The 1899 Melbourne Premiers' Conference and the Birth Place of Canberra
On February 2, 1899, the premiers of Australia's six colonies concluded a crucial conference in Melbourne that resolved one of federation's most bitter disputes: where to place the new nation's capital. Rather than let either Sydney or Melbourne claim the prize, the premiers agreed on a compromise that would eventually give Australia its purpose-built capital, Canberra, situated in New South Wales but a safe distance from Sydney. The decision reshaped the young nation's constitutional settlement and set in motion decades of planning that produced one of the world's few custom-designed national capitals.
A Rivalry Threatens Federation
By the late 1890s, the movement to federate Australia's separate British colonies into a single Commonwealth had gathered strong momentum, but one issue repeatedly threatened to derail the entire project: which city would serve as the seat of government. Sydney, founded in 1788 as Australia's oldest colonial capital, and Melbourne, which had boomed into the continent's largest and wealthiest city during the 1850s gold rush, each believed itself the natural choice. Neither New South Wales nor Victoria was willing to see the other claim such a symbolic and practical prize, and delegates to the constitutional conventions of 1897 and 1898 found the question nearly impossible to settle through debate alone. With referenda on the draft constitution looming in several colonies, premiers recognized that failure to resolve the capital question could sink the whole federation scheme, particularly in New South Wales, where public opinion was wary of losing prestige to its southern rival.
Did You Know?
Melbourne served as Australia's temporary national capital for 26 years, from 1901 to 1927, longer than many expected when the premiers struck their compromise. The stopgap arrangement became so entrenched that some Victorians hoped it might simply become permanent, but Canberra's Parliament House finally opened its doors on May 9, 1927.
The Melbourne Conference of January–February 1899
To rescue the faltering federation process, the premiers of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, and Western Australia convened in Melbourne in late January 1899, meeting through February 2 to hammer out final amendments to the draft constitution before it went to the voters. Premier George Reid of New South Wales pressed hard for concessions to satisfy Sydney's pride, while Victorian Premier George Turner defended Melbourne's interests. After days of negotiation, the premiers reached a landmark compromise: the federal capital would be located within New South Wales, satisfying that colony's demand that the seat of government sit on its soil, but the site had to lie at least one hundred miles (about 160 kilometres) from Sydney, addressing Victorian fears that Sydney would simply absorb the new capital into its own metropolitan sprawl. As a further concession to Melbourne, the conference agreed that the Victorian capital would serve as the temporary seat of the Commonwealth Parliament until a permanent capital city could be surveyed, designed, and built.
From Compromise to Canberra
The formula struck in Melbourne on February 2, 1899, was written into Section 125 of the Australian Constitution, which took effect when the Commonwealth of Australia was proclaimed on January 1, 1901. True to the bargain, Melbourne hosted the new Commonwealth Parliament from 1901, sitting in the Royal Exhibition Building before moving to the Victorian Parliament House, while surveyors scoured the New South Wales countryside for a suitable capital site. After years of debate over candidate towns including Dalgety, Yass, and Bombala, the Yass-Canberra district was selected in 1908, and construction of the new capital began the following decade. Chicago architects Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin won an international design competition in 1912, and the city of Canberra was formally named in 1913. Parliament finally shifted from Melbourne to the new Parliament House in Canberra in 1927, closing the chapter that had begun with the premiers' hard-won compromise nearly three decades earlier.