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Published by the Parliament of NSW and the University of SydneyVolume 1 of a 3-volume setAustralia became a nation politically through the willingness of the existing colonies and their citizens to join together, ceding some of their powers in order to construct something better than the sum of those older political units. Yet the colonies did not disappear; they became autonomous States in the new Commonwealth of Australia. Consequently, to understand the political history of Australia it is not enough to know what happened in federal politics. Each State has had its own significant political history, often influencing developments in other States and at the centre. This work is a political chronicle of the most populous State, New South Wales, during the century since Federation, using the regular State elections as focal points. It fills in some of the important detail necessary to understand how modern Australia has become such a successful democratic nation. Volume One - 1901 to 1927This first volume traces the story of NSW through the first years after Federation, when Australia was slowly recovering from the economic depression of the 1890s and adjusting to the new political realities of Federation. It was a period when the political party system was developing a shape still recognisable a hundred years later. With the outbreak of the Great War, Australia and NSW had to face a new set of challenges that placed great strains on the political and social fabric of society. Divisions opened up along lines of ethnicity, class, religion and national identity. During the war the Labor Party split disastrously over the issue of compulsory military service. Even after that, NSW, like most of Australia, remained deeply divided. The politics of the Lang era reflected and added to those divisions, with the arrival of a further crisis in the shape of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Volume Two - 1930 to 1965 Volume Three - 1968 to 1999