Events
- 7 January – Guy Menzies flies the first solo non-stop trans-Tasman flight (from Australia to New Zealand) in 11 hours and 45 minutes, crash-landing on New Zealand's west coast.
- 10 January – The Beef Riot takes place in Adelaide. Seventeen people are injured when unemployed men clash with police while protesting the decision to remove beef from the dole ration.
- 21 January – Isaac Isaacs becomes the first Australian-born Governor-General.
- 22 January – The Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration announces a 10% reduction in the basic wage, in addition to reductions made in accordance with the fall in the cost of living index, effective from 1 February.
- 4 February – Joseph Lyons resigns from the federal cabinet of James Scullin, after Scullin re-appoints Ted Theodore as Treasurer.
- 18 February – The Royal Australian Navy light cruiser HMAS Pioneer is scuttled off Sydney Heads.
- 4 March – Holden's Motor Body Builders is purchased by General Motors, and is renamed General Motors–Holden's Ltd.
- 10 March – The first Apex Club is formed in Geelong, Victoria.
- 21 March – The Australian National Airways aircraft Southern Cloud, carrying 8 persons, disappears on a flight between Sydney and Melbourne. The wreckage is not located until 1958.
- 7 May – Joseph Lyons forms the United Australia Party, through the amalgamation of ALP defectors, Nationalists and anti-Labor citizens' groups.
- 9 May – A general election is held in Tasmania, which implements compulsory voting clauses of the Electoral Act for the first time. The Nationalist Party led by John McPhee defeats the Australian Labor Party, and substantially increasing its majority.
- 15 August – The two ends of the Sydney Harbour Bridge are joined in the middle.
- 25 November – The Lang Labor group led by Jack Lang votes with the Opposition on a motion of no confidence against James Scullin's government, triggering an early election.
- 19 December – A federal election is held. The incumbent Australian Labor Party led by James Scullin is defeated by former Labor MP Joseph Lyons and the United Australia Party.
Read more about this topic: 1931 In Australia
Famous quotes containing the word events:
“I have no time to read newspapers. If you chance to live and move and have your being in that thin stratum in which the events which make the news transpire—thinner than the paper on which it is printed—then these things will fill the world for you; but if you soar above or dive below that plane, you cannot remember nor be reminded of them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If I have renounced the search of truth, if I have come into the port of some pretending dogmatism, some new church, some Schelling or Cousin, I have died to all use of these new events that are born out of prolific time into multitude of life every hour. I am as bankrupt to whom brilliant opportunities offer in vain. He has just foreclosed his freedom, tied his hands, locked himself up and given the key to another to keep.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“By the power elite, we refer to those political, economic, and military circles which as an intricate set of overlapping cliques share decisions having at least national consequences. In so far as national events are decided, the power elite are those who decide them.”
—C. Wright Mills (1916–1962)