from this prison-like regime, democracy speedily emerged. This was an excep-
tional outcome.
In 1860 almost nine of every ten white Australians lived in those colonies
where every man had the right to vote. Perhaps only one other country of the
world—the USA—had a higher proportion. Furthermore, Australian parlia-
mentary elections were held every three years, and a local politician was
more accountable than his counterpart in any European or North American
parliament. Victoria and South Australia in1856 became thefirst territories in
which elections were conducted by secret ballot: a reform which prevented
an employee from being intimidated or unduly influenced by his employer
or landlord at the public polling-place. Slowly the remainder of the semi-
democratic world adopted this device, calling it either the Australian or
Victorian Ballot. Here, in Australia, wasan infant democracy, eager to experiment.
Another leap forward in Australian democracy was made at the end of the
century. New Zealand became thefirst country in the world to give women the
vote, and Australia was thefirst to give them both the vote and the right to
stand for parliament.
Even then, in the main Australian colonies, democracy was still hampered.
An upper house or legislative council was dominated usually by the wealthier
sectors of society; but it had to be wary of blocking any legislation which had
massive popular support. The big sheep-owners were powerful in these upper
houses but often they lowered their colours to the lower house in a political
crisis. Slowly the upper houses surrendered much of their power. A more
important impediment to Australian democracy in the long term was the
long absence of full rights for Aborigines. It is difficult to summarize, even in
two pages, the position of Aborigines, for their civic rights differed from
colony to colony, from state to state, and decade to decade. Thus, in the
two most populous states, many Aborigines exercised a right to vote long
before and long after 1901. But in Queensland and Western Australia—the
two biggest states in area—few Aborigines had the right to vote even as
recently as 1945. Throughout the twentieth century, the Aborigines, whether
enfranchised or not, represented only a tiny proportion of Australia’s
population.
For many well-informed British people, Australia’sfirst democratic experi-
ment had been a dangerous piece of political chemistry. Many of London’s
more conservative politicians feared that Australia might adopt universal
adult suffrage (Hirst 1988, p. 71). In 1851The Times, a daily journal of high
prestige, argued that in a democratic system,‘the lowest types were elected to
parliament, governments were unstable, inefficient and corrupt and sanc-
tioned the wildest prejudices of the mob.’At its birth Australian democracy
was definitely an example of exceptionalism. Yet the fact that Australia today
is one of the oldest continuous democracies may owe much to the sad fact that
Geoffrey Blainey