After the gold rush, the colonial cradle of democracy

Miners living it up at Bendigo goldfields on Christmas Day 1895. For four decades Australians enjoyed close to the highest standard of living in the world.

Measured by some criteria, Australia was the world’s surprise packet for much of the 19th century. Between 1830 and 1850 its standard of living increased, thanks to the output of wool, and then for another 20 years when gold provided more wealth than wool.

The four decades from 1851 to 1890 saw fast economic development. The population multiplied by almost 10. Just imagine today’s Australia displaying a similar pace of growth in the next 40 years. It would mean that the present population of 23 million would exceed 200 million before the year 2055.

In the initial gold era, Victoria was the leader and Melbourne, its capital, passed Sydney in population; but every colony enjoyed one or more phases of fast economic growth: Western Australia was the exception, lagging until the 1890s. The most backward of the seven Australasian colonies, it came alive through gold in the 1890s, trebling its recorded population in the space of 10 years.

As a trigger of growth, gold was dynamic over a far larger geographical area in Australia than in the comparable gold countries of North America and South Africa. Furthermore, Australia’s rushes — and New Zealand’s too — began when the local economy was tiny and therefore was more easily transformed by a dynamic new activity.

In the first 40 years after the initial discoveries, gold’s impact on Australia was formidable. Most historians — persuaded by the calculations of Noel G. Butlin — now believe that, for about four decades, the Australian people enjoyed the highest — or close to the highest — standard of living in the world.

Even at the first peak of the gold output, in the mid-1850s, Australia’s standard of living probably was among the highest. The Australian ports and gold-diggings were heavy consumers of luxuries, including natural ice imported in sailing ships from Boston at high prices.

This was simply one of many mirrors of a high standard of living. By 1889, urbanisation and the kind of consumer life lived in the cities were others.

Of the declining population of Aborigines, most did not share noticeably, and many did not share at all, in these gains. Large numbers, of course, lived totally outside the European — style economy and had barely heard of it.

In explaining Australia’s high per capita standard of living, especially in the period 1850-90, the exploitation of grasslands and mineral deposits and other new natural resources was vital. Also important were the high flow of British capital at low rates of interest, the adoption of new British technology in many fields, the introduction of suitable livestock and crops from the northern hemisphere, and the presence for four decades of relatively favourable weather in the southeastern quarter of the continent. Ample rain was a boon in an era when rural production was vital to the standard of living.

A little-recognised asset was that in the 19th century most immigrants came from the British Isles, which, at that time, were, compared to most other peoples, sympathetic to new technology. After 1890, Australia’s relatively high income began to fall on the international ladder.

 Australia, though commonly described as a young nation, owns an unusual political pedigree. It is one of the oldest, continuous democracies in the world. It became a democracy in the 1850s, when such a political system was operating in no more than a handful of countries. Even to designate these countries as democratic is open to dispute.

Britain in 1860 was perhaps not a democracy.

Only a small fraction of adults had the right to vote, and because all those entitled to vote had to declare their vote in public — there was no secret ballot — they could be intimidated. A tenant farmer or the employee of a big manufacturer or merchant could easily be pressed into voting for the candidate favoured by his master.

Even in the US, one of the grandfathers of modern democracy, important groups had no right to vote. For example, slaves had no vote, and long after the end of the American Civil War most Afro-Americans could not vote.

France could be called a democracy in revolutionary 1792, but not for long. Democracy in France was frail and sometimes tottering until 1875 when adult male suffrage was endorsed; but French democracy collapsed again in 1940.

Britain was far behind Australia in achieving adult male suffrage, and so, too, was almost every country in Europe. Even in the British overseas colonies, with their sympathies towards democracy, New Zealand, though a slow starter, became one of the few stars.

Canada, seemingly so democratic and operating a vigorous form of parliamentary government after the forming of the Confederation in 1867, did not introduce universal adult-male franchise until years after Australia became a federation in 1901.

Australia became a full-blooded democracy in the late 1850s, achieving it with lightning speed. Only 30 years previously it had consisted of two convict colonies, ruled by governors whose personal power was magnified because most of their subjects were prisoners or ex-prisoners.

Moreover, the governors were so remote geographically that Britain’s control of them and their decisions was loose. One year might elapse between the governor writing an urgent dispatch to London, and the arrival of an official reply. And yet, from this prison-like regime, democracy speedily emerged. This was an exceptional outcome.

In 1860 almost nine of every 10 white Australians lived in those colonies where every man had the right to vote. Perhaps only one other country of the world — the US — had a higher proportion. Furthermore, Australian parliamentary 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 in 1856 became the first territories in which elections were conducted by secret ballot: a reform that prevented an employee from being intimidated or unduly influenced by his employer or landlord at the public polling-place.

Slowly the remainder of the semidemocratic world adopted this device, calling it either the Australian or Victorian Ballot.

Here, in Australia, was an infant democracy, eager to experiment. Another leap forward in Australian democracy was made at the end of the century. New Zealand became the first country in the world to give women the vote, and Australia was the first 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 that 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 summarise 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 20th century, the Aborigines, whether enfranchised or not, represented only a tiny proportion of Australia’s population.

For many well-informed British people, Australia’s first democratic experiment had been a dangerous piece of political chemistry. Many of London’s more conservative politicians feared that Australia might adopt universal adult suffrage. In 1851 The 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 sanctioned 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 Hitler’s conquests temporarily snuffed out most of the vigorous democracies in Europe.

Why did the colonies move so quickly from despotism to an advanced kind of democracy at a time when democratic states in the world were few?

The great majority of immigrants, especially in the 1840s and 50s, came from the British Isles where a restricted and highly cautious form of democracy was already being practised.

Moreover, these immigrants were largely people who possessed no vote at home but believed — more perhaps than any previous generation — that they should be entitled to a vote.

The quick rise of an advanced democracy in Australia also owed much to a group of British politicians and critics. Recalling the breakaway of the North American colonies and the outbreak of the American War of Independence in the 1770s, they tended to believe that overseas colonies would inevitably break away unless they were treated sensitively and favourably.

Indeed, the seven colonies in Australasia might eventually secede, even if they were humoured and courted by the mother country. These more radical British politicians and critics were sympathetic to the creation in both Canada and Australasia of self-governing colonies with a franchise and structure notably more democratic than that prevailing in the British Isles.

Geoffrey Blainey is a historian and author of more than 35 books.