Andrew Fisher: Australia's Era of Reform (1910-1914)

[Music] taxes yes taxes we will tax all of them so much money so we've had a whole century to perfect the negative campaign ad the bill australia can't afford but heading into the 1910 election it was a pretty new science andrew fisher certainly had a lot of ammo to work with after all as we saw last week deakin had blown up the previous government and merged with the very people who were supposed to be his ideological enemies andrew fisher's repeated tagline was this what can you do with a man like that but no one knew if this was really sticking going into the election deakin's new liberal party was perhaps going in as slight favorites but no one could know for sure when the results came in in april they were shocking deakin's liberals were decimated 42-31 labor were back and for the first time in australia's history no coalition was required for a party to form government deakin's career was effectively over okay so deacon will have one final impact on this series before we write them out completely but before we get to the backroom politics i want to give a quick congratulations to our winners from last episode who successfully guessed the winners of the 1910 election my subscriber question for you today is this your primary school library would have had these iconic australian books for your chance to feature next week guess which of andy griffith's just so-and-so books was my favorite but like i said before for the first time fischer was leading a majority government as we saw last week fischer had briefly been the prime minister until deacon and cook merged to form the liberal party and outnumber him and with labour in majority they got to work right away passing 23 pieces of key legislation for the purpose of keeping this episode interesting we won't go into each of them but these were some of the highlights firstly the northern territory acceptance act transferred control over the northern territory from south australia to the federal government secondly the naval defense act formalised an australian navy and with this also came the establishment of don true military college our version of west point thirdly the commonwealth bank act established the commonwealth bank and up until paul keating this bank would remain controlled by the government rather than private owners and then finally key workers rights laws were passed that saw the introduction of maternity leave and workers compensation so finally with a fully functioning government fischer would have been pretty popular right well it wasn't that simple fischer pushed for a number of referendums if you don't know what that is it's basically the process of changing the constitution where everyone in australia either votes yes or no for the proposed amendment the constitution can only be changed if a majority of australians vote yes in a majority of the states so these are actually pretty tough to pull off and fisher found that out the hard way housekeeping housekeeping come back later please housekeeping not now housekeeping go away firstly in 1911 fischer aimed to increase the federal government's powers so that they could break up monopolies but around 61 of australians voted against fischer on this and then secondly in 1913 fischer proposed increased federal power in six areas of trade and commerce which was rejected once again but it's here where i actually want to take the focus off of fisher and put it on the libs who are in opposition with deakin defeated for a third time back in 1910 they needed a new leader and as we saw last week the liberal party was made up of ex-protectionists and ex-free traders and these old divisions emerged once again when appointing the new opposition leader john forrest was the candidate representing the ex-protectionist faction of the party and joseph cook was the candidate representing the x-free trader faction of the party and when the party cast their votes the votes were split 19 votes each way with one left to split the difference and have a guess who had that deciding vote that's right alfred deakin on the one hand deacon could stay loyal to his old protectionist and vote for forrest or alternatively he could vote for cook and really assert that the old parties didn't matter because the liberal party was the party now and so casting aside his protectionist roots deacon voted for joseph cook so cook was the opposition leader who would take on fischer in 1913 and this one was a nail biter labour won 37 seats libra won 38 once again fisher was gone and now cook was in so the 1913 election was a really fascinating one for a couple of reasons firstly there were zero independents that were elected so it was a parliament made up of only liberal and labour members there was also some interesting personnel change william lyon who had nearly stolen the job of prime minister out from the hands of edmund barton and who became an independent when deacon ended the protectionist party to merge with the free traders well he was voted out and then future prime minister james scullin he also lost his seat too so for anyone saying that frydenberg's career is over i'm not convinced if he came back as liberal leader in the future then it wouldn't be the first instance in history of this sort of thing happening but what was more interesting than any of this was that labour held the senate convincingly i'm talking 29-7 and so with each party having control of a different house labor was primed to block any proposed laws that the leads were attempting at passing so if you're joseph cook what do you do your prime minister but without labor's cooperation can't actually pass any laws through parliament well cook sought what was called a double dissolution essentially both parliaments being completely dissolved with re-elections for every seat of government in the australian constitution a double dissolution is triggered if the senate rejects the same bill twice with each rejection being more than three months apart so cook tried to bait labour into repeatedly rejecting their proposals by putting forward inflammatory bills such as an anti-unionist bill and a postal voting bill which would disadvantage labor however cook was starting to lose patience and wanted to petition the governor-general for an immediate dissolution whereas many in his party wanted to wait the three months until it was labor who triggered it cook got his wish and in july of 1914 the governor general called for new elections to be held in september if you're not paying close attention take look at not by this point available was in crisis because austrian archduke franz ferdinand had been assassinated and germany had promised a blank check to austria-hungary however war hadn't begun just yet though he was an opponent of the boer war fischer now in opposition started campaigning in favour of intervention saying should the worst happen australians will stand beside our own to help and defend her to our last man and our last shilling if you're australian you might have seen the phrase last man and last shilling on posters in your old history classroom because fischer repeated this phrase in his campaigning and when the uk intervened with the german invasion of belgium fischer made the war the most important policy issue going into the election rather than oppose the war cook's strategy was to match fisher and show his support for the empire after all still as early as 1914 many of australia's politicians had grown up in britain including both cook and fisher when the army proposed an expeditionary force of 12 000 soldiers to go abroad cook counted with twenty thousand and so by september europe was firmly in war the battle of tannenberg saw the beginning of the eastern front between russia and germany and after the battle of the man a western front had developed between germany and then france and britain on september the 5th the election results finally came in and you'll have to watch next episode to see what happens thanks for watching you can't miss the next episode as australia receives its baptism of fire gallipoli not only that but we'll see australia become deeply divided over the issue of conscription and after all get to see those 1914 election results it's one of the most important chapters in australian history we can't wait to see you next time for our next venture into a fascinating part of history