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Title: The Troubles Of Australian Federation Author: G. B. Barton * A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook * eBook No.: 0607041h.html Language: English Date first posted: September 2006 Date most recently updated: September 2006 This eBook was produced by: Richard Scott Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editions which are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright notice is included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particular paper edition. Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this file. This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online at http://gutenberg.net.au/licence.html To contact Project Gutenberg of Australia go to http://gutenberg.net.auGO TO Project Gutenberg of Australia HOME PAGE
House of Representatives. Senate. New South Wales 26 6 Victoria 23 6 Queensland 10 6 South Australia 7 6 West Australia 5 6 Tasmania 5 6 76 36 Total 112A three-fifths majority of 112 being sixty-eight, it follows that the sixty-one members representing the two largest colonies, with a united population of over 2,500,000, would be defeated by the fifty-one members representing the four smaller, with a joint population of, say, 1,200,000. They would be seven votes short on a division. On the other hand, although it is not less clear that, with an absolute majority in place of a three-fifths one, the sixty-one members would have a majority of ten over their fifty-one opponents, they assumed that the representatives of the larger States would always be caught napping by those of the smaller. The main source of their dissatisfaction lay in the principle of equal State representation in the Senate, undoubtedly one of the radical defects in the Constitution. The stock arguments in its favour as a basis of union made no impression on them. They were not reconciled to it by the fact that the State of Nevada, with 45,000 people, has equal voting power in the Senate of the United States with that of New York, notwithstanding its 6,000,000 inhabitants. Majority rule is their basic principle, and without absolute safeguards for it, they would view with suspicion any constitution, however liberal it might be in other respects. The fact that the island of Tasmania, with a population of 170,000, is to enjoy the same voting strength in the Senate as New South Wales with 1,450,000, amounts, they say, to giving one man in the former eight times the voting power of one in the latter. The result of the polling at the last Referendum proved a still bitterer pill for them. Notwithstanding their vigorous and well-organized efforts to defeat the Bill, it had a majority of 25,000 in New South Wales, and that majority might have been more than doubled had it not been for the opposition of a strong Conservative section, who objected to the financial clauses of the measure. The Labour Party was utterly routed. The defeat was hard to endure, but it might have been endured with some patience had it not been attributable so largely to the double-dealing of their once-trusted leader. To grasp the prize of the Federal Premiership, he threw all his democratic professions to the winds, and appeared on the platform as the eloquent and earnest champion of a measure which they regard as undermining the first principles of democracy. The sore humiliation from which they suffered in the defection of their too versatile chief was not the only unpleasant experience they had to put up with. They were equally deceived and disappointed in the working of the Referendum. Looking upon it as an infallible weapon of offence, they saw it easily turned against them, and used with deadly effect against their own ranks. When it came to a trial of strength between them and the rest of the population, they proved to be in a hopeless minority. It was not in human nature that disappointments of this kind should be tamely endured, still less forgotten, by fighting politicians, and it speaks well for their organization and tactical skill that they should have been able, in the face of such crushing defeats, to possess their souls in patience until the whirligig of time brought in his revenges. Now it remains to be seen whether the Federal Parliament and Government are destined to pass under their control, and with them the Constitution itself.