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Records of the Australasian
Federal Conventions of the 1890s
The records of the Australasian Federation Conference of
1890 and the Australasian Federal Conventions of 1891 and 1897/8 are among
the most significant founding documents of the Australian nation.
At the Australasian Federation Conference held in Melbourne
from 6 to 14 February 1890, leading politicians from the six Australian
colonies and New Zealand affirmed the desirability of ‘an early union
under the crown’ and committed themselves to persuading their governments
to send delegates to a convention which would ‘consider and report’
on a scheme for a federal constitution. Accordingly, the members of the
National Australasian Convention of 1891 which met in Sydney from 2 March
to 9 April did not debate whether the colonies should federate
but how. They devoted themselves to finding a draft constitution
to which they could agree and which they could take back to their legislatures
for discussion and endorsement. When the Australasian Federal Convention
met, in three sessions, in Adelaide Sydney and Melbourne in 1897 and early
1898, the delegates modified the draft produced in 1891. The Australian
Constitution was contained in the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution
Bill, which was endorsed by the voters of each Australian colony at referendums
in 1898, 1899 and 1900, passed by the British Parliament, and given Royal
Assent on 9 July 1900.
This web site provides access to the following documents:
Debates
and Proceedings of the Australasian Federation Conference, Melbourne,
6-14 February, 1890
Debates
of the National Australasian Convention, Sydney, 2 March to 9 April, 1891
Debates of the Australasian Federal Convention of 1897/8 in three sessions:
These links provide the ability to browse the daily debates of each of the listed conventions. A key word or phrase search across the convention database can be conducted by using the Australian Parliament ParlInfo Search facility, and choosing the collection ‘Constitution’.
The text of these documents has been generated by electronic scanning
of original published volumes of the debates and proceedings. This process
may have caused errors in the text which have not been identified by checking
with optical character recognition. Before citing from this source, data
should be checked against the original documents:
Official Record of the Proceedings and Debates of the Australasian
Federation Conference, 1890. Melbourne, Robert S. Brain, Government
Printer, 1890
Official Report of the National Australasian Convention Debates. Sydney,
2 March to 9 April, 1891. Sydney, George Stephen Chapman, Acting Government
Printer, 1891
Official Report of the National Australasian Convention Debates. Adelaide,
March 22 to May 5 1897. Adelaide, C.E. Bristow, Government Printer,
1897
Official Record of the Debates of the Australasian Federal Convention.
Second Session. Sydney, 2nd to 24th
September, 1897. Sydney, William Applegate Gullick, Government Printer,
1897
Official Record of the Debates of the Australasian Federal Convention.
Third Session. Melbourne, 20th January to 17th
March 1898, 2 vols.
Melbourne, Robert S. Brain, Government Printer, [1898]
Errors in the text will be corrected where identified. They should
be notified to kay.walsh@aph.gov.au
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