The 1901 Australian federal election for the inaugural Parliament of Australia was held in Australia on Friday 29 March and Saturday 30 March 1901. The elections followed Federation and the establishment of the Commonwealth of Australia on 1 January 1901. All 75 seats in the Australian House of Representatives, six of which were uncontested, as well as all 36 seats in the Australian Senate, were up for election. After the initial confusion of the Hopetoun Blunder, the first Prime Minister of Australia, Edmund Barton, went into the inaugural 1901 federal election as the appointed head of a Protectionist Party caretaker government. While the Protectionists came first on votes and seats, they fell short of a majority. The incumbent government remained in office with the parliamentary support of the Labour Party, who held the balance of power, while the Free Trade Party formed the opposition. A few months prior to the 1903 election, Barton resigned to become a founding member of the High Court of Australia, and was replaced by Alfred Deakin. Edmund Barton entered parliament at this election, as did six future prime ministers Alfred Deakin, Chris Watson, George Reid, Joseph Cook, Andrew Fisher, and Billy Hughes and future opposition leader Frank Tudor. Background The federation of the colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia came into effect on 1 January 1901 to form the Commonwealth of Australia. An election was held on Friday 29 March in Western Australia, Victoria, New South Wales and Tasmania, and on Saturday 30 March 1901 in South Australia and Queensland, to elect the inaugural members of federal parliament. Floods in Queensland delayed polling in parts of the state until April. The 1901 election was the only one of two occasions in Australia's history that the entire country did not go to the polls on the same day in a general election, the second occasion being the 1993 "supplementary election" in the Division of Dickson. This election was also the only time that an election or any part thereof was held on a day other than a Saturday. In what would later be known as the Hopetoun Blunder, in December 1900 the Governor-General, the 7th Earl of Hopetoun commissioned William Lyne, the Premier of New South Wales, to form the first Commonwealth Government from 1 January 1901. The government was to conduct itself on a caretaker basis in the