The Barton government was the first federal executive government of the Commonwealth of Australia. It was led by Prime Minister Sir Edmund Barton, from 1 January 1901 until 24 September 1903, when Barton resigned to become one of the three founding judges of the High Court of Australia.

The background to the Barton government saw the six British colonies of Australia vote to federate as one Commonwealth. Sir Henry Parkes was among the leading voices calling for Federation and had kick-started the movement with his Tenterfield Oration of 1889:

Australia [now has] a population of three and a half millions, and the American people numbered only between three and four millions when they formed the great commonwealth of the United States. The numbers were about the same, and surely what the Americans had done by war, the Australians could bring about in peace, without breaking the ties that held them to the mother country.

Known himself as the "Father of Federation", Parkes would die before the project was completed. Shortly before his death in 1896, Parkes called on Edmund Barton to take up the struggle of leading the push for Federation. Barton in turn announced:

There is one great thing which above all activates me in my political life, and will activate me until it is accomplished, and that is the question of the union of the Australian colonies.

After a series of constitutional conventions and referendums, the colonies agreed to federate as a new "commonwealth": the Commonwealth of Australia. The Constitution of Australia, with its provision for the foundation of a bicameral Australian Parliament, was endorsed by the Imperial Parliament in Britain and signed into law by Queen Victoria. Lord Hopetoun, a Lord-in-waiting to Queen Victoria and a former Governor of the Colony of Victoria, was selected as Australia's first Governor-General, and the appointment of the first Cabinet was put in train.

Edmund Barton became the newly Federated Australian nation's first prime minister at a grand ceremony in Centennial Park, Sydney, on 1 January 1901. He and his cabinet were sworn in by Australia's first Governor-General, Lord Hopetoun before an estimated crowd of 250,000 people. Hopetoun had first offered the position to the Premier of New South Wales Sir William Lyne (an opponent of Federation), but the other members of Cabinet and the general population saw Barton as the logical choice. The appointment was temporary, to organise the first general election.

Barton was sworn in as prime minister and Minister for External Affairs and his Cabinet consisted of a number of ex-premiers: Sir George Turner of Victoria was Treasurer, Charles Kingston of South Australia was Minister for Trade and Customs, Sir John Forrest of Western Australia was Postmaster-General, Sir James Dickson of Queensland was Minister for Defence, and Sir William Lyne was Minister for Home Affairs. Other than Barton, Alfred Deakin was the only other member of the original Cabinet who had not served as a premier but, like Barton, he had been a strong advocate for Federation. Barton appointed two other honorary Cabinet positions: Richard O'Connor of New South Wales, to serve as Vice-President of the Executive Council, and Elliott Lewis, the Premier of Tasmania.