acquired other ideas. In the new federal parliament that first met in
Melbourne in 1901, two of the three political parties usually advocated
free trade, but Labor soon became protectionist, and the Free Trade Party of
George Reid fused with the protectionist Liberals under Alfred Deakin in 1909
and joined the protectionist movement. In 1909 the federal protective tariff
became high, and manufacturing soared. A new political party, the Country
Party (now called the Nationals), was strong enough in 1923 to become almost
an equal partner in S. M. Bruce’s right-wing government. Initially free trade in
sympathies, it joined the protectionist orchestra as the new conductor. Aid to
a wide variety of rural industries became federal policy. In the 1930s even the
gold-mining industry, less influential than in 1900, gained government
subsidies.
The federal government penetrated far into thefield of taxation, which, in
1901, had been largely the realm of the six states. Soon there was a federal
income tax and a federal land tax, as well as federal old-age pensions. A minor
borrower on the British loan market before 1914, the federal government
became the main borrower and never looked back—except to observe occa-
sionally the mounting public debt. Some of these changes are the themes of
detailed chapters in this book. Matching the more radical mood in Australia,
beginning in the 1890s, was a second wave of parliamentary reforms, includ-
ing votes for women. They form part of Australia’s exceptionalism, in the eyes
of political scientists.
Just before 1914 the question was increasingly posed: which would be the
world’sfirst country to practise a form of socialism. Czarist Russia was rarely
mentioned. New Zealand and Australia were widely predicted to become the
first semi-socialist states in the world. The Russian revolutions in 1917 ended
that prediction. The high point of economic radicalism in Australia was the
decision of the federal Labor government in 1947 to nationalize the banks—a
decision thwartedfirst by the High Court, and then by the electors. The
definite swing away from this long era of interventionism and state activism
probably began in the 1970s.
2.10 Immigration: an Exceptional History
Australia wasfirst colonized by Western Europe, a half-continent which was
exceptionally remote from Australia. The British Isles, with a little help from
Germany, supplied most long-term migrants, and they, in turn, shaped nearly
every facet of Australian life, whether law, politics, religion, sport, or the arts.
The composition of Australia’s population for at least sixteen decades differed
from that of other New World lands settled increasingly by Europeans. It
lacked the Spanish and Portuguese intake in Latin America and the French
Geoffrey Blainey