Georgist reform in Australia

1890 Henry George visits Australia talking to enraptured audiences, providing insights into likely economic results of the speculative state of the economy.

“In the colonies [of Australia] I have been through, the curse of land monopoly and land speculation is over everything. I don’t know of any new country where more striking instances of the absurdity and injustice of our present treatment of land is to be seen.” – Adelaide Observer, 26 April 1890

1908 A site is selected for the nation’s capital, between Melbourne and Sydney.

1910 Andrew Fisher’s Labour government introduces a progressive federal tax on unimproved land values. https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C1910A00021

1912 (September) Walter Burley Griffin, one of the American designers of the national capital, along with Marion Mahony Griffin, congratulates Home Affairs Minister King O’Malley in a letter:

“I cannot refrain from extending congratulations to your Government on the stand it has taken to maintain in perpetuity the rental value of the capital site. Failure to do this everywhere is largely responsible for distortion and prevention of natural city growth, nowhere better exemplified than in our own capital, Washington, where speculative holdings perverted the development” – Walter Burley Griffin, Single Taxer and Social Reformer’

12 March 1913 Lady Denman officially announces Canberra as the name of Australia’s capital city.

Weell ……. maybe?