DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST PERSPECTIVE

Unlike the United States, or Britain itself, Australia never experienced a bourgeois revolution that overthrew feudalism and brought the capitalist class to power. However, because there was no previously existing pre-capitalist ruling class, the Australian capitalist class developed in relatively favourable conditions. The British colonial power was not able, and did not think it necessary, to block the rise of an independent Australian capitalist class.

The process of creating an independent nation-state in Australia involved few serious political or economic conflicts between the British ruling class and the emerging Australian ruling class. The introduction of parliamentary forms of rule was also achieved without recourse to revolution, though popular struggle played an important role in the extension of democratic rights beyond the propertied classes.

Prior to the 1820s, the Australian settler colonies were ruled autocratically by British-appointed governors. In the following decade, nominated legislatures were set up, and in the 1840s these became subject to election according to the restricted franchise then in force in Britain (public voting, property qualifications, exclusion of women).

The petty-bourgeois struggle for democracy (the high point of which was the 1854 miners' rebellion at the Eureka Stockade in Ballarat) played an important role in the extension of formal democracy in the second half of the 1850s. Formal constitutions were granted to each of the colonies in 1855-56. Under these, the governor became subordinate to the colonial legislature. In Victoria, scene of the Eureka rebellion, the secret ballot was adopted in 1856 and in the following year universal manhood suffrage was introduced for the lower house of the colonial parliament.

Similar democratic reforms were introduced in the other settler colonies before the end of the decade. However, the lack of political organisation among working people, the veto power of upper houses (which still were elected only by property owners), and the concentration of administrative power in the hands of a paramilitary police force, ensured that the reformed parliamentary system in the self-governing colonies remained firmly at the service of the capitalist class.

In the decades before federation, the centre of political power in the colonies shifted from the legislative to the executive branch of the state. Extensive government revenues (foreign loans, taxes and excise duties) were used not only to expand the infrastructure of the colonial capitalist economies (construction of roads, railways, post and telegraph systems, lighthouses, harbors, etc.), but to finance a large and highly centralised permanent state apparatus (civil bureaucracy, judiciary, police force).

By the 1880s, lack of coordination between the economic policies of the separate colonial governments had begun to impede the development of Australian capitalism. The decline of British dominance in the South Pacific, and the growing regional influence of other colonial powers (France, Germany) also added pressure for the creation of a nationally unified capitalist state machine.

In a series of intercolonial conventions in the 1890s, the basic structure of this nation-state was worked out by the representatives of the big merchants, bankers, industrialists, and wealthy graziers. This structure was codified in the national constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia.

The framers of this document faced two main problems. Firstly, they had to ensure that real power remained firmly in the hands of the capitalist class while at the same time winning the acceptance of the workers and small farmers who made up the majority of the population. To do this, they needed a constitution that appeared to provide for popular control of the national government. Secondly, they had to deal with conflicting interests between and within the ruling classes of the various settler colonies (local versus transcontinental capital, free traders versus protectionists).

To solve these problems, the national constitution provided for a federal state with a structure that kept popular participation to a minimum and ensured a strict division of authority between the national and state governments. It provided for a federal legislature with a popularly elected lower house (House of Representatives), and an upper house (Senate) based on equal representation from each state and having considerable powers to delay or block the workings of the lower house.

A federal executive, composed of members of the federal legislature, would as closely as possible imitate the British cabinet system. An unelected governor-general would have the power to dissolve the federal legislature, appoint and dismiss federal ministers, authorise government expenditures and have formal command over the military forces. A high court, consisting of judges appointed for life by the federal legislature, would interpret federal law and rule on the relative powers of federal and state governments. Any alteration or amendment to the constitution would require the approval of both houses of the federal parliament and ratification by a referendum that achieved a majority of popular votes overall and in a majority of states.

The constitution contained no guarantees of specific democratic rights (freedom of press, free speech, right to strike, freedom of assembly and association, etc.). Nor was there any provision for the mass of people to remove or recall any elected or appointed official from office. The Australian constitution was a practical agreement as to how the different sections of the capitalist class would share political power among themselves.

The Australian capitalist class initially saw its federal state as a rather weak institution designed to promote and defend national capitalist economic interests by establishing an internal free trade zone highly protected from foreign competition, and a national administrative framework for shipping, immigration, tariffs, posts and telegraphs. However, the emergence of monopoly capital and the sharp crises that wracked the imperialist system in the following decades (two world wars, economic depression) forced the capitalist class to massively increase its central state machinery.

During World War II and in the immediate postwar years, the size and role of the Australian capitalist state machine grew vastly, particularly at the federal level. The army, navy and airforce were greatly enlarged and a specialised political police (ASIO) was created. State-owned enterprises were set up or strengthened to provide infrastructural services to big capital and to regulate the marketing of primary products. An extensive network of state welfare agencies was established to maintain relative social peace by redistributing income within the working population.