Chris Watson is one of Australia’s forgotten prime ministers. The forgotten prime ministers are virtually all of those, with the possible exceptions of Deakin and Hughes, who occupied the Lodge before Curtin. Not all of them occupied the Lodge, of course, especially those who served in the years before it was built. Watson was prime minister for a few months in 1904, achieving the distinction of becoming not only Australia’s first Labor prime minister but the first Labor prime minister of any country anywhere. He took office at the age of 37, making him still the youngest alpha-male in our history.
Watson was also the only Australian prime minister not to have been born within the British Empire. People who spend their lives helping good causes at trivia nights will be aware that he was born in Chile: it is one of those evergreen questions which nobody is meant to be able to answer but everyone can because they attended the same worthy function last year. Watson’s father vanished when Chris was young and the boy acquired the name of his stepfather.
It is shameful that such a significant character should have fallen from the national story. Virtually all that stands in his memory is a dour part of Canberra. It is one of the characteristics of Canberra that all the suburbs named after prime ministers are curiously out of keeping with the nature of those they honour: there are no pubs in Curtin, no trains in Chifley, no seances in Deakin, not much retail competition in Reid, no waterfrontage in Holt, no labour ward in Lyons and no art in Fadden. I’m sure, when it is built, that Keating will house the offices of Australians for the Restoration of the Monarchy, not to mention Australians for the Restoration of Victorian Terraces. Howard will be the site of a major public hospital. Watson, which already exists, is a scene of middle class comfort and relaxation. Chris Watson wanted, at the same time, both more and less for his people.
Ross McMullin’s short biography works, like Watson himself, both unostentatiously and effectively to achieve results. It is not only a window on the first decade of federation, although McMullin’s extensive use of newspaper extracts of the period from all over the country do move the reader into another era for long stretches.
At its deepest level, this book is a lament to