Western Australia: 3 situations

Cook

Banned
What's in it for WA to go it alone? Mining didn't take off over there until the 60s and 70s. WA will just be a more backward shithole than it was/is IOTL.

Thank God NZ didn't join us, they're an economic basket case, but I suppose if they joined us they'd be doing well also.

Not particularly useful there Riain since the Goldfields in 1901 were booming, as was the wheatbelt, cattle industries and wool.
 

Cook

Banned
Generally we are pretty glad we didn't join the proposed federation as well, we didn't care to take a step back on social legislation, indigenous affairs or sign up to rule from 2000km away. It was bad enough having London to answer to, let alone Sydney or Melbourne as well

Seems like everyone is happy eh?

Julius just hit the primary reason an independent Westralia was a possibility in the late 19th century.

New Zealand is closer to Sydney and Melbourne, and a future Canberra than Perth is.
Perth to Melbourne is 2720km, Auckland to Sydney is 2150km.
 

Cook

Banned
Shackel,

One immediate consequence of an independent Westralia during WW2 is that John Curtin would not have been Prime Minister of Australia. This could mean enormous changes to the defence of Australia and the region.

Conceivably he could have been Prime Minister of Westralia if he’d still gone into politics, but you need someone else as the Australian P.M.

http://primeministers.naa.gov.au/primeministers/curtin/



 
Just fishing.

Basket case is too harsh, but NZ was right alongside us until the 70s and then we pulled away and now we are 1/3 richer. Easy explanations like minerals and distace don't cut it, apparently NZ has a less profitable investment legislation environment and tax setup so over the last 20 years we have pulled ahead. Subtle, but it adds up over decades.

http://www.cis.org.au/executive_highlights/EH2007/eh54507.html

Here's an article.

Thanks for the link. Don't get me wrong, there is plenty wrong with NZ's economy and economic direction and there has been for at least the last 20-30 years, possibly a lot longer, I was just a little annoyed at the blanket comment without any development.


Back to the OP thought - while it might be possible to get a POD that made for a separate WA back in the 19th century, it would be pretty ASB I think for a white dominion to take such a separate development path that there would be any talk of military confrontation anytime soon. For one the separate national identity of say Australia or NZ didn't really dominate over the greater imperial British identity till the mid 20th century (give or take a decade). We would need a series of quite big PODs to create such a fracture with WA against wider Australia, Britain or NZ
 
An independent Westralia is no more likely to join in 1904 than New Zealand in OTL.

An independent Western Australia at the time of the Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War is going to have a Whites Only immigration policy it believes in defending to the death (thanks to the influence of the workers' movement--in OTL they were barely two years away from having the first Labour party majority government in Australia). New Zealand politics at this time wasn't driven by Asiaphobia. They didn't have to manage a large coastline on an ocean so exposed to the Yellow Menace.

By the end of the decade the CofA is building its own navy to replace the RN's Pacific squadron, Kitchener is giving firsthand advice to the Antipodes as to how best defend themselves as part of the empire--those voters in Perth and on the goldfields will turn overwhelmingly to a Labour party that promises to unite them with the East in order to keep the continent safe for the White Man.
 

Shackel

Banned
Cook, which one would be more powerful, also, how would the two Australia's react during the Great Depression?
 

Cook

Banned
By the end of the decade the CofA is building its own navy to replace the RN's Pacific squadron, Kitchener is giving firsthand advice to the Antipodes as to how best defend themselves as part of the empire--those voters in Perth and on the goldfields will turn overwhelmingly to a Labour party that promises to unite them with the East in order to keep the continent safe for the White Man.

One of the complaints of the secessionists’ was that the west was neglected by the Federal Government. I doubt you’d be able to squeeze much more in the way of defence out of Melbourne than the naval guns around Rottnest, Garden Island and Fremantle that the west could provide for itself.

Cook, which one would be more powerful, also, how would the two Australia's react during the Great Depression?

Eastern Australia (Still the Commonwealth of Australia) would still be the most powerful and what people think of when they referred to as Australia.

Westralia would be wealthier than in OTL but not massively. With Forrest as Prime Minister of an independent Westralia he may have looked after C.Y. O’Conner and obtained loans from London for more Civil Engineering projects on a par with the massive Mundaring Weir and Goldfields pipeline projects.

Both sides of Australia were tied into the global economy in the 1920s and 30s, being exporters of minerals, wool and wheat and would suffer accordingly during the Depression.

Would either turn extremist?
No, our democratic institutions were well established by that time and we already had an electoral system that disfavours extremism. Preferential Voting is remarkably good in that regard.

How Westralia’s Prime Minister Curtin manages relations with London, Canberra and Washington during World War Two could make for an interesting story.
;)
 
One of the complaints of the secessionists’ was that the west was neglected by the Federal Government. I doubt you’d be able to squeeze much more in the way of defence out of Melbourne than the naval guns around Rottnest, Garden Island and Fremantle that the west could provide for itself.

This complaint you mention would be from the nineteen thirties in OTL (our timeline), not from the first decade of an ATL (alternate timeline) where WA doesn't join the Commonwealth at federation.

In this ATL there is the shock of the Russo-Japanese war and the end of RN bases in Australia to contend with.

I can't imagine that a Western Australia that was susceptible to Yellow Menace warscares in the late 1910s of this ATL would have the same complaints of the failed secessionists of OTL. Those WA politicians deriding the East's ability to safeguard the entire continent (and do so with the help of the empire, of course) would be at a severe disadvantage in promoting their own self-defence policy, as a Western Australian nation-state isn't likely to be able to raise it's own equivalent of the brand spanking new RAN.

Cook said:
Westralia would be wealthier than in OTL but not massively. With Forrest as Prime Minister of an independent Westralia he may have looked after C.Y. O’Conner and obtained loans from London for more Civil Engineering projects on a par with the massive Mundaring Weir and Goldfields pipeline projects.

This is pure speculation. Maybe it happens; more likely the failure of WA to join the Commonwealth has no effect on O'Connor's decision to blow his brains out, and he is thus unable to turn the desert into a flowering oasis.

By all means put this in a fictional scenario, as O'Connor's is a story worth knowing.

Cook said:
How Westralia’s Prime Minister Curtin manages relations with London, Canberra and Washington during World War Two could make for an interesting story.

I don't see why Curtin is bound to move to an independent WA after the Great War, as one of his motivations in OTL was that he was already involved in a nationwide Australian political organisation and moving to Fremantle would not effect his participation in this organisation. Plus there is such a thing as butterflies in alternate history speculation. Anyway, like I maintain, Western Australia is unlikely to survive as a nation-state, not unless it came out of the 1890s so resolutely opposed to federation that defence and the maintenance of racist immigration policies were of little or no account in its political system (John Forrest was pro-federation in the referendum vote of 1900, after all.)
 
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Cook

Banned
This is pure speculation. Maybe it happens; more likely the failure of WA to join the Commonwealth has no effect on O'Connor's decision to blow his brains out, and he is thus unable to turn the desert into a flowering oasis.

By all means put this in a fictional scenario, as O'Connor's is a story worth knowing.


Prior to Forrest going east he’d been able to block criticism of O’Conner. I doubt O’Conner would be trying to make the desert bloom; he was a very practical engineer.

Of course it’s speculation, that’s the point of the whole site.

I don't see why Curtin is bound to move to an independent WA after the Great War, as one of his motivations in OTL was that he was already involved in a nationwide Australian political organisation, and moving to Fremantle would not end his participation in this organisation. Plus there is such a thing as butterflies in alternate history speculation. Anyway, like I maintain, Western Australia is unlikely to survive as a nation-state, not unless it came out of the 1890s so resolutely opposed to federation that defence and the maintenance of racist immigration policies were of little or no account in its political system (John Forrest was pro-federation in the referendum vote of 1900, after all.)

He’s not bound to, I was just giving Shackel an entertaining Alternative history for John Curtin.

For the west to resist Federation in ’01 would have needed as stronger feeling of local identity and feeling that the East was too far away to govern usefully, so not sure a brand spanking new Dominion would want to give up independence after only three years without more concessions than the Commonwealth would have wanted to give.

I’m sure I was the one saying this scenario was mostly ASB anyway.
 
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