Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Medicare) Share this | Hansard source

In the history of Ballarat there are many defining moments, but Eureka is one of the most significant. The events of the Eureka Stockade are well known across Australia, and this week marks their 164th anniversary. Those who died at Eureka lie buried in Ballarat's old cemetery, where each day a Union Jack is raised over the dead of the redcoats and the colonial police, while a Eureka flag is raised over the fallen miners.

At Eureka, the door was opened for Australia's democratic future. The colonial authorities tried to hold back the coming tide of change, but within months the leaders were acquitted by a jury of their peers. The jurors were unwilling to sentence those charged for an action which had such broad political sympathy and support. Less than a year after the battle, the miners' leader, Peter Lalor, took his seat in parliament. The arm he lost to a British bullet was forever a reminder that this democratically elected leader had not long before had to fight for those rights.

While Eureka is important because it saw individuals unite to fight for their rights, it is more significant for being the exception. Its bloody circumstances never had to be repeated in Australia's history. Future advances in Australia's democracy came peacefully, with discussions, strikes, protests and conventions, not with bayonets and bullets. Thankfully, Eureka stands alone in our nation's history. Never again on Australian soil would such defined instances of rebellion mark the cause of democracy and rights.

While the miners lost the battle at Eureka, their ideas won out. The Italian miner Raffaello Carboni described the people of Eureka as being 'of all nations and colours' who gathered to 'salute the Southern Cross as a refuge of all the oppressed from all countries on earth'. It would be over a century before Australia embraced its destiny as a multicultural nation. These words were well and truly ahead of their time.

The demands of the Ballarat Reform League, a copy of which hangs in my office here in parliament, called for full and fair representation, manhood suffrage, payment of members of parliament and no property qualification for members of the legislative council, demands which would soon become law and, over following generations, would expand to the full democracy that we cherish today. These ideas weren't perfect. They saw no place for women within Australian politics and certainly no place for certain races within Australian society, but they were certainly a start.

The fight at Eureka for democracy, representation and unity is one which remains important to all of us, and all Australians, today. It is something that we should reflect on each December in the commemoration of the events that occurred in Ballarat but which had ramifications across the state and across the nation for years and years to come.

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