Review: Andrew Fisher

Most Australians know nothing of the man who became Australia's fifth Prime Minister in 1908. Some however will recognise the bold statement attributed to Andrew Fisher at the outbreak of World War I when as Opposition leader he committed Australia’s support for Britain "To the Last Man and the Last Shilling".

David Day tells the story of a remarkable man who in 1910 led the first democratic socialist Government ever elected anywhere in the world. Australia had already had Labor Prime Ministers (Chris Watson and Fisher himself in 1908) and Queensland a Labor Premier (Anderson Dawson) but they led minority Governments, whereas Fisher had a majority. He was elected in his own right and with a mandate to build a nation.

His election was not without controversy, stirring the fevered imaginings of some conservative businessmen who were convinced that the sky would fall in. They wrote to newspapers and to bureaucrats to complain.

Born in Scotland, Fisher began work in the coal mines aged 10, was a union leader at 17, and immigrated to Queensland at 22. He came from a generation who wanted more than his constrained circumstances in Ayrshire could allow. Yet it was here where Andrew Fisher’s socialism was forged. It was built on Presbyterian principles and the twin beliefs of giving to all (white) men the fairest of conditions and the greatest of opportunity. Much of what Day explores in Fisher’s subsequent behaviour traces back to these formative years.

He won a seat in the Queensland Parliament at 30, a seat he subsequently lost and won again before being elected to the first National Parliament in 1901.

Much of what Australians take for granted was established during the three Fisher Governments. The site for the national capital was established, the Military College at Duntroon (then the officer training school) set up and the first ships of the fledgling Australian Navy commissioned and delivered.

It was Fisher who established the Commonwealth Bank, the transcontinental railway and who gave to Australia old-age and disability pensions as well as workers compensation.

The economic and social reforms of this Government would not be matched until the Chifley Government.

Despite these great achievements, David Day reveals that like all those at the top he was not without opposition, enemies and detractors. As a national leader in a newly formed country Fisher found the State Premiers to be hugely uncooperative on many issues, not least of which was his desire to see a single-gauge railway line to better serve trade and more importantly to strengthen defence.

Where he couldn’t win the issue he worked to win the hearts and minds by giving Australians the things that helped them develop a national identity. The adoption of wattle as the national flower and its introduction into the design of the Australian armorial bearings is a case in point.

As is often the case with politicians, the greatest threats to Fisher came from within his own party and his third term as Prime Minister was diminished both by the drawn out and debilitating war and by constant undermining by his deputy Billy Hughes.

In late1915 Fisher resigned as Prime Minister and also from Parliament and was replaced by Hughes. Fisher took up the position (which Hughes had repeatedly rumoured he wanted but Fisher denied) as Australian High Commissioner in London, a position he held until 1921. He came back briefly to Australia but returned to London in 1922 where his “mental faculties dissipated” and he died in 1928.

This is an immensely readable biography and David Day is no stranger to the lives of Australian leaders, having previously chronicled the lives of Curtin and Chifley.

He treats his subject with the same honesty and compassion as he says Fisher conferred on his contemporaries. Yet there is something unnerving about the way he introduces each chapter, each period of Fisher’s life with a short narrative vignette highlighting the dark world of the dementia into which Fisher ultimately withdrew.