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Published by the Parliament of NSW and the University of SydneyVolume Two of a 3-volume set.Australia became a nation politically through the willingness of the existing colonies and their citizens to join together, ceding some of their powers in order to construct something better than the sum of those older political units. Yet the colonies did not disappear; they became autonomous States in the new Commonwealth of Australia. Consequently, to understand the political history of Australia it is not enough to know what happened in federal politics. Each State has had its own significant political history, often influencing developments in other States and at the centre. This work is a political chronicle of the most populous State, New South Wales, during the century since Federation, using the regular State elections as focal points. It fills in some of the important detail necessary to understand how modern Australia has become such a successful democratic nation. Volume One - 1920-1927Volume Two - 1930 to 1965This Second Volume relates how NSW and Australia faced the near collapse of the economic system in the Great Depression of the 1930s, followed by the catastrophe of the Second World War. In other parts of the world these events brought empires and nations to disintegration, but moderate and sensible political leadership prevailed in NSW and helped society to emerge from those crises stronger than before. After the war, economic and political management was much easier, due partly to the long economic boom of the 1950s and into the 1960s. The NSW political system experienced an unaccustomed era of stability, with the hegemony of Labor governments from 1941 to 1965, although by the end of the 1960s signs were emerging of challenges to the long accepted orthodoxies of the postwar period. Volume Three - 1968-1999