The Money Men

a significant role in the proceedings, moving a motion that the senior NSW politician and prominent pro-federation campaigner Edmund Barton be the leader of the convention. Turner also used the occasion to give his first major address, which was typically strong on detail and light on rhetoric. Deakin, who was never too quick to praise Turner, was not impressed: ‘He looked and spoke like a busy little shop-keeper, being pushed forward by unwise colleagues to seize the earliest occasion of speech, [and] delivered an elaborate catalogue of radical proposals just as he would have read a list of goods and chattels at a sale.’¹⁹ Despite Deakin’s dismissive view, records of the convention indicate that Turner’s speech was welcomed by ‘loud and continuous cheers’, and many subsequent speakers congratulated him on his practical approach.

The convention had several controversial issues to deal with, which primarily went to the relative power balance between the larger colonies (and putative states) and the smaller jurisdictions. On these matters, there was a clear dividing line between NSW and Victoria on the one hand and the remaining colonies on the other. The small colonies wanted to ensure that NSW and Victoria did not have the ability to ride roughshod over the wishes of the minnow jurisdictions. The populations of NSW and Victoria, meanwhile, were strong in their views that the smaller jurisdictions should not have a right of veto over the wishes of the majority of the country’s population.

This was a robust debate, both among the delegates to the convention and the broader population. As an example of the views being put, the radical and influential magazine Tocsin argued that equal representation of the colonies in the proposed Upper House was too big a price to pay for federation, as it would give too much power to the smaller, inherently conservative jurisdictions. Tocsin also warned that Turner would sell Victorians out on this matter. Indeed, Turner, early in the convention, conceded that equal representation of the states in the federal Senate, regardless of population, was an acceptable model. This disappointed some in his own delegation, such as the prominent jurist Henry Bourne Higgins, and the man who was effectively his deputy in the Cabinet, Sir Isaac Isaacs. Higgins in particular felt passionately that this concession amounted to a selling out of the populations of NSW and Victoria.

Turner’s concession to the smaller colonies did not come without him exacting a price, however. When NSW premier George Reid moved a resolution that the Senate not have the power to amend ‘money Bills’ (all Bills involving the levying of taxation or expenditure of funds), therefore neutering much of the proposed Senate’s power, he found a willing seconder in the Victorian premier. In doing so, Turner declared that Victoria would never accept a constitution in which a Senate with equal representation of the states would have the power to amend money Bills.

Now it was the turn of the smaller colonies to be outraged. Sir John Forrest, the premier of Western Australia, declared, ‘All I can say in response to Mr Reid and Sir George Turner is that if those are the only terms upon which they want Federation, they must federate among themselves.’²⁰

The situation was serious, with the impasse over the powers of the Senate threatening the viability of the entire federation project. Barton used his considerable political skills to ensure the federation movement did not collapse at this point. Claiming to have bronchitis, he adjourned the convention to the next day, which avoided an immediate divisive and potentially fatal vote. There was no doubt Barton was genuinely ill, but if it had suited his purposes to put the vote to the convention on the spot, he would have done so. He needed a delay, and he used his health to good political advantage.

As Barton recorded, the next day he

appealed to honourable members not to allow any vote to be taken at this stage which will have the effect of prejudicially and disastrously influencing the union which—if there was any truth in our utterances as candidates the other day—must have been the desire of all of us.²¹

Barton’s emollient words did not end the disagreement between the big and the small colonies, but they did ensure the disagreement did not derail the entire federation effort.

The Reid–Turner resolution was subsequently put to the convention and passed by two votes, with every NSW and Victorian delegate voting for it, together with two Tasmanian delegates who bolted from their delegation to support the big colonies. By the end of the convention, Turner’s role had been such that even Deakin conceded that Turner had ‘earned his place in the first rank of men of influence’.²²

The convention agreed to the draft constitution that Reid and Turner had fought so hard to deliver, and a referendum was held in June 1898. Both Turner as the sitting premier and Deakin as the pre-eminent federation advocate could take credit for the overwhelming 100 520 ‘Yes’ votes in Victoria, compared with just 22 099 ‘No’ votes. South Australia and Tasmania also voted comfortably for a federation. In NSW, however, the vote was much closer, with 71 595 ‘Yes’ votes compared with 66 288 people voting ‘No’. The largest colony’s Federation Enabling Act 1895 required at least 80 000 ‘Yes’ votes for it to become part of a federation. And so Reid immediately sent a plaintive plea to his fellow premiers for a renegotiation of key constitutional terms to win over another 8000 voters in a subsequent referendum.

Given how finely balanced was the result of the constitutional convention, it was hardly surprising that the other premiers, including Turner, were not enthusiastic about reopening a conversation on such fraught issues. Eventually, however, the premiers met in Melbourne to hammer out a compromise that would make the result more palatable to the voters of NSW. Behind closed doors, they thrashed out the issues over five days. Reid demanded that the new federal capital be in NSW. Turner agreed to this provided the capital was