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The deal Complex deals were an integral part of the Australasian Constitutional Conventions of the 1890s. Western Australia was able to negotiate a deal to phase out the protective tariffs it had imposed on the importation of goods from the eastern colonies of Australia over a ten year period rather than immediately abandon them on entering the Federation. This was enshrined in the Constitution as Clause 95. The other key concession Forrest pushed for was a guarantee that the Commonwealth would build a railway to link Western Australia with the rest of the nation. Politicians from the eastern colonies were reluctant to grant any further concessions to Western Australia. While happy to pledge to eventually build a trans-continental railway, they refused to make the construction of the railway a condition of entry to the Commonwealth. The response of Alfred Deakin, the Victorian politician prominent in the federal movement who became Australia's second Prime Minister, was encouraging but noncomittal. He wrote to John Kirwan, editor of the Kalgoorlie Miner "If WA joins the Union it will be [in] the interest of the Union to make the best use of her geographical advantages (which will then be the Union's as much as yours) for the sake of the Union. It is our interests as much as yours that the line should be built and it is upon this fact of our joint interests in it that renders me so hopeful of its early construction." [full text]The reality that Western Australia needed the rest of the continent more than it needed Western Australia is shown in a letter to John Kirwan from George Reid, the Premier of New South Wales and a future Prime Minister of Australia. May 11, '99  In
the end John Forrest's appeals for further concessions were rejected and,
realising Western Australia would never get a better deal, he campaigned
in favour of Federation. While some people, like Frederick Vosper, campaigned
for the 'No' case on the grounds that it was a poor deal, most Western Australians
feared they would be offered fewer concessions if they did not enter the
Commonwealth as an original State. The Colonial Secretary Joseph
Chamberlain made it clear that a united Australian continent
was the preferred outcome for Britain by putting pressure on the Western
Australian Parliament to allow the referendum to be held. Meeting with Colonial
delegates in London in 1900 to discuss the proposed Australian Constitution,
Parker, the Western Australian representative sent by Forrest to observe
proceedings, watched as the Australian Constitution Act was sent through
the House of Commons, passed and sent for royal assent even before Western
Australia had agreed to hold a vote on the issue.
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