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New State Movement
Before independence, New England saw a determined New State Movement. Many attempts were made to create a new state of New England, but espite these attempts (an action that would have certainly kept New England within the Commonwealth), the new state movement failed garner enough support to leave New South Wales. Instead, the region came close to statehood in 1967 only to be thwarted by the politics of Sydney based interests.
The resulting failure would leave the New England region stuck in a state that neglected it to the point that terminal economic decay had set in within fifteen years.
Background
Desire for a separate colony (and later state) began not long after European settlement in New England. In the 1850s the creation of the colony of Queensland led to intense lobbying for the location of the border between the two colonies. In the end, the border was set just one hundred kilometres to the south of Brisbane, much to the irritation of many who had advocated that the border be much closer to the halfway point between the colonial capitals.
In 1915 a meeting in Grafton drew up boundaries for a possible new state, and this was followed by another proposal from a meeting in Tamworth in 1920. After the war, new state movement parties managed to force two Royal Commissions, with varied success. In 1934, the second state Royal Commission under Commissioner H.S. Nicholas KC investigated the new state and formed a proposal with boundaries for a state based around the city of Newcastle, the Hunter, the Northern Tablelands and North Coast and a hinterland determined by the existing rail network1. Despite the various commissions, meetings and movements, little action was seen on these proposals until the 1960s.
1967 Referenda
As part of an election promise, on 29 April 1967, the Liberal/National coalition state government of Sir Robert Askin held the first of two proposed referenda for a new state based on modified Nicholas boundaries. The question was defeated 198,812 to 169,103 with a strong geographical difference in the results of the vote from north to south. A comfortable majority had voted Yes over the northern regions. But in the south, a strong No vote in Newcastle and the Lower Hunter was enough to sink the proposal. The reasons for this seem to have stemmed from the the exclusion of many voters west of the Nicholas line who would have voted in favour of statehood and a scare campaign over the potential loss of the Sydney milk quota in the dairy farming Oxley and Gloucester areas led to these areas voting against statehood2.
The conservative Liberal/National coalition government held office with a one seat majority and had been out of power for twenty-five years. The New England area that was voted on in 1967 contained approximately equal numbers of Coalition and Lab or voters, but the Labour vote was concentrated in a relatively few safe seats in the south, while the conservative vote was spread over a greater number of moderately save seats. Removal of the entire New England area from the New South Wales electorate would have compromised the Askin government's chances of re-election. Removal of only the conservative electorates in the north would have condemned them to certain opposition for many years to come3.
End of the Movement
With the risk of upsetting the balance of conservative and Labour held seats held in New South Wales, no government would consider the option of granting New England statehood again. Attempts were made to revive the movement, but support for a new state fell away over the next few years and the movement failed. Despite it's failure, the movement had created a sense of regional identity. This sense of identity and difference from the rest of New South Wales would be played upon by the events of the Civil War forty years later. Before then however, New England would face some very lean years.
Notes:
1 http://www.newstates.net (specifically, here)
2 ibid.
3 ibid.
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