Events
- 20 March – Lieutenant Frank Hubert McNamara becomes the first Australian airman to receive the Victoria Cross.
- 5 May – A federal election is held. The incumbent Nationalist government led by Billy Hughes is returned to power.
- 5 May – Queenslanders reject a referendum to abolish the state's Legislative Council.
- 2 August – The General Strike of 1917 begins, a massive industrial action involving over 100,000 workers in support of railway workers in Sydney.
- 17 October – The two halves of the Trans-Australian Railway meet.
- 15 November – A general election is held in Victoria. The Commonwealth Liberal Party led by John Bowser defeats the incumbent Labour government led by Sir Alexander Peacock.
- 29 November – The "Warwick Incident" takes place in the town of Warwick, Queensland. A man throws an egg at Prime Minister Billy Hughes, and the refusal of Queensland Police to arrest him leads to the forming of the Commonwealth Police Force.
- 12 December – The Royal Australian Navy battlecruiser HMAS Australia is damaged in a collision with the British cruiser HMS Repulse.
- 20 December – The second plebiscite on the issue of military conscription was held; it was defeated.
- Daniel Mannix becomes a Catholic archbishop of Melbourne. He publicly supports Sinn Féin.
Read more about this topic: 1917 In Australia
Famous quotes containing the word events:
“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)
“That’s the great danger of sectarian opinions, they always accept the formulas of past events as useful for the measurement of future events and they never are, if you have high standards of accuracy.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“A curious thing about atrocity stories is that they mirror, instead of the events they purport to describe, the extent of the hatred of the people that tell them.
Still, you can’t listen unmoved to tales of misery and murder.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)