AUSTRALIA: Closed Shop

Strict immigration curbs keep Australia rather empty, but safe for seven million inhabitants who prefer kangaroos to competition. Even when it came to picking the King's Governor General for the Dominion, the Australian Labor Party wanted no "foreigners" to succeed the Duke of Gloucester (whose chief of staff had been charged with an unfair labor practice after a row with his valet). So Prime Minister Joseph B. Chifley, an ex-locomotive engineer, produced from the Labor Party's own marsupial pouch the new Governor General, William John McKell, Prime Minister of New South Wales.

King George had gently suggested that his representative...

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