Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Victoria
separated from NSW and renamed Victoria. 1 By the 1870s, Melbourne emerged as
a major manufacturing centre, and in the 1880s the city experienced a significant
real estate boom that was to end in a spectacular crash in the 1890s. 2 At Federation
Victoria was a major producer of grains and wool as well as a manufacturer of
farming implements, and one of Australia’s landmark industrial disputes occurred
at the Sunshine Harvester Works in Melbourne’s western suburbs in 1907 – a
dispute that was resolved by Justice Henry Bournes Higgins outlining the concept
of a ‘minimum wage’ in his Harvester judgement. 3
Victorian manufacturing was vital to the supply of Australian troops in both
world wars. After the Second World War, Melbourne’s armaments manufacturing
industry shifted to automobiles, with a race between Ford and General Motors to be
thefirsttodevelopanAustraliancar. 4 The consolidation of manufacturing under
the auspices of British and American corporations led to Melbourne’s reputation as
the preferred home of international capital. As the base for the Australian Council
of Trades Union, there was a strong link between the city and the ‘industrial
relations club’.
For all this industrial activity, the state’s political history was, until comparatively
recent times, dominated by conservatives and liberals. 5 Until the 1980s,
Labor governments were rare. The state’s politics were invariably a battle between
rural conservatives and metropolitan liberals with the nascent Labor Party
something of an incidental player (see Table 1). 6
Victoria was the home of such prominent colonial liberals as Henry Bournes
Higgins and Alfred Deakin, both of whom were participants in the Federation
movement. It was the home of arguably Australia’s greatest liberal-conservative
Robert Menzies, and Liberal leader Henry Bolte still holds the record as the state’s
longest-serving premier. With the advent of the modern party system, Victoria was
often referred to as the ‘jewel in the Liberal crown’. This historical theme stands in
stark contrast with more contemporary politics, in which Victoria (and especially
Melbourne) is viewed as the epicentre of progressive politics that is governed by the
Australian Labor Party (ALP) more often than not, and is arguably the strongest
statefortheAustralianGreens.
1 Legislation from the NSW Legislative Council authorising the separation was passed in 1850 upon
passageoftheAustralian Colonies Self Government Act 1850 (UK) in Britain. Promulgation of the
Act and actual separation occurred on 1 June 1851.
2 Cannon 1995.
3 Rickard 1984.
4 Conlon and Perkins 2001.
5 Murray 2007; Rawson 1977.
6 Holmes 1976.
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