Australia

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The Commonwealth

Central to the history of Australia in the 20th century was the development of both a national government and a national culture. Commonwealth governments, led by architects of federation such as Alfred Deakin, quickly established a protective tariff to foster domestic development, introduced a system of arbitration for setting minimum wages in industry, and preserved the white immigration policy. Nevertheless, the old colonial political rivalries and factional alliances gave way only gradually.

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Identity Forged by War

World War I (1914-1918), much more than federation itself, helped to create a sense of national identity in Australia. Responding to the allied call for troops, Australia sent more than 330,000 volunteers, who took part in some of the bloodiest battles. Suffering a casualty rate higher than that of many other participants, Australia became increasingly conscious of its contribution to the war effort. At Gallipoli an Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (Anzac), fighting alongside British and French troops, tried in vain to launch a drive on the Ottoman forces in the Dardanelles. The date of the fateful landing, April 25, 1915, became equated with Australia’s coming of age, and as Anzac Day it has remained the country’s most significant day of public homage. Through the writings of war correspondent and historian C. E. W. Bean, the Anzac legend became the basis for a new sense of national identity, one that united former servicemen and their families across class and geographical boundaries.

In 1915 William M. (“Billy”) Hughes became prime minister and leader of the Labor Party. Representing Australia at councils in London, Hughes personified Australian energies. When he failed to carry the electorate in the first of two attempts to institute the military draft, Hughes remained in power by joining his former conservative opponents and forming the Nationalist Party, much to the annoyance of his Labor colleagues. He attended the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, acquiring German New Guinea as a mandated territory and establishing Australia’s right to enter the League of Nations. The powers designated to the federal government in the constitution proved sufficient to allow a strong central government.

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Interwar Years

After an internal backlash within the Nationalist Party forced the retirement of Hughes in 1923, Stanley M. Bruce became prime minister. The Country Party, founded in 1920 as a patriotic, conservative movement to protect the interests of farmers and graziers, joined the Nationalist coalition, although it kept its own identity. The chief opponent of the coalition was Labor, now committed to social-welfare objectives. To maintain wartime levels of production and expansion, the government sought to increase immigration, investment, and export industries (under the propaganda slogan “Men, Money, Markets”). However, the Great Depression that hit in 1929 cut deeply into the health of the Australian economy, increasing public and private debts at a time of massive unemployment.

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Recovery from the economic depression, led from 1929 to early 1932 by James H. Scullin and the Labor Party, was extremely uneven. Deflationary economic policy contributed to economic effects that were far harsher than those felt elsewhere in the world. At its worst in 1932, unemployment reached almost one-third of the male workforce. Disagreement on government policy broke Labor again in 1931, and for the rest of the 1930s the United Australia Party, composed of former Nationalists and disenchanted Laborites, held the reins of power. The party was led by Joseph Aloysius Lyons.

Upon assuming responsibility for its own foreign affairs, Australia was guided by its cultural and political ties with Britain. Emphasis was therefore placed on following Britain’s leadership in solving the problems of the depression. Chief among these was an attempt to redirect more trade between Britain and the dominions. As early as the 1920s, however, Japan and the United States were among Australia’s best customers for its wool exports. Against its own interests, but motivated in part by fears of Japanese expansionism, Australia sought to reestablish British trade at the expense of its relations with Japan. In the League of Nations the Australian government tended to favor appeasement in order to avert war with the Fascist powers.

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World War II

In April 1939 Lyons died in office and was succeeded by Robert Menzies. In September of that year Australia entered World War II, after Britain declared war on Germany. Menzies immediately placed Australia’s small armed forces at Britain’s disposal. The elections of 1941 returned the Labor Party to power for the first time since 1931, and John Curtin became prime minister. British Singapore, long regarded as one of the world’s strongest fortresses, fell to Japanese forces in February 1942, and shortly thereafter Britain’s Royal Navy suffered defeat in the Pacific. In March Japanese forces occupied the Dutch East Indies and landed on New Guinea. Japanese bombers raided Darwin several times, and Japanese midget submarines entered Sydney Harbour. However, Britain was no longer able to supply naval protection to Australia. Although Australian casualties were lighter than in World War I, Australians were more psychologically affected by World War II because of their fears of Japanese invasion. Curtin recognized that Australia relied more on the United States than on Britain for security, and he sought U.S. assistance to contain the Japanese advance. In May U.S. forces surrendered the Philippines; until the Allied liberation of the Philippines in 1945, U.S. general Douglas MacArthur and his staff used Australia for their base of operations.

Australian industry was again transformed by the needs of war. The economy was redirected toward manufacturing, and heavy industries ringed the capital cities. Drawing on wartime models of planning, Prime Minister Curtin’s administration laid the foundation for policies of postwar reconstruction. Curtin died in 1945, a few months before Allied victory in the Pacific. The new Labor government under Joseph B. Chifley continued the policies of full employment and state social welfare developed during the war years. It began a vigorous immigration program, drawing New Australians, as they were called, from continental Europe as well as from traditional sources in the British Isles. As the perils of war receded, however, Labor’s plans for the nationalization of key industries, such as banking, encountered growing opposition. As a charter member of the United Nations, Australia also agreed to the decolonization of the islands in the Pacific, including the preparation of Papua New Guinea for independence (achieved in 1975).

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The Menzies Era

In 1949 Menzies became prime minister a second time, ushering in a long era of conservative rule. During the war, the old United Australian Party had disintegrated and Menzies was ousted as prime minister. In opposition he led the formation in 1944 of the new Liberal Party, which upheld principles of free enterprise against Labor’s inclination toward socialism. Menzies, who remained prime minister until 1966, dominated federal politics against an internally divided Labor Party. He stressed the sentimental link with the British crown but developed a strong relationship with the United States, formalized in the 1951 treaty that created the tripartite mutual-defense alliance known as ANZUS (acronym for Australia, New Zealand, and the United States); it led to greater policy coordination between the three countries. Beginning in the 1940s Australia took a more active interest in Pacific and Asian affairs. Under the Colombo Plan, Asians began studying at Australian institutions in the 1950s. Menzies maintained the White Australia Policy, but under his successors it was gradually discarded, and since the early 1970s the entry of immigrants has been based on criteria other than race.

The Liberals’ long rule (1949-1972) coincided with the most sustained period of economic prosperity since the 19th century. Despite the party’s devotion to free enterprise, however, government intervention in the form of assisted immigration, tariff protection, wage arbitration, state enterprises, and government assistance for health care and education, including university scholarships, remained important strands of policy. Foreign investment, especially from the United States, transformed the Australian manufacturing industry; “Australia’s Own Car,” the Holden, was designed and manufactured by a subsidiary of General Motors Corporation. The coastal cities and their sprawling suburbs were the main beneficiaries of this growth. Between 1901 and 1971 urbanization rapidly increased; the state capitals grew from 35 percent to 61 percent of the national population. By 1971 almost three-quarters of Australian house dwellers owned or were buying their own homes. “The Lucky Country”—a title applied ironically by social critic Donald Horne—was how Australians increasingly thought of themselves.

Menzies had clung to the British connection, but his government followed policies that were steadily weakening it. Between 1947 and 1970 more than 2 million immigrants arrived in Australia, more than 60 percent from countries outside the British Isles. In the inner suburbs of the cities Italians, Greeks, Yugoslavs, and Lebanese were creating their own distinctive ethnic enclaves. From the beginning, Australia stressed the goal of assimilation: New Australians were encouraged to quickly learn the English language and assume the Australian way of life. By the late 1960s, however, representatives of ethnic associations were winning increased support for more pluralistic policies based on multiculturalism.

After World War II Australia remained active in Western military alliances, contributing troops to the Korean War (1950-1953) and the Vietnam War (1959-1975) as a staunch ally of the United States. Though not a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Western military alliance formed in 1949, Australia participated in its Asian counterpart, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), from 1954 until its dissolution in 1977. Meanwhile, Australia adjusted its domestic and foreign policies, which included recognizing its growing ties with Japan.