Australia 1918–1949

Australia 1918–1949 is one of eight National Studies options in Section II. You answer one 25-mark extended response (one of two alternatives), about 1,000 words in roughly 45 minutes. The syllabus key features are: nationalism; the experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples; changes in society; the changing role of women; postwar economic development; the impact of communism; and the aims and impacts of foreign policy.

• Survey: Australia after World War I — the consequences of the war, the social landscape, and attitudes and policies towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
• Focus of study: the changing face of 1920s Australia; the Great Depression and political responses; changing foreign policy and the relationship with the USA; John Curtin and social welfare; postwar reconstruction; communism and the 1949 election.

About 60,000 Australians died in the war, and returned soldiers carried physical and mental wounds. The war had split the nation over conscription (two referendums, 1916 and 1917, both defeated) and divided Labor; Billy Hughes led the new Nationalist Party. The war strengthened a national legend (Anzac) built around white, male soldiers.

At the Paris Peace Conference (1919) Hughes won a mandate over German New Guinea, reparations and the defeat of Japan's racial equality clause, which he saw as a threat to the White Australia policy.

• Politics and economy: Stanley Bruce (Nationalist PM 1923–29) promoted ‘men, money and markets’ — British migrants, overseas loans and protected markets. Tariffs helped manufacturing grow.
• Rural ideal: governments believed Australia's future lay on the land. Soldier settlement placed about 37,000 returned men on farm blocks, but many failed (small, poor blocks, debt, falling prices).
• Urbanisation and modern life: suburbs spread; cars (Ford assembled in Geelong from 1925), radio (from 1923), cinema and jazz arrived; goods were bought on hire purchase.
• Women: more young women worked in shops, offices and factories; the ‘flapper’ symbolised new freedoms; Edith Cowan entered the WA parliament in 1921. But the female basic wage was only about 54% of the male rate, and married women were expected to leave paid work.
• Conflict: strikes on the waterfront (1928) and the coalfields (the Rothbury lockout, 1929). Bruce's attempt to give up federal arbitration cost him the 1929 election and his own seat.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples

Under protection laws, state boards and protectors controlled where Aboriginal people lived, worked, married and travelled, and often controlled their wages. Children were removed (in NSW without a court order after 1915). Frontier violence continued — at Coniston (NT, 1928) at least 31 people were killed by police-led parties, and Aboriginal accounts put the toll much higher. In 1937 governments adopted assimilation as policy. Aboriginal people organised: the Australian Aborigines' League (William Cooper), the Aborigines Progressive Association (William Ferguson, Jack Patten), the Day of Mourning (26 January 1938) and the Cummeragunja walk-off (1939). In the Torres Strait, Islander pearling crews struck in 1936 against the Protector's control of their boats and earnings; the Queensland _Torres Strait Islanders Act 1939_ then gave elected island councils a limited role in local government.

Australia depended on wool and wheat exports and on British loans, so it was hit early. Unemployment reached close to 30% of trade unionists in 1932.

The Arbitration Court cut the basic wage by 10% in 1931. Labor split: Joseph Lyons left to lead the new United Australia Party, which won in December 1931, and Lang's followers broke away. Lang was dismissed by Governor Game in May 1932. Daily life: evictions, ‘susso’ (sustenance relief), shanty camps, anti-eviction fights, the right-wing New Guard and a growing Communist Party. Recovery from 1932–33 owed much to devaluation (1931) and rising export prices.

1. 1919–1939: imperial loyalty. Defence rested on the Singapore strategy. Australia did not adopt the Statute of Westminster (1931). The Lyons government supported appeasement. On 3 September 1939 Menzies announced that because Britain was at war, ‘Australia is also at war’.
2. 1941–1942: crisis. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and Malaya (7–8 December 1941). On 27 December Curtin wrote that ‘Australia looks to America’. Singapore fell (15 February 1942; about 15,000 Australians captured) and Darwin was bombed (19 February). Curtin brought the 7th Division home against Churchill's wishes; General MacArthur arrived in March 1942.
3. 1942–1945: war and independence. The Coral Sea (May 1942), Kokoda and Milne Bay. The Statute of Westminster was adopted in 1942 (backdated to 1939); the ANZAC Agreement with New Zealand (1944); Evatt championed small and middle powers at the UN conference (1945).
4. 1945–1949: Evatt's diplomacy (support for Indonesian independence at the UN), continued British ties in trade, migration and defence.

John Curtin (PM October 1941 – July 1945) led a total war effort: manpower controls, rationing, conscription for service in a defined area of the South West Pacific (1943), and the Women's Employment Board (1942), which set women's rates in many wartime jobs at between 60% and 100% of men's, most often 90%. Uniform taxation (1942) gave the Commonwealth control of income tax, funding new welfare: widows' pensions (1942), unemployment and sickness benefits (paid from 1945) and pharmaceutical benefits. Curtin died in July 1945; Ben Chifley succeeded him.

Chifley (Treasurer from 1941, Minister for Post-War Reconstruction from 1942, PM 1945–49) aimed for full employment (1945 White Paper), social security (the 1946 social services referendum passed) and national development: mass immigration under Arthur Calwell (Displaced Persons from 1947), the Snowy Mountains Scheme (1949), the Holden car (1948) and training for ex-servicemen. His ‘light on the hill’ speech (June 1949) expressed Labor's ideals.

Communism

The Communist Party of Australia (founded 1920) was banned in 1940–42 but grew while the USSR was an ally (Fred Paterson won a Queensland seat in 1944). It had strong influence in unions such as the Miners' Federation. The 1949 coal strike caused blackouts; Chifley froze union funds, jailed leaders and sent troops into open-cut mines.

Why Labor lost in December 1949

• Bank nationalisation (Banking Act 1947), struck down by the High Court (1948) and Privy Council (1949).
• Controls: petrol rationing; the failed 1948 prices referendum.
• Cold War fears; the coal strike.
• Menzies' Liberal Party (founded 1944–45), modern and well organised, promising to end rationing and ban the Communist Party.

Worked example (not a bank question). _‘Assess the impact of World War II on the lives of Australian women.’_

1. Thesis: the war opened new roles for women, but these were treated as temporary, and postwar society pushed most women back towards the home.
2. Paragraph 1 — work: women in munitions, the Australian Women's Land Army, the women's services (AWAS, WAAAF, WRANS).
3. Paragraph 2 — pay and the Women's Employment Board: higher but unequal pay; employer and union opposition.
4. Paragraph 3 — limits: demobilisation, the marriage bar in the public service, the female basic wage still at 54% until the Arbitration Court raised it to 75% in 1950.
5. Conclusion: judge the extent of impact, for whom, and whether it lasted.

Open every paragraph with an argument sentence, support it with specific evidence (dates, names, figures) and end by linking to the question.

• Treating the 1920s as uniformly ‘roaring’ — distinguish city and country, men and women, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people.
• Confusing the Premiers' Plan, the Lang Plan and Theodore's plan.
• Saying Curtin ended Australia's British connection in 1941 — he shifted military reliance, not loyalty.
• Linking the 1949 election to the Korean War (which began in 1950) or to ANZUS (1951).
• Writing about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples only as victims; include activism and agency.

• Section II is marked on a sustained, logical and cohesive response, detailed, accurate and relevant historical knowledge, historical terms and concepts, and, where relevant, historical interpretations. Naming historians can strengthen an argument but is not required.
• Useful interpretations: David Day's view that Britain ‘betrayed’ Australia in 1942; C.B. Schedvin's argument that recovery from the Depression owed more to external factors than to policy; debates over whether postwar reconstruction created a lasting ‘social democratic’ settlement.
• Key terms: protection, assimilation, Singapore strategy, Premiers' Plan, deflation, uniform taxation, postwar reconstruction, full employment, nationalisation.
• Prepare flexible paragraphs on the big themes (1920s society, the Depression, foreign policy, Curtin and the war, reconstruction and 1949) so you can adapt them to either alternative.
• When writing about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, use respectful terms and name individuals and organisations.

• The core covers the Depression's role in the rise of dictatorships — compare Australia's democratic survival.
• Conflict in Europe 1935–1945 and The Cold War 1945–1991 give the international context for 1939, 1941–42 and 1949.
• Civil Rights in the USA links to later Australian campaigns such as the 1965 Freedom Ride.