JOHN ROBERTSON: LIBERAL OF THE PEOPLE – WILLIAM COLEMAN

Australia’s development has so often been about land – acquiring it, stealing it, buying it, developing it, depending on its fundamental importance to life, revenue and identity. For the European colonisers, land was the basis for wealth. Enter John Robertson. London born, John Robertson served as NSW premier on five separate occasions and defeated the much-lauded Henry Parkes. Later, he collaborated with Parkes in government. The Robertson land acts of 1861 began the process of breaking down the stranglehold of squatters on land ownership.  Of humble birth, Robertson helped forge the nation. William Coleman, economist and historian had now published John Robertson. Liberal of the People, in the Australian Biographical Monographs Series – Connor Court Publishing, 2025. On Tuesday 10 June, William Coleman addressed The Sydney Institute to talk about John Robertson. Except where otherwise stated in the paper which follows, all sources for quotations and factual particulars are provided in his monograph.

JOHN ROBERTSON. LIBERAL OF THE PEOPLE

WILLIAM COLEMAN

The Sydney Institute meets this evening in the aftermath of the unparalleled defeat of the Liberal Party at the 2025 Australian federal election.

The historic dimension of that defeat casts more than a ray of topicality in turning back to the man who was the first president of Australia’s first liberal party (the Free Trade and Liberal Association); and was, much beyond that, the five-time premier of NSW in the liberal philosophy: John Robertson.

John Robertson – sometimes Sir John, more frequently just Jack – was the political superstar of late nineteenth century Australia. The last day of his fifth and final premiership fell just a few days short of 26 years after the first day of his first; a span of political eminence approached by no other Australian politician of his day, and few since.

His career was not a case of continuance without consequence. On the contrary. In the late 1850s, he led the transformation of NSW from an old-style oligarchy to a modern-style democracy: a transition comprising the abolition of wealth tests for voting, the introduction of secret ballot, the creation of elected local government, and the taming of the unelected Legislative Council: of all of these measures, he was the principal and forceful driver.

In full sympathy with this democratising drive, in the 1860s Robertson pushed through his signature land reforms, that sought to turn over to the inhabitants of NSW the freehold of much of 97 per cent of its land which was then in the hands of the state.

In the 1870s, he was a prominent supporter of a number of liberalising reforms in the law of marriage, divorce and suicide. And to the end of his career, in the 1890sm was a robust defender of free-trade. All in all, Robertson was, I believe, the great liberal hero of Australia of his day; and perhaps the country’s entire history.

His story begins in the industrialising village of Bow, then on the outskirts of London’s East End, where he was born in 1816, the third and youngest son of a Scottish clockmaker and his English wife, herself the daughter of an East End craftsman. Not very much is known about Robertson’s parents, and less still about his remoter forbears, but his heredity did plainly yield one bequest: Robertson was born with a cleft palate; a condition that left him with, in the words of one observer, surely “the strangest voice that ever afflicted an orator”. Modern medical research has revealed a cleft palate is not uncommonly associated with congenital heart problems, and the evidence is that Robertson also had some fault in his heart. I don’t think he ever let either condition slow his pace for a quarter-hour.

At the age of four, his family emigrated to Australia, where his father, established his clockmaking trade and household in the Rocks, a stone’s throw – quite literally – from its wharves. Doubtless, these seafaring surrounds help explain why at the age of 16 John sailed to England as a common sailor. After a not very long sojourn there he returned to Australia. In leaving England this second time, you might say he left it behind. As he said, “I may have been an English infant, but as a man I am an Australian.” We might mark the contrast with Henry Parkes, who in consciousness was always an Englishman abroad.

In returning to Australia, Robertson also left behind any ambitions to be a mariner; the great “green ocean” of the Australian bush would henceforth be his ruling passion.

That passion was intensified by the resolve of his father to leave behind his humble status as a clockmaker, and re-invent himself a country gentleman, with the help of a 1,000 acre grant in the Hunter Valley, where Englishmen of respectable birth were striving to establish a Merrie Australia.

From clockmakers to gentleman’s heir: I believe this transition was moulding of John Robertson’s psyche. Neither underdog, nor parvenue, nor to the manor born; he would be free of the resentment of the first, insecurity of the second, and assumption and complacency of the third. He was well-made to move easily about-and-between the many-and-various compartments and layers of this new society of New South Wales.

Thus well-prepared, on entering adulthood in the mid-1830s, he launched himself into the foaming white water of the colony’s economic currents; the sudden spilling of squatters’ herds over 50 million acres of table lands, slopes and plains, in just ten years after 1830. The latter half of that decade saw Robertson roving by horse and foot across that wide brown land, 600km beyond the Limits of Settlement, as far as Bourke, and further, literally the back of Bourke, in search of good land; and, at about the age of 20 or 21 settling on (or “squatting on”) 20,000 acres south of the Namoi River. Today it is well understood that his 20,000 acres are not good land; they are economically worthless. He did not realise this, until reality broke in during the Great Crisis of 1844; his lease was forfeited, he was bankrupted, and the ardent dreams of his ebullient youth extinguished amid the Sequestration Orders of the Chief Commissioner of Insolvency.

So, at the age of 27, he was back in the Hunter Valley, a tenant farmer, searching there for available freehold in a Valley already well-visited by squatters and their leases; eventually finding something, near Scone, vacated by another victim of the Great Crisis of 1844. Perhaps in this hunt, and his subsequent struggles as a mixed farmer, were planted the seed of his later programs of land reform. But there is a second significance in his mixing in the society of the Upper Hunter; something that explained his eventual decision to abandon rural pursuits and devote himself to politics: this was the influence of the Valley’s small but animated intelligentsia.

Well-established there was the family of his old teacher, the irrepressible John Dunmore Lang; and also his friend, Charles Harpur, the native-born poet, and political discontent; and in Scone itself the man Robertson would describe as his “political godfather”, a Frank Isaac, a London emigrant and “radical” by the usage of the day. I have reason to believe these had a sort of consciousness-raising impact on Robertson, whose politics prior seems to have been merely that of remonstrance rather than of reform. I suspect they encouraged in him the thought that he himself would make fine a law-maker.

Such a thought would only be further animated by the political ferment being stimulated by the plain approach in those years of self-government; and during the decade preceding self-government’s advent Robertson came to know, and sometimes league with, the two leading younger spirits of that ferment: James Martin and Henry Parkes. Along with these two, Robertson in 1856 won a seat in the first parliament of self-governing NSW, defeating his conservative opponent by means of a coalition of the native-born, emancipists, doubtless a few Scot kinsmen, and small mixed farmers like himself.

In the inaugural Assembly, he encountered four blocs: a group of old officialdom; a conservative group under James McArthur; a group of office-seekers under Charles Cowper, blowing with the new wind of liberalism; and an “extreme liberal” group, of which Robertson was soon leader.

As liberal leader, he became in 1860 premier; and led his government to victory that year in a General Election fought over land reforms, only to leave the Assembly for the Council when it blocked the land bill in defiance of that election result. In a conclusive and climatic confrontation, he had the Council humbled, and the Robertson Land Acts passed.

A large share of my little book on Robertson is devoted to his land acts because his reputation commonly is suspended from them. He devised them, he championed them, he owned them. These laws were controversial and remain so to the present. Their successes and failures on various dimensions can be long debated. But in this paper, I will confine myself to assessing their success in one dimension, namely, in fulfilling his purpose.

Robertson’s purpose was to transfer to the people much of the 200m acres of NSW then owned by the state – near 97 per cent of the total. His means were his laws, which, in essence, entitled any person (“the selector”) to choose (“select”) any 320 acres of rural crown land – leased or unleased – upon the deposit of 5s per acre; and to work and live on their selection as if it was their own, until their payment of a further 15s made it in their own outright, as unimpeachable freehold.

So, did his laws foster the spread of freehold?

In the 50 years following the acts of 1861 freehold increased from 7m acres to 38m acres, as you see in column 1 of Table 1.

Table 1: Types of Land Tenure, NSW

millions of acres

In fact, Column 1 is a bit misleading, in the direction of under-estimating the effect of the Acts, as it omits that land which had been selected by 1911, but as of 1911 was yet to become freehold on account of some of the required 15s remaining outstanding – so-called incomplete purchases”. Column 2 reveals these are substantial, and if included imply an eight-fold increase in freehold.

And yet Table 1 is also misleading in the direction of over-estimating the effect of the Acts as it neglects the massive increase in population over 50 years, which would have increased freehold even under the old laws.

As it happens, growth in freehold outstripped the growth in population, but nevertheless it would be more testing of the Acts to compare the amount of freehold in NSW, after 40 years, with the amount in other states, none of which went as far as NSW in “free selection”.

Table 2: Freehold plus Incompletely Purchased Selections, 1901

acres per head

Clearly, there was much more freehold in NSW than in other states: the Robertson Land Acts had, it seems, promoted their end.

So, consider Robertson on 18 October 1861, the day the land laws were proclaimed: he, the runt of the litter, with cleft palate and dodgy ticker, had won the crown and had given the people laws. But there was to be no long reign of Good King John. The very conclusiveness of his triumph of the land laws had recast the political terrain; the land question – previously at the centre of political contention – was now closed.

Consequently, some liberals who before were of necessity his ally now felt free to be his adversary; and some conservatives who were before, of necessity, his adversary, now felt free to be his ally. So, what Robertson’s victory opened up was a war: a 25 years war, between those who would be king: John Robertson, James Martin and Henry Parkes. Such a tripartite contest spells instability, as each will seek to form a pairing with one other, in order to dud the third. There are evidently three possible pairings; Parkes and Martin, or Martin and Robertson; or Parkes and Robertson; and all were experienced over the following 20 years.

The first was a combination of Martin and Parkes, an alliance that was destroyed by Parkes’ maladroit overreaction to the attempted assassination of Prince Alfred in 1867. Then came a combination Martin and Robertson, which Parkes, in time, made impossible by having Martin appointed Chief Justice. That left just two to spar, and the late 1870s saw an ongoing cage fight between Parkes and Robertson, which produced nothing but mutual injury. The upshot was that the cage was left for the alter, and in 1878 the political marriage Parkes and Robertson was sealed in an agreement to share government.

This dyarchy yielded historically important legislation; especially the Public Instruction Act and the Liquor Licensing Act. But both these provoked strong opposition, and with the aid of the disaffection they provoked, in 1882 Alexander Stuart swept into power at the general election, at the head of an unholy alliance of squatters and selectors. In the electoral carnage Parkes lost his seat but Robertson held on. The leadership of the liberals was now Robertson’s, and in 1885 he won election as their chief. But, in this moment of victory, Parkes refused to join a liberal govt. Robertson denounced this refusal as treachery, and announced his “divorce” from Parkes. Divided again, the liberals were left in Opposition to what was in essence a squatter government. Then on 17 April 1886 came the sensational news that Stuart had died of typhoid. Over the previous 12 months, Robertson had been battling a recurrent typhoid infection, and on 18 April 1886 Robertson relinquished the liberal leadership, resigned from parliament and retired from politics. Parkes assumed the liberal leadership, and seven months later was premier. The 25-years war was over, with Henry Parkes as victor.

But there was an important epilogue. Within little more than a year of becoming Premier, Parkes had taken up the then dormant cause of Federation. To this initiative of Parkes’ Robertson was vehemently opposed. Under federation, he protested, NSW would “before the Dominion parliament … stand in whispering humbleness while her irate sisters determined”.

So, Robertson devoted his last years to trying to tear down what Parkes had begun. When, in the first week of March 1891, the National Australasian [Federation] Convention gathered in his old haunt – the Assembly – to construct a federal future, Robertson journeyed to the township of Robertson, carved out of the bush by selectors, to publicly announce his readiness to “return to public politics” to combat “this cursed Federation”. On the Convention’s closing day, he submitted to the Sydney Morning Herald an appeal to reject the federal constitution the Convention had drafted. By the time the appeal appeared in next day’s issue, Robertson was dead, his heart finally defeated by a lifetime of unequal struggle.

We all know the fate of Robertson’s posthumous appeal, and all others like it. His fate in Australia’s official historical imagination was correspondingly one of oblivion. Yet the Liberal Party’s defeat of 3 May 2025 behoves a spirit of review in liberal politics. And one of the many things that may be usefully reviewed are the political heroes of that side of politics. Given the chequered history of liberalism Australia there has, understandably, been an impulse to identify some personal figure inspirational to that cause. So now more than ever, the liberal side might ask who are the persons who have, in the Australian story, most illustriously symbolised the liberal cause? Might John Robertson be one such person? His recommendations are several.

Firstly, he was steadfast in his liberal principles. This contrasts with Parkes’ guiltless dandling with causes; picking them up, casting them aside, then picking them up again, and then putting them aside yet again.

Second, Robertson was a democrat. Beyond his leadership of the democratic transition of the late 1850s already noted, he was an advocate of woman’s suffrage, triennial parliaments and the payment of MPs. Parkes much less of a democrat; he opposed triennial parliaments, and payment for members; he said the secret ballot was merely “an expedient”;^[1] and he favoured wealth tests to determine eligibility to vote for a reformed Legislative Council.

Thirdly, Robertson was an Australian patriot. He was free of the Englishry that has crimsoned Australian liberalism from Parkes to Menzies. This absence of Englishry was not borne of some anti-British animus, but self-knowledge. He realised that he was Australian and not English; and that Australia was not England. It was this realism that made Robertson one of the founding fathers of Australian Armed Forces. When the British Army departed Australian shores in 1870, he fully realised that it was never going to come back. He felt, therefore, it was now imperative to create a paid, professional, full-time Australian armed force. And that was done. But that project was begrudged, resisted, and substantially damaged by Parkes, who evidently felt that such an obvious expression of sovereignty – armed forces – menaced Australia’s tie with the UK; and who could not have been more gratified, sentimentally, than by the return of the dear old red-coated regiments to Sydney streets.

Fourthly, Robertson was successful. A winner. How so? Much of his political success is traceable to his attractive personality. As Premier George Dibbs said, he was “magnetic”; people were drawn to him, they liked to hang around him. Even Henry Parkes, who was both a frenemy of Robertson and a solitary by nature – his favourite form of travel was solitary travel – was noticed to be hanging around Robertson.

The several bases of that attraction are worth enumerating. He rippled with vitality.

He was rich in the martial virtues; lion heated, with an eye that did not know how to express fear. He was also replete in social virtues: one observer wrote, “There is a sincerity about the man which impresses nearly every person at first sight.” He was loyal to the last, “generous to a fault”, and lacking the spirit of vindictiveness, so unlike Parkes. Again, unlike Parkes, personal grandeur was not important to him; he could laugh at his own expense; he was the sort of man “who could no doubt die laughing … his laugh overflowing with intense joy”.

Of intrinsic good nature, the press could not refrain from playfully dubbing him the Kight of Clovelly, his “hospital home” on his Watson Bay. A knight, but not always a gent, given his undeniable streak of irascibility; but the public forgave him that, as they did the frequent inaccuracy of his political recollections.

With a rugged candour and natural gift for profanity, “slapper” Robertson fathered a bevy of affectionate anecdotes, and his appeal traversed class boundaries, allowing him to be returned for West Sydney (i.e. the Rocks) 11 times. All in all, Robertson was rich in that recognisable charm that has proved political gold in Australia.

He had another personal trait which did not, I think, add to his popularity but did, I hypothesise, aid his political strength: he seems to have had a genuine sense of justice. I am of the (perhaps optimistic) view that political justice is a source – not of political popularity – but of strength. And I find it corroborating of that view that much of Robertson’s policy victories can be interpreted as the pursuit of political justice. His push for democracy was palpably a piece of political justice; his land laws can also be seen so. (Putting aside any economic consequences, is there not a political wrong in sequestering 97 per cent of land to the state? Is that what the state is for?)

Further, with respect the deep and painful sectarian divide of nineteenth century Australia, Robertson pursued a judicious impartiality. He was president of the local Irish Home Rule League but, as he told fellow members, he was far from the most zealous member of the League. He believed in the partition of Ireland, between a Home Rule portion and a remainder. This was, surely, not a popular policy with either side, but was perhaps the least unjust program for dealing with Ireland’s predicament. Robertson’s free-trading might also be assimilated to a regard for political justice; for it seems an offense against political justice in a democracy for some members of polity to use what is meant to be a shared state for the purpose of benefit themselves at the expense of others. This brings us to Federation, and Robertson’s vehement opposition to it, which might seem a fatal barrier to Robertson donning the mantle of Australian liberal hero.

In considering his outlook on Federation, it is important to realise Robertson did not in the abstract oppose a central, Australia-wide government. Robertson held it would actually have been for the better if there had ever only been one colony in Australia; one not subject to separation into several colonies, as NSW was; a single colony which in time, in his vision, would have become the Commonwealth government. But, he pressed, there had been “separation”; and each separation created a colony which became its own vested interest. Each now had its own debt; its own railways; its own protected industries. Each would see Federation as an opportunity to try to unload its debt on the others; to require the others to use its under patronised railways; and force the others to buy its over-priced goods.

It is obviously a deep offence against political justice for any political community to be made liable for the policy choices (and delinquencies) of another community. But that is what Robertson saw coming in Federation; and that is what has come. Anyone who died in 1891 would find many features of present-day Australia astonishing; but one recent piece of news Robertson would receive with a bitter sense of foreknowledge. I refer to the shocking announcement that, violating all precedent, in 2025-26 the Victorian government will receive larger amount of GST revenues than NSW. NSW pays approaching 30 per cent more GST than Victoria; it has some 20 per cent more people; but NSW will actually receive less GST. Palpably, NSW is being made liable, to the tune of over billion dollars per annum, for political choices and delinquencies of the Andrew-Allen governments. I am sufficient optimist to think that in this political injustice is – so blatant, so brutal – there may be a political weakness; and that, at some point in the future political, justice may express itself against such crude exploitations by our false federation; and that point, perhaps, Robertson’s time in Australia’s historical imagination may come.

1. Sydney Morning Herald, 14 March 1878. ↑