Josiah Symon mixes the national and imperial in active eloquent South Australian campaign on Australian federation
Josiah Symon (back row, second from right) with delegates from all the Australian colonies at the Adelaide convention on Australian federation in 1897. South Australian premier Charles Cameron Kingston as convention chair is seated at the front centre. Inset: Symon making his mark on the drafting of the Australian constitution.
Images courtesy State Library of South Australia and Symon Library
Josiah Symon, a former South Australian politician and a lawyer who led the province's Bar for more than years, made a major contribution towards Australian federation.
Symon brought the popular federal movement to life in South Australia. His sense of Australia's destiny rivalled Edmund Barton's, and his vision, combining nationalism with British imperialism, was no less than Alfred Deakin’s. Symon's nationalism was limited by insisting on certain state rights. He aimed, as well, to win the support of newly-enfranchised women in South Australia for the federal movement.
Symon opposed South Australia's federal council bill in 1884, arguing it would delay or prevent the real federation and endanger responsible government. Already in touch with Edmund Barton and questioning the federal commitment of South Australia's premier Charles Kingston, Symon became president of the Australasian Federation League of South Australia in 1895 and later the Commonwealth League.
A tall eloquent speaker, Symon addressed full town hall gatherings to ensure the success of the federation referendum. His argument for federation was based on economics (especially free trade between the states), defence, political advantage, and strongly-felt national sentiment.
Symon successfully stood for election to the 1897 Adelaide convention, one of a series to determine how the federation would be structured. Symon chaired the judiciary committee at Adelaide convention where, apart from colonial premiers and Barton, no one spoke more often and gained more attention. He also was elected as a South Australian delegate to the Australasian federal convention in Sydney (1897) and Melbourne (1898), chairing the judiciary committee. He made outstanding contributions to the convention debate and to the drafting and passing the Constitution Bill. In 1900, he also published a history of the federal movement in the Yale Review.
He was most interested in the major issues that gave the convention trouble: equal representation of the states in the senate, equality of power between the senate and the house of representatives (even over money bills), solving deadlocks between the two federal parliament houses, the Murray waters question, and a federal supreme court of appeal to replace the anachronistic system of Australian court appeals to the privy council in London. (He changed his mind about this many years after federation.)
Deakin estimated Symon's influence at the conventions at second level because of inexperience in backroom politicking rather than public performances. Along with Kingston and Patrick Glynn, Symon made a significant contribution to help Western Australia into the federation.
In 1900, Symon drew an unprecedented audience to the Democratic Club in Adelaide to hear him speak on abolishing court appeals to the privy council. When the Commonwealth bill on federation was before the British parliament, Symon worked with the delegates in London to prevent the right of appeal to the privy council in constitutional cases; at home, he tried to stiffen the resolve of colonial governments to counter the machinations of South Australian chief justice Samuel Way and Samuel Griffiths in support of the privy council appeal.
In January 1901, he was made knight commander of the Older of St Michael and St George for his services to federation.
In the 1901 federal elections, Symon topped the senate poll in South Australia. He became opposition leader in that chamber but was more interested in improving than opposing nation-building legislation. His greatest interest was the judiciary bill (1903). He saw the high court of Australia as “the keystone of the federal arch” and wished to give it the dignity and usefulness of the supreme court of the United States of America.
As attorney general in the Reid-McLean government 1904-05, Symon was vehement in his struggle with chief justice Griffith over the costs and status of the high court. Symon's cause was just but spoiled by violent argument, perhaps partly motivated by the 1900 events and envy at Griffith's appointment.
Having again topped the poll at the 1906 election as a strong anti-socialist, Symon refused to sign the Liberal Union's manifesto at the 1913 election. Standing as an independent, he failed to gain a place and retired to the lucrative law practice he’d never really abandoned.