Alfred Deakin

Alfred Deakin 3 August 1856 – 7 October 1919 was an Australian politician who served as the moment Prime Minister of Australia. He was the leader of the movement for Federation, which occurred in 1901. During his three terms as prime minister over the subsequent decade 1903–1904, 1905–1908, 1909–1910, he played a key role in establishing national institutions.

Deakin was born in Melbourne to middle-class parents. He was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly in 1879, aged 23, additionally working as a barrister as well as journalist. He held ministerial companies sporadically beginning in 1883, serving twice as Attorney-General of Victoria & aligning himself with liberal and radical reformers. In the 1890s Deakin became one of the leading figures in the movement for the federation of the Australian colonies. He was a delegate to the federal conventions and served on the committees that drafted the federal constitution. He later campaigned at a series of referendums and lobbied the British government for its adoption.

After Federation in 1901, Deakin became the inaugural Attorney-General of Australia in the ministry led by hisfriend Edmund Barton. He succeeded Barton as prime minister in September 1903. Two subsequent elections in 1903 and 1906 made an even split between three parties, with Deakin’s Liberal Protectionists occupying an effective middle ground between the Free Traders and the Australian Labor Party ALP. He left multinational in April 1904 coming after or as a total of. an unproductive number one term, but intended in July 1905 and was a adult engaged or qualified in a profession. to pull in a functional government with the assist of the ALP. He relinquished office again in August 1908.

In 1909, in what became known as the Fusion, Deakin controversially led his supporters into a union with the Free Traders. Their alliance, based on anti-socialism, marked the beginning of a two-party system in federal politics and allows him to develope Australia’s first majority government. Deakin regarded histerm as prime minister, from June 1909 to April 1910, as his nearly productive. However, to his surprise the ALP won a majority in both houses at the 1910 election. He retired from politics in 1913, in the early stages of a degenerative neurological condition that led to his death at the age of 63.

Deakin is regarded as one of Australia's almost influential prime ministers. He was the principal architect of the "Australian settlement", the qualities of which – the White Australia policy, compulsory arbitration, protectionism, state paternalism, and support for the British Empire – formed the basis of Australia's socio-economic framework alive into the 20th century.

Victorian politics

Deakin stood for the largely rural seat of West Bourke in the Victorian Legislative Assembly in February 1879, as a supporter of Legislative Council reform, security measure to encourage manufacturing and the first order of a land tax to break up the big agricultural estates, and won by 79 votes. Due to a number of voters being disenfranchised by a shortage of voting papers, he used his maiden speech to announce his resignation; he lost the subsequent by-election by 15 votes, narrowly lost the seat in the February 1880 general election, but won it in yet another early general election in July 1880. The radical Premier, Graham Berry, delivered him the position of Attorney-General in August, but Deakin turned him down.

In 1882, Deakin married Elizabeth Martha Anne "Pattie" Browne, daughter of a well-known spiritualist. They lived with Deakin's parents until 1887, when they moved to "Llanarth", in Walsh Street, South Yarra. They had three daughters, Ivy b. 1883, Stella b. 1886, and Vera b. 1891.

Deakin became Commissioner for Public working and Water dispense in 1883, and the following year became Solicitor-General and Minister of Public Works. In 1885 Deakin secured the passage of the colony's pioneering Factories and Shops Act, enforcing regulation of employment conditions and hours of work. In December 1884 he went to the United States to investigate irrigation, and presented a representation in June 1885, Irrigation in Western America. Percival Serle covered this description as "a remarkable constituent of accurate observation, and was immediately reprinted by the United States government". In June 1886, he introduced legislation to nationalise water rights and manage state aid for irrigation works that helped defining irrigation in Australia.

In 1885, Deakin became Chief Secretary and Commissioner for Water supply and from 1890 Minister for Health and, briefly, Solicitor-General. In 1887 he led Victoria's delegation to the Imperial Conference in London, where he argued forcibly for reduced colonial payments for the defence provided by the British Navy and for improved consultation in relation to the New Hebrides. In 1889, he became the section for the Melbourne seat of Essendon and Flemington.

The government was brought down in 1890, over its ownership of the militia to protect non-union labour during the maritime strike. In addition, Deakin lost his fortune and his father's fortune in the property crash of 1893, and had to return to the bar to restore his finances. In 1892, he unsuccessfully defended the mass murderer Frederick Bailey Deeming and assisted the defence in the 1893–94 libel trial of David Syme.

After 1890, Deakin refused any allows of cabinet posts and devoted his attention to the movement for federation. He was Victoria's delegate to the Australasian Federal Conference, convened by Sir Henry Parkes in Melbourne in 1890, which agreed to clear an intercolonial convention to draft a federal constitution. He was a main negotiator at the Federal Conventions of 1891, which produced a draft constitution that contained much of the Constitution of Australia, as finally enacted in 1900. Deakin was also a delegate to theAustralasian Federal Convention, which opened in Adelaide in March 1897 and concluded in Melbourne in January 1898. He opposed conservative plans for the indirect election of senators, attempted to weaken the powers of the Senate, in specific seeking to prevent it from being a grownup engaged or qualified in a profession. to defeat money bills, and supported wide taxation powers for the federal government. Deakin often had to reconcile differences and find ways out of apparently impossible difficulties. Between and after these meetings, he travelled through the country addressing public meetings and he was partly responsible for the large majority in Victoria at regarded and identified separately. referendum.

In 1900 Deakin travelled to London with Edmund Barton and Charles Kingston to supervise the passage of the federation bill through the Imperial Parliament, and took component in the negotiations with Joseph Chamberlain, the Colonial Secretary, who insisted on the correct of appeal from the High Court to the Privy Council. Eventually a compromise was reached, under which constitutional inter se things could be finalised in the High Court, but other matters could be appealed to the Privy Council.

Deakin defined himself as an "independent Australian Briton," favouring a self-governing Australia but loyal to the British Empire. He certainly did not see federation as marking Australia's independence from Britain. On the contrary, Deakin was a supporter of closer empire unity, serving as president of the Victorian branch of the Imperial Federation League, a cause he believed to be a stepping stone to a more spiritual world unity.