Andrew Fisher
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| Rt Hon Andrew Fisher | |
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| In office 13 November 1908 – 2 June 1909 |
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| Constituency | Wide Bay (Queensland) |
| Preceded by | Alfred Deakin |
| Succeeded by | Alfred Deakin |
| In office 29 April 1910 – 24 June 1913 |
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| Preceded by | Alfred Deakin |
| Succeeded by | Joseph Cook |
| In office 17 September 1914 – 27 October 1915 |
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| Preceded by | Joseph Cook |
| Succeeded by | Billy Hughes |
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| Born | 29 August 1862 Crosshouse (Kilmaurs), Scotland |
| Died | 22 October 1928 (aged 66) |
| Political party | Labor |
Andrew Fisher (29 August 1862 – 22 October 1928) was an Australian politician and the fifth Prime Minister of Australia. Fisher's 1910-13 ministry completed a vast legislative programme which made him, along with Protectionist Alfred Deakin, the founder of the statutory structure of the new nation. According to D. J. Murphy, "his contemporaries saw him as honest and trustworthy, but surpassed by Billy Hughes in wit, oratory and brilliance. Fisher's record however reveals a legacy of reforms and national development which lasted beyond the divisions that Hughes left in the Labor Party and in Australia".
Fisher's second Prime Ministership in 1910 represented a number of firsts: it was Australia's first federal majority government; Australia's first Senate majority; the world's first Labour Party majority government; the first time the Labour Party had controlled any house of a legislature; and the first time it controlled both houses of a bicameral legislature.[1]
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[edit] Early life
Fisher was born in Crosshouse, a mining village near Kilmaurs, East Ayrshire, Scotland. He was one of seven children of Robert Fisher and Jane Garvin. Fisher's education consisted of some primary schooling, some night schooling, and the reading of books in the library of the cooperative his father had helped to establish. He began working at the age of 10 in the Crosshouse coal mines. At 17 he was elected secretary of the local branch of the Ayrshire Miners' Union.[2] This was the first step in a career of activism that eventually led him into politics.[3]
His activism resulted in his being blacklisted by the colliery and so, unable to find work, Fisher and his brother migrated to Queensland in 1885. Despite leaving his homeland Fisher is said to haved retained a distinctive Scottish accent for the rest of his life.[3] Here, Fisher worked as a miner, first in Burrum and then in Gympie. He was active in the Amalgamated Miners Union, becoming President of the Gympie branch by 1891,[3] and was part owner of a labour newspaper, the Gympie Truth, founded in 1896.[1][4]
In 1891, Fisher was elected as the first president of the Gympie branch of the Labour Party and in 1893 he was elected to the Queensland Legislative Assembly as Labour member for Gympie. He lost his seat in 1896, but won it back in 1899. In that year he was Secretary for Railways and Public Works in the seven-day government of Anderson Dawson, the first parliamentary socialist government in the world.[1]
[edit] Member of Parliament
The state Labour parties and their MPs were mixed in their support for the Federation of Australia.[5] However Fisher was a firm federationist, supporting the union of the Australian colonies and campaigned for the 'Yes' vote in Queensland's 1899 referendum.[1] Fisher stood for the electorate of Wide Bay at the inaugural 1901 federal election and won the seat, which he held continuously for the rest of his political career.[3] At the end of 1901 Fisher married Margaret Irvine, his previous landlady's daughter.[2]
Labour improved their position at the 1903 election, gaining enough seats to be on par with the Protectionists. When the Deakin government resigned in 1904, George Reid of the Free Trade Party declined to take office, resulting in Labour taking power and Chris Watson becoming Labour's first Prime Minister. Fisher established himself as one of Labour's most prominent leaders as Minister for Trade and Customs in the Watson Labour government of 1904.
At the 1906 election, Deakin remained Prime Minister even though Labour gained considerably more seats than the Protectionists. When Watson resigned in 1907, Fisher succeeded him as Labour leader, although Hughes and William Spence also stood for the position. Fisher was considered to have a better understanding of economic matters, was better at handling caucus, had better relations with the party organisation and the unions, and was more in touch with party opinion.[1]
[edit] Prime Minister
[edit] First government 1908-09
When Alfred Deakin's Protectionist government resigned in 1908, Fisher formed his first, minority, government. In March 1909, he committed Labour to amending the Constitution to give the Commonwealth power over labour, wages and prices, to expanding the navy and providing compulsory military training, to extending pensions, to a land tax, to the construction of a transcontinental railway, to the replacement of pound sterling with Australian currency and to tariffs to protect the sugar industry.[6] In May, when he had been in office for eight months, the Protectionists and Freetraders, combined into a "Fusion", ousted him from office and he failed to persuade the Governor-General Lord Dudley to dissolve Parliament.[1]
[edit] Second government 1910-13
At the 1910 election, Labour gained seventeen additional seats to hold a total of forty-three of the seventy-five House of Representative seats, and all eighteen Senate seats up for election to hold a total of twenty-two out of thirty-six seats. This gave Labour control of both Houses and enabled Fisher to form Australia's first federal majority government, Australia's first Senate majority, and the world's first Labour Party majority government.[1] The 113 acts passed in the three years of the second Fisher government exceeded even the output of the second Deakin government over a similar period.[6]
Fisher carried out many reforms in defence, constitutional matters, finance, transport and communications, and social security, achieving the vast majority of his aims in his first government. These included such specifics as establishing old-age and disability pensions, a maternity allowance and workers compensation, issuing Australia's first paper currency, forming the Royal Australian Navy, the commencement of construction for the Trans-Australian Railway, expanding the bench of the High Court of Australia, founding Canberra and establishing the government-owned Commonwealth Bank.[6]
Fisher wanted additional Commonwealth power in certain areas. The 1911 referendum asked two questions, on Legislative Powers and Monopolies. Both were defeated with 61 per cent voting 'No'. An additional six questions were asked at the 1913 referendum, on Trade and Commerce, Corporations, Industrial Matters, Trusts, Monopolies, and Railway Disputes. All six were defeated with around 51 per cent voting 'No'. Renamed 'Labor' by King O'Malley in 1912, Fisher's party was defeated at the 1913 election by a single seat to the Commonwealth Liberal Party, led by Joseph Cook.[1]
[edit] Third government 1914-15
Labor retained control of the Senate, however, and in 1914 Cook, frustrated by the Labor controlled Senate's blocking of his legislation, recommended to the new Governor-General Sir Ronald Munro-Ferguson that both houses of the parliament be dissolved and elections called. This was Australia's first double dissolution election, and the only one until the 1951 election. The First World War had broken out in the middle of the 1914 election campaign, and Fisher campaigned on Labor's record of support for an independent Australian defence force. He pledged that Australia would "stand beside the mother country to help and defend her to the last man and the last shilling." Labor won the election and Fisher formed his third government, and an absolute majority in both houses.[1]
Fisher and his party were immediately underway in organising urgent defence measures for planning and implementing Australia’s war effort. Fisher visited New Zealand during this time which saw Billy Hughes as acting Prime Minister for two months. Fisher and Labor continued to implement promised peacetime legislation, including the River Murray Waters Act 1915, the Freight Arrangements Act 1915, the Sugar Purchase Act 1915, the Estate Duty Assessment and the Estate Duty acts in 1914. Wartime legislation in 1914 and 1915 included the War Precautions acts (giving the Governor-General power to make regulations for national security), a Trading with the Enemy Act, War Census acts, a Crimes Act, a Belgium Grant Act, and an Enemy Contracts Annulment Act.[6]
In October 1915, the journalist Keith Murdoch reported on the situation in Gallipoli at Fisher's request, and advised him, "Your fears have been justified". He described the Dardanelles Expedition as being "a series of disastrous underestimations" and "one of the most terrible chapters in our history" concluding:
| “ | What I want to say to you now very seriously is that the continuous and ghastly bungling over the Dardanelles enterprise was to be expected from such a general staff as the British Army possesses ... the conceit and self complacency of the red feather men are equalled only by their incapacity. | ” |
Fisher passed this report on to Hughes and to Defence Minister George Pearce and it led to the evacuation of the troops in December 1915, and to the Dardanelles Commission on which Fisher served, while High Commissioner in London.[6]
Fisher resigned from the Prime Ministership and Parliament on 27 October 1915 after being absent from parliament without explanation for three sitting days.[6] Three days later Labor Caucus unanimously elected Billy Hughes leader of the Federal Parliamentary Party.[7]
[edit] High Commissioner
Fisher served as Australia's second High Commissioner in London from 1 January 1916 to 1 January 1921. Fisher opposed conscription which made his dealings with Billy Hughes difficult. Hughes asked Fisher for support by cable three weeks before the first referendum, but Fisher cabled back "Am unable to sign appeal. Position forbids." He subsequently refused to publicly comment on the issue. Hughes' 1916 and 1917 referendums on conscription both had a No majority of around one percent. Fisher visited Australian troops serving in Belgium and France in 1919, and later presented Pearce with an album of battlefield photos from 1917 and 1918, showing the horrendous conditions experienced by the troops.[8]
The Dardanelles Commission, including Fisher, interviewed witnesses in 1916 and 1917 and issued its final report issued in 1919. It concluded that the expedition was poorly planned and executed and that difficulties had been underestimated, problems which were exacerbated by supply shortages and by personality clashes and procrastination at high levels. Some 480,000 Allied troops had been dedicated to the failed campaign, with around half in casualties. The report's conclusions were regarded as insipid with no figures (political or military) heavily censured. The report of the Commission and information gathered by the inquiry remain a key source of documents on the campaign.[9][10]
Fisher wanted to continue to serve as High Commissioner in London when his term expired in 1921, but Hughes did not permit it. Despite calls by some Labor supporters in Australia for Fisher to return to Australia and re-enter politics, he lived in London through retirement until his death in 1928 at South Hill Park, Hampstead.[1] He is buried at Fortune Green Cemetery in West Hampstead.
[edit] Honours
At the end of the First World War, France awarded him the Légion d'honneur, but he declined it.[1] The federal electorate of Fisher was named after him. The Canberra suburb of Fisher was also created in his memory, with its streets reflecting a mining theme in honour of Fisher's occupation before entering public life. A memorial was unveiled by Ramsay MacDonald, Britain's first Labour Prime Minister, in Hampstead Cemetery in 1930. A memorial garden was also dedicated to Fisher at his birthplace in the late 1970s.[8]
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Murphy, D. J.. Fisher, Andrew (1862 - 1928). Australian Dictionary of Biography. Australian National University. Retrieved on 2007-05-31.
- ^ a b Andrew Fisher, before. Australia's Prime Ministers. National Archives of Australia. Retrieved on 2007-08-30.
- ^ a b c d Fisher, Kathleen (2006) "From pit boy to prime minister: Andrew Fisher", in National Library of Australia News, XVI (9), June 2006, p. 16
- ^ Serle, Percival. Fisher, Andrew (1862 - 1928). Dictionary of Australian Biography. Project Gutenberg Australia. Retrieved on 2007-05-31.
- ^ Federation Political Groups—to 1901 and beyond. National Library of Australia. Retrieved on 2007-08-31.
- ^ a b c d e f Andrew Fisher, in office. Australia's Prime Ministers. National Archives of Australia. Retrieved on 2007-08-30.
- ^ Fitzhardinge, L. F. (1983). Hughes, William Morris (Billy) (1862 - 1952). Australian Dictionary of Biography. Australian National University. Retrieved on 2007-08-30.
- ^ a b Andrew Fisher, after. Australia's Prime Ministers. National Archives of Australia. Retrieved on 2007-08-30.
- ^ First Word War.com Battles: The Gallipoli Front - An Overview. Firstworldwar.com (18 August 2002). Retrieved on 2007-08-30.
- ^ Fisher, Mackensie; Cawley; Clyde; Gwynn; May; Nicholson, Lord; Pickford; Roch (February 1917). First report (of the Dardanelles Commission) (Abstract). British Official Publications Collaborative Reader Information Service. Retrieved on 2007-08-30.
[edit] References
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| Persondata | |
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| NAME | Fisher, Andrew |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | Australian politician and fifth Prime Minister of Australia |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 29 August 1862 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Crosshouse, East Ayrshire, Scotland |
| DATE OF DEATH | 22 October 1928 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | South Hill Park, Hampstead, London, England |
