 Such settlement plans initially began during World War I, with South Australia first enacting legislation in 1915.Similar schemes gained impetus across Australia in February 1916 when a conference of representatives from the Australian Government and all the state governments was held in Melbourne to consider a report prepared by the Federal Parliamentary War Committee regarding the settlement of returned soldiers on the land.The report focused specifically on a federal-state cooperative process of selling or leasing Crown land to soldiers who had been demobilised following the end of their service in this first global conflict.