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The New Southern Cross by Claude Marquet. The 1916 Australian referendum, concerning how conscripted soldiers could be deployed, was held on 28 October 1916. It was the first non-binding Australian referendum (often referred to as a plebiscite because it did not involve a constitutional question), and contained one proposition, which was Prime Minister Billy Hughes' proposal to allow ...
During the late 1960s, domestic opposition to the Vietnam War and conscription grew in Australia. In 1965, a group of concerned Australian women formed the anti-conscription organisation Save Our Sons, which was established in Sydney with other branches later formed in Wollongong, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Newcastle and Adelaide. The movement ...
Britain did not completely demobilise in 1945, as conscription continued after the war. Those already in the armed forces were given a release class determined by length of service and age. In practice, releases began in June 1945, and the last of the wartime conscripts had been released by 1949.
It formed part of the larger debate on conscription in Australia throughout the war. All of the historical documentation refers to the ballot as a referendum, [8] [9] even though it did not involve a proposal to amend the Australian Constitution. Because it was not an amendment to the constitution, (1) it had no legal force, (2) it did not ...
The history of Australia from 1901 to 1945 begins with the federation of the six colonies to create the Commonwealth of Australia. The young nation joined Britain in the First World War, suffered through the Great Depression in Australia as part of the global Great Depression and again joined Britain in the Second World War against Nazi Germany in 1939.
In Australia, Irish Catholics mostly opposed conscription; in Canada (and the US), Irish Catholics supported conscription. [citation needed] The threat of conscription resulted in a plan, proposed by Cathal Brugha, to assassinate British cabinet members in April 1918, before they could vote on conscription (or as reprisal for having done so).
In Australia two referendums in 1916 and 1917 resulted in votes against conscription, and were seen as opposition to an all-out prosecution of the war. In retaliation, the Australian government used the War Precautions Act and the Unlawful Associations Act to arrest and prosecute anti-conscriptionists such as Tom Barker, editor of Direct Action ...
Hughes, however, knew that he did not need to create a new law but could just amend the old one to include conscription via a democratic referendum. As a result, on 28 October 1916, an advisory referendum was held to decide whether the community of Australia supported conscription. The vote was rejected, and Hughes was sacked from the Labor Party.