The Origins of Unemployment Insurance in Queensland 1919-1922

Abstract

The late nineteenth and early twentieth century was a period of wide spread social reform in several Western nations. Australia and New Zealand in particular gained a reputation as the social laboratories of the world as colonial governments passed advanced labour legislation.l Some of the major reforms of this period have been well documented yet the introduction of an unemployment insurance scheme in Queensland in 1923 has remained unexamined.2 This significant episode in labour history has been noted only in passing by histories of social welfare. T. H. Kewley gives the fullest published account of unemployment insurance, noting the favourable responses of the Knibbs Report (1910) and the Premiers' Conference (1915) to the unemployment insurance scheme in Britain. While the Federal government failed to introduce relevant legislation, Kewley reports that 'the Queensland Government took action on its own and, in 1922, introduced unemployment insurance'.3 However, he fails to mention significant political change after the Premiers' Conference with the election of T. J. Ryan's Labor government in May 1915 and their unsuccessful attempt in 1919 to pass unemployment insurance legislation. Basing their comments on Kewley, subsequent welfare histories have paid only cursory attention to Queensland's unemployment insurance legislation, mostly as an exception to a perceived general decline in radical legislation after 1914.4 Histories of Queensland politics and economic development5 have similarly given the scheme only passing mention, with D. J. Murphy describing the legislation as a practical response by the Labor government to unemployment problems.6 There has thus been little documentation of the origins of the Queensland unemployment insurance scheme, nor the details of its implementation.