Australia’s Parliament Turns 100

Thousands of dignitaries gathered Wednesday to commemorate the first sitting of Australia’s Federal Parliament 100 years ago--the high point in a year of festivities that has seen the country’s political roots come under fire.

Australia’s political, cultural and business leaders listened to bands and patriotic speeches in Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Building to honor the launch of the legislature in the same vast hall exactly a century earlier.

“This, above all days, is an occasion to celebrate the success of Australian democracy,” Prime Minister John Howard told the crowd.

The opening of the first Parliament followed the formation of the Commonwealth of Australia on Jan. 1, 1901, when six British colonies joined together in a federation. Melbourne was the seat of government for Australia’s first 26 years before operations were moved to Canberra.

Australia’s head of state, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, delivered a message in which she said the country had “established and nurtured one of the best parliamentary democracies in the world.”

But many were less enthusiastic.

“The anniversary is chiefly a celebration of the dull deeds of forgotten men with long beards,” the Melbourne newspaper the Age said in an editorial.

Critics point out that Australia’s original constitution denied citizenship to Aborigines and that the first order of business of the Parliament, which included no women, was adopting the White Australia policy, which excluded Asians and non-Europeans for more than 50 years.