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A land fit for heroes – but not for Australian governors ‘In selecting governors, it would be wise to follow the same policy as in selecting wine. Choose something with plenty of body in it, as it will mature well.’1 The Great War’s slaughter ended on 11 November 1918. There was no great victory – nobody had won. There was just an armistice, an agreement that the fighting would stop. When it did stop, 15 million people were dead and perhaps 20 million more were to die of the influenza that the troops spread around the world as they went home. The Western Front that stretched from Belgium through France and into Switzerland had hardly moved from where it had been in late 1914. There was much unfinished business, many unresolved things that led inexorably to economic depression and then to another war that would cost even more lives. What had it all been for? That was a hard question to answer. It was easiest to take refuge in platitude and say it had been fought to make the world a better place, to make Australia a land fit for its returning heroes. Queenslanders felt that their state held special promise to be such a land. After all, they said, their state was a big place, a golden land in the sun, filled with resources. There was confidence that Queensland could now achieve the destiny that had been delayed. There was optimism and there were high expectations but there was also great tension because there were many conflicting opinions about just where that destiny lay and how it might be reached. There was agreement about one thing: that the chance to make Queensland a better place must not be missed. Vision and leadership would be essential. It was going to be a challenging time for people in public office because, if they failed, the disappointment would be great and the recriminations would be sharp. It would be a testing time for everyone, not least for Queensland’s thirteenth governor, Sir Matthew Nathan. Would he embody the spirit of the new age and help lead the state into the brave new world, or would he be just another place filler?
Left: Sir Matthew Nathan – urbane, charming and far sighted. He was just as much at home at Windorah as he might have been at Wimbledon.
Queensland was lucky. Nathan proved to be a very good governor, the right man for some of the most fortunate years in the state’s history. Part of his gift was that he encouraged Queenslanders not to waste their good fortune, to make sure they built for the future while they enjoyed the present. He was ‘an uncommonly good man, accessible, hospitable and the possessor of a marked gift for friendship.’2 He was strong, determined and hard working, a man of charming manners, a courteous and polished host with an unerring instinct for entertaining. He was a prodigious reader who thoroughly informed himself in advance about every place he visited, wrote his speeches himself and made sure they were based on research, not comfortable assumptions. By the time he arrived in Queensland he had probably read and thought about the state as much as most local residents.
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It may have been that he was better educated than most governors because he was Jewish. He was born in London in 1862, into a financially comfortable family of Jewish origin on both sides. At that time, Jewish boys were not welcomed at the best English public schools and so Matthew and his siblings were privately educated by a series of governesses and tutors. He then went to the Royal Military Academy where he was an outstanding cadet, graduating with sixteen prizes and the academy’s Sword of Honour. He joined the Royal Engineers and was soon sent overseas to help build fortifications, harbour defences and railway lines in Egypt, the Soudan, Sierra Leone, India and Burma. In 1891 he joined the fortifications branch of the War Office before being seconded as Secretary to the Colonial Defence Committee. In 1899 he was sent to Sierra Leone as that colony’s acting governor, then in succession he was governor of the Gold Coast in Africa (1900-04), Hong Kong (1904-07) and
Natal (1907-09). During his time in Hong Kong, he did notable and enduring work to establish a central urban planning and reconstruction policy, regulating the previously chaotic growth of the territory. He initiated work on major thoroughfares in the Kowloon Peninsula and started construction of the Kowloon to Canton (Guangzhou) railway. Nathan Road, Kowloon’s major thoroughfare, was named in his honour. He was knighted in 1902. Nathan returned to Britain in 1909 and then held several increasingly important public service positions until he rose to become Under-Secretary for Ireland. That was not a happy posting for him because he was blamed by his superiors for misjudging the outbreak of the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland. He was brought back to England but continued to hold very senior positions until 1920. He never married, but he enjoyed the company of women and seems to have been magnetically attractive to them. It was an open secret that he conducted a series of discreet affairs with intelligent and beautiful women who sparkled
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From left: The Industrial Home for Boys at Indooroopilly, conducted by the Salvation Army, opened in 1922. Nothing could be taken for granted in the bush, not even water. This boy is drawing water from a soakage at Birdsville. An Isisford boy fills a cask with water for his household while his goat team patiently waits to begin the haul into town. Pupils and teacher at the Windorah State School, 1931.
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in the social and intellectual firmaments. One liaison was with Constance Spry, the author of books about cookery and flower arranging. In Queensland, there was intense competition to be his partner at official functions. When he departed the state, he left behind more than one broken (or at least chipped) heart.3 His appointment as Governor of Queensland was announced in London in July 1920. It is certain that more than usual care was taken when the British authorities selected Nathan for the job. There had been tension and conflict between the Queensland government and Governor Goold-Adams, just as there had been difficulties during the tenure of Lord Chelmsford. After Chelmsford, Sir William MacGregor was hand picked as the man who could rebuild the bridges. Now, Nathan was entrusted with the same demanding task.
Nathan started the repair work before he left England. In October 1920, he spoke at a London gathering organised by the Royal Colonial Institute to farewell him and Lord Stradbroke, Governor-designate of Victoria. Nathan is reported to have said ‘... he applauded the firmness with which Australia had maintained the “White Australia” doctrine ... the maintenance of a high standard of living called for advanced legislation and the schemes developed in Queensland would be watched with keen interest by the whole world. It remained for Australia to see that her whole continent was irrigated and that no drop of water needed for the land should enter the sea.’4 Those words were tailor-made for Queensland, especially to reassure the labour movement that had been so vehemently supportive of ‘White Australia’ but advocated no more governors, at least not imported ones. On 16 October 1920, Nathan and his personal staff left England on the liner Orontes5 which reached Brisbane on third December. Dredging of the Brisbane River made it possible for the Orontes to proceed upstream as far as New Farm, where the new governor boarded the Lucinda for the last stage of his voyage to
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Petrie Bight. There was an especially enthusiastic reception for Nathan as he proceeded along Queen Street. For many people, the occasion seemed to mark the end of the sombre and sorrowful days of war and it seemed to be a new day in a brighter world. An address by returned soldiers was a novel feature of the welcome. Nathan told them ‘that he was glad to meet representatives of the men who made it possible for him to come to this land.’ After being sworn in, Nathan had lunch with the premier and his ministers.6 Two days later, the new governor was cheered by more than 10,000 people at the Brisbane Cricket Ground, where Australian cricketers were playing England.7 Nathan’s Queensland innings was off to a good start. He continued to display very good form through the next five years. They were peaceful and prosperous years, sometimes called the Roaring Twenties. Queensland’s economy was benefiting from a wool boom that began in 1916 and lasted until 1926, with prices in real terms rising as high as they ever were at any time between the 1870s and the present. Seasonal conditions were generally excellent, until late 1925. The sugar industry was completing its transition from plantation agriculture to small farming, with migrants from southern Europe thoroughly disproving the old notion that white men could not work in the tropics. Men who had started as cane cutters often became businessmen or farmers on their own account and they started families that changed Queensland forever. North Queensland communities grew and grew. In other farming districts, closer settlement intensified and agriculture diversified. Returned soldiers were settled on land of their own. Mining, especially copper mining at Cloncurry, had a resurgence during the Great War and the boom was sustained for some years thereafter. Near Cloncurry, in February 1923, prospectors found signs of the huge mineral deposits near the place that was to become Mt Isa. Modern construction techniques and the use of steel and new money made taller buildings possible. In Brisbane, some office blocks even reached the
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From left: Brisbane street scene during the 1912 strike. It was the age of the motor car, the electric tram, the telephone, the wireless – and even the gramophone. Cominos’ Central Cafe and American Bar in Longreach in the 1920s. Greek people brought commercial catering, fruit and vegetable supplies, confectionery and the Hollywood sophistication of milk bars to many towns. Harry Corones (extreme right, back row) with an aerial survey party in Charleville. The Corones family were legendary hotelkeepers.
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dizzy height of six or seven storeys while the City Hall tower was soaring even higher. Queensland’s population in 1921 totalled 755,972, with 209,946 people living in Brisbane, 24,168 in Rockhampton, 21,353 in Townsville and 20,676 in Toowoomba. There was common talk of ‘Australia Unlimited.’ People pointed out that the continent was roughly the same area as the United States, that it had similarly unlimited resources and therefore its destiny was for its economy to become at least as large and prosperous as America’s. Armchair geographers and agriculturalists looked at the big rivers that flowed out to sea or towards Lake Eyre. The dreamers said it would be a simple matter to harness the rivers and harvest their wasted water so that it could be used for irrigation and hydro-electric projects. New science and technology seemed to promise that one day all this might be possible. It was the jazz age, the age of the gramophone, the telephone, the wireless, aeroplanes, motor cars, electricity, perhaps even reticulated water and sewerage. Queensland stood on the threshold of great things. There was a strong feeling that everyone should share in the new prosperity and comfort when it came, a feeling that the state could now afford to spend more on education, health and social welfare. There was even money for roads. Hitherto, the only roads in the state had been made by local authorities and they did not want to spend money on ‘through’ roads that might take people away from their own districts. In 1920, the state government formed the Main Roads Commission (later Department) to build ‘main’ roads that would connect towns and create a state-wide road network.8 Country women in particular put the argument that rural districts should be given the amenities that people in the city had so long taken for granted. On 8 August 1922, a conference for country women was held in Brisbane. It was opened by Lady Forster, wife of the Governor-General, and it was addressed by
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Sir Matthew Nathan. The meeting resulted in the formation of the Queensland Country Women’s Association (QCWA).9 Nathan became a particularly enthusiastic supporter of the organisation and he forged a link between Queensland’s governors and the QCWA that continues in 2009. Nathan was more than a passive patron of the QCWA. He made it a practice wherever he went in rural districts (and he went to them all during his term) to speak with women about forming a local branch of the QCWA and to supply them with literature about the association. He performed many ‘stump-capping’ ceremonies for the QCWA – symbolically placing a galvanised iron cap over one of the stumps upon which a new hostel or meeting room might rest, the cap hopefully being a barrier to the progress of white ants. No doubt it made a pleasant change from laying foundation stones! The QCWA was not Nathan’s only active interest in ‘quality of life’ issues and Queensland’s general welfare. He thought that if white people were going to live comfortably in the tropics their houses should be designed for tropical conditions. In 1923 he donated ten guineas to start a fund for a prize for a competition for better tropical house designs. Nathan was too far ahead of his time in this respect and there was little support from other individuals or organisations. He actively supported the Boy Scout and Girl Guide movements;
he advocated the study of local history and the preservation of materials relating to it, he strove to promote British immigration to Queensland and he accepted appointment as Chancellor of the University of Queensland in 1922. Nathan had not been in Queensland long when he declared that, while he wanted to see people in all parts of the state, he also wanted to see native wildlife. ‘Humanity is humanity everywhere’ he said, ‘but only in this country can I see various strange and interesting plants, mammals and birds.’ He was taken on a number of short tours by the naturalist Alec Chisholm, who later
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From left: Sir Matthew Nathan, centre, on an expedition to the Great Barrier Reef, October 1923. Nathan was a pioneer advocate for research and conservation of the reef. Mrs K.B. McRae (at left), Mrs E.A. Atherton (centre) and Miss Grace Broghero inspecting a tobacco crop at Mareeba, about 1929. The view from a verandah at Government House, looking over blooming jacaranda trees. Right: Sir Matthew Nathan unveiling the Beaudesert War Memorial, 1921.
recalled ‘Once, when we were travelling in the south east, he addressed twenty small schools within a few days and at each one of them he made a different speech ... he was an able and dedicated administrator, a broad minded and refreshing companion and in general a very good bloke.’12 Nathan’s interest in the Great Barrier Reef was more far-reaching. He strongly believed that there should be systematic scientific study of the reef. In September 1922 he took the lead in forming the Great Barrier Reef Committee. He chaired the committee in 1922-23, and was one of the reef’s first and most effective messiahs. As scientist Dorothy Hill wrote ‘Vice-Regal support for the new group was significant in view of the lack of money for research.’13 Perhaps even more significantly, the governor led the way in making the general community aware of the reef’s values. Typical of his proselytizing was his address to the Rotary Club of Brisbane on the first anniversary of the formation of the committee – ‘The magnitude, the mystery and the nature of this phenomena is so well indicated by that stirring name, the ‘Great Barrier Reef’ ... In so far as the reef is of world interest it is fitting that the study of it should claim the consideration of fine intellects in all parts of the world. But the Great Barrier Reef belongs to Australia, and especially to Queensland. We are here responsible for yielding the riches it owes to the world.’ Nathan went on to argue the case for sustained and continued inquiry, with the establishment of a marine biological station an immediate priority.14 Although Nathan was a bachelor, he made Government House a welcoming and comfortable place. His sister-in-law, Estelle Nathan, described a visit to Fernberg in October 1924. ‘A long drive across the hills and bumps on which Brisbane stood, over bad roads with sharp turns, brought us to Government House, itself situated on a steep little hill. It was ... inconveniently far out. The garden was delightful, I never ceased admiring the mauve Jacaranda tree ...
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How can I describe the perfect Britishness and Victorianism of the house and its appurtenances? It might well have been one of the larger ‘residences in their own grounds’ of Wimbledon. ... The rooms were large, light and well arranged, furnished in solid mahogany or satinwood. Royal portraits hung in the dining room and many of Matthew’s own portraits elsewhere. Matthew was an adored and admired Governor. He took the deepest interest in the life, occupation and produce of the country, stimulated all associations for betterment of conditions ... Droughts, being the curse of the country, schemes for irrigation and land reclamation were always in his mind. He also collected many historical works on the colony and eventually presented his valuable library to Brisbane.’15 In actual fact, in 1926 Nathan presented his library of Australian materials to Queensland, on condition that it be kept at the office of the Queensland Agent-General in London, for general reference and especially to inform people on his death who were considering emigrating to Australia.16 After the Second World War, the materials were brought to Queensland and they are now held by the State Library. The Shakespearean actor Allan Wilkie often found himself in Brisbane and was invited to Government House. He enjoyed ‘delightfully informal Sunday evening supper parties when servants were dispensed with and the Governor and his aides personally waited on the guests, amongst whom one could always count on finding whatever interesting visitors happened to be in Brisbane at the time.’17 In March 1925 it was announced that the governor would leave Queensland later in the year.18 Nathan began a series of tours to farewell the people he had come to know so well. In April he journeyed through the south-west of the state, then in June he visited the pastoral districts of the far west, central west and north. Later, he made a final visit to most coastal communities.19 He travelled more than 4,200 miles by motor car and 8,000 miles by train. Everywhere he went, he spoke to school children, visited hospitals and looked at productive enterprises. Everywhere, there was genuine sadness that he was leaving Queensland. On 21 September 1925, he left Brisbane for Hong Kong, sailing via Thursday Island.20 Later, he returned to England, where he retired to a country estate in Somerset. He died there, on 18 April 1939. As he left Queensland, the Brisbane correspondent for The Argus newspaper wrote ‘Sir Matthew Nathan has exercised an intellectual ascendancy in Queensland which has been of very great value to the community. He has been indefatigable ... If ever there was a tradition in Queensland that governors were merely ornamental personages who gave receptions and graced social functions, Sir Matthew has disposed of it effectively.’21 That was not entirely true. Nathan’s impending departure rekindled public debate about a number of questions that had been put to one side during his term. Should Queensland have a governor at all? If yes, who should appoint him? Should governors be local men or should they continue to be British? The questions had been raised by a few people as long ago as the 1890s, but a strong majority of Queenslanders seemed content with the existing arrangements. Then, in 1915, a Labor government was elected on a platform that included doing away with the Legislative Council. That raised questions
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Top left: Edward Granville Theodore, Queensland premier who was determined to abolish the Legislative Council. He got his way in 1922.
about the governors, who were seen as probable obstacles in the path of Legislative Council abolition.
Centre: At the races at Eagle Farm in 1920, from left, HRH the Prince of Wales, Acting Premier John Fihelly, and William Lennon.
Ever since its creation in 1860, there had been arguments about the size, authority and legitimacy of the Council. Queensland’s original constitutional arrangement was that its legislature should be comprised by an elected Legislative Assembly and an appointed Legislative Council. Bills for proposed legislation needed to be passed by both houses before the governor could sign them into law.
Below: Weighing in at the Birdsville races, about 1926. Below right: A civic reception in Tambo for Premier T.J. Ryan, 1917. Tambo was in Ryan’s Barcoo electorate.
There was no express stipulation about the size of the Council, although a convention developed that the Council should have approximately two-thirds the number of members of the Assembly. In 1860, the first eleven members of the Council were nominated by the Governor of New South Wales, for five year terms. Subsequent appointments were to be made by the Governor of Queensland, for life terms. Some of the vexed questions that arose out of these arrangements included whether the Council had any authority over the Assembly’s money bills (the Privy Council held in 1885 that it did not, but the Council ignored that ruling) and was the governor bound by advice from his ministers about the appointment of new councillors? Did the governors have the discretion to reject advice to appoint new councillors if the appointments would enlarge the Council to a size much greater than two thirds the size of the lower house? In particular, did the governors have the power to reject
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advice to make new appointments if the purpose was obviously to abolish the Council and thus radically change Queensland’s constitutional arrangements? From 1915, the Ryan Labor government began to take active steps to implement its long standing policy to abolish the Council. A 1908 law provided that if a bill was twice passed by the Assembly but twice rejected by the Council, it could then be submitted to a referendum. Bills to abolish the Council were passed by the Assembly in 1915 and again in 1917 but on each occasion the Council rejected the proposal. In 1917, the government put the proposal to a referendum but it was soundly rejected, by 179,105 votes to 116,196. Then the government pursued a strategy to appoint new members who would ‘swamp’ the Council and create a majority who would vote for abolition. This strategy was thwarted when Governor Goold-Adams agreed to make some of the new appointments that the government sought, but declined to make the full number of appointments that would be needed to swamp the Council. Premier Ryan seemed content to let the matter rest for the time being but it was vigorously revived after October 1919 when Ryan left Queensland to enter federal politics and Edward Theodore took over as premier. Theodore devised a two pronged strategy. There would be an interval between Goold-Adams’ departure and the arrival of his successor. Theodore would use his considerable powers of persuasion and personal charm to try to ensure that Goold-Adams chose a suitable man to be lieutenant-governor during this interval. Theodore wanted a compliant man to act as governor, a man who would rubber stamp proposed new appointments to the Council. The second limb of Theodore’s strategy was to argue for the appointment of Australian governors, who would be nominees of the Queensland government, not the British government. Going further, the new premier took Labor policy off the shelf and argued for abolition of the office of governor altogether. The long-standing procedure in Queensland was for the appointment of a lieutenant-governor, normally a man who was or had been the President of the Legislative Council, who would hold a dormant commission to act as governor in the event of the absence, incapacity or death of the substantive governor. There was also an administrator, normally the Chief Justice, who would act as governor if both the governor and lieutenant-governor were unavailable to perform the governor’s duties. Appointments to both offices were made by the governor, on the advice of the premier.22 Legislative Council president Sir Arthur Morgan, who had been lieutenant-governor, died in December 1916. Chief Justice Pope Cooper was then appointed lieutenant-governor for short periods between 1917 and 1919. However, Goold-Adams was reluctant to appoint Cooper for the longer period that would follow his departure because he, Goold-Adams, thought that the irascible Cooper would not be able to work harmoniously with the government. By late 1919 Goold-Adams was not well and he did not want to delay his departure from Queensland. It was important that he choose a lieutenant-governor before he left, somebody suitable to act as governor during the possibly long interval before a new governor could take up office. Cooper had been eliminated as a possibility and Goold-Adams now considered William Hamilton, the President of the Legislative Council. However, Hamilton was not suitable because he had a criminal record, having been convicted of conspiracy during the 1891 shearers’ strike. Sir Robert Philp was also a
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possibility, but Goold-Adams thought Philp would be too obviously politically partisan. That left just one name on Goold-Adams’ short list, that of William Lennon, Speaker of the Legislative Assembly.
Top left: Motor cars were a wonderful development, but they could not guarantee arrival at the end of a journey over unmade roads. Centre: Floating a car across the flooded Cooper Creek. Below: ‘Roads’ became quagmires when it rained, dustbowls when it did not.. Top right: Sir Matthew Nathan’s vice regal progress through the far west – travelling from Hammond Downs to Windorah. From left, George Cartwright of Moothandella (at horses’ heads), George Hammond of Hammond Downs seated on buggy at left, Sir Matthew next to him, and two unknown men.
It appears that Goold-Adams conferred with Theodore, who enthusiastically advised the governor that Lennon was certainly the most suitable choice and should be appointed. Lennon was Theodore’s man, a man who would do as he was told. Theodore was almost certainly delighted when Goold-Adams agreed to put Lennon’s name forward to London. The Colonial Office was alarmed by Lennon’s overt identification with the governing Labor Party and by the possibility of his partisanship, but it eventually reluctantly accepted Goold-Adams’ advice that Lennon was the best man for the job. The Office agreed to the appointment, provided that Lennon resigned from the position of Speaker and from the Assembly.23 The Colonial Office consideration of the matter caused some delay which obliged Goold-Adams to delay his departure. Eventually, the outgoing governor was able to formalise Lennon’s appointment and then leave Queensland by train on 26 January 1920, to catch
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up in Melbourne with the vessel he should have boarded some days before.24 On 19 February 1920, Lennon appointed fourteen more Labor nominees to the Council. Labor now had the secure upper house majority it needed to pass a bill to abolish the Council. However, Theodore chose to bide his time on the abolition while he went to London to secure new loans for Queensland and to discuss the appointment of a new governor with British authorities. Lennon’s appointment may have been constitutionally permissible, although there was argument about that. Constitutional or not, it was certainly unorthodox and irregular, a departure from the Westminster spirit if not its letter. The episode caused alarm in London, well beyond the Colonial Office and particularly in the city, the financial district to which Queensland turned when it wanted to raise loans. The state was still a very heavy borrower but potential lenders took a very jaundiced view of ‘socialistic’ measures promised by the Theodore government to control prices, lift land rents and perhaps even abolish the office of governor. Conservative British lenders took the view that the Legislative Council, backed up by the governors, had been a bastion against unbridled socialism. Without these institutions Theodore could do whatever he liked, the financiers thought. Theodore went to London in mid-1921, to try to allay these fears and to secure new loans and to seek discussions with the British government. Theodore intended to make the point that Queensland should have the right to appoint its own governors and that Lennon should be the first of them. He was also to argue that London should not in future withhold assent to Queensland legislation. He tried hard, but Theodore’s arguments were weakened when an independent delegation from Queensland, led by Sir Robert Philp, arrived in London to lobby against some of Theodore’s proposals, particularly those that would affect pastoral lands. As to appointment of governors, Philp and his colleagues made the perfectly valid point that many, probably most, Queenslanders wanted the system of appointment of British men by British authorities to continue. It was the best guarantee that there would be no political partisans in Government House, the best guarantee that there would always be an independent umpire who saw to it that the game was played by the rules. In July 1920 it was reported in London that Theodore had asked Lord Milner, then Secretary of State for Colonies, that no further governors should be appointed to Queensland and that instead the governor’s duties should be performed by the lieutenant-governor, starting with Lennon. The request was disregarded and, on 13 July, the Colonial Office advised that the King had appointed Sir Matthew Nathan.25 During the discussions with Milner, Theodore is said to have undertaken that he would not use the Lennon nominees in the Council to abolish that body until a new election had been held for the Legislative Assembly.26 On 16 July, Queensland’s Agent General entertained a number of British and Australian dignitaries at a dinner at London’s Trocadero restaurant. In a toast to Theodore, the Under-Secretary for Colonies, Leo Amery, said ‘he believed that Mr. Theodore held advanced views that age would cure.’ In selecting statesmen (meaning governors), Amery said ‘it would be wise to follow the same policy as in selecting wine. Choose something with plenty of body in it, as it will mature well.’ In his response, Theodore was conciliatory toward the Colonial
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Office, but he made a ‘violent outburst against the financial interests which, he asserted, had prevented him from achieving his purpose of floating a loan because of the unfortunate misapprehensions prevailing regarding the bona fides and motives of the Queensland Ministry, which was supposedly careless in honouring its obligations.’27
Top left: Spillway at the big dam, Mount Morgan. Left, below: An engine pushes a train up the rack railway toward Mount Morgan. Top right: View from the Queensland National Hotel, toward the Mount Morgan town and mine.
If Theodore was chastened, he did not show it. He returned to Brisbane and called a snap election in October 1920. His government was returned, but with a drastically reduced majority. When Nathan arrived a few weeks later, he assumed, along with almost everyone else, that no more would be heard of Legislative Council abolition because the election result seemed to indicate community disapproval of the proposal and Theodore would accept that the electorate had not given him any mandate to abolish the Council.28 Those assumptions were wrong. In October 1921 Theodore again presented his Abolition Bill. This time, the bill was comfortably carried in both houses. The bill went to Nathan for approval. He reserved it for imperial assent, with the comment that a refusal of assent would simply give Theodore more ammunition to shoot down the office of governor. Nathan also pointed out that local opponents of the bill had made very little to use of proper political processes to defeat it. The new Secretary for Colonies, Winston Churchill, clearly disapproved of what had happened, but recommended assent on the basis that the bill was a matter purely of local concern and Imperial advisers should not intervene to prevent it becoming operative.29 Advice of the royal assent was received in Brisbane on 22 March 1922 and so the Abolition Bill became law. When it was proclaimed the following day, the Legislative Council ceased to exist.30 The tension immediately subsided. The question of who should be appointed governor and by whom did not arise again until toward the end of Nathan’s
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term. Throughout Australia, the Labor Party was showing signs that it took seriously its policy commitment that the state governorships should be filled by Australian appointees. In 1923, Nathan sensed which way the wind was blowing. He offered to resign if he was not wanted in Queensland and if his resignation would facilitate the implementation of Labor policy. He was sharply reminded by the Colonial Office that the home government’s policy was still to continue sending governors from London and to retain those already in office until the six Australian states could reach unanimity on the question.31 That unanimity appeared possible in 1925, when the Labor Party was in office in every state except Victoria. Nathan had been appointed for a three year term but, when that was expiring, Theodore pressed him to stay on until such time as the new policy for the appointment of Australian governors might be consummated. Then, Theodore hoped, an Australian could immediately be appointed to Queensland. Nathan’s term was extended, but as the extension drew to a close the British government took no steps to appoint a successor, pending clarification at the 1925 Premier’s Conference of whether the Australian states would come to the one view about the appointment of Australians. Queensland delayed making any suggestions to London, believing, certainly correctly, that London would not accept a suggestion from Queensland unless it conformed with the unanimously adopted position of all the states.32 The unanimity was never quite achieved because, in 1925, Victoria held out against the other states and refused to agree that from henceforth state governors should be Australians. William Lennon again took over as
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Top left: A fireplough track across the downs was a good road in the 1920s. Above, top: Mt Isa in 1929, six years after the first mineral discoveries there. Below: Mt Isa miners in 1929. Right: January 1925 – Qantas Pilot Moody prepares to take newlyweds Lila and Owen Harris from Colane station, near Winton, to Longreach to catch a train for their honeymoon trip.
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lieutenant-governor when Nathan left Queensland in September 1925. Queensland did not press for a permanent appointment as governor and it seemed that London was happy to allow matters to drift along until opinion about the appointment of local men as governors was clearly expressed within Australia, one way or the other. Finally, it seemed that the status quo had prevailed. By way of confirmation of that, new Royal Instructions to the Governor of Queensland were issued in 1925, replacing those that had been given to Bowen in 1859. The new instructions provided that ‘the Governor shall be guided by the advice of the Executive Council, but if in any case he shall see sufficient cause to dissent from the opinion of the said Council he may act in the exercise of his said powers and authorities in opposition to the opinion of the Council, reporting the matter to us without delay and his reasons for so doing.’33 That made it crystal clear that Queensland’s governors retained perogatives and discretions and that the ultimate authority rested with the monarch and those who advised him or her. That position was not changed until 1986 and nor were the arrangements whereby Australian state governors were appointed by the monarch on the advice of the government in London. In February 1927, the British doctor and colonial administrator Sir John Goodwin was appointed to be Queensland’s new governor. It would be twenty more years before an Australian took over at Government House.
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