Development of Democracy in Australia

The First Fleet consisting of 11 ships, each one no larger than a ferry, left Portsmouth in 1787 with more than 1480 men, women and children onboard. Although most were British, there were also African, American and French convicts. After a voyage of three months, the First Fleet arrived at Botany Bay on 24 January 1788.
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In February 1851, a man named Hargraves found gold in near Bathurst, New South Wales. Within a week there were over 400 people digging there for gold, and by June there were 2000. They named the Goldfield Ophir after a city of gold in the Bible. Between 1851 and 1861, Australia produced one-third of the world's gold. By the end of the 19th century, Australia was the largest producer of gold in the world. A massive amount of Chinese came to Australia - 7000.
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The Eureka rebellion, which is often referred to as the 'Eureka Stockade', is a key event in the development of Australian democracy and Australian identity, with some people arguing that Australian democracy was born at Eureka'. The government charged 30 shillings per miner. Police were sent to the goldfields to obtainthe payment and were known to use unwarranted force when dealing with miners who did not, or could not, pay. In 1851, miners at Bendigo in Victoria held a large protest rally that began a movement for political change. The miners urged the government to decrease the licence fee.
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In 1856, all men over 21 were permitted to vote, instead of only wealthy land-owners. However, women still couldn’t vote. Men over 21 years allowed to vote in South Australia.
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The League grew out of the work of the Social Purity Society, an organisation which worked against "the social evil" - ie prostitution. The Society was concerned about the social and economic difficulties many women faced. It campaigned for fairer treatment of women by the law, and greater legal protection for young women. In 1885, the Society achieved legal reforms which raised the age of consent for girls to 16 and regulated the age of young people in brothels.
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Australia became an independent nation when the British Parliament passed legislation allowing the six colonies of Australia colonies to govern in their own right as part of the Commonwealth of Australia.The Commonwealth of Australia was established as a constitutional monarchy. 'Constitutional' because the Commonwealth of Australia was established with a written constitution, and 'monarchy' because Australia's head of state was Queen Victoria during that time.
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In 1902, Australia was the first country in the world to give women both the right to vote in federal elections and also the right to be elected to parliament on a national basis. New Zealand granted women the right to vote in 1893.

Commonwealth women's suffrage in Australia reflected the rights of women to seek election in South Australia and to vote in Western Australia, rights granted in 1895 and 1899 respectively
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Indigenous people as a group were not granted suffrage in federal elections, although South Australia granted suffrage to Aboriginal women very early in 1894, and the Commonwealth Constitution stated that anyone with a state vote was entitled to a Commonwealth vote.
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In Australia, for example, 824 000 new voters were registered in the election immediately after the change, about double what would have been expected due to the increase in the size of the population.1

The public rapidly accepted the lowering of the voting age to 18 years; since the 1990s, the debate about the franchise shifted to reducing the age further, to 16.