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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
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