Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

David Clune and Rodney Smith
Key terms/names
Bob Carr, electoral systems, Federation, Henry Parkes, Labor Party, Legislative
Assembly, Legislative Council, Liberal Party, minor parties, National Party, Neville
Wran, Nicholas Greiner, representative government, Robert Askin, William McKell
New South Wales (NSW) politicians tend to see their state as ‘the premier state’,
a claim once emblazoned on NSW vehicle number plates. This contentious claim
of pre-eminence rests on two main strands. One strand is cultural centrality: in
1788, the convict colony in NSW initiated the ‘defining moments and symbols’
of the later Australian nation. 1 One version of this idea incorporates stories of
colonial politicians successfully pressing for self-government, public works and land
development, the great strikes of the 1890s, the founding of the Labor Party (ALP)
and, most recently, Sydney’s rise as a global city – ‘the quintessential Australian city,
raffish, hedonistic, where old wealth means nothing and new wealth is admired and
ostentatiously displayed’. 2 A more critical version of the idea of cultural centrality
sees the colony’s founding on ‘Australia Day’ as emblematic of unresolved conflicts
and inequalities between the colonisers and Indigenous Australians.
Clune, David, and Rodney Smith (2019). New South Wales. In Peter J. Chen, Nicholas Barry, John
R. Butcher, David Clune, Ian Cook, Adele Garnier, Yvonne Haigh, Sara C. Motta and Marija Taflaga,
eds. Australian politics and policy: senior edition. Sydney: Sydney University Press. DOI: 10.30722/
sup.9781743326671
1 Hirst 1998, 464.
2 Hirst 1998, 464–5.
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