Part III

The 20th Century: New Nation, New Trajectories

‘Now we’re a Federation, they’ll get around to fixing this. I just hope it’s your side of the track that gets ripped up.’

In this part . . .

Australia emerged as a newly federated nation at the start of the 20th century with a serious intent to change the way society worked. The collapse of the old ‘workingman’s paradise’ in the 1890s meant that all the problems of the rest of the world that had seemed so strikingly absent in colonial Australia — intense class conflict, mass unemployment, governments taking the side of big business owners against striking workers, destitution — now had to be dealt with here.

In the first decades of the 20th century, Australia strove to resolve the problems of the world. Then World War I hit, causing frictions and ruptures on the home front. When the dust settled, a new idea emerged — Australia Unlimited, where the focus was on economic growth and increased population.

In this part, I cover the social reforms that were brought in after Federation, Australia’s involvement in World War I, and the easy spending days of the 1920s.