South Australians vote 65,990 Yes to 17,053 No in 1899 referendum to approve constitution and national federation

"Little SA leads the way to Union" is the caption for a May 1899 cartoon in The Critic – the Federal Weekly. The Critic's photo shows the crowd at an Adelaide Town Hall federation meeting in April 1898.
Images courtesy State Library of South Australia

South Australians voted 35,800 Yes to 17,320 No in their first say on Australia becoming a federation in the 1898 non-compulsory referendum.

Referendums in Victoria and Tasmania also were a Yes success but failed in New South Wales where a minimum of 80,000 – more than the simple majority it achieved  – was required.

The 1891 constitutional convention agreed that, before proceeding with Federation, the constitution for governing the new nation should have “the approval of the people”.  Seeking this approval through referendums was agreed at the Corowa people's convention in 1893.

The referendum was a new idea at the time of federation. It had been used in Switzerland and some of the American states but not yet been applied to a British system of Government. In Australia, it was used to ratify the constitution and included as Section 128 as the means of changing the constitution. The people's convention also decided on a new constitutional convention composed of popularly elected delegates.

In 1897, elections for members of the new constitutional convention were held in all the colonies except Queensland, where parliament couldn’t agree on the enabling legislation, and Western Australia, where parliament elected its own delegates.

In 1899, as a result of amendments to the constitution recommended by New South Wales, the colonies organised a second round of referendums. This time New South Wales required only a simple majority of Yes votes. Queensland also joined the process. Majorities were achieved in all colonies. South Australia had a large 65,990 Yes to 17,053 No majority. By 1900, Western Australia still hadn’t taken steps to hold a referendum. In protest, eastern goldfield residents took steps to form a separate colony. Finally, in July 1900, when the Commonwealth Constitution Bill had already been enacted by the British parliament, a Western Australian referendum was passed.

Only South Australian and Western Australian women voted in the referendums. Indigenous Australians, Asians, Africans and Pacific Islanders weren’t allowed to vote in Queensland or Western Australia unless they owned property. In several colonies, poor people receiving public assistance could not vote and Tasmania required certain property qualifications. Commonwealth laws for voting in federal elections lifted some of these restrictions.