Alfred Deakin

110 Pages·2017·7.89 MB·English

Alfred Deakin
(1856–1919)
Australia’s second Prime Minister
The Lives, The Legacy
David Headon
Australian Parliamentary Library
Department of Parliamentary Services
Alfred Deakin
(1856–1919)
Australia’s second Prime Minister
The Lives, The Legacy
David Headon
Australian Parliamentary Library
Department of Parliamentary Services
© Commonwealth of Australia 2018
Published by:
Australian Parliamentary Library
Department of Parliamentary Services
Parliament House
Canberra
First published in 2018
Series:
The first eight: Australia’s early prime ministers; 1
Series editor:
Dianne Heriot
Layout and design:
Matthew Harris
Printed and bound by:
Bytes N Colours
Braddon
Australian Capital Territory
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Headon, David (author)
Alfred Deakin – the lives, the legacy: Australia’s second prime minister
1st ed.
ISBN: 978-0-9806554-9-0
1. Politics & government
2. Australian history
1. Front cover: No 002 Deakin by Alison Alder.
56. Back cover: Canberra Times cartoon by Geoff Pryor on the day of Federation’s
Centenary, 1 January 2001. A reunited and ‘remembered’ Barton and Deakin
enjoy the nation’s celebratory fireworks.
ii
Foreword
On 1 January 1901, the Australian colonies united in ‘one indissoluble Federal
Commonwealth’.i Reflecting popular sentiment, The Sydney Morning Herald
declared: ‘seldom indeed in the world’s history have a people entered into full
possession of their heritage under circumstances so auspicious and with an
outlook so full of dazzling promise’.ii
But while the nation was created in law, the task of creating a true federal union
had only just begun. As Alfred Deakin observed in his anonymous column in the
(London) Morning Post:
Sudden as the birth will be and richly endowed as is the new-born with the
amplest charter of self-government that even Great Britain has ever conceded to
her offshoots, much time and toil will be required before we can hope to actually
enter and enjoy our inheritance. Not even an Act of the Imperial Parliament can
remove by its fiat the antagonisms of thought, aim, and situation existing among
the scattered four millions of independent Australian Britons who are taking
their destinies into their own hands on a far greater scale than they have been
hitherto accustomed to essay … The Commonwealth Constitution will begin to
take effect on the 1st of January, but everything which could make the union
it establishes more than a mere piece of political carpentry will remain to be
accomplished afterwards.iii
To the 111 members of the new Commonwealth Parliament, not least its first prime
ministers, would fall the challenge of ‘putting into actual operation the intricate
provisions of the Constitution’ and of building the new nation.iv
This monograph is part of a multi-year project focusing on Australia’s first eight prime
ministers, who led their governments from the benches of a parliament house borrowed
from Victoria. All but one (Bruce) brought to the role experience as parliamentarians in
the colonial parliaments. Even so, they and their parliamentary colleagues must have
felt it a herculean task to create the legislative, financial and administrative institutions
and frameworks of the new Commonwealth government from scratch.
The first eight: Australia’s early prime ministers project, undertaken in partnership with
the National Archives of Australia, the National Museum of Australia, the Australian
Studies Institute at the Australian National University, and the Parliament of Victoria,
seeks to enliven interest in this formative period of the nation’s history, focusing on
the private, public and political lives of its political leaders, and something of the
essence of the world they inhabited and which shaped them.
iii
Alfred Deakin, although not Australia’s first prime minister, seems a good place to
start. Deakin was attorney-general in Edmund Barton’s first Cabinet, and prime
minister three times during the nation’s first decade, twice with the support of the
Labor Party and once as leader of the Fusion government.
Urbane and intellectual, charming and courteous to men from all parties, he was
enormously well-read—in philosophy, theology, comparative religion and literature.
In the words of another biographer, Judith Brett, ‘he was middle class, well-educated,
and supremely self-confident, like the city and the colony in which he grew to
manhood’.v

Dianne Heriot
Parliamentary Librarian
iv
2. Alfred Deakin’s Bible. Given his admiration for the Deakin legacy, it is appropriate that
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull swore his Oath of Office on this Bible on 12 July 2016.
v
vi
Contents
The Deakin challenge 1
Story and story-tellers 5
Glimpses of childhood 13
A new pilgrim’s progress 21
A rich life of the spirit begins 25
Reluctant lawyer, reluctant politician 35
A father of Federation, a family man 51
A founder of nation 63
Between temple and tomb 81
Australia’s greatest prime minister? 87
vii

The Deakin challenge
3. The Argus newspaper photograph of Deakin on the steps of the Victorian
(then, the Commonwealth) Parliament, on his retirement in 1913.
1