Flinders
Street Station, Melbourne, intersection
of Swanston Street and Flinders Street,
1927.Melbourne was the capital city of
Australia from 1901 until 1927. It became
the national capital at Australia's Federation
on 1 January 1901. The first Federal parliament
was opened on 9 May of that year in the
Royal Exhibition Building. The seat of
government and the national capital remained
in Melbourne until 1927 when it moved
to the new capital city of Canberra. Melbourne
continued to expand steadily throughout
the first half of the 20th century. It
became the Allied Pacific Headquarters
for a time from 1942 to 1944 as General
Douglas Mac Arthur established Australia
as a launch base for Pacific operations.
During World War II Melbourne industries
flourished and expanded with war time
production. This set Melbourne on a course
for significant post war expansion, particularly
with the post-World War II influx of immigrants
and the prestige of hosting the Olympic
Games in 1956.
Even
after the national capital moved to Canberra,
Melbourne remained Australia's business
and finance capital until the 1970s, when
it began to lose this primacy to Sydney.
Melbourne also developed as a centre of
the arts. After a boom in the 1980s Melbourne
experienced a (largely property market
and manufacturing driven) slump from 1989
to 1992, with a loss of employment and
a drain of population to New South Wales
and Queensland. In the 1990s, the Victorian
state government of Premier Jeff Kennett
(Liberal) sought to reverse this trend
with the aggressive development of new
public buildings, such as the Melbourne
Museum, Federation Square, the Melbourne
Exhibition and Convention Centre (nicknamed
"Jeff's Shed"), Crown Casino,
capital works (most notably the City Link
tollway), the (somewhat controversial)
selling of state assets (the State Electricity
Commission and some state schools), the
pruning back of state services and the
publicising of Melbourne's merits both
to outsiders and Melburnians.
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