How Labour Governs: A Study of Workers' Representation in Australia

THE main theme of the present study will be the development of Labour organisation and policy during the current century; for it is in this period that the most characteristic phases of Australian Labour have manifested themselves. Moreover, the course of Australian economic and industrial growth down to the date of the Federation of the Colonies has been admirably and exhaustively described by Sir Timothy Coghlan and other writers. Nevertheless, in order to enable the reader to follow more readily the drama to be unfolded, it may be helpful to sketch very briefly the historical background. In the first place it must be remembered that Australia is a continent of 2,974,581 square miles in area -- slightly larger, therefore, than the U.S.A., and rather smaller than the Dominion of Canada. We often hear that this continent is empty. In fact, the total white population, as revealed by the 1921 census, is just under five and a half millions. But emptiness is not to be reckoned by the population per square mile, but by the number which the country is actually capable of supporting and, when this is taken into consideration, the disproportion between the immense acreage of Australian soil and her meagre population becomes less striking. In point of fact vast areas of Australian territory are quite unadapted for close settlement. Over huge tracts of the interior the rainfall is so exiguous and so uncertain that agriculture is out of the question. The only industry that such land could maintain is pasturage, and that only thinly at the rate of, say, one sheep to a hundred acres. No amount of settlers could increase materially the carrying capacity of these plains, since man cannot control the rainfall, and the natural configuration of the land precludes the possibility of irrigation. On the other hand, this appearance of emptiness is enhanced by the uneven distribution of the population and the immense concentration in a few bloated cities. The 900,000 inhabitants of Greater Sydney represent almost half the total population of a State covering 309,432 square miles. Outside the capital there are only five towns in the whole of N.S.W. with more than 10,000 inhabitants. South Australia is even larger, yet more than half of her 494,867 citizens are returned as residents of Adelaide. Similarly half the Victorians live in Melbourne. In these three States the capital cities dominate the whole political and economic life of the community; they are the termini of the principal railways, and practically the only ports for overseas shipping. Thus they have sucked in an undue proportion of the increase of the State's population, and continue to grow ever more unwieldy and bloated. Queensland is far more happily situated. She has achieved some degree of decentralisation, and possesses at least three independent ports, each connected with their own hinterlands by separate railway systems. While in N.S.W. all lines run to Sydney, Brisbane occupies no such exceptional position in the traffic of the northern State. In geographical structure and in climate Australia is a remarkable unity. A narrow but fertile and well-watered strip along the Pacific Coast is separated from the more characteristic plains and slopes of the west by a steep dividing range. running spine-like the whole length of the continent from north to south. West of the range the land slopes away very gradually to the great plains of the Murray-Darling basin, and as one proceeds westward the rainfall becomes ever smaller and less reliable, till beyond the Darling one reaches a comparative desert which extends nearly to the West Australian coast. In the far north the physiographical conformation of the land is somewhat different, and the rainfall also is more regular and bounteous. But for such details the reader is referred to the lucid descriptions published in the Commonwealth Year Book.