There is no need to invent a War of Independence which never occurred.

Initially the power of the colonial governor was restricted only by the law and by instructions from London.

This power was later tempered by an advisory legislative council and executive council. Gradually the legislative council took on an increasingly representative flavour and, within a surprisingly short period, the executive became responsible to that legislature.

This is even more remarkable if we remember that most of the states started as penal colonies.

From 1823 there was to be a gradually increased involvement of the people in the governance of what was now a civil and no longer penal colony.

By 1842, as Professor PH Lane points out, we can identify three basic constitutional doctrines applying in New South Wales:.

“No taxation without representation”: that is, the newly constituted people’s institution was to make laws, including the tax laws.
“The financial initiative of the crown”: that is, the governor must first recommend to the legislature the purpose for which public money was to be appropriated.
“Parliament controls the expenditure of public money”: that is, an appropriation of (most) revenue must be made by the legislature, and in no other manner.

The second Australian Constitutions Act, 1850, “An Act for the better Government of Her Majesty’s Australian Colonies”, (13 & 14 Vic, ch 59) brought similar reforms to the other colonies (except for the Moreton Bay district – Queensland –which was attached to the New South Wales legislative council until 1859).

This act was extremely important. It empowered the various colonies to draft their own constitutions, although they were still to be approved by the Colonial Office in London before being presented for the Queen’s assent. The New South Wales and Victorian Constitutions’ received Royal Assent on 16 July, 1855.

To strike down another myth, the bills were in London well before the Eureka Stockade. Whatever the Eureka Stockade achieved it was not democracy.

The state constitutions were, as Lane puts it, “essentially home grown; even if monitored by the Imperial authorities”.

They were never imposed by London. And this was half a century before the federal constitution. Lane observes that the development of the legislative council in each of the colonies brought about constitutional monarchy in Australia.

Also known as a crowned republic, this is a system of government in which the crown does not exercise absolute power, only limited power under the constitution. In particular the crown is advised by its ministers who are answerable, through parliament, to the people.

The state governors today survive as living symbols of the process of evolution to representative and responsible government under the Crown, under which they act as constitutional umpires and auditors.

Our strength and our failings

It is right and proper that we not hide our failings and our weaknesses. Perhaps our greatest failings were in racial matters, White Australia, and especially, with the Aboriginal people. Let us look briefly at the White Australia Policy.

The White Australia Policy led to conflict with London. Imperial policy was not racist, and Queen Victoria herself was a strongly objected to any hint of racism.

The most virulent Australian opponent of Asian immigration has surely been the staunchly republican journal The Bulletin. They led a movement to remove Australia form the British Empire so that it could become a republic, a white republic.

As an example of their crude racism consider this. On 22 June 1901, the editor attacked Joseph Chamberlain, the Colonial Secretary who had blocked certain Queensland legislation banning coloured labour:

“If Judas Chamberlain can find a black, or brown or yellow race … that has as high a standard of civilisation and intelligence as the white, that is progressive … as brave, sturdy, as good nation building material, and that can intermarry with the whites without the mixed progeny showing signs of deterioration, that race is welcome.”

Federation changed this, for one of the powers of the new Commonwealth Parliament was in relation to immigration.

One of the first laws passed after Federation instituted the White Australia Policy. To allay strong British objections, a dictation test in any European language could be administered on entry at the discretion of a customs official.

Its strongest supporters were in the unions and Labor Party. They feared with some justification then that the relatively good working conditions achieved behind the tariff wall would be weakened by competitively priced immigrant Asian labour. But the White Australia Policy was not enacted to expel existing Asian immigrants, although this was to be the fate of many of the indentured Kanaka workers from the Pacific. The policy allowed Asian immigrants established here to stay, but was intended to stop further immigration.

Yet immigrants still came through. My own maternal grandparents, and their children, arrived in Sydney from Batavia, now Jakarta, in 1917. A dictation test was administered on this occasion in English, fortunately one of the several languages in which they were fluent. They passed, including my mother, who was still a child.

While the White Australian Policy seems outrageous by our standards today, it was little different from the barriers to Asian immigration erected in other countries, including the United States and Canada. It is not so different from the immigration policies which are still applied by many countries today, including some of our neighbours, but which are rarely criticised. In any event it was gradually relaxed after the Second World War and no longer applied in any real sense by the mid-1960s.

Australians can be least proud of the policy concerning the Aboriginal people. And with the advent of self-government, the restraining influence of more liberal colonial secretaries and governors was removed.

Philip ordered that Aborigines be treated well, and indicated that the murder of an Aborigine would be punished by hanging.

According to his entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, “one of the offences Phillip refused to tolerate was ill treatment of the Aboriginals. In his Instructions he had been ordered to establish contact and maintain friendly relations with them and he took these humanitarian injunctions seriously. He interested himself in the life of the natives whose customs also attracted considerable attention from his fellow officers. He made them presents, placed two, Colebe and Bennelong, under his personal care, and did his utmost to win and keep their friendship. At first he seemed to have succeeded.”

“The Aboriginals evinced no desire to drive the whites out and showed admiration for their power and their leader whose missing front tooth apparently possessed symbolic value. Friction later developed and matters eventually reached the point where Phillip was forced to take punitive action, though he continued to exercise restraint even after being wounded by a spear at Manly Cove.”

“Throughout he sought to maintain harmony while gradually persuading the Aboriginals of the superiority of British civilization. Settlers who interfered with their pursuits remained liable to heavy punishment.”

There is a widespread belief, reported in the media, that the 1967 referendum gave the Aboriginal people, for the first time, Australian citizenship and the right to vote. But they were already citizens. Moreover the right to vote had been granted in a piecemeal way, in four States, at least in law, if not in practice, before Federation.

A secondary purpose of the 1967 referendum was to remove provisions from the Constitution against counting Aboriginal people (then considered mainly nomadic) in reckoning the number of people for electoral purposes. The principal purpose was to give the Federal Parliament a power, with the States, to legislate with respect to Aboriginal people.

This referendum was a bipartisan measure, and was approved by a record affirmative vote of 90.77%.

This vote was the clearest indication of an overwhelming view among Australians that the Aboriginal people were entitled to be treated as the equals of other Australians. The extent to which the Aborigines have today been accorded this status is the subject of considerable debate.

The noted French historian and anthropologist, Emmanuel Todd (1994), argues that the leading indicator of the degree of the acceptance of minorities within a society is the degree of female exogamy. That is, the extent to which female members of the minority marry out of their group.

In Australia, according to John Taylor (1997), the 1996 census demonstrated that 64% of “indigenous couple families” were unions between non-indigenous and indigenous partners. These families were almost evenly divided between those where the mother was indigenous, and those where the father was indigenous. This indicates a rate of female exogamy among the Aboriginal people of about 32%.

This is far higher than those minorities which Todd evaluates, including black Americans in the United States (1.3%), Turks in Germany (7%), or Algerians in France (perhaps 23%: that last statistic is probably inflated, because French citizens of Algerian descent are treated as French.)

This is not an unreasonable test, even if it may encourage a charge that those who rely on it are reviving the assimilationist policies of the past. These statistics must constitute a balance against others which compare adversely to such matters as the health, and the life expectancy, of Aboriginal people with other Australians.

In any event, it is clear that there is hardly any support for a policy which would be intended to differentiate adversely against the Aboriginal people.

The question remains about the proper assessment of past policies. The final judgement on that, if a final judgement can ever be made in this world, will be made by Australian historians in an objective search for the truth.

Certainly there were individuals and even officials who committed terrible crimes against Aboriginal people. But there is no evidence that the Australian treatment of the Aboriginal people ever approached the barbarity of the Nazi’s treatment of Jews, Gypsies and others, including homosexuals and the mentally ill. In the case of these unfortunates, the Nazi policy was for a “final solution”, a term which in itself strikes at everything that is good in man and in his institutions.

The Nazi policy was for the liquidation, the physical destruction, of all people of a proscribed race or group by agents of the state, aided by the police and the public service in accordance with the decisions and directions of the highest state authorities.

There is no evidence that the crimes committed against the Aboriginal people were ever committed as government policy. And there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Indeed from the beginning of the penal colony, the authorities were to insist on the application of the rule of law at least the criminal law to all men and women, of all races and colours. That this was to be imperfectly applied and that there were to be legal restrictions on Aboriginal people, often for paternalistic reasons, is a matter of great regret. But it does not equate to some form of Nazism at the heart of white Australia.

Let me take you back to the early years of our nation, back to 1838, only 50 years after settlement.

The application of the rule of law was demonstrated cogently in the final grave words of the judge when sentencing the seven white perpetrators of the massacre of 27 aboriginal people at Myall Creek in that year. These words demonstrate that even then, the principle that the rule of law must in Australian society prevail whatever the race or colour of the victim or offender.

These were the words of Mr Justice Burton:

“Prisoners at the bar … you have been found guilty of the murder of men, women and children. The circumstances of the murders of which you have been found guilty are of such singular atrocity that I am persuaded that you long ago must have expected what the result would be.

“This is not the case where a single individual has met his death by violent means; this is not the case, as has too often stained indelibly the annals of this Colony, where death has ensued from a drunken quarrel; this is not the case, when, as this session the Court has been pained to hear, the blood of a human being and intoxicating liquor were mingled on the same floor, this is not the case where the life or property of an individual has been attacked, ever so weakly, and arms have been resorted to. No such extenuating circumstances as these, if any consider them extenuating, have taken place.

“This is not the case of the murder of one individual, but of many men, women, and children, old men and babes hanging at their mothers’ breasts, to the number in all, according to the evidence, probably of thirty individuals, whose bodies on one occasion were murdered — poor defenceless human beings …

“I cannot expect that any words of mine can reach your hearts, but I hope that the grace of God may reach them, for nothing else can reach those hardened hearts which could surround that fatal pile, and slay the fathers, mothers, and the infants …

“I cannot but look at you with commiseration; you were all transported to this Colony, although some of you have since become free; you were removed from a Christian country and placed in a dangerous and tempting situation; you were entirely removed from the benefit of the ordinances of religion; you were one hundred and fifty miles from the nearest Police station on which you could rely for protection — by which you could have been controlled. I cannot but deplore that you should have been placed in such a situation — that such circumstances should have existed, and above all, that you should have committed such a crime.

“But this commiseration must not interfere with the stern duty, which, as a Judge the law enforces on me, which is to order that you, and each of you, be removed to the place whence you came and thence to a place of public execution, and that at such time as His Excellency, the Governor, shall appoint, you be hanged by the neck until your bodies be dead, and may the Lord have mercy on your souls.”

Recall that this is a judge, in 1838, sentencing to death white men for the murder of Aborigines.

What greater evidence can there be of a society under the rule of law for all, and for all races and colours, than these words delivered in court in the early part of the nineteenth century?

These words are more than sufficient not only to deny, but to unmask, the unjustified attempt by some to paint our country as a genocidal hell.

While our nation is not perfect, Australians have much to be proud of in the history of our Federation.

The Sixth Pillar: Federation

Not long after the 1999 referendum, the Courier Mail published a letter which stated that it was well known that the British had strongly opposed Federation.

The fact is that the first serious l proposal for federation came from London.

As early as Earl Grey, the Colonial Secretary, proposed an Australian General Assembly to deal with Australian matters – tariffs, the post office, railways and roads.

A Privy Council report filled out the details: the General Assembly would consist of a Governor-General, and a House of Delegates elected by the colonial parliaments. The General Assembly would have the power to make laws at the request of colonies. It would have the power to create a Supreme Court of Australia.

The proposal was greeted here with derision, ridicule and strong opposition.

From 1855 the colonies gained responsible government and became internally self-governing. It became clear – and Earl Grey’s experience confirmed this – that if Federation were to come it would be the Australians – and not the British – who would not only decide on it, but also determine its form.

So when W.C. Wentworth, who quite liked Lord Grey’s proposal, tried again in 1855 the Colonial Secretary Henry Labouchere rejected it. He would not move unless he were satisfied that the colonies were likely to accept federation.

There were further proposals. In 1870, at an Intercolonial Postal conference, Henry Parkes proposed not federation, but a Federal Council. The Conference and the NSW passed a bill for this, but Royal Assent was not forthcoming. It was too closely and narrowly tied to the postal scheme.

It was German unification, and her imperial ambitions – as well as those of France – that led to the next significant development. In 1883 Queensland attempted to annex New Guinea to thwart Imperial Germany’s ambitions. This was repudiated by London.

In the meantime, France was clearly interested in the New Hebrides.

So an Inter-colonial Convention in 1883 drafted an Act, not for federation, but to constitute a Federal Council of Australasia. There were to be two members from each of the self-governing colonies and including NZ one from the Crown colonies (Fiji and WA).

It was passed by five of the colonial parliaments and then by the Imperial Parliament in 1885. It was to meet only every two years, and could legislate over matters referred by two or more colonies. New Zealand and New South Wales never joined, Fiji came only once, and South Australia left it.

But the mood of the country was changing. The advantages of federation, seen long ago by the British, were becoming evident.

A report in 1889 by Sir James Bevan Edwards about the colonies separate defence forces was scathing.

In the meantime the colonies were adopting immigration policies at odds with London. United they would be more able to resist British pressure against a White Australian Policy.

(It may be recalled that the colonies had already escaped from the constraints on their aboriginal policies which the Colonial Office had imposed on them up to the grant of responsible government.)

Sir Henry Parkes responded to this mood in what was to be called the Tenterfield Oration in 1889. He called for a convention to settle the terms of federation. He was so successful that an Australian Federation Conference was convened in Melbourne in February 1890.

It agreed, unanimously, to call together ordinary a National Australasian Convention to be chosen from the seven colonial parliaments. This was done. It met from 2 March to 9 April 1891 in Melbourne. It produced a draft constitution.

The main differences from our present constitution were:

. the Senate would be appointed by the State Parliaments

· there would only be a power to establish a Supreme Court

· constitutional amendments could be approved by State conventions

· as soon as three parliaments agreed to the proposal London would be asked to adopt it

Its principal weakness was that it depended on the colonial politicians in each parliament, or at least three, giving effect to the proposal.

They did not.

And so we come to the most significant and the most exciting part of the Federation story.

Because the politicians had failed, the people took over.

This was done sensibly, democratically and without an uprising or revolution.

This was a grassroots movement conducted principally through two organisations, the Federation Leagues and the Australian Natives Association. They held a famous conference, a truly peoples’ conference, in Corowa in 1893.

It was there that Sir John Quick moved that there should be another convention, but this time one directly elected by the people. And that their proposal should not go to the politicians for ratification, but direct to the people by way of a referendum in each colony.

This was indeed a revolution, a glorious and bloodless revolution.

The Corowa process was approved by the premiers in 1895, the politicians had to be jogged into action by another peoples’ Convention. This was held in Bathurst in 1896.

In 1897 an Australasian Federal Convention was finally elected by the people, except by WA, whose parliament appointed their delegates. Queensland did not attend.

The Convention met in Adelaide and Sydney in 1897 and in Melbourne 1898. It did its work, improving on the earlier constitution. This was submitted to a referendum in four States in 1898. Passed in Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia, it failed to attain the prescribed minimum of 80,000 affirmative votes required in NSW.

George Reid, the NSW Premier, then negotiated a compromise with all the Premiers in 1899. That year a referendum was held again in all States, except in WA. These passed.

The five Parliaments then formally requested the Queen that the Constitution be given legal effect by the Imperial Parliament. Joseph Chamberlain, the Colonial Secretary, invited a delegation to come to London.

They were Edmund Barton (NSW), Alfred Deakin (Victoria), Charles Kingston (SA), James Dickie (Queensland), Sir Philip Fysh (Tasmania) and S.H. Parker (WA).

Although the Colonial Office had advised him the constitution be enacted without change, Chamberlain wanted some amendments, especially one to retain appeals to the Privy Council.

A compromise was eventually agreed, and accepted glumly. The Australian delegates then withdrew to their private room and “seized each other’s hands and danced hand in hand in a ring around the centre of the room to express their jubilation.”

Bear in mind the photographs that have survived of the Founding Fathers – all austere, very serious men, often with long beards.

The Bill passed unanimously by Parliament, Chamberlain being reprimanded for his changes by Earl Carrington in the House of Lords. It received Royal Assent on 9 July 1900.

The people of Western Australia approved of the Bill by referendum on 31 July. So on the 17th of September, at Balmoral, Queen Victoria signed a Proclamation for the Commonwealth to be established on the very first day of the new century, 1 January 1901.

A little over seven years had elapsed between the Corowa Conference in 1893 – a private initiative- and the signing of the Proclamation.

Without computers, air travel, the web, and only rudimentary electronic communication, our predecessors had in seven years ensured that a new nation was established.

After the first elections on the 29 and 30 March, the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York opened the new Parliament in Melbourne on 9 May.

An assessment

Our Constitutional system, with all its weaknesses has proved to be one of the world’s most successful.

The foundation of our federal Commonwealth was an extraordinary achievement. Sir John Quick, one of our Founding Fathers, played a significant role in it.

He saw that by the 1890s the federation movement had to be saved from the political morass into which it had fallen. At Corowa in 1893, he proposed that the people had to be directly involved in the election of a convention to draft the Constitution, and that the people should finally determine whether to approve it. It was the acceptance of this principle that ensured that the federal movement would succeed.

Sir John Quick was to write subsequently, with Sir Robert Garran, in a major book which remains, even today, a priceless commentary on the Constitution:

“Never before have a group of self-governing, practically independent communities, without external pressure or foreign complications of any kind, deliberately chosen of their own free will to put aside their provincial jealousies and come together as one people, from a simple intellectual and sentimental conviction of the folly of disunion and the advantages of nationhood.

“The States of America, or Switzerland, or Germany were drawn together under the shadow of war. Even the Canadian provinces were forced to unite by the neighbourhood of a great foreign power.

“But the Australian Commonwealth, the fifth great Federation of the world, came into voluntary being through a deep conviction of national unity.

“We may well be proud of the statesmen who constructed a Constitution which — whatever may be its faults and its shortcomings — has proved acceptable to a large majority of the people of five great communities scattered over a continent; and proud of a people who, without the compulsion of war or the fear of conquest, have succeeded in agreeing upon the terms of a binding and indissoluble Social Compact”.

Our Federation was born on the very first day of the new Century, 1 January, 1901. In that year Australia had the highest income per head in the world, an honour it shared with another former settled colony, Argentina. I make no criticism of Argentina, a fine country and a fine people. But she has been a less happy land than ours. Since 1930 military dictatorships have alternated with democratic governments, with cruel results for her people.

In 1975, we experienced an unusual political crisis when supply was denied to the government. The attempt to bring down the government was not at all unusual.

According to Sir David Smith, in the authoritative book, Head of State (Macleay Press, 2005 page 264), there had been 200 such attempts since 1950.

What was unusual in 1975 was the opposition seemed to have the numbers. This was after certain senate vacancies were filled in controversial circumstances.

The Governor –General eventually ruled that attempting to govern without supply was unconstitutional.

He withdrew Mr Whitlam’s commission, appointed the Leader of the Opposition as caretaker Prime Minister provided an election was advised. This was held on 10 December.

There were no deaths, no bloodshed, no coup, no junta, no arrests; the constitution worked and the people decided.

Shortly after this an Argentine military junta waged a “dirty war” against its own people. This resulted in many thousands of “disappeared”, a euphemism for tortured and murdered by the military. And now Argentineans’ income per head has declined to less than half of ours. She was to play no significant role in the defence of freedom in either the first or second World Wars.

In the meantime, terms of life expectancy, health and prosperity, the UN HDI has for twenty years placed us in the top countries in the world.

Even in times of great stress, even when threatened with invasion, we have remained a democracy. We remain among the world’s most successful economies, and we excel in the arts and in intellectual achievement as measured by the number of Nobel Prizes awarded per capita.

And just as we have achieved outstanding results on the sporting field (extraordinary results when you consider the size of our population), we have made an outstanding contribution to the cause of liberty and freedom worldwide. With a population one-quarter of what it is today, more serving Australians gave their lives in the First World War than those of any of the other non-European powers involved.

These include South Africa, India, Canada and even that great power with its vast population the United States. And all of the Australians were volunteers. In the Second World War, Australia was one of that tiny coalition of powers which had resisted Hitler from the very beginning.

This tradition has continued, through Korea to so many peace-keeping interventions. More recently, Australia played a significant role in helping the people of East Timor. This in many ways made some amends for our role in recognising the forced incorporation of that territory into the Republic of Indonesia.

This country is not perfect, but we have much to be proud of when reflect on our nation on this Australia Day.

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