Andrew Fisher: Prime Minister of Australia by David Day
Sydney: Fourth Estate, 2008 ISBN 9780732276102
This is both a necessary and disappointing book. Necessary, as it is to date the only full-length biography of Andrew Fisher, Australia's first Labor Prime Minister and the first socialist leader in history to be elected with a majority government; and disappointing, as I felt as a reader little wiser as to the inner workings of Fisher's mind or his governments when I finished the book.
Most Australians - if they know anything at all about Fisher - will recall his famous statement that Australia would support Britain in World War One "to the last man and the last shilling" (which, I discovered in the book, was delivered in Colac, Victoria, not far from my home). The War was in many ways the undoing of Fisher and his hopes for Labor, with the necessity to provide men and treasure ham-stringing government initiatives and dividing the party.
Fisher came from a Scottish mining family, with a father who was politically active, so it's no surprise to learn that he was an active organiser in Ayrshire before he emigrated (with his brother) to Queensland. He quickly found work in the mines there, and almost as quickly began moving in socialist circles. A stint in the Queensland Parliament saw him a minister in the first Labor government in the world, Anderson Dawson's short-lived Queensland Government in 1899.
Fisher was elected to the Federal Parliament in the first Australian election in 1901, running on a platform that mainly consisted of championing White Australia. Day is quite embarrassed about this fact and tries to skim over it as much as he can during the book - he may have been better served to explain a little more than he does how the fear of miscegenation and of takeover by Asian races had a hold on the population as a whole and that Fisher was giving the people what they wanted, as well as obviously believing it himself as well. His support of the White Australia policy, and especial fear of Japan's expansion into a poorly populated Australia, remained with him for his whole political career, even after Australia and Japan fought side-by-side in World War One.
As for his socialism Fisher understood, perhaps better than some of his comrades, the need to tread carefully and not scare the general populace. Once he became Prime Minister, he was especially careful to not overspend, to ensure Australia's defence, and attempt to develop the North as well as enshrine pensions, arbitration, and other more socialist policies. He came to be seen as a "safe pair of hands" as Prime Minister.
Perhaps his greatest achievement was to begin to move Australia along the path to being Australia. It is easy to forget that when he took the reins of power the country was barely ten years old, the Premiers of each State still wielded enormous power, and weren't prepared to give it up to the Commonwealth without a fight. Fisher realised early that the Federal Government needed more fiscal power than that provided for in the Constitution, and his unceasing and unsuccessful referendum campaigns took up much of his time.
Day skims the surface of much of this history: it seems that Fisher did not leave much behind him, no diary or copies of his letters, so it would have been hard for Day to get to Fisher's thoughts at times, but I do wonder whether he could have mined the papers of Fisher's contemporaries more to provide more context. Day began his career as a historian of war, and this comes out in the book with a focus on the Dardanelles Campaign, of which Fisher had little knowledge and even less say. Less pages on this and more on the machinations of the Labor Party and Billy Hughes in particular, may have helped flesh out not only Fisher's life in politics, but the milieu he worked in.
Day paints Fisher as a man of high principle and a man of the people, a worker running a worker's government. While this was no doubt the case, it strikes one on reading the book that Fisher was a canny Scot when it came to money, and a proud one when it came to his position as Prime Minister. As was noted by the Sun newspaper, Fisher had "a Scotsman's regard for a profitable contract."
In the end it was Fisher's health that was his undoing, rather than the machinations of Hughes or the conservatives: he left at a time of his own choosing, to become High Commissioner in London. What could have been another high point of his career turned out to be but a highly-paid sinecure, as Hughes' megalomania didn't allow Fisher any freedom of movement, and his own declining health reduced his ability to be effective. His fall into dementia in his last years was a sad end to an amazing life.
There is no doubt that Australians should know more about Andrew Fisher. David Day in this book has begun that process, but I feel the definitive biography is yet to be written.
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