Federation of New South Wales
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The establishment of a Commonwealth government in 1901 inaugurated a new era in the history of New South Wales. With a population of 1,354,846—more than one-third that of Australia overall—it was the most populous state. Important powers were handed over to the federal government, which progressively encroached on the state’s domain. Other changes affected the course of the state’s development. For most of the 19th century, New South Wales had enjoyed almost continuous progress, broken only by occasional setbacks. The first half of the 20th century, in contrast, was marked by the two World Wars and a worldwide depression in the 1930s. Besides creating widespread unemployment and precipitating the collapse of businesses and financial institutions, the depression produced a political crisis. The Labor premier Jack Lang, who had introduced major reforms after gaining office in 1925, threatened to repudiate payment on overseas debts. He clashed with the Commonwealth government and alarmed wealthy propertied groups, which gave support to a semi-militaristic movement, the New Guard. Tensions mounted, and on March 19, 1932, F.E. De Groot, a member of the New Guard, cut the ribbon opening the Sydney Harbour Bridge before Lang was able to do so. This was a highly symbolic gesture that was caught on newsreels and often replayed. Two months later, after Lang forbade government departments to hand over money to the Commonwealth, he was dismissed by the New South Wales governor, Sir Philip Game.
Despite the disturbances occasioned by war and depression, much was accomplished in New South Wales between 1900 and 1945. Labor held office for the first time, under premier James McGowen in 1910. He was succeeded by William Holman, who left the party in 1917 after it split over the question of whether conscription for overseas military services should be introduced. The party held office for most of the 1920s, but in the 1930s power passed to a coalition of the United Australia Party (later the Liberal Party) and the Country Party (later the Nationals). The Country Party was established in 1925 in New South Wales (succeeding the Progressive Party, which had been formed in 1919) to represent the rural interest. The state continued to control public works, law and order, and health and education. Important reforms were introduced, particularly in the field of education. The state system brought into being under Parkes was reformed after 1904 by Peter Board, the celebrated director general of education. He established Sydney Teachers’ College in 1905–06 and sought to ensure that teaching and courses were adapted to the needs of children. In 1911 he laid the basis for an improved secondary school system that was designed to cater to older students. Some of those who attended secondary school proceeded to the University of Sydney (1850), the oldest university in Australia. It too was expanded after 1900 and became a major centre of learning with an international reputation.
The educational reforms introduced after 1900 reflected a growing tendency on the part of the government to help its citizens. State intervention had been a feature of New South Wales history from the outset, for, in so large a colony, government alone possessed the resources to provide essential services. The emergence of the Labor Party gave additional stimulus to this tendency and pushed it in new directions. From the 1890s a welfare state gradually took shape. Old-age pensions were introduced in 1900 and later extended. As the 20th century progressed, further innovations—including a benefit program for people with dependent children that set the lead for Australia—were established. So too was a system for settling industrial disputes by arbitration and conciliation, a workers’ compensation scheme, and the 44-hour workweek.
In addition to the attention paid to these areas of government intervention, there was also growing public and professional interest in addressing questions of morality (especially juvenile delinquency, or “larrikinism”), marriage (e.g., concern at a declining birth rate), housing (particularly with regard to the congested and polluted slum areas of Sydney), town planning, and development beyond the cities. Extensive irrigation works commenced on the Murrumbidgee River before World War I (1914–18) with the goal of encouraging settlement in new areas. Further to this end, after each of the two World Wars, returning soldiers were given grants of farming and grazing land. The success of these ventures was often mixed, since the new settlers were often inexperienced and the land tended to be of poor quality or in parcels too small to be viable. As the Great Depression of the 1930s confirmed, many members of the community were unprotected or poorly safeguarded against threats to their well-being. Even in earlier periods of supposed plenty, poverty existed in what was thought to be a land of opportunity. In the interwar years, however, there was a marked polarity between the modernity of Sydney’s middle-class suburbs, with icons such as the Harbour Bridge in the backdrop, and entrenched hardship in other areas of the city and beyond, the subject of much reportage, commentary, and art.
These contrasts were particularly strong for the state’s Indigenous population, which in 1933 numbered 1,229 “full-blood” Aboriginal persons and 8,485 “half-caste.” An Aborigines Protection (later Welfare) Board had been established in 1883, and under new legislation of 1909 and 1915 it acquired the power to legitimize the practices already followed in removing “mixed race” children from the parents, without consent, in the cause of assimilation. These children were placed in hostels where they were prepared for domestic service (in the case of girls) and farm labour (for boys). It is estimated that a minimum of approximately 6,200 children—the “stolen generations”—were removed from their families until the board was abolished in 1969. The January 26, 1938, sesquicentennial celebration of European settlement was characterized as a “Day of Mourning” by well-organized Aboriginal activists such as William Cooper, William Ferguson, and Jack Patten. Day of Mourning protests have been held annually ever since.
The postwar period
World War II (1939–45) and the decades that followed produced major changes in New South Wales. During the war a Japanese midget submarine entered Sydney Harbour and attacked ships there. This was the only direct attack on New South Wales territory, but the war’s social and economic impacts were considerable. The war stimulated industrialization, and the movement of Allied troops—especially U.S. servicemen—brought cultural change. A Labor government, elected in 1941, promised to expand social services.
After the war the population of the state expanded greatly, from 2,917,415 in 1945 to 5,738,500 in 1988. The proportion of residents of British origin fell as increasing numbers of immigrants—initially from Europe, then from the Middle East and Asia—arrived under schemes implemented by the federal government. Policies premised on assimilation gave way in the 1970s to the goal of creating a multicultural society, and cultural diversity—or at least areas of ethnic concentration—came increasingly to characterize areas of Sydney, where the majority of immigrants settled.
The continued growth of the state capital was a marked feature of the postwar years. Sydney, which had a population of about 1,756,611 in 1945, grew to 3,596,000 by 1988. In the process it became recognized as a leading world city. However, it was also marked as both more affluent and more economically and socially polarized than other major Australian cities. Construction of the Sydney Opera House, designed by Danish architect Jørn Utzon, began in 1959. It was funded largely by the sale of lottery tickets and was completed in 1973. The opera house project exemplified both the idealized image and the reality of Sydney, just as the controversies surrounding its construction revealed tensions between the bold design and the politics and penny-pinching of its implementation.
Important too was the expansion of Newcastle and Wollongong, centres of the iron and steel industry. The increased concentration of population in coastal cities such as these created inequalities in development and gave rise to attempts to promote compensatory growth in the interior of the state, where some country towns were in decline. Places designated as “growth centres”—e.g., the Bathurst-Orange area, some 120 miles (200 km) west-northwest of Sydney, and Albury-Wodonga, on the Victorian border—were projected in the mid-1970s, but only limited results were achieved in breaking Sydney’s lure.
Despite some setbacks, the postwar years were ones of economic expansion. Construction of the massive Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme, begun in 1949 and completed in 1974, was undertaken in conjunction with the federal and Victorian governments. It was an outstanding venture among a number of public works projects that brought improvements to the power supply, roads, railways, and city life. A Housing Commission, established in 1941, sought to address pent-up demand for housing, and new estates on the fringes of Sydney provided cheaper housing for workers. The largest trading state, New South Wales retained a leading position in many spheres of enterprise.
In the political sphere, power alternated between Labor, which ruled until 1965 and from 1976 to 1988, and the coalition formed by the Country Party and the Liberal Party. After 1942 the Commonwealth alone levied income tax; this limited the state’s opportunities to initiate reforms. Increasingly the Commonwealth seized the initiative in spheres such as health and education, particularly in the university and college sector, which underwent unprecedented expansion after 1957. Nevertheless, the state government did much to diversify and expand the economy and improve facilities and opportunities for a widening segment of the population. Reforms were introduced in the hospital system, while the school system, primary and secondary, was brought into line with new social and educational needs. Legislation, influenced by that introduced overseas and in Canberra, opened new opportunities for women, who since the 1960s had been organizing in protest against prevailing inequalities. New South Wales had been the first Australian state to legislate for equal pay for equal work, in 1958, and campaigns for divorce-law reform gained pace in the following decade.
Attention also was turned toward Aboriginal peoples, whose plight aroused national and international concern. Up until World War II it was widely believed that they were vanishing “as a people” and that the object should be to ease the process of their vanishing. The measures adopted, such as separating children from their families, brought much suffering. After the war, attitudes gradually changed, as Aboriginal people became more conscious of their heritage and their rights. Inspiration came from overseas, especially from civil rights campaigns in the United States, building support among segments of the white populace, including university students and teachers. Students joined in the “freedom rides” of 1965, which were inspired in part by the Freedom Rides of the U.S. civil rights movement and were designed to highlight racial discrimination in rural New South Wales. In response to mounting pressure and the example set by the federal government, which after a referendum in 1967 gained power to legislate for Aboriginal people, reforms were introduced in New South Wales. These culminated in 1983 with an act that established Aboriginal Land Councils. Earlier, attempts had been made to improve medical facilities for Aboriginal people and increase educational opportunities.
Brian Hinton Fletcher Nicholas BrownIn the latter half of the 20th century, the cultural changes that came with sustained prosperity—and, not least, during the 1960s, the infusion of large numbers of U.S. servicemen on leave from the war in Vietnam—transformed areas of inner-city Sydney (most notoriously, King’s Cross) into districts where illicit activities such as prostitution, gambling, and trafficking in illegal drugs flourished. Money made through such activities and through speculation on property development was fed into networks of corruption that tainted areas of the police force and shadowed senior politicians. Equally, these new pressures and opportunities generated social movements protesting against the abuse of power, sheer conservatism, and the destruction of valued areas of parkland or housing. A march drawing attention to the persecution of homosexuals in 1978 grew through the 1980s into the Sydney Gay (and Lesbian, after 1988) Mardi Gras, gaining large crowds and international prominence as an event and arts program (held annually in February).
“Alternative lifestyle communities” exploring the countercultures of the 1960s and ’70s, exemplified by the “Aquarius Festival” held at Nimbin, a small town in northern New South Wales, in 1973, provided one constituency for concerted campaigns against the logging of forests on the north and south coasts of the state, but the environmental concern spread well beyond those groups through the 1980s. Whether the problem under study was the clear-cutting and wood chipping of old forests, the sewage that washed back onto Sydney’s beaches, or the location of noxious industrial plants in cities, a “green” agenda demanded action. The Liberal–Country Party coalition that had taken office in 1965 was edged aside in 1976 by Labor, which offered a fresh style of leadership and action on issues such as environmental protection and minority rights.
The economic challenges to the state, however, were considerable, and by the mid-1980s Sydney was repositioning and reshaping itself to become a financial capital for the Asia-Pacific region and a major global tourist destination. The grounds for the Royal Easter Show—an annual festival that celebrates rural industries and features exhibitions of agricultural products from around the state—were converted into movie soundstages, helping to attract international filmmakers to the state. Amid popular outcry, a monorail was constructed along the facades of inner-city buildings to serve Darling Harbour as it converted from shipping docks to entertainment facilities and a casino. Meanwhile, both Liberal and Labor governments wrestled with reducing the size and costs of state government.
From the time of the announcement in 1993 that Sydney would host the 2000 Olympic Games, the city worked to ensure that nothing would be lost in this great chance for reinvention. At the opening ceremony for the Games, clever parodies of the traditional icons of the bush, the beach, and the suburban backyard showed how vigorously this challenge was met. The hints of unfinished business—especially in relation to Aboriginal Australia—in the closing ceremony suggested that the past was not over yet.
Through the early 21st century New South Wales continued to find its way through the fluid and uncertain settings of the times. Sydney was consistently ranked high on most lists of the world’s most livable cities, given its environmental amenity, the ready availability of goods and services, and the quality of its infrastructure. However, strains were clearly evident in those same areas. Examples included rising electricity costs, delays or cuts in funding for public transportation, housing costs that were unaffordable to many and increased more rapidly than the rate of inflation, and the increasing debt of the state government and local councils. Population growth was concentrated in Sydney, but in the coastal regions growth was projected to outpace that in the rest of the state (including Sydney) and to be characterized by an aging demographic profile. Inland, the need to conserve water from the already straining river systems both heightened the uncertainties faced in those regions and put a premium on innovation and adaptability. These trends were to a large extent in accord with the history of the state and played to its identity—its diversity, its resourcefulness, the lure and glamour of the capital, and the stoicism of the bush.
Nicholas Brown