A Political Anniversary
Jun 14, 2006
On last Monday an important political anniversary was celebrated at the top end of town, with minimal press coverage. This was a pity, because we were celebrating 150 years of government by the people for the people. By + Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, 28/5/2006.
The opening of the second session of the fifty-third parliament of New South Wales celebrated 150 years of “responsible” government in the state. This was no extraordinary claim that governments had always avoided acting irresponsibly, but that we had been ruled, not by a governor, but by an elected government which needed majority support in the parliament. In other words we were celebrating a century and a half of democracy, which makes New South Wales one of the oldest democracies in the world.
The first premier Stuart Donaldson was in fact known as Prime Minister and Colonial Secretary, as there was no federated Australia until 1901. There have been 40 premiers.
Our situation was very different in the early nineteenth century as a British penal colony ruled by military governors, whose masters were 20,000 kms and six months away by ship. Lachlan Macquarie, a fine man who laid the foundation stone of St. Mary’s Cathedral in 1821, was the last such governor. Afterwards there was a Legislative Council to advise the governor and from 1843 this was partly elected.
150,000 convicts were transported to Eastern Australia including 25,000 women and the last convict ship arrived in N.S.W. in 1840 although transportation did not finish in Western Australia until 1868. 150 years ago the entire continental population was less than 900,000.
The significant percentage of emancipated convicts and their children and the large number of Irish born in this small population, as well as the excesses of the French Revolution in 1789 (where king and queen were executed) and then the Napoleonic wars, meant that the “powers-that-be” in N.S.W. and in England were suspicious of democracy, as something dangerous and un-British.
However the discovery of gold in 1851, the huge immigration this induced and the immense wealth which followed, more in Victoria than here, meant that the slow movement to democracy quickened and was unstoppable.
In many ways the Australian colonies led the way in the development of democracy, although many of the features we now take for granted came after the first sitting of parliament in 1856.
It was a coupe of years later in 1858 that all men were allowed to vote and the secret ballot was introduced. Women could not vote in N.S.W. until 1902, nor become members of the Legislative Assembly until 1918.
Aboriginal people were never prohibited officially but found it difficult to vote until the 1960s.
Australian parliaments were notorious as being rowdy and irreverent and governments generally only lasted 18 months until the party system was introduced in the 1890s. Now governments average six years in office.
Our democratic governments and parliamentarians are imperfect, but far better than any alternative.
A Political Anniversary