[Editor: This chapter is part of The White Australia Policy: The Rise and Fall of Australia’s Racial Ideology (2025).]
Federation and national issues
The push for the federation of the Australian colonies was based upon several important elements, including the desire for a White Australia.
The significant issues of concern to the federation movement were:
1) White Australia. There had been problems in the past regarding the Australian colonies having a unified response to non-European immigration. This was of especial concern because the lax immigration policies of one colony would affect all of the other colonies, due to inter-colonial migration (Queensland, with its use of labourers from the Pacific Islands on sugar plantations, was a particular issue). Attaining federation would enable a national immigration policy of having a predominantly white Australia.
2) Defence. High levels of concern had been expressed over the disjointed colonial defence situation, with there being a lack of a national military command and strategy. Each Australian colony had its own separate military forces and military policies. Having Australia’s military forces joined together, and commanded at a national level, would enable a co-ordinated and timely military response to any threat.
3) Inter-colonial trade. Pre-federation, tariffs (import taxes) were payable on goods being traded between the colonies, with customs officials being stationed at the colonial borders to collect tariff revenue. Having a federated Australia would enable the easy flow of goods across the country, irrespective of state borders.
4) Nationality. Federation enabled the bonding together of the Australian people as one. Although, in some ways, the close cultural and political connections between the colonies was assumed, there was potential for future conflict and separation. If any of the colonies developed in a significantly different political or social direction to the others, then there could be future dramatic or dire consequences, including the spectre of war. Joining together as one would enable the future existence of a nationally-unified people.
5) National aspirations. It was hoped that a federated Australia would make great strides in national development, in terms of culture, economics, and society. The several colonies joining together as one would enable Australia to develop exponentially.
The first three reasons were the most prevalent issues regarding federation, whilst the latter two reasons were somewhat assumed as a natural development of the Australian colonies joining together.
Mainly in response to the important issues of White Australia, defence, and trade, the six colonies of Australia decided to join together in a national federation, with the Commonwealth of Australia being officially created on the 1st of January 1901 (the first day of the new century).
Although the desire to establish a nationwide bar against non-white immigration was not the only reason for Federation, it was certainly an important part of the drive to formally establish the Australian nation.
Referring to the importance that the issue of White Australia was playing in the movement for the federation of Australia, The Daily Telegraph stated in 1899:
“One of the main objects for which the democracy of New South Wales supports Federation is that of providing a guarantee for a white Australia.”[1]
Alfred Deakin, who was Attorney-General of Australia (and later Prime Minister), during the parliamentary debates regarding the Immigration Restriction Bill in 1901, said that racial considerations were a widespread motive for the federation of the Australian colonies:
“No motive power operated more universally on this continent or in the beautiful island of Tasmania, and certainly no motive operated more powerfully in dissolving the technical and arbitrary political divisions which previously separated us than the desire that we should be one people; and remain one people without the admixture of other races.”[2]
According to the editor of The Freeman’s Journal, Australia’s federation was important for defence, internal free trade, external trade barriers, and a White Australia (1908):
“Australia is a great, isolated, sea-girt continent, part of the British Empire, but much further from the seat of Empire than from the greedy, over-populated Orient, and in her case the great minds which won responsible government for her saw the peculiar need of a federation which would create that community of feeling known as nationhood.
Fifty years of government by decentralisation proved that such government, in our case, without a central authority, tended more and more to alienation, if not of sympathy, of action, between the States, and left Australia’s shores exposed to the predatory visitor. Federation came to effect uniformity of defence, uniformity of trade, and in other ways to take in hand purely Australian affairs.
Its first achievement, was inter-State freetrade; its next, the pioneer step in defence known as a “White Australia”; it is just putting the finishing touches to a national tariff which gives the island-continent industrial self-respect; presently it will reach another stage of real defence in which the Northern Territory, a “terra incognita,” except to Oriental hordes, in the tug-of-war government days, will play a part. … the Oriental is ever so much more dangerous to-day in his political awakening than he was in the old days when Lambing Flat struck an anti-Oriental note.”[3]
The White Australia Policy was an important policy of the Australian nation in its early years, and was supported by all of the major political parties. At the time of Federation, in 1901, the main parties were the Free Traders (a free enterprise, capitalist party), the Labour Party (a democratic socialist party), and the Protectionists (a centrist party, with both free enterprise and socialist aspects); right across the political spectrum, all of these political parties championed the principle of a White Australia.
References:
[1] “The secret conference bill and a black state”, The Daily Telegraph (Sydney, NSW), 9 June 1899, p. 4
[2] Commonwealth of Australia, “Parliamentary Debates: House of Representatives: Official Hansard”, 1901 no. 37, 12 September 1901, p. 4804, columns 1-2
[3] “Mr. Holman explains”, The Freeman’s Journal (Sydney, NSW), 4 June 1908, p. 35 [see the Editor’s reply at the end of the article]
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