Part One – Laying the Foundations
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chapter one – To Erect a New and Separate Colony to be called queen’s land
To erect a new and separate colony to be called Queen’s Land ‘The governors have stood for and upheld one fundamental principle upon which Queenslanders are agreed – that all people of all parties and all walks of life belong to the same community, a body politic that is a parliamentary democracy where government is conducted according to law. The highest purpose of the governors is to see to that.’1 This is a book about Queenslanders and their progress through history since the tenth day of December 1859. On that great day, at the direction of Queensland’s first governor, Sir George Bowen, Letters Patent issued by Queen Victoria were read to an elated audience. Queensland was thereby proclaimed to be a new colony, separate from New South Wales. The proclamation was read by Bowen’s acting private secretary, Abram Moriarty, who spoke from the balcony of a temporary Government House in Ann Street in Brisbane. Later that day, Bowen appointed an Executive Council to take charge of Queensland’s government until a parliament had been created. Five days later, Moriarty became Queensland’s first public servant when Bowen appointed him Under Colonial Secretary.
Left: Queen Victoria’s long reign (1837-1901) spanned Queensland’s evolution from a convict outpost to a self governing colony and eventually a state within the Commonwealth of Australia. Below: Brisbane begins to grow: Kangaroo Point, in about 1853.
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Part One – Laying the Foundations
Queenslanders had been put in charge of their own affairs; from that day forward their futures were in their own hands. On 6 June 18591, Queen Victoria had assented to the creation of the new and separate colony, to be called Queen’s Land2 at her suggestion. However, the separation could not become effective until the first governor arrived to officially proclaim the separation and then establish the new colony’s government. Through the 150 years since that momentous first Proclamation Day, Queenslanders have had special relationships with Governor Bowen and his successors. Through all those years, the governors have stood for and upheld one fundamental principle upon which Queenslanders are agreed – that all people of all parties and all walks of life belong to the same community, a body politic that is a parliamentary democracy where government is conducted according to law. The highest purpose of the governors is to see to that. They are to be referees if necessary; they are to transcend divisions and to be living proof of the idea that Queenslanders have things in common that unite them and make it possible for everyone to live together despite their differences. Changing times: Left: Group at Government House, about 1898. From left, standing: Captain Barton, Captain Cecil, Captain Pelham, unknown, Sir E. Richardson, Mr P.W.G. Stuart, Captain Pakenham; sitting: the Hon. G.R. Le Hunte, Mrs Pakenham, Queensland Governor Lord Lamington, Lady Brassey, the Hon. Victor Cochrane-Baillie, Lady Lamington with baby Gem on her knee. Right: Lady Mansfield and Sir Alan (Queensland’s Governor 1966-1972), with friends at Lone Pine sanctuary. This image was used for the Mansfield’s Christmas card from Government House.
In fulfilling their purpose, the governors perform many roles that are taken for granted. It has seldom been necessary for Queenslanders to reflect very deeply on why they have a governor and what that governor does. For a people as pragmatic as Queenslanders are, it is sufficient that their system works. It has stood the test of time and it is the envy of many communities who live under different arrangements. They know that their governor represents centuries of constitutional tradition that is at the core of our
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chapter one – To Erect a New and Separate Colony to be called queen’s land
civilisation; they know that the governor is the symbolic head of Queensland – a special place where people have come together to live as Queenslanders, under the rule of law. That is enough. It has lately become fashionable to dismiss those traditions and that symbolism as fossilised survivals from a vanished age. But it would be a pity if, during their state’s sesqui-centenary, Queenslanders did not pause for a moment to reflect on how the cornerstone of their organised society, as expressed through the state’s constitutional arrangements, has worked for them through those 150 years since Governor Bowen came to Queensland to set up the apparatus that would make it possible for Queenslanders to govern themselves. After all, the traditions and symbolism of the governors as the formal pinnacles of our system of government are more than mere curiosities. They are central to the arrangements for the management of our community. If there is one consistent theme in Queensland’s history, it is the steady desire of Queenslanders ever since 1859 to see their colony/state achieve economic and social development in the context of a system that guarantees stable, civilised, democratic government. Queensland has been lucky – for 150 years it has had such a system. The governors have been the symbolic heads of that system; the office of governor embodies all the accumulated and inherited tradition that came to Queensland with Governor Bowen. That inheritance has not been the exclusive possession of Queenslanders of British descent; it has been embraced with particular enthusiasm by people who have come to Queensland from quite different places with quite different systems, traditions and symbols. Bowen brought to Queensland a pre-fabricated system of government that had been fashioned from centuries of experience. Since then, the system has evolved and it has been enriched in the Queensland context. Whatever decisions we may make about the form of our system of government in the future, the system we have today will be the foundation for that future. Bowen’s instructions directed him to ‘erect’ Queensland as a new and separate self-governing body politic, with all the institutions and procedures that went with the Westminster system and a constitutional monarchy. There would be representative government by a parliament that was in part elected; there would be responsible government in the sense that the colony’s administrators would be directed by and answerable to the parliament; and there would be an Executive Council that would give formal effect to ministerial decisions. The Crown, the sovereign Queen Victoria, would be at the head of the apparatus of government in Queensland and the governor would represent the Queen in the new colony. The governor would do all the things that were necessary to carry out government in Queensland but, in accordance with the Westminster system, the governor would act only on the advice of his ministers. It was an apparatus that was created very quickly and then functioned very effectively in the new colony because, at least in its principles, it was well understood by everyone who was involved. Those principles were regarded as part of the birthright of every British citizen; they were part of the cultural inheritance of almost all of the people who had come to Australia from Britain since 1788.
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Part One – Laying the Foundations
Those essential principles had been evolving in England since at least the reign of Henry the Second (1154-1189), the great king who took decisive steps to create a centralised system of administration and justice and who nurtured the notion that everyone in the country, even the highest nobles, had obligations to the king. In return, the king accepted the obligation to guarantee a stable and secure society, to defend its citizens and protect them against oppression. Since 1189, those principles and the system begun by Henry had been continuously evolving in England. In 1215, Magna Carta declared that the people had rights the king could not take away and confirmed that the king was ‘below the law.’ In other words, there were limits to royal government. Some later monarchs refused to accept this, but, after a turbulent seventeenth century that saw revolution, the execution of a king and a republican experiment, the supremacy of the law was confirmed. Then the English people had decided that they wanted an end to the turbulence. They wanted a monarchy, but it should be a constitutional monarchy, not a monarchy where the sovereign’s will was absolute. Instead, the people wanted
Left: Sir William MacGregor, one of the great men of the Empire. He made a decisive and very positive difference to Queensland. Opposite: Top: Governor Sir Hamilton John Goold-Adams (seated, third from right) and Lady Goold-Adams (seated, at left) on the occasion of the visit to Brisbane by British defence adviser Lord Jellicoe (seated, second from left) and Lady Jellicoe (seated, second from right). Centre: The 1888 visit of Sir Anthony Musgrave (seated, third from left) and Lady Musgrave (seated, in centre) to the North Phoenix mine at Gympie. Below: Staff at Government House during Sir Samuel Blackall’s term. Far right: George Augustus Constantine Phipps, the second Marquis of Normanby.
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a monarchy based on the rule of law, resting on the principle that the will of the reigning monarch would be subordinate to laws made by parliament. All citizens would be equal under the law and the monarch would have the responsibility of guaranteeing that equality. In 1701, in circumstances of doubt about the continuity of succession to the throne, the English parliament enacted the Act of Settlement. It defined who might ascend to the throne and on what terms. The English wanted no more of the notion of the Divine Right of Kings that had brought the Stuart kings into conflict with parliament. The Stuarts had been Roman Catholics and they had subscribed to the view that they were God’s vice-regents on earth and were subject to no power other than God. The Act of Settlement therefore specifically excluded Roman Catholics from the succession. It was the final proof of parliament’s supremacy. The Act declared itself to be ‘An Act for the further Limitation of the Crown and better securing the Rights and Liberties of the Subject.’ It concluded with an emphatic assertion of the supremacy of the laws made by parliament –
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The Laws and Statutes of the Realm confirmed. And whereas the Laws of England are the Birthright of the People thereof and all the Kings and Queens who shall ascend the Throne of this Realm ought to administer the Government of the same according to the said Laws and all their Officers and Ministers ought to serve them respectively according to the same The said Lords Spirituall and Temporall and Commons do therefore further humbly pray That all the Laws and Statutes of this Realm for securing the established Religion and the Rights and Liberties of the People thereof and all other Laws and Statutes of the same now in Force may be ratified and confirmed And the same are by His Majesty by and with the Advice and Consent of the said Lords Spirituall and Temporall and Commons and by Authority of the same ratified and confirmed accordingly. In 1707, the Act of Settlement and the principles underlying it moved north into Scotland when the Act of Union created the Kingdom of Great Britain,3 comprising the countries of England, Wales and Scotland. Since then, the British system of government by a constitutional monarchy has migrated to many distant and different places. The system came to New South Wales with the First Fleet in 1788. At first, the new settlement was governed as a Crown Colony, where the governor as the supreme local official implemented instructions formulated in distant Whitehall. However, as soon as it became apparent that New South Wales
Below: Cane cutting gang at Childers, about 1918. All but three of these Greek men had come from the island of Kythera. It had previously been thought that white men could not do this sort of work in the tropics, but southern Europeans were proving that wrong. Right, above: Travelling outfitters, near Yatala, in 1871. When travel was much more difficult, business people often went to their customers. Centre: Mrs Taylor, at Isis Downs, near Isisford. Below: Mollie, with Colin and Betty Milson at Springvale station, near Boulia, 1923.
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would become something more than a prison, the British authorities began to plan for the progressive devolution of all the responsibilities of government to local people. It is notable that the Australian colonies evolved in an environment when British policy was to give the colonies self-government as soon as the colonial communities wanted it – or even sooner. The British were mindful of the regrettable consequences of trying to suppress the aspirations the American colonists had for constitutional advancement. Until the last few decades of the nineteenth century, the memory of what had happened in America motivated a generous encouragement of colonial constitutional progress. So did the increasing acceptance of liberal notions of individual freedoms and the idea that those freedoms gained best expression and protection within a democratic constitutional monarchy. Then, as the nineteenth century closed in a fervour of Imperial excitement and unshakeable confidence in British greatness, colonial constitutional advancement was slowed down as the policy shifted back to a more cautious approach. Queensland, and all the other Australian colonies except Western Australia, were fortunate to have come to maturity during the more generous policy era. The result was that, by the third quarter of the nineteenth century, the Australian colonies were as democratic as any places on earth and considerably more democratic than the Mother Country itself. Had Australian colonisation occurred a few decades earlier, or later, our history would probably have been very different. New South Wales was not very old when it was acknowledged in Britain that the colony’s future would be as a free society, best ruled by votes and not by the lash of the convict scourgers. The British colonial authorities resolved that New South Wales should eventually have a system of representative and responsible government. A governor, as local representative of the Crown, would be at the head of that government. The transition to such a form of self-government began in New South Wales in 1823, when a Legislative Council was created to advise the governor. At first, the Council was comprised entirely of the governor’s appointees. Then, from 1842, two thirds of the Council’s members were elected. In 1853, the Council drew up the New South Wales Constitution Bill, providing for a fully elected Legislative Assembly and a wholly appointed Legislative Council. This was ratified by the British parliament in 1855. In accordance with the British system, the governor would continue to be at the pinnacle of government. The governor’s appointment would be a vice-regal one, in the strict sense that the governor would act in place of the monarch, to carry out the duties that would have been undertaken by the Queen had she been personally present in the colony. It would be necessary for the governor to assent to all bills passed by the parliament before those bills could become law; and the governor would appoint executive officers. However, as in Britain, the powers of the governor were not personal, nor were they to be exercised with a free hand. Rather, the governor’s duties were to be performed only on the advice of ministers, who in turn were to be answerable to parliament for their advice and actions. These arrangements created both representative and responsible government for New South Wales. They came into effect in 1856.
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This was the model that Governor Bowen was instructed to follow when he ‘erected’ Queensland as a separate colony in December 1859. Since then, there have been legislative changes and other modifications that have occurred by usage and through the growth of constitutional conventions. For example, Queensland no longer has a Legislative Council. However, the essential principles that were confirmed in England in 1701 and then brought to Australia in 1788 remain today as the foundations of Queensland’s constitutional arrangements. The point is illustrated by the fact that if George Bowen came back to Queensland in its sesqui-centenary year he could quite comfortably take up office again. Little has changed in the fundamentals of his old job. On 26 March 2009, Governor Penelope Wensley swore in the ministers of the Bligh government at Fernberg, Queensland’s present Government House. The swearing-in ceremony followed the election of the fifty seventh Queensland parliament. If Governor Bowen had been present on that occasion he would have heard echoes of the proceedings he had conducted in December 1859; Bowen would have completely understood and approved what was happening. Illustrious and effective though he was as Queensland’s first governor, Bowen might now feel slightly out of place as a British citizen in Queensland’s highest office. He would be sensitive to the fact that since 1946 all but one of Queensland’s governors have been Australians. Since 1986,4 governors have been appointed by the Queen on the advice of the Queensland government rather than on the recommendation of the British government, which no longer has any responsibility at all for the government of Queensland. Bowen might have been startled to see a woman doing his old job and to learn that Governor Wensley is in fact the third female to hold Queensland’s highest office. But Governor Wensley, for her part, might find much that is relevant today in a letter that Bowen brought with him to Brisbane. The letter to Bowen was from Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the Secretary of State for Colonies, and it was written on 29 April 1859. ‘I have the pleasure to inform you that the Queen approves your appointment to Moreton Bay, which will henceforth bear the appellation of Queensland. Accept my congratulations ... ... for your guidance in the new Colony ... Abstain as much as possible from interference. Avoid taking part with one or the other ... you must be strictly impartial. Mark and study the idiosyncrasies of the community; every community has some peculiar to itself ... in your public addresses appeal to those which are the noblest ... ... keep up the pride in the mother country. Throughout all Australia there is a sympathy with the ideal of a gentleman. This gives a moral aristocracy. Sustain it by showing the store set on integrity, honour and civilised manners; not by preferences of birth, which belong to old countries. ... As you will have a free press, you will have some papers that may be abusive. Never be thin-skinned about these, laugh them off. ... Above all, men are governed as much by the heart as by the head. Evident sympathy with the progress of the colony; traits of kindness, generosity, devoted
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chapter one – To Erect a New and Separate Colony to be called queen’s land
energy ... a pure exercise of patronage; an utter absence of vindictiveness or spite; the fairness that belongs to magnanimity – these are the qualities that make Governors powerful. The Governor who is the least huffy, and who is most careful not to over-govern, he is the one who has most authority. Pardon all these desultory hints; and, wishing you all health and enjoyment in the far land ...’5 Lytton was stressing the importance of the governor’s identification with the ambitions and achievements of the people of the colony; he was drawing attention to the opportunity the governor would have to represent the people, to themselves as well as to others. His special task was to see that Queenslanders knew who they were, had a good opinion of themselves and good reason to hold that opinion. It is significant that in his advice to Bowen, Lytton took the governor’s formal constitutional duties for granted. Instead, Lytton emphasised the importance of the governor’s relationships with the people of Queensland. Those relationships are a dimension of the role of the governors that is often ignored or glossed over in discussions about vice-regal powers and responsibilities. Bowen would have been surprised: Left: Governor Quentin Bryce on 21 July 2008, delivering her farewell speech as governor of Queensland before becoming Australia’s first female Governor-General. Centre: Governor Leneen Forde, Queensland’s first female governor. Right: Governor Penny Wensley, Queensland’s current governor and its third woman in the role.
In the pages that follow, we seek to redress that. We will illustrate how the various governors have carried out their constitutional duties, but we will also explore the ways in which the governors have shown their ‘evident sympathy’ with the people of Queensland and their progress. We will join the governors and the people of Queensland in their journeys along some of the roads they have travelled since 1859.
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