A POPULATION HISTORY OF COLONIAL NEW SOUTH WALES : THE ECONOMIC GROWTH OF A NEW COLONY

In , the celebrated humanitarian Caroline Chisolm arrived at Sydney and soon after began her work to alleviate the conditions for the poor women migrants of the colony. She met every immigrant ship at the docks, found positions for immigrant girls and established a Female Immigrants' Home. Later she began campaigning for legal reform to alleviate poverty and assist female immigration and family support in the colonies. In , the Sydney City Council was established. Australia's first parliamentary elections were conducted for the New South Wales Legislative Council in , again with voting rights for males only tied to property ownership or financial capacity.

The end of transportation and the rapid growth of population following the gold rush led to a demand for "British institutions" in New South Wales, which meant an elected parliament and responsible self-government. In the franchise for the Legislative Council was expanded, but this did not satisfy the settlers, many of whom such as the young Henry Parkes had been Chartists in Britain in the s.

Successive Governors warned the Colonial Office of the dangers of republicanism if the demands for self-government were not met. There was, however, a prolonged battle between the conservatives, now led by Wentworth, and the democrats as to what kind of constitution New South Wales would have. The key issue was control of the pastoral lands, which the democrats wanted to take away from the squatters and break up into farms for settlers. Wentworth wanted a hereditary upper house controlled by the squatters to prevent any such possibility. The radicals, led by rising politicians like Parkes and journalists like Daniel Deniehy , ridiculed suggestions of a " bunyip aristocracy.

This right was extended to Victoria in and New South Wales the following year the other colonies followed until, in , Tasmania became the last colony to grant universal male suffrage. The New South Wales Constitution Act of , steered through the British Parliament by the veteran radical Lord John Russell , who wanted a constitution which balanced democratic elements against the interests of property, as did the Parliamentary system in Britain at this time.

The Assembly was heavily malapportioned in favour of the rural areas. The Legislative Council was to consist of at least 21 members but with no upper limit appointed for life by the Governor, and Council members had to meet a higher property qualification. These seemed like formidable barriers to democracy, but in practice they did not prove so, because the Constitution Act could be modified by simple majorities of both Houses.

In the property franchise for the Assembly was abolished, and the secret ballot introduced. Since the principle that the Governor should always act on the advice of his ministers was soon established, a Premier whose bills were rejected by the Council could simply advise the Governor to appoint more members until the opposition was "flooded": The ministry of Charles Cowper marked the victory of colonial liberalism, although New South Wales liberals were never as radical as those in Victoria or South Australia.

The major battle for the liberals, unlocking the lands from the squatters, was more or less won by John Robertson , five times Premier during the s, who passed the Robertson Land Acts to break up the squatters' estates. From the s onwards government in New South Wales became increasingly stable and assured. Fears of class conflict faded as the population bulge resulting from the gold rushes was accommodated on the newly available farmlands and in the rapidly growing towns.

The last British troops left the colony in , and law and order was maintained by the police and a locally raised militia, which had little to do apart from catching a few bushrangers. The only issue which really excited political passions in this period was education, which was the source of bitter conflict between Catholics , Protestants , and secularists , who all had conflicting views on how schools should be operated, funded and supervised.

This was a major preoccupation for Henry Parkes, the dominant politician of the period he was Premier five times between and In Parkes, as Education Minister, brought in a compromise Schools Act that brought all religious schools under the supervision of public boards, in exchange for state subsidies. But in the secularists won out when Parkes withdrew all state aid for church schools and established a statewide system of free secular schools.

New South Wales and Victoria continued to develop along divergent paths. Parkes and his successor as leader of the New South Wales liberals, George Reid , were Gladstonian liberals committed to free trade, which they saw as both economically beneficial and as necessary for the unity of the British Empire. They regarded Victorian protectionism as economically foolish and narrowly parochial.

It was this hostility between the two largest colonies, symbolised by Victorian customs posts along the Murray River , which prevented any moves towards uniting the Australian colonies, even after the advent of the railways and the telegraph made travel and communication between the colonies much easier by the s. So long as Victoria was larger and richer than New South Wales, the mother colony as it liked to see itself would never agree to surrender its free trade principles to a national or federal government which would be dominated by Victorians.

By the s, several new factors were drawing the Australian colonies towards political union. The great land boom in Victoria in the s was followed by a prolonged depression, which allowed New South Wales to recover the economic and demographic superiority it had lost in the s. There was a steady rise in imperial sentiment in the s and s, which made the creation of united Australian dominion seem an important imperial project.

The intrusion of other colonial powers such as France and Germany into the south-west Pacific area made colonial defence an urgent question, which became more urgent with the rise of Japan as an expansionist power.

New South Wales Colony

Finally, the issue of Chinese and other non-European immigration made the federation of the colonies an important issue, with advocates of a White Australia policy arguing the necessity of a national immigration policy. As a result, the movement for federation was initiated by Parkes with his Tenterfield Oration of earning him the title "Father of Federation" , and carried forward after Parkes' death by another New South Wales politician, Edmund Barton. Opinion in New South Wales about federation remained divided through the s. The northern and southern border regions, which were most inconvenienced by the colonial borders and the system of intercolonial tariffs, were strongly in favour, while many in the Sydney commercial community were sceptical, fearing that a national Parliament would impose a national tariff which was indeed what happened.

The first attempt at federation in failed, mainly as a result of the economic crisis of the early s. It was the federalists of the border regions who revived the federal movement in the later s, leading up to the Constitutional Convention of which adopted a draft Australian Constitution. Reid was able to bargain with the other Premiers to modify the draft so that it suited New South Wales interests, and the draft was then approved. On 1 January , following a proclamation by Queen Victoria , New South Wales ceased to be a self-governing colony and became a state of the Commonwealth of Australia.

Although the new Governor-General and Prime Minister's swearing-in ceremonies were held in Sydney, Melbourne was to be the temporary seat of government until the permanent seat of government was established. This was to be in New South Wales, but at least miles km from Sydney.

Economic history of Australia

At the time of federation the New South Wales economy was still heavily based on agriculture, particularly wool growing, although mining - coal from the Hunter Region and silver, lead and zinc from Broken Hill - was also important. Federation was followed by the imposition of protective tariffs just as the Sydney Free Traders had feared, and this boosted domestic manufacturing. Farmers, however, suffered from increased costs, as well as from the prolonged drought that afflicted the state at the turn of the century.

A further boost to both manufacturing and farming came from the increased demand during World War I. The growth of manufacturing and mining brought with it the growth of an industrial working class. Trade unions had been formed in New South Wales as early as the s, but it was great labour struggles of the s that led them to move into politics.

The defeat of the great shearers' and maritime strikes in the s led the AWU to reject direct action and to take the lead in forming the Labor Party. Labor had its first great success in , when it won 35 seats in the Legislative Assembly, mainly in the pastoral and mining areas. This first parliamentary Labor Party, led by Joseph Cook , supported Reid's Free Trade government, but broke up over the issue of free trade versus protection, and also over the "pledge" which the unions required Labor members to take always to vote in accordance with majority decisions.

After federation, Labor, led by James McGowen , soon recovered, and won its first majority in the Assembly in , when McGowen became the state's first Labor Premier. This early experience of government, plus the social base of New South Wales party in the rural areas rather than in the militant industrial working class of the cities, made New South Wales Labor notably more moderate than its counterparts in other states, and this, in turn, made it more successful at winning elections.

The growth of the coal, iron, steel and shipbuilding industries gave Labor new "safe" areas in Newcastle and Wollongong , while the mining towns of Broken Hill and the Hunter also became Labor strongholds. As a result of these factors, Labor has ruled New South Wales for 59 of the 96 years since , and every leader of the New South Wales Labor Party except one has become Premier of the state.

New South Wales voters rejected both attempts by Hughes to pass a referendum authorising conscription, and in Hughes, Holman, Watson, McGowen, Spence and many other founders of the party were expelled, forming the Nationalist Party under Hughes and Holman. Federal Labor did not recover from this split for many years, but New South Wales Labor was back in power by , although this government lasted only 18 months, and again from under Jack Lang.

In the years after World War I it was the farmers rather than the workers who were the most discontented and militant class in New South Wales. The high prices enjoyed during the war fell with the resumption of international trade, and farmers became increasingly discontented with the fixed prices paid by the compulsory marketing authorities set up as a wartime measure by the Hughes government.

In the farmers formed the Country Party , led at national level by Earle Page , a doctor from Grafton , and at state level by Michael Bruxner , a small farmer from Tenterfield. The Country Party used its reliable voting base to make demands on successive non-Labor governments, mainly to extract subsidies and other benefits for farmers, as well as public works in rural areas.

The Great Depression , which began in , ushered in a period of unprecedented political and class conflict in New South Wales. The mass unemployment and collapse of commodity prices brought ruin to both city workers and to farmers. Lang's second government was elected in November on a policy of repudiating New South Wales' debt to British bondholders and using the money instead to help the unemployed through public works. This was denounced as illegal by conservatives, and condemned by James Scullin 's federal Labor government.

The result was that Lang's supporters in the federal Caucus brought down Scullin's government, causing a second bitter split in the Labor Party.

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In a Sheffield Shield cricket match at the Sydney Cricket Ground in , Don Bradman , a young New South Welshman of just 21 years of age wrote his name into the record books by smashing the previous highest batting score in first-class cricket with runs not out in just minutes. The British Empire Games were held in Sydney from 5—12 February, timed to coincide with Sydney's sesqui-centenary years since the foundation of British settlement in Australia. By the outbreak of World War II in , the differences between New South Wales and the other states that had emerged in the 19th century had faded as a result of federation and economic development behind a wall of protective tariffs.

New South Wales continued to outstrip Victoria as the centre of industry, and increasingly of finance and trade as well. World War II saw another surge in industrial development to meet the needs of a war economy, and also the elimination of unemployment. When Ben Chifley , a railwayman from Bathurst, became prime minister in , New South Wales Labor assumed what it saw as its rightful position of national leadership. Though casualties were light, the population feared Japanese invasion. The main Japanese naval advance towards Australian territory was however halted with the assistance of the United States Navy , in May , at the Battle of the Coral Sea.

This is considered the only fighting within New South Wales of the war. The postwar years, however, saw renewed industrial conflict, culminating in the coal strike , largely fomented by the Communist Party of Australia , which crippled the state's industry. This contributed to the defeat of the Chifley government at the elections and the beginning of the long rule at a Federal level of Robert Menzies , a politician from Victoria, of the newly founded Liberal Party of Australia.

The postwar years also saw massive immigration to Australia , begun by Chifley's Immigration Minister, Arthur Calwell , and continued under the Liberals. Sydney, hitherto an almost entirely British and Irish city by origin apart from a small Chinese community , became increasingly multi-cultural, with many immigrants from Italy , Greece , Malta and eastern Europe including many Jews , and later from Lebanon and Vietnam , permanently changing its character.

The Snowy Mountains Scheme began construction in the state's south. This hydroelectricity and irrigation complex in the Snowy Mountains called for the construction of sixteen major dams and seven power stations between and It remains the largest engineering project undertaken in Australia and necessitated the employment of , people from over 30 countries.

The Scheme built several temporary towns for its construction workers, several of which have become permanent: The sleepy rural town of Cooma became a bustling construction economy, while small rural townships like Adaminaby and Jindabyne had to make way for the construction of Lakes Eucumbene and Jindabyne. Since the s New South Wales has undergone an increasingly rapid economic and social transformation. Old industries such as steel and shipbuilding have largely disappeared, and although agriculture remains important, its share of the state's income is smaller than ever before.

New industries such as information technology, education, financial services and the arts, largely centred in Sydney, have risen to take their place. Coal exports to China are increasingly important to the state's economy. Tourism has also become hugely important, with Sydney as its centre but also stimulating growth on the North Coast, around Coffs Harbour and Byron Bay. As aviation has replaced shipping, most new migrants to Australia have arrived in Sydney by air rather than in Melbourne by ship, and Sydney now gets the lion's share of new arrivals, mostly from Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.

Although generally of mild climate, the State endured several notable natural disasters around the turn of the century. Manufactured goods increased their share of exports, while rural products continued to decline. Yet, although growth was more broadly-based, rapid and sustained table 7 , the country continued to experience large trade and current account deficits, which were augmented by the considerable increase of foreign debt after financial deregulation during the s.

Unemployment also failed to return to its pre level of around 2 percent, although much of the permanent rise occurred during the mid to late s. In , it remained 5 percent Figure 1. Reform was also complemented by policies to provide the skills needed in a technologically-sophisticated, increasingly service-oriented economy. Retention rates in the last years of secondary education doubled during the s, followed by a sharp increase of enrolments in technical colleges and universities. By , total expenditure on education as a proportion of national income had caught up with the average of member countries of the OECD Table 9.

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Shortages were nevertheless beginning to be experienced in the engineering and other skilled trades, raising questions about some priorities and the diminishing relative financial contribution of government to tertiary education. Gross enrolments are total enrolments, regardless of age, as a proportion of the population in the relevant official age group. OECD enrolments are for fifteen high-income members only. Virtually since the beginning of European occupation, the Australian economy had provided the original British colonizers, generations of migrants, and the descendants of both with a remarkably high standard of living.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, this was by all measures the highest in the world see table After , national income per member of the population slipped behind that of several countries, but continued to compare favorably with most. Economic historians have differed over the sources of growth that made this possible.

The Bridgehead Economy, 1788-1820

Butlin emphasized the significance of local factors like the unusually high rate of urbanization and the expansion of domestic manufacturing. In important respects, however, Australia was subject to the same forces as other European settler societies in New Zealand and Latin America, and its development bore striking similarities to theirs. From the s, its economy grew as one frontier of an expanding western capitalism.

With its close institutional ties to, and complementarities with, the most dynamic parts of the world economy, it drew capital and migrants from them, supplied them with commodities, and shared the benefits of their growth. Like other settler societies, it sought population growth as an end in itself and, from the turn of the nineteenth century, aspired to the creation of a national manufacturing base.

History of New South Wales

Finally, when openness to the world economy appeared to threaten growth and living standards, governments intervened to regulate and protect with broader social objectives in mind. But there were also striking contrasts with other settler economies, notably those in Latin America like Argentina, with which it has been frequently compared. In particular, Australia responded to successive challenges to growth by finding new opportunities for wealth creation with a minimum of political disturbance, social conflict or economic instability, while sharing a rising national income as widely as possible.

This included the post-war willingness to use macroeconomic policy to maintain growth and full employment; and, after the s, the abandonment of much government intervention in private markets while at the same time retaining strong social services and seeking to improve education and training. Australia also experienced a similar relative decline of manufacturing, permanent rise of unemployment, and transition to a more service-based economy typical of high income countries.

By the beginning of the new millennium, services accounted for over 70 percent of national income table 7. Australia remained vulnerable as an exporter of commodities and importer of capital but its endowment of natural resources and the skills of its population were also creating opportunities. The country was again favorably positioned to take advantage of growth in the most dynamic parts of the world economy, particularly China.

With the final abandonment of the White Australia policy during the s, it had also started to integrate more closely with its region. This was further evidence of the capacity to change that allowed Australians to face the future with confidence.

Cambridge University Press, The Rush that Never Ended: A History of Australian Mining , fourth edition. Melbourne University Press, Economics and the Dreamtime, A Hypothetical History. Forming a Colonial Economy: Investment in Australian Economic Development, George Allen and Unwin, Foundations of the Australian Monetary System, Sydney University Press, Chapman, Bruce, and Glenn Withers.

Australian Manufacturing in the s and s. Australian Economic Development in the Nineteenth Century. Australian National University Press, The End of Certainty: The Story of the s. Allen and Unwin, A Concise History of Australia. Meredith, David, and Barrie Dyster.

Australia in the Global Economy: Pope, David, and Glenn Withers. Reserve Bank of Australia. Gross Domestic Product — G10 [cited 29 November ]. Unemployment — Labour Force — G1 [cited 2 February ]. Australia and the Great Depression: A Study of Economic Development and Policy in the s and s. A Perspective on Australian Economic History.

The Process of Economic Development in Australia. United Nations Development Programme.

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Bernard Attard, University of Leicester Introduction The economic benefits of establishing a British colony in Australia in were not immediately obvious. Table 1 The Colonial Economy: VDL became Tasmania in , in an attempt to try and distance the colony from its former function. In the same year, the newly elected Tasmanian parliament sat for the first time. By , Hobart Town had grown to occupy approximately a square mile, the population was nearing 60,, and economically, visually and socially, the town was very different to the place that the convicts had first landed. Hobart now had a Supreme Court , Botanical Gardens , a new Government House to replace its dilapidated predecessor and the Theatre Royal for entertainment.

The economic downturn of the s was followed by labour shortages in the s, as men left to find gold in Victoria, and public buildings were not erected as quickly as they had been although many had already been built and Hobart was clearly a place of importance. St David's Anglican Cathedral was built in , followed two years later by a new Public Library In , Truganini, described as the last full-blooded Tasmanian Aborigine, died in Hobart.

The penal settlement at Port Arthur was closed in , but the last of the convicts, aged and some in ill-health after so many years of captivity, were still living there as the complex became an infirmary. Up north, the town of Launceston was redesignated as a city in , and the University of Tasmania opened its doors in Hobart in The boom years of the s were then followed by the bust of the s, when recession and economic downturn returned to Hobart.

However, even then the town was still visually attractive enough to catch the eye of Mark Twain, the American author, who was visiting Hobart in When the last convict ship docked in Fremantle harbour on 9th January , the convicts disembarked into a colony which had developed considerably from its origins in The colony started with low numbers of free settlers and a low level of infrastructure. However, the colonists worked hard to establish a working community until the s when labour shortages threatened the continued progression of the colony.

The sometimes free or cheap convict labour then reinvigorated the colony. Public buildings sprang up, leisure and community facilities were developed, and Perth became a viable city which acted as a social net that dragged in more and more settlers. The level of petty theft and alcohol-related offending by ex-convicts, and also by new settlers, meant that the prison built in became a significant place in the centre of Fremantle. By , there were just under 6, people in Perth.

After the gold rushes of the s, the population of Perth grew to 36, people, by which time it had another cathedral, a new courthouse, a large hotel and many retail establishments. By , the population had reached over , The nation is said to have been forged not in Canberra but on the beaches of Gallipoli where Australian soldiers perished in a forlorn assault on Turkish fortifications in the First World War.

The country experienced the same kind of economic turmoil as the UK in the s and s with Western Australia nearly leaving the Federation in , but the country enjoyed growth thereafter, stimulated and enriched by migration from Europe and the Far East.