Political History of Australia

In this episode we say farewell to Governor Lachlan Macquarie after twelve years in Sydney. He championed the name Australia, made 26 January an official public anniversary, and was the first leading figure to address the colony as a people — “Fellow Citizens of Australia.”

From first arrival to last days he backed emancipist rights, and that stance cost him the exclusives, the church, the courts and London. His last years were hard. In his farewell in Hyde Park he still said, “I anticipate the applause of posterity.” Classic Macquarie — arrogant, but accurate.

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The Hon. John Ruddick MLC is a member of the NSW Legislative Council.

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Produced by Sean Masters
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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Governor Lachlan Macquarie was on a sincere mission to lift up the former convicts known as emancipists. For years that project had gone his way — until the colonial establishment struck back and set out to put these “uppity” emancipists in their place.

In this episode the church, the courts and then London itself flip from supporting the Governor to becoming his trenchant critics. Macquarie never wavers from his pro-emancipist stance, but under pressure he begins to act foolishly act in anger. London’s answer is decisive: Commissioner John Bigge is sent with wide-ranging powers to audit the entire Australian experiment. Macquarie knows his time is up.

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The Hon. John Ruddick MLC is a member of the NSW Legislative Council.

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Produced by Sean Masters
(All voices in this series are AI generated bar the narrator.)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In early New South Wales, more than four-fifths of the non-Aboriginal population were convicts, former convicts, or their children. Once free, these people — the emancipists — discovered that money and talent could not wash away the ex-convict stain. Wealthy exclusives still treated them as second-class subjects. This episode asks ‘what mobilised a scattered group of successful ex-prisoners into a political force?’

Governor Macquarie brought the best of them into the open. Architect Francis Greenway, merchant Mary Reibey, the “Botany Bay Rothschild” Samuel Terry, and Dr William Redfern all flourished under his protection. Then, in 1815, the new Supreme Court exploded over a simple question: could three emancipist solicitors appear before it? Judge Jeffrey Bent said no. Macquarie’s magistrates said yes. The court froze for two years, letters flew to London, and the colony split into two camps. Status, not class, was the issue.

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The Hon. John Ruddick MLC is a member of the NSW Legislative Council.

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Produced by Sean Masters
(All voices in this series are AI generated bar the narrator.)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 38 follows John Macarthur after he slipped out of New South Wales just before Lachlan Macquarie arrived to restore order. Having masterminded the Rum Rebellion, Macarthur exploited a legal loophole in Lord Castlereagh’s arrest orders and spent more than eight years in England. After the Rum Rebellion trial, Macarthur was stuck in England because if he returned to NSW he faced immediate arrest.

So Macarthur waged a stubborn, years-long campaign against the Colonial Office to return home without having to admit to any “impropriety.” When he finally sails back in 1817, the colony he left has changed: wealthy emancipists like Samuel Terry now rival the exclusives and a bitter struggle is underway over land, labour, and what kind of society New South Wales will become. Macarthur has won every political fight so far. This time the numbers and the spirit of the age are against him.

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The Hon. John Ruddick MLC is a member of the NSW Legislative Council.

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Produced by Sean Masters
(All voices in this series are AI generated bar the narrator.)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In September 1803 Lieutenant John Bowen raised the Union Jack at Risdon Cove on the Derwent, founding the first European settlement in Van Diemen’s Land. The next year, Governor King in Sydney, under orders from London, sent Lieutenant-Colonel William Paterson to command the proposed second settlement on the island at Port Dalrymple along the north coast. By late 1804 the island was formally divided at the 42nd parallel: the southern County of Buckinghamshire under Collins and the northern County of Cornwall under Paterson. Two settlements, two very different commanders, and two rival experiments in colonial survival.

This episode traces the contrasting fortunes of those early settlements. We follow Paterson’s relatively liberal land grants that encouraged private farming. We contrast that with Collins’s more regimented approach, chronic supply shortages, reliance on hunting and fishing, and the slow, painful growth of Hobart Town until the influx of experienced colonial farmers from Norfolk Island transformed it. The story closes with Governor Macquarie’s first visit in 1811, his inspection of both settlements and his descriptions of a young colony that was rapidly getting on its feet.

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The Hon. John Ruddick MLC is a member of the NSW Legislative Council.

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https://x.com/JohnRuddick2
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Produced by Sean Masters
(All voices in this series are AI generated bar the narrator.)
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.