This is a free one-day symposium on the lawyer and public servant, Robert Randolph Garran (1867-1957). Garran was a major figure in the making of the Commonwealth of Australia, the formation of the Commonwealth (now Australian) Public Service, the development of federal law and Australia's international status, and in the life of Canberra as national capital between 1927 and his death 30 years later. His nation-building and public service ranged across federalism, administration, law, censorship, education, music and literature. In a study of Garran’s life, we are able to see many of the themes of Australia’s national history in the age of British imperialism and Australian nation-building.

Program

9.00-9.10 am - Introduction: Jeff Brownrigg

COMING COMMONWEALTH
9.10 - 11.00 am - Session 1 (Chair: Frank Bongiorno) 
Colin Milner (ANU) “Ancestral echoes and settler pride: the family background of Robert Randolph Garran”
James Warden “Garran’s commonwealth”
John Williams (Adelaide University) “The Coming Commonwealth and Garran in Adelaide” (Title: tbc)

11.00 - 11.20 am - Morning tea

COERCIVE COMMONWEALTH?
11.20 am - 1.20 pm - Session 2 (Chair/Discussant: Nicole Moore) 
Andrew Dillon (ANU) “Frank Tate: Nation Building through the Victorian School System”
Frank Bongiorno (Vice-Chancellor’s Centre of Public Ideas, University of Canberra) “John Quick, Chinese Voters and Settler Democracy”
Catherine Bond (UNSW) “Garran and Law in the First World War” (Presentation via Zoom)

1.20 - 2.10 pm - Lunch

CULTURE AND CANBERRA
2.10 - 3.40 pm - Session 3 (Chair: Marilyn Dooley)
Nicholas Brown (ANU) “‘I doubt whether a better choice could have been made by a committee of disinterested archangels’: Garran’s Canberra”
Jeff Brownrigg (ANU) “The Arts of Robert Randolph Garran”

3.40-4.00 pm Wrap-up

4.00 pm - Drinks
 

Conveners: Jeff Brownrigg and Frank Bongiorno
Enquiries: frank.bongiorno@anu.edu.au