Meanwhile opportunity in Australia and distress in Britain led to the formation of companies to exploit new areas. In 1829 a settlement was started at Swan River on the west coast under Governor Stirling, and although many at first found life there too difficult the settlement later developed and, when incorporated with Albany in 1831, became the second Australian Colony, Western Australia. The next voluntary settlement was due to the activities of Edward Gibbon Wakefield whose Letter from Sydney (which he had never visited) drew attention to his new scheme for financing settlement by the sale of land. The South Australia Company was formed in 1836 and a settlement was made at Adelaide. Land for the new Colony, South Australia, was taken from New South Wales whose boundaries in the west had been extended up to the boundary of Western Australia in 1835. Land speculation and a division of authority between the Governor and the Land Commissioners led to the appointment of Captain (later Sir George) Grey as Governor in 1841 and to his assumption of the powers of the Land Commissioners in 1842. His vigorous and economical administration, the development of sheep farming and agriculture and the opening of copper mines at Burra in 1843, set the new Colony on a firm basis.

During the 'hungry forties' immigration to all the Australian Colonies quickened until by 1850 the convicts accounted for less than 15 per cent of the population. Local agitation forced the Government to abandon the transportation of convicts to New South Wales in 1840, and frustrated attempts to introduce convicts into Victoria. When transportation to Van Diemen's Land stopped in 1853, Western Australia remained the only Colony to which convicts continued to be sent until the system's final abolition in 1868. Van Diemen's Land, which had been separated from New South Wales in 1825, was, on 1st January 1856, formally renamed Tasmania.

The settlement founded at Moreton Bay was abandoned in 1839, but news of the fertility of the land attracted settlers, and, after the founding of the town of Gladstone in 1853, settlement was rapid. On 6th June 1859 the territory from Point Danger north to Cape York was separated from the Colony of New South Wales to become the sixth Colony in Australia under the name of Queensland. The western boundary was moved further west in 1862.

With the creation of Queensland, the whole of Australia was divided up among the six colonies with the exception of that part to the north of South Australia. In theory this was part of New South Wales, but when the explorations of Stuart showed that much of it could be settled, it was put under the administration of South Australia, under the name of the Northern Territory, and remained under that administration until 1911, when it was transferred to the Commonwealth Government.

So long as Port Jackson remained a penal settlement, it was ruled autocratically by the Governor. To begin with he had the New South Wales Corps to enable him to keep order, but the Corps eventually took up trade, and attempts by the Governor to keep the Corps under control led to their deposing Governor Bligh in 1808. Bligh was later reinstated, the Corps disbanded and replaced by regular troops. As the proportion of free settlers increased, so did agitation for limitation of the Governor's powers. In 1823 a start was made in the process of introducing democratic institutions by the passing of the New South Wales Judicature Act setting up a nominated Legislative Council with advisory functions. Enlarged in 1828, the Council became partly elective in 1842. Similar Councils were set up over the years in the other Colonies. The changed ideas in Britain resulting from

the Durham Report, and the agitation by the District of Port Phillip for full colony status, led in 1850 to the Australian Colonies Government Act, which created the Colony of Victoria and set up partly elective Legislative Councils in all the five Colonies and, furthermore, permitted them to make amendments to their own constitutions. Led by William Charles Wentworth, the Colonies one by one brought in new constitutions on the Westminster model, New South Wales obtaining responsible government in 1855, Tasmania and Victoria in 1856, South Australia in 1857, Queensland, on separation from New South Wales, in 1860, and finally Western Australia in 1890. In each of the Colonies there was established a bi-cameral legislature, the Upper House being elective except in New South Wales and Queensland, where its members were nominated by the Crown. The ballot was early introduced, together with the payment of members of the lower house and the grant of universal adult male franchise; and towards the end of the century the vote was extended in South Australia to women also.

Meanwhile the economy of Australia had been further strengthened by the discovery of gold and other minerals—the discovery of gold, in particular, leading to a great inrush of population, not all of whom were of British stock, and to a great movement of population within Australia, a movement which tended to disrupt other industries. By 1891 this country, whose exploration had hardly been completed, had already over three million inhabitants, living in the six self-governing Colonies. The export of wheat to Europe and Britain began in about 1870, Australia rapidly becoming one of the leading wheatproducing countries. The invention of refrigeration led to an export trade in dairy products and mutton. The basis of a railway system was laid.

As communications improved, and as the population increased and land was opened up, it slowly became realised that the community of interest between the colonies justified some closer union. When the proposals to confer self-government on the Colonies were being discussed in 1849, there had been proposals that there should be a General Assembly for the whole of Australia, whose members should be elected by the Colonial Parliaments. But the idea was then unpopular, and was dropped. However it soon became clear that some form of consultation was required, and this was provided on an ad hoc basis by inter-colonial conferences. In 1883 Henry Parkes of New South Wales suggested that there should be a Federal Council, and the British Parliament passed a bill in 1885 giving power to the six Colonies, and to Fiji and New Zealand, to pass acts to enable each of them to send representatives to a central Council. This Council first met in 1886, New Zealand never sending representatives and Fiji only sending representatives on the first occasion. More important, Parkes and his government in New South Wales did not take part. Later Parkes began to press for a Federation of the six Colonies, and the first Australian Convention of Members of Parliaments was held in Sydney in 1891 and prepared a draft. But again Parkes withdrew his support. Thenceforth it was the people who took the lead. From 1893 there was a great public movement for Federation, leading to a Convention in 1897-98 attended by 10 persons from each Colony, other than Queensland. Except in the case of Western Australia, whose representatives were chosen by Parliament, these representatives were elected by the people. The Convention drafted Federal Constitution under which each self-governing Colony voluntarily surrendered to the Federal Government certain of its powers, ensuring at the same time that the Federal Government

was in itself a democratic Government of the type which they themselves had developed on the British model. For this new Federation they adopted the name of the Commonwealth, a name suggested by Parkes in 1891, a name with a long history in British political thought beginning long before the time of Cromwell. A Commonwealth Bill, based on the proposals of the Convention, was prepared and agreed not only by the Parliaments but by an affirmative vote of all the peoples in the Colonies; and in July an Act to constitute the Commonwealth of Australia was passed by the British Parliament, and the Commonwealth of Australia, by proclamation of 17th September 1900, came into existence on 1st January 1901.

Many of the bases of modern Australian social policy were established between Federation and the First World War. The social and industrial legislation which had begun in Victoria in the 1870s, with the introduction of free, secular and compulsory education and the passing of the first Factory Act, and which had gathered momentum during the eighties and nineties, was now continued in the Federal sphere. With the steady increase in the number of wage-earners, trade unionism had spread rapidly. Arbitration in industrial disputes had been introduced in Victoria and New South Wales after a general strike in 1890. In 1903 the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration was created to cover disputes extending outside the borders of a single State; in 1906 Chief Justice Higgins declared that it was for the Court to determine the minimum wage necessary for 'the normal needs of an average employee regarded as a human being in a civilized country'. Invalid and old-age pensions were introduced two years later, followed by maternity allowances.

While the foundations of a welfare state were being laid, a policy of protection was adopted to further national development and maintain full employment. By this and other means Federal and State Governments helped to reduce the dependence of the economy on primary production. Although iron and steel were manufactured as early as 1848, the modern industry in Australia dates from 1915, when the Broken Hill Proprietary, a Company formed originally to develop the Broken Hill silver mines, ‘blew in' its first blast furnace at Newcastle. By 1939 the Company was producing the world's cheapest iron and steel. This helped to develop other industries, as well as mining. The older industries expanded and new industries such as the manufacture of glass, chemicals and electrical goods, were added. Industry, which in 1911 had accounted for only one fifth of the value of total production, by 1939 accounted for two fifths.

After the Second World War expansion and diversification accelerated. Australia became virtually self-sufficient in iron and steel in 1958. The car manufacturing industry developed and this in turn encouraged the development of oil refining. The mining of uranium and bauxite was developed as well as the mining of coal. Commercial oil fields were discovered. A rocket-launching site was constructed at Woomera.

Nevertheless, agriculture, and particularly sheep rearing, remained the mainstay of the country. From 1890 the expansion of Australian agriculture depended on improvements in method, in particular on the discovery of means of farming areas of low rainfall. The extended use of dry-farming techniques and the production in 1902 by William Farrer of a wheat resistant to both drought and rust made possible the rapid expansion of the wheat export trade. 'In 1886 the first major irrigation scheme was begun in Victoria, and, after

Federation, major schemes were developed elsewhere. The Snowy Mountains scheme, although better known as a scheme for generating hydro-electricity, was primarily intended to divert easterly flowing rivers to irrigate areas to the west of the Blue Mountains. Elsewhere the discovery of artesian wells, particularly in the Great Artesian Basin of Queensland, made possible a further advance inland for the sheep and cattle rearing industries. In the north the increase in the area under sugar cane led to the temporary immigration of Chinese and Pacific Island labour.

The achievements of Australian troops in the 1914-18 War, particularly in the Gallipoli campaign (still commemorated on the public holiday of 'Anzac Day'), fostered a sense of nationhood. At the Peace Conference at Versailles, the Australian Prime Minister, W. M. Hughes, played a prominent part. By the Peace Treaty Australia was entrusted with the administration of the former German Pacific colonies south of the Equator, and German New Guinea (renamed New Guinea) was later joined with Papua, which had become a Commonwealth territory in 1906, in an administrative union known as the Territory of Papua and New Guinea. In domestic politics, the war had stimulated the growth of sectional organisations outside the towns, and this led to the formation of the Country Party, which has remained one of the three major Federal political parties.

The depression of 1929 severely checked the pace of Australian development, which did not pick up again until shortly before the 1939 War, and reduced the inflow of immigrants. The Second World War and the Japanese advances in 1941 and 1942 made the Australians acutely aware of the inadequacy of their resources and manpower to fill the whole continent. The Australian Government therefore instituted a vigorous migration programme aimed at maintaining a high level of settler movement from the United Kingdom and other countries. By 31st December 1967 an estimated 2,260,000 settlers had entered Australia, of whom 1,140,000 were of British nationality.

CONSTITUTION

THE PARLIAMENT OF THE COMMONWEALTH

The Commonwealth of Australia Constitution, which was enacted by the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900 (U.K.), established a Federal Parliament called the Parliament of the Commonwealth, consisting of the Queen, the Senate and the House of Representatives. A Governor-General appointed by the Queen is Her Majesty's representative in the Commonwealth. The Constitution requires that a session of the Parliament be held once at least in every year.

THE SENATE

The Senate is composed of an equal number of senators for each of the six States of the Commonwealth, it having been the intention of the framers of the Constitution that the Senate should be both a States' House and a House of Review. Although originally there were thirty-six senators, this number has been increased to the present number of sixty (ten from each State) in pursuance of the Parliament's power under the Constitution to increase or diminish the number of senators for each State, but so that equal representation of the original States is maintained and no original State has less than six senators. The Senate is presided over by the President who is chosen by the senators

from their own members. Senators are chosen for a term of six years. The places of one half of the Senators become vacant every three years. Immediately prior to the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1948 the method of electing senators was in general the 'preferential block majority system' under which as a general rule all seats in any one State went to the party or combination of parties favoured at the time by a simple majority of the electors, leaving the minority without any representation at all in the Senate. The 1948 Act altered the system of Senate elections to one of proportional representation. The franchise for the election of senators is on the basis of adult suffrage, subject to electors being British subjects and having lived in Australia continuously for six months.

Where the place of a senator becomes vacant before the expiration of his term of office, the House or Houses of Parliament for the State for which he was chosen, sitting and voting together may choose a person to hold the place until either the expiration of the term, the next general election of the House of Representatives or the next election of senators of the State, whichever event first happens, at which time a senator is elected to hold the senate place until the expiration of the term.

THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

The House of Representatives is presently composed of 124 members, and, although the number of members may be increased or decreased by the Parliament, such changes must comply with the requirement that the number of members shall, as nearly as practicable, be twice the number of senators. Unlike the Senate, which has equal representation for each State, the number of members of the House of Representatives chosen in the respective States is required to be in proportion to the respective numbers of their people, subject to certain guaranteed numbers of members from original States. The House of Representatives is presided over by the Speaker who is chosen by the members from their own numbers. Every House of Representatives continues for three years from the first meeting of the House, and no longer, but may be sooner dissolved by the Governor-General. Members of the House of Representatives are elected for electoral Divisions on a preferential voting system by adult British subjects who have lived in Australia for at least six months.

A casual vacancy occurring in the House of Representatives is filled by by-election, the member so returned holding his place until the expiration or prior dissolution of that House of Representatives. Voting is compulsory in elections for both Houses of Parliament.

QUALIFICATIONS OF SENATORS AND MEMBERS

To qualify for election as a member of the Senate or House of Representatives a person must be a British subject of the full age of twenty-one years, be an elector entitled to vote at the election of members of the House of Representatives, or a person qualified to become such an elector, and have been for three years at least a resident within the limits of the Commonwealth of Australia as existing at the time he is chosen. A member of either House of Parliament is incapable of being chosen or of sitting as a member of the other House.

POWERS OF THE PARLIAMENT

The Constitution confers on the Parliament two classes of powers; those in respect of which the Parliament alone has power to legislate, i.e. exclusive powers, and those in respect of which the States retain power to legislate con