“The world of public speech was the world of English-speaking men.”

opening of parliament, moving tongues.jpg

Samuel Calvert, ‘Opening of Parliament – Interior of Legislative Chamber’, 1864, State Library of Victoria.

Built in 1851, the Victorian Parliament House was, and is, elevated above the city by its high foundation stones and the topography of the land. The opening of the Parliament House in 1864 serves as a telling illustration of how Parliament was designed as a space for the oratorical dominance of white men and, on occasion for the hearing of women.

In colonial Australia the 'world of public speech', historian Joy Damousi has observed, was ‘the world of men’, and of white, English-speaking men especially. By 1901 two women’s clubs had opened on Collins Street, but the educated white women who frequented them wouldn’t attain suffrage until 1908.

Victorian leader and Chief Secretary Alfred Deakin was particularly vocal in this era. Throughout the 1890s, Deakin repeatedly promoted the idea of 'English-speaking' unity, and attributed to so-described 'English-speaking people' the same characteristics he attributed to Anglo-Saxons – rationality and an exceptional capacity for self-government. In the lead up to Federation, these sentiments grew even stronger. To unite with the rest of the ‘English-speaking race’ was, Deakin and  other politicians, including first Prime Minister Edmond Barton, proclaimed, our 'destiny'. The textual inscription and circulation of these speeches supported the formation of an increasingly global network of self- consciously ‘English-speaking men’.

In November 1898, the Victorian Government invited some of the city’s residents of colour to Parliament to give their opinion on the proposed Immigration Restriction Act, which would effectively exclude people designated ‘Asiatic’ from Melbourne. Prominent Christian missionary Cheong Cheok Hong spoke against the Act, as did Abraham Davis, an importer who frequented Khooda Bux’s shop. Abraham objected that the proposed legislation ‘affected Hindoos, with whom he had had business relations’.

Despite these solidarities and protests, in 1901 the Immigration Restriction Act (IRA) was one of the first Acts passed by the new Federal Parliament. It saw the introduction of a Dictation Test where a prospective ‘undesirable immigrant’ could be asked to dictate fifty words in ‘any European language’, chosen at the discretion of the customs officer. In this way, a language test was a quasi a-racial way to whiten the nation.