Stanley Bruce

Is that because you see those, I mean, there are ebbs and flows of migration through that period.

Stanley Malcolm Bruce, of course, is a proponent of men, money and markets and wants lots of British men and women to come to Australia through assisted passage.

Of course, it's becoming increasingly difficult because the conditions in Britain are actually quite good.

It reaches a point where Australia is not quite as appealing as staying at home in Britain is.

It didn't, for me, make the threshold of being transformative.

So there were interesting things that happened in the 1920s.

You talked about Stanley Melbourne Bruce and Money, Men and Markets.

The Empire Settlement Act was passed in the UK and a parallel act in Australia.

Before we get into it, though, we have to discuss some major moments in the lead up.

As we are all aware of now, industrial relations and strikes had become a major component of the Australian political scene, and the Bruce-Page Nationalist-Country coalition government had campaigned on cutting down the unions and reforming industrial relations at the 1928 election.

As such, Prime Minister Stanley Bruce was, by the middle of 1929, feeling the heat to make good on his promises, especially as strikes continued to rage across the country, such as with the timber workers striking over their new award, increasing their working hours from 44 to 48.

Perhaps most prominent, though, occurred as a consequence of attempts to cut wages for miners, something which the Miners' Federation staunchly resisted.

Hughes, angered at the budget and Bruce's stance on industrial relations, crossed the floor, and in doing so, returned to high relevancy once more.

For their crossing of the floor, both Manne and Hughes were expelled from the party.

The Maritime Industries Bill was the final straw for the Bruce-Page government.

Hughes quickly worked alongside Labor MPs like Ted Theodore and James Scullin to mount an opposition, with Hughes in particular being key to bringing in Nationalist MP George Maxwell and Independent Percy Stewart to vote down the bill.

But as long as there is a single clear one, their vote counts.

If all of their preferred candidates are excluded, the vote exhausts, so not every formal vote will remain in the count until the end.

These two methods have existed for at least a century, and during that time there has been a constant tension over the method of voting.

Early in the 20th century, those parties that tended to lose out from the flowing of preferences advocated for a return to first past the post, but this option was discredited by the 1970s.

Since then, the argument has focused on the exact method of marking preferences.

Do we force every voter to mark preferences for every candidate, which ensures stronger flows of preferences and a winner with a majority of the vote, but at the cost of more informal votes and denying a voter the choice to simply not mark a preference? Or do we keep informal voting low and give voters the freedom to not mark preferences, even if it means candidates are elected with less than half the vote and preferences don't flow as strongly? Where a political party lands on this question often depends less on their political principles and more on what might help them.

If your party does better on preferences from other candidates or needs preferences to coordinate between multiple parties, you'll likely support whatever method ensures preferences flow as strongly as possible.

Compulsory preferential, that is.

So that didn't emerge until 1919 and preferential voting kind of was brought in to aid the right to prevent them from splitting their own vote.

All right, so Hughes served as Prime Minister until 1923, and he was ultimately pushed out in favor of the fanciest fella to ever be Prime Minister, and that is the Right Honorable Viscount Stanley Bruce of Melbourne.

He did become Viscount after he was Prime Minister, but yeah, you can see him there.

He looks like he kind of does have the look of someone who's been subject to a bit of inbreeding, like real aristocratic vibes.

Yeah, absolutely.

Coming out of the coffin, doing some kooky stuff.

Bruce was an old school conservative, born into money.

It's kind of one of those stories where they had crazy money, they pissed it away, he rebuilt the fortune, one of those sorts of things.

No, lose ten on that one.

Lord Stanley Bruce.

No, thank you.

I think he was a Prime Minister, wasn't he? And what do you