How Australians set out to perfect the exceptional democracy they had achieved

A Democratic Nation- Identity, Freedom and Equality in Australia 1901-1925 tells the story of the political battle after Federation to achieve unprecedented levels of social and economic equality, while preserving both national independence and individual freedom.;;;As the third book in a landmark five-volume Australian Liberalism series, A Democratic Nation shows how Australians, inspired by the exceptional democracy they had achieved, set out to perfect its principles while protecting it from a world they saw as increasingly threatening.;;;The period saw political battles within and between Liberal and Labor parties as attempts to protect identities defined by nation, class and race confronted ideas of individual freedom and equality.;As the war of 1914-18 between the European empires gave rise to unimaginable horrors, economic chaos and continuing violence, the Australian Labor Party shattered and the Liberal Party became submerged in a new Nationalist win-the-war alliance. In peacetime it struggled to restore the nation’s social and economic health under the weight of pre-war and wartime identity-based policies.;Throughout years of divisive political conflict, the Australian people would remain largely faithful to their hope of a land that would give them freedom to chart their own destinies, and would resist the siren calls of those who promised a conflict-free world by the use of centralised power to reconstruct the industrial and social order.