Federation and everything it encompassed, like workers’ rights, the welfare safety net and suffrage, and not the criminal Gallipoli landings, constituted the birth of Australian nationhood. Yeah, I’ve always had a thing about 1 January 1901 and why the Founding Fathers – after years of bush pioneering and forging governance out of the wretched, miserable Pommy penal colonies that were filled with political prisoners – were much more important than the King and Country cannon-fodder Anzacs.
Daniel Slattery, fictional Labor Leader, in Challenge, by Paul Daley
