The 1919 Australian federal election was held on 13 December 1919 to elect members to the Parliament of Australia. All 75 seats in the House of Representatives and 19 of the 36 seats in the Senate were up for election. The incumbent Nationalist Party government won re-election, with Prime Minister Billy Hughes continuing in office.
The 1919 election was the first held since the passage of the "Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918", which introduced preferential voting for both houses of parliament – instant-runoff voting for the House of Representatives and preferential block voting for the Senate. It was held several months earlier than constitutionally required, so that the government could capitalise on the popularity of Hughes after his return from the Paris Peace Conference. The Nationalists campaigned on the government's war record and appealed to return soldiers. The Australian Labor Party (ALP), in opposition since the 1916 party split, contested a second election under the leadership of Frank Tudor. However, T. J. Ryan was the party's national campaign director and played a key role in the campaign.
The Nationalists won 37 out of the 75 seats in the House of Representatives, including the seat of Ballaarat by a single vote. Labor won 26 seats, a net gain of four. The Nationalists also swept the Senate for a second consecutive election, leaving the ALP with just a single senator, Albert Gardiner. The election was notable for the emergence of the Country Party as a national political force. A referendum was held simultaneous to the election, at which the government unsuccessfully sought approval to amend the constitution for increased government powers over commerce.
Background.
The Nationalist Party, formed after the 1916 Labor Party split, won a large majority at the 1917 federal election. In April 1918, Prime Minister Billy Hughes left Australia to attend the Imperial War Cabinet. He was overseas for sixteen months, which saw the signing of the Armistice of 11 November 1918 and the Paris Peace Conference. He was at the height of his popularity during this time, and was widely feted when he returned to Australia in August 1919. According to Robert Garran, who was both Solicitor-General of Australia and Hughes' personal secretary at the conference, there were three main problems that confronted him upon his return – profiteering, high prices, and industrial unrest.
At the ALP Federal Conference in early October 1919, a resolution was passed calling on T. J. Ryan, premier of Queensland, to enter federal politics. He agreed to do so, and was appointed to the new position of "national campaign director". Con Wallace, MP for West Sydney, agreed to give up the ALP nomination to allow Ryan to win a safe seat. Opposition Leader Frank Tudor remained the party's formal leader, but Ryan had a higher public profile and led the ALP's campaign. According to King O'Malley, who met with him in Hobart a few weeks before the election, Ryan believed that he would become prime minister if Labor won the election.
Electoral reform.
The 1919 federal election was the first to use preferential voting. The "Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918" replaced the previous first-past-the-post system used in the House of Representatives, and also re-introduced postal voting. It was amended the following year to also allow preferential voting for the Senate. The new act repealed the existing "Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902", but did not alter the terms of the "Commonwealth Electoral (War-time) Act 1917", under which naturalised British subjects born in enemy countries were disqualified from voting. This provision mainly affected German-Australians. There was a long history of support for preferential voting in Australia, but the immediate trigger for the new legislation was the decision of farmers' organisations to run candidates of their own in opposition to the Nationalist Party. The Swan by-election in October 1918 saw an ALP candidate elected with just over one-third of the vote, after the Nationalist candidate split the vote with a candidate from the Country Party of Western Australia. The Corangamite by-election in December was the first held under the new system, and resulted in the Victorian Farmers' Union candidate winning from Nationalist preferences.
Campaign.
Constitutionally, a new election was not due until early 1920, but the Nationalists wished to hold an early election to capitalise on Hughes' popularity. On 30 September, the party caucus approved an election for 13 December. The writs were formally issued on 3 November, with the close of nominations on 14 November. However, the campaign had begun in earnest after the last sitting day of federal parliament on 24 October.
Party platforms.
Nationalists.
Hughes and the Nationalists sought re-election largely on the basis of their record in government. The prime minister's 90-minute policy speech, delivered in Bendigo on 30 November, was "stronger on generalities than on concrete proposals". Hughes promised to appoint royal commissions on profiteering, the living wage, and taxation, and to call a constitutional convention for 1920. He planned to overhaul industrial relations by setting up a system of industrial councils with a Commonwealth Industrial Court at their apex. The Nationalists also promised government support of industry, primary producers, and immigration.
Labor.
The ALP was ill-prepared for the election – six weeks before the polling date, it had no party manifesto, had preselected few candidates, and the state branches in Victoria and New South Wales were "virtually bankrupt". The party eventually released its manifesto on 4 November, which was signed by Tudor, Ryan, and Jack Holloway. It "showed much of Ryan's hand in its language and political style", and ended with a quote from Abraham Lincoln. Tudor's policy speech was delivered in Melbourne the following day. The party promised an expansion of the welfare system, including the introduction of widows' pensions, child endowment for orphans and children of invalids, and a significant increase in old-age and disability pensions. It also promised to establish a national shipping line, national insurance office, and national medical service, which were to be funded through a wealth tax.
Issues.
The campaign primarily focused on Hughes and Ryan and their respective records. "The Round Table" observed that "the prominence given to them made genuine political discussion impossible". The Nationalists accused Ryan of disloyalty to the war effort and fostering left-wing extremism, while Labor accused Hughes of mismanaging the war and failing to deal with profiteering. Tudor was "barely considered" in the campaign due to poor health, and twice had to withdraw from campaigning due to "attacks of hemorrhage". The Nationalists claimed Hughes had safeguarded the White Australia policy at the Paris Peace Conference, while the ALP said he had endangered it by failing to stop the Japanese from acquiring the South Seas Mandate. Issues relating to returned soldiers were also prominent, and the 1919 election has been classed as a wartime or "khaki" election, despite it taking place over a year after the Armistice.
Returned soldiers.
Both parties were keen to secure the votes of returned soldiers, and Hughes in particular cultivated them as a new political base. In 1919, there were about 270,000 returned soldiers out of a total enrolment of 2.85 million; they were viewed as a "vital political constituency". While Hughes was already popular with the armed forces, he sought an explicit endorsement from the main lobby group for returned soldiers, the Returned Sailors and Soldiers Imperial League of Australia (RSSILA). Its newly elected president was Gilbert Dyett, a 28-year-old junior officer who was protective of the organisation's independence and political neutrality. In the lead-up to the election Hughes had five separate meetings with Dyett and other officials. He was willing to make concessions on repatriation policy and other related issues, but repeatedly stressed that the RSSILA's agenda could only be enacted if the Nationalists won, for which a formal endorsement was necessary. Dyett was unwilling to compromise his neutrality, and consequently the RSSILA "gained almost every concession they sought, yet maintained their independence by holding out to Hughes the prospect of returned soldier support while never granting it".
Sectarianism.
Sectarianism between Catholics and Protestants became an issue in the campaign. In early November, Ryan chaired an Irish Race Convention in Melbourne, which had been organised by Catholic archbishop Daniel Mannix to support Irish home rule. Mannix tacitly endorsed Ryan as prime minister, stating that "Ireland and Irish Australia have no reason to be ashamed of him, either as Premier of Queensland or as the prospective Prime Minister of the Commonwealth". Additionally, the Catholic press in Melbourne and Sydney "unashamedly support[ed] Ryan and his party". In response, Protestant organisations ran advertisements claiming a Labor government would see Australia controlled by the Catholic Church.
McDougall incident.
One issue in the campaign was the anti-war poem "The White Man's Burden", written by John Keith McDougall in 1900 during the Boer War. It contained lines critical of soldiers, describing them as "sordid killers who murder for a fee", "hog-souled and dirty-handed", and "fools and flunkeys". The poem was republished on a number of occasions during World War I – in January 1915 by the "Labor Call", the official ALP newspaper in Victoria, and later by McDougall's opponents at the 1915 Grampians by-election and 1917 federal election. On 13 November 1919, "Melbourne Punch" re-published excerpts from the poem, contrasting them with the ALP's election manifesto which praised soldiers. Pro-government newspapers did likewise, particularly "The Argus", and a leaflet containing the poem was widely circulated. Hughes frequently quoted the poem in his campaign speeches, stating that returned soldiers faced a choice between "those who stood by you, or those who spoke contemptuously of you as 'sordid killers'". Pro-opposition newspapers noted that Hughes had in fact campaigned for McDougall four years later, when he was still a member of the ALP. The outcry over the poem was directed at the ALP rather than its author, who was often not identified. However, a week before the election, a group of about 20 ex-soldiers kidnapped McDougall from his property in Ararat, before tarring and feathering him and dumping him in the street, bound and blindfolded. In February 1920, six of the men were convicted of assault and fined £5 each, while receiving sympathy from the magistrate and much of the press.
Results.
House of Representatives.
Out of the 75 seats in the House of Representatives, 37 were won by the Nationalists and 26 by the Labor Party. In Melbourne Ports and Newcastle, the ALP candidate was elected unopposed. Eleven of the remaining twelve seats were won by candidates endorsed by or aligned with the farmers' organisations in each state; they subsequently formed the Country Party. The remaining seat was won by Frederick Francis, who stood as an "independent Nationalist" in the Melbourne seat of Henty and defeated the sitting Nationalist member.
Government ministers Paddy Glynn and William Webster were among those who lost their seats. The closest margin of victory was in Ballaarat, where Nationalist Edwin Kerby defeated the sitting Labor member Charles McGrath by a single vote. The result was successfully challenged in the Court of Disputed Returns, with Justice Isaac Isaacs criticising the "almost incredible carelessness" of the electoral officers. McGrath won the seat back at the resulting by-election. Mary Grant was the only woman to stand for the House of Representatives, polling 18.1 percent of the vote in Kooyong.
Senate.
In the Senate, the Nationalists won 18 out of the 19 seats up for election. The party had previously won all 18 seats at the 1917 election, leaving them with "an absurdly large majority" – after 1 July 1920, when the new senators began their term, Albert Gardiner was the only non-government senator and the sole representative of the Labor Party in the chamber. The country parties failed to win any seats, but some Nationalist senators were sympathetic to their views. Mary McMahon was the only woman to stand for the Senate, polling 0.3 percent of the statewide vote in New South Wales.
Aftermath and analysis.
According to Hughes' biographer L. F. Fitzhardinge, "the result of the election gave no satisfaction to anyone". The Nationalists were the only party capable of forming a government, but their failure to win an absolute majority weakened the position of Hughes within the party. Neither of the referendum questions carried. Ryan attributed the ALP's defeat to the new voting system, while James Catts, the party's campaign director in New South Wales, stated in January 1920 that "the defeat of Labor is due to Labor". Senior Labor MP William Higgs publicly blamed the election result on interference from the organisational wing, and was expelled