ANDREW FISHER

'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 saw Australia's first majority government, and the world's first Labour Party majority government. Fisher, Andrew (1862 - 1928)

Contents

Early life

Federal politics

Prime Minister

First government 1908-09

Second government 1910-13

Third government 1914-15

High Commissioner

Honours

See also

Notes

References

Early life

Fisher was born in Crosshouse, a mining village at Knockentiber near Kilmarnock, 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. Andrew Fisher, before
In 1885 Fisher and his brother migrated to Queensland, where Fisher worked as a miner, first in Burrum and then in Gympie. He was active in the Amalgamated Miners Union and was part owner of a labour newspaper, the ''Gympie Truth'', founded in 1896. Fisher, Andrew (1862 - 1928)
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 Labor 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.

Federal politics

Labour Party MPs elected at the inaugural 1901 election, including Watson, Fisher, Hughes, and Tudor.

The state Labor parties and their MPs were mixed in their support for the Federation of Australia,^[1] however Fisher was a firm federationist, supporting the union of the Australian colonies and campaigned for the 'Yes' vote in Queensland's 1899 referendum. Fisher stood for the electorate of Wide Bay at the inaugural 1901 federal election and won the seat. At the end of 1901 Fisher married Margaret Irvine, his previous landlady's daughter.
Fisher established himself as one of Labour's most prominent leaders as Minister for Trade and Customs in the Chris Watson Labour government of 1904.
At the 1906 election, Deakin remained Prime Minister even though Labor gained considerably more seats than the Protectionists. When Watson retired 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.

Prime Minister

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. Andrew Fisher, in office 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 Governor General Dudley to dissolve Parliament.

Second government 1910-13

At the 1910 election, Labour won forty-three of the seventy-five House of Representative seats and all eighteen Senate seats up for election, giving Fisher control of both Houses and formed Australia's first majority government, and the world's first Labour Party majority government. 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.

Andrew Fisher at the naming of Canberra ceremony, 1913.

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, including such specifics as establishing old-age and invalid 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, founding Canberra and establishing the government-owned Commonwealth Bank.
Fisher wanted additional Commonwealth power in additional areas. The 1911 referendum asked two questions, on Legislative Powers and Monopolies. Both were defeated with 61 percent 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 percent voting 'No'. Labor (renamed by King O'Malley in 1912) was defeated at the 1913 election by a single seat to the Commonwealth Liberal Party, led by Joseph Cook.

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, engineered a double dissolution election in an attempt to gain control of both Houses. The First World War broke 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 with another absolute majority.

A studio portrait of the Prime Ministerial family in 1910

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''.
In October 1915, 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:
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 in 1916-17.
Fisher resigned from the Prime Ministership and Parliament on 27 October 1915 after being absent from parliament without explanation for three sitting days. Three days later Labor Caucus unanimously elected Billy Hughes leader of the Federal Parliamentary Party.^[2]

High Commissioner

Australia's second High Commissioner in London.

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 cabled 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. Andrew Fisher, after
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.^[3][4]
Fisher wanted to continue to serve as High Commissioner in London when his term expired in 1921, however 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 He is buried at Fortune Green Cemetery in West Hampstead.

Honours

The Andrew Fisher Cairn in Ayrshire.

At the end of the First World War, France awarded him the Légion d'honneur, but he declined it. The federal electorate of Fisher was named after him. 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.

See also

★ First Fisher Ministry

★ Second Fisher Ministry

★ Third Fisher Ministry

Notes

1. Federation Political Groups—to 1901 and beyond
2.
3. Battles: The Gallipoli Front - An Overview
4. First report (of the Dardanelles Commission) (Abstract)

References

★ National Museum of Australia

★ Andrew Fisher - Scaramouche