Sir John Kerr was an eminent lawyer. He was the 13th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New South Wales and the 18th Governor-General. He is best known for being the controversial figure at the centre of the dismissal of the Labor government of Gough Whitlam on 11 November 1975, an event which sparked the most significant constitutional crisis in Australian history. On that day Kerr dismissed Prime Minister Whitlam and appointed Malcolm Fraser to form a caretaker government, pending elections.…
The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) was the winner of the 1935 federal election, but what made the voters choose them over the other parties in the election? To begin, the leader of the party J.S. Woodsworth, was able to persuade voters with motivational speeches, respond to voter questions with confidence, and the party platform was also well written and balanced. To begin, a contributing factor to the success of the CCF were the motivational and persuasive speeches by the leader of the party, J.S. Woodsworth. He appealed to the entire audience and his party was in the center of attention. Additionally, the CCF were able to respond proficiently to questions posed by the voters with detail and clarity which led to voter confidence.…
The liberal’s victory in the 1906 was a very significant one due to how they won it with such an overwhelming majority; it was the biggest electoral victory since 1832. In the 1890’s the liberals were suffering from a crisis identity and they were lacking in money and morale. In the 1906 election the liberals won 49.4% of the vote and that amounted to 399 seats which was such a large margin compared to in 1900 where 45% of the vote was only 183 seats. There are four main reasons arguably why the Liberals won the1906 election and these are through Conservative faults such as the massacre in the Boer war. The education act in 1902 and Chamberlain’s tariff reform campaign also lost the conservatives a lot of support, which meant people turned to liberals just due to disliking the conservatives. The most important reason was Arthur Balfour getting involved and not making the right decisions for the conservatives and losing a lot of the voters they had before. The liberals also used a very negative campaign in order to get voters to realise the flaws in the conservative’s ideals and make them vote for the liberals just through dislike of the other parties.…
The Cold War stimulated the ‘fear of communism’, which had extremely cohesive and divisive implications amongst Australian society and politics. The fear of communism exercised it’s powerful influence over the minds of Australians from about 1949 with the beginning of the Cold War and the communist revolution in China, until about the end of Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War in 1972. Through close examination of the ALP split as a result of the Communist Party Dissolution Bill (CPDB) and the Petrov affair, and Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War it can be seen just how divisive the communist scare was, as well as creating cohesion.…
When the Liberals came into power in 1906 the Conservatives held a startling majority in the House of Lords due to their…
The 29th of April 1965 was a pivotal moment in Australian military history. In parliament, Robert Menzies proposed his arguments for sending Australian troops into South Vietnam and subsequently announced that Australia would be joining the United States in the Vietnam War. He believed that Australia’s allies would need help and that it was best to stop the spread of communism before it reached Australia: a forward defence technique. The pressure and increasing fear of communism amongst the Australian public would have also influenced parliament. Although faced with opposition, the proposition advanced, and later that year, the first 800 Australian troops were dispatched to Vietnam.…
After the Conservative Prime Minister (A. J. Balfour) resigned, the Liberals called a general election in 1906, and won by a ‘landslide’. Whether the Liberals won the election by such a large margin by their own success or the failure of the Conservatives is debatable. Many factors contributed to the outcome of this.…
In the1870s, the Conservative Party won three out of four elections and formed the government for 17 years out of a total of 20 years. It reflected the Conservative Party was the most powerful party in England at that time; they even had an overpowering majority of seats in the House of Lords. They had support from everywhere. However, the situation changed dramatically when the Liberal party won the general election in 1906 with an overwhelming majority of 400 seats as against 157 seats for the Conservatives party. This event was marked as the well-known ‘Liberal landslide’. There are several reasons why the Conservative lost such a large amount of seats; national efficiency, the imposition of Education Act and Licensing Act, tariff campaign and Neglect of social reform.…
Edward Gough Whitlam was born on 11th July 1916. He is well known as Gough Whitlam, Australian politician and 21st Prime Minister of Australia. He was Australia 's Prime Minister elected in 1972, Whitlam 's term as prime minister ended in 1975 when he was dismissed by the Governor-General. It ended three years of extensive social and cultural reform.…
Both men, who served as Prime Ministers, reformed many institutions with many of them effecting the working class like education (bringing up the working class), trade union (helping the working class fight for work wrights), public health (living conditions affecting the working class) and licensing (the way many working class people passed the time), along with the electoral institution (workers being able to vote on the matters which the work upon, such as factory conditions and education). Many historians, such as William Kuhn, argue that William Gladstone, the Liberal Prime Minister, passed many other reforms as well to help the working class, including the Ballot Act of 1872. However, some historians, such as Monypenny and Buckle, say that Benjamin Disraeli, the Conservative Prime Minister, did more to help the working class, including passing the Second Great Reform Act of 1867.…
The “threat” of communism that the Australian government produced is highly debatable issue. Australia was being exposed to Communism, which was spreading south from Russia, through Asia and ultimately to Australia. The domino theory was a key belief in the mind of the public, spreading fear throughout the world. The Liberal party exploited the threat of Communism and the domino theory to help with their election campaign. They attempted to ban the Communist Party from Australian soils. Trade unions and political parties being suspect to communist infiltration, and a possible spy scandal, “The Petrov affair” added to the exaggerated threat of communism. Australia decided to make alliances with other countries and sent troops to the Korean and Vietnam wars.…
One of the best lines in Swift’s “A Description of a City Shower,” is “Triumphant Tories, and desponding Whigs//Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs (39-42). For one thing, the mere image of normally polished and powdered politicians feverishly running for shelter to protect their wigs is amusing in itself. On a deeper level, for the politicians to react to the rain just as any other townsperson brings them down a peg and levels them with the commoners such as “the drunkard” or the “seamstress.” For Swift, even the lofty politicians need a “cleansing” just like every other person (or perhaps even more so in their case). At the same time, the fact they so quickly “forget” their long-lasting feuds for the sake of something as trivial…
In March 1975 Malcolm Fraser took control of the Liberal opposition. Before February 1975 the senate was evenly balanced between the two parties but the retirement of a NSW senator and the death of a QLD senator left two gaps in Labours line up. The convention was that the premier of the states would replace the senators with someone from the same party. However In both cases the conservative Premiers of QLD and NSW selected a non-Labor person giving the coalition majority in the senate. The coalition was afraid that Whitlam would call a half senate election in an attempt to regain his majority.…
My time period for the group presentation was the 1920s and 1930s, the boom and bust era. I chose this time period specifically because I always thought of it as the emergence of our modern day culture and lifestyle. I’m also quite fond of the 20s like the TV show Boardwalk Empire. This is a drama set in Atlantic City where the political leadership profits from corruption and bootlegging in the time of prohibition and organized crime. It is also a part of the reason why I chose the time period.…
At this time Liberal meant supporting freer trade (still almost a hundred years until actual free trade) and less government interference in the economy. This made the liberal party very popular during prosperous times because when businesses are booming, the less government management, the longer…