A Great Australian

What if our ‘border wars’ were real?  What if the unseeable lines of our continent were in fact national borders, at which citizenship not residency determined our movements?

Instead of state-based police forces peaceably overseeing the regulated movement of Australians in the name of public health, imagine the armed forces of separate nations preventing movement at the Tweed, or Albury, or Bordertown.  Imagine this had been the case for more than 100 years…

This dystopic alternative reality is not inconceivable.  If nothing else, 2020 has taught us that many accepted, fundamental truths are far more brittle than we might have considered. 

2020 is also significant as it marks the centenary of the death of a man who arguably did more than anyone to deliver us the security of a continent to ourselves, and the ability to live freely within it.

What name springs to mind?  Perhaps Edmund Barton? While some may recall from their schooling the name of our first Prime Minister, if Barton is remembered he is not remembered like a Churchill, or a Washington.  We do not have within our national memory store a well of the great individuals who made the modern Australia.  Even less do we have a national knowledge of our history before European arrival.  Both are shortcomings.

Tomorrow – Sunday 9 August – commemorates, without fanfare, 100 years since the death of Sir Samuel Griffith. 

If we had a Mount Rushmore, his face would be on it.  Instead we have Sir Samuel Griffith Drive which encircles Mount Coot-tha, near the Toowong cemetery in which Griffith is buried, in a grave of no distinction.

But without Griffith, there is no Australia. 

And Australians should know more about this man.

The act of our peaceable formation as a nation of federated states on 1 January 1901 is under-appreciated.  It is a giant story that remains relatively unknown, and largely not well told.

If the actions of Griffith (and others) had failed, we could easily be a continent of more than one nation.  Nations don’t get many chances like the one our colonial forebears converted into our Commonwealth.

Griffith is the James Madison of Australia.  Author of the Constitution, author of the legislation that created the High Court of Australia, then its first Chief Justice and much, much more. 

It was Griffith who held the pen as our Constitution was drafted in 1891.  In his papers are the handwritten annotations to this draft which was amended only slightly at the subsequent Federal Conventions. The document, of his pen, came into force and created the Commonwealth of Australia as the calendar clicked over to 1901. 

As the document which founded the modern Australian nation, it has endured and enabled.  It has flexed, and evolved.  It is self-healing; capable of regeneration.  It is a work of genius. 

Griffith brokered the crucial foundations of the Australian constitutional compact aboard the official Queensland Government yacht, Lucinda, upon the Hawkesbury River.  He had on board Barton, as well as Andrew Inglis Clark and Charles Kingston amongst others. He was not merely the stenographer, but a negotiator, broker, draftsman and advocate. 

To pull together the interests of the smaller states and larger states has been an enduring challenge for all Australian leaders.  Griffith’s giant capability gave future Australian Prime Ministers the chance to face that challenge.  Without him, there are no Australian Prime Ministers.

Griffith was a substantial public figure before his role as one of the ‘Fathers of Federation’.  Twice a Premier of Queensland, he was then the Chief Justice of Queensland prior to his call-up to the same role in the new nation in 1903.  He was a barrister who became Attorney-General, and author of the criminal code which remains in force today in Queensland, and in Western Australia and was adopted in other Commonwealth jurisdictions. 

He was a man of letters.  He translated Dante from the original Italian as a hobby.  He believed in education: introducing the first legislation in Queensland to provide for free, secular, compulsory public education.  He advocated for the building of universities in colonial Australia.

He was a fierce intellect, with a fierce worth ethic.  He was reported to have worked late into the night, stopping only when the whisky bottle was dry.

Sir Samuel is hard to categorise through modern labels, or judge by today’s sensibilities.  He was damned by landholders for his abolitionist stance on labour drawn from the Pacific, then heralded by them when he reversed his view in government.  He spoke in favour of the emerging labour movement, introducing legislation to recognise unions, and then deployed armed forces to break the Shearer’s strike of 1891. 

Perhaps this merely points to the fact that he was just like any other politician through the ages, and not much has changed!  Or perhaps these contradictions recognise that views can evolve, priorities can change, and leaders must be responsive as well as resolute.

There may be argument as to the respective contributions of Henry Parkes, Alfred Deakin, Barton and Sir Samuel when it comes to our federating.  There may be conjecture about the draftsmanship of the Constitution as between Griffith and Inglis Clark.  There will be various views as to who is our greatest jurist. 

But there can be no doubt that Griffith was a towering figure in our history.   Yet so little is known of him.  So little is he recognised.  As far as I have been able to find out, the author of our founding statute does not have a statue anywhere in Australia. 

He has a suburb of Canberra, and a federal electorate named after him, and of course, Griffith University.  How is it that we are so ignorant of him that we do not have our law courts named in his honour?

His original family homestead, Merthyr House, named after his Welsh birthplace of Merthyr Tydfil, is gone.  Its ghost is commemorated only by Merthyr Road in New Farm, off which runs streets named Samuel and Griffith.  A Llewellyn Street between them is almost certainly named after his son who died young, and for whom Griffith grieved terribly until his own death in 1920.

Sir Sam Griffith was a great Australian, perhaps one of the greatest Australians.  Indeed, he was a great Queenslander who brokered a path that paved the way for South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania to agree with Victoria and New South Wales upon a federation of the colonies.  That bequeathed us a continent to ourselves, rich and abundant.  It gifted us a peaceful formation, and a security that we should not take for granted.

At the very least, we should remember him tomorrow and perhaps resolve anew how we might better honour his contribution.

6 August 2020

Brisbane

Andrew Fraser is a former Deputy Premier of Queensland and a member of the Council of Griffith University. An extract of this piece was published in The Courier-Mail on 8 August 2020.