Military Service Bill - info please

[Carrie Meerten]

Does anyone know what the Military Service Bill was? It was introduced in Jan 1916. Thats all I know.

Is there any sites that can give me information on this? Am interested to know is all. I like to find out about the background stuff that my ancestors were involved with etc etc....

Just a thorough person is all. Thanks.
|angel|

[Peter Goodey]

Google using the proper title - Military Service Act - a Bill is a proposal - it becomes an Act when it's passed. Doesn't Australia work this way?

Suggested search term for Google - "Military Service Act" 1916

In short it introduced conscription plus recognition of the principle of conscientious objection.

[Carrie Meerten]

Thanks for your reply. I am not at all politically minded and/or follow the workings of politics. |cheers|

[Terry Waters-Marsh]

Peter,

(and this is not a criticism of Carrie) You have to appreciate that in Australia, unlike other developed countries, school children are not given a sound grounding in public administration and civics. In Queensland, the State Government is a unicameral system - if you ask Queenslanders what unicameral means, you are very unlikely to get the correct answer. More likely get answers like, "a digital camera", "a brand of watch", etc. Sadly, and I say this as a University Academic, Australians pride themselves in their ignorance of civics and government. I suspect it stems from the convict heritage of early colonial days that was reinforced by the later "working man" [person] culture, personified in the bushrangers, Ned Kelly and Labour Party legends. The end result is pride in ignorance of how government works.|banghead|

[Carrie Meerten]

Adding to Terry's reply

I have done my whole schooling in Queensland and it was only in the later part or primary school (grade 6 or 7 I think) that we covered a little bit about politics. All that we really had to do was a 'very basic' report about the history of some of the Prime Ministers. Other than that nothing more is done with learning the Politics of the country. It is something that you would look into either through university or TAFE college.

My family never had much of an interest in it so I never gained an interest in it either. I still don't. There's not much that we can do to change the things that they do and/or we disagree with so why bother - I guess that could be the way most of us think about politics over here.

[Peter Goodey]

It's not much better here either, I'm afraid.