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Sir Henry Parkes. Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
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During the 1890s Sir Henry Parkes emerged as a leader of the Federation movement dedicated to forming the Australian colonies into a single Commonwealth. The first of several conferences to discuss a new Australian Constitution was held in Melbourne in February 1890.
At the conference banquet, Parkes, then premier of New South Wales, declared that disagreements among the colonies over trade protection policies should not prevent Federation. He argued that Australians were members of a single colonial family, united by 'the crimson thread of kinship'. The phrase became an enduring catchcry of the Federation movement.
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