Perth
Federation and beyond

After a referendum in 1900, Western Australia joined the Federation of Australia in 1901, and "became a founding state of Australia". It was the last of the Australian colonies to agree to join the Federation, and it did so only after the other colonies had offered several concessions, including the construction of a transcontinental railway line from Port Augusta in South Australia to Kalgoorlie to link Perth with the eastern states.

In 1927, Indigenous people were prohibited from entering large swathes of Perth under penalty of imprisonment, a ban that lasted until 1954.

In 1933, two-thirds of Western Australians voted in a referendum to secede from the Australian Federation. However, the state general election held at the same time as the referendum had voted out the incumbent "pro-independence" government, replacing it with a government that did not support the independence movement. Respecting the result of the referendum, the new government nonetheless petitioned the Imperial Parliament at Westminster. The House of Commons established a select committee to consider the issue but after 18 months of negotiations and lobbying, finally refused to consider the matter, declaring that it could not legally grant secession.

Perth entered the post-war period with a population of approximately 280,000 and an economy that had not experienced sustained growth since the 1920s. Successive state governments, beginning with the Willcock Labor Government (1936–1945), determined to change this. Planning for post-war economic development was initially driven by Russell Dumas, who as Director of Public Works (1941–1953) drew up plans for Western Australia's major post-war public-works projects, including the raising of the Mundaring and Wellington Dams, the development of the new Perth Airport, and the development of a new industrial zone centred on Kwinana. The advent of the McLarty Liberal Government (1947–1953) saw the emergence of something of a consensus on the need for continuing economic development. Economic growth was fuelled by large-scale public works, the post-war immigration program, and the success that various state governments had in attracting substantial foreign investment into the state, beginning with the construction of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Refinery at Kwinana in 1951–52.

The result of this economic activity was the rapid growth of the population of Perth and a marked change in its urban design. Commencing in the 1950s, Perth began to expand along an extensive highway network laid out in the Stephenson-Hepburn Report, which noted that Perth was beginning to resemble a pattern of development less in line with the British experience and more in line with North America. This was encouraged by the opening of the Narrows Bridge and the gradual closure of the Perth-Fremantle Tramways. The mining-pastoral boom of the 1960s only accelerated the pace of urban growth in Perth.

In 1962, Perth received global media attention when city residents lit their house lights and streetlights as American astronaut John Glenn passed overhead while orbiting the Earth on Friendship 7. This led to its being nicknamed the "City of Light". The city repeated the act as Glenn passed overhead on the Space Shuttle in 1998.

Perth's development and relative prosperity, especially since the mid-1960s, has resulted from its role as the main service centre for the state's resource industries, which extract gold, iron ore, nickel, alumina, diamonds, mineral sands, coal, oil, and natural gas. Whilst most mineral and petroleum production takes place elsewhere in the state, the non-base services provide most of the employment and income to the people of Perth.
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