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Fusion: the Party System We Had to Have?

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Fusion: the Party System We Had to Have? FEATURE FUSION: THE PartY SYSTEM WE HAD TO Have? A hundred years ago, the fusion of the Protectionist and Free Trade parties created the party system that still dominates Australian politics, writes Charles Richardson espite occasional efforts by pundits to The major development of those first eight make it sound volatile and exciting, years was the rise of the ALP to be a contender Australia’s party system is one of for power in its own right. By the third federal the most stable in the democratic election, in 1906, Labor had almost doubled D its vote to 36.6 percent—mostly at the expense world. Its fundamental shape has not changed in a hundred years. of the Protectionists.1 Based in the trade union A hundred years exactly, because May 1909 movement, Labor was a tightly disciplined group; saw the key event that formed that shape: the its members pledged themselves to vote as a bloc ‘Fusion’ of non-Labor groups into a single party, according to the decisions of caucus, and therefore whose lineal descendant is today’s Liberal Party. behaved more like a modern political party Since then, with rare exceptions (almost all of than their rivals did. This put them in a strong bargaining position. them in Victoria), Australian elections have been But the nature of the ALP also provoked a contest between Labor and non-Labor parties. resistance. The caucus system was seen as hostile Fusion, although much neglected by historians to the individual conscience of MPs; Labor’s and political thinkers, is therefore fundamental socialist doctrines, half-hearted as they were, were to understanding the development of Australian resisted by the propertied classes; and the very idea politics. But before trying to assess its significance, of working-class participation in politics was still it will be useful to recap some of the basic facts. new and unsettling. As Labor seemed more within What happened reach of a majority, it lost interest in cooperating with middle class politicians, and they in turn For the first eight years of Federation, Australia began to see themselves as sharing a common had a three-party system: Protectionists, Free interest in resisting Labor’s claims. Traders and Labor. This was the same pattern that By the middle of the decade, the tariff issue had developed in NSW, the largest colony, by the had lost much of its centrality; the Protectionists 1890s, although at no time was it typical of the had succeeded in erecting tariff barriers around the other colonies. Labor started out as the smallest of the three parties, but it held the balance of power between the other two, and after the first Charles Richardson is a Melbourne-based federal election in 1901 it chose to maintain the writer and political commentator, and a Protectionists under Edmund Barton as prime former editor of Policy. minister. Vol. 25 No. 1 • Autumn 2009 • POLICY 13 FUSION: THE PartY SYSTEM WE HAD TO Have? new nation, and even their opponents accepted Free Traders and Protectionists they would not be able to reverse that policy in Despite its geographical location, Australia since the medium term. George Reid, leader of the white settlement has been part of the European Free Trade Party, adopted a strategy of trying to world, and its late-nineteenth-century move reorient the party system along Labor vs non-Labor to nationhood took place within a European lines. In 1906, the Free Traders were repackaged intellectual milieu. Some of the economic as ‘Anti-Socialists’; Reid envisaged a spectrum doctrines associated with liberalism, including running from socialist to anti-socialist, with the free trade and freedom of enterprise, were under Protectionists (semi-socialist) in the middle. challenge, but in a general sense liberalism was still the dominant influence at the time throughout the west. In light of this it would be no surprise In the British tradition, support to find Australia producing a strong liberal party. for free trade was part and parcel In fact, it would be only a slight exaggeration to of being on the progressive say that it produced three of them: a free trade side of the spectrum. (or ‘classical’) liberal party, a welfarist liberal party, and a trade union liberal party. The Free Trade Party originated as the party of This attempt struck a chord with politicians Henry Parkes and George Reid, which dominated who were steeped in the Westminster tradition NSW politics in the 1880s and 1890s. It was the and regarded a two-party system as very much closest thing that Australia produced to the British the norm. Reid’s Anti-Socialists emerged from Liberal Party, with all of its internal tensions: the 1906 election as the largest party, relegating democratic, progressive, individualistic, but also the Protectionists to third place. But Victoria’s inescapably middle class. It ‘managed to present Alfred Deakin, who had succeeded Barton as itself as sympathetic to democracy and reform Protectionist leader and prime minister in 1903, while retaining an air of middle class “safeness,” was Reid’s most bitter rival, and he continued respectability and concern for established 2 to govern with Labor support. Only with the institutions.’ The Free Traders weathered the rise withdrawal of that support in 1908, followed of the Labor Party at colonial level; Reid, who was closely by Reid’s retirement, did Deakin agree to the NSW premier from 1894 to 1899, enjoyed work together with the former Free Traders. good relations with Labor and governed with The result was the Fusion of 1909 and the their support. creation of a new ‘Liberal Party,’ which displaced In the British tradition, support for free trade Labor in government until the 1910 election. But was part and parcel of being on the progressive this union of apparent opposites was not at first an side of the spectrum. Tariffs imposed a heavier electoral success. Labor won an absolute majority burden on the poor; free trade meant funding in 1910—the goal that had eluded all parties until government services more out of direct taxes. that point—and by 1915 the ALP was also in That was certainly Reid’s understanding of government in every state except Victoria. Only politics. Despite a century of hostile commentary the Labor split of 1916 ushered in the non-Labor that has pegged him as a conservative, Reid never dominance that has been characteristic of federal abandoned the name or the self-image of ‘liberal.’ politics: Labor split on two further occasions, but He always believed that free trade, freedom of the ‘fused’ non-Labor party, under a succession of enterprise and smaller government would benefit names, has stayed together. the masses, not just the middle class, and NSW’s Such was Fusion. To appreciate its significance, economic performance in the 1890s provided we should try to answer three questions: What was strong evidence in his favour. the nature of the two parties that merged? What Yet of course there were conservative strands did they become after merging? And how might to the Free Trade Party as well. With economic they have developed if they had stayed separate? issues at the fore, a party opposed the trade unions 14 Vol. 25 No. 1 • Autumn 2009 • POLICY FUSION: THE PartY SYSTEM WE HAD TO Have? and their policies was bound to attract a coalition propagandist, writing (anonymously) articles for of interests, from both liberal and conservative a British newspaper even while he was prime backgrounds. While the substance of party policy minister, and much of Australia’s early history remained liberal—it was the only one of the three has been written from his point of view (Reid, parties, for example, that showed any reluctance by contrast, left few papers for historians to work about adoption of the White Australia policy— from). Deakin’s constant manoeuvring for power Reid’s anti-Socialist strategy inevitably led to suggested a flexible conscience that was a powerful a more conservative orientation. The cause of asset in that era; in Stuart Macintyre’s words, ‘he building an anti-Labor coalition, to which Reid was always surprised to find blood on his hands.’4 committed himself after 1901, was hardly going to be served by stressing radical ideas. No doubt this reorientation was helped by the fact that … protection had become part of Labor in NSW had deserted Reid’s party in 1899, a fundamentally illiberal package, as the colony’s Protectionists, once clearly the more conservative force, came to bid for Labor’s driven by fear of the outside world support. and contempt of individual liberty. But the heartland of the Protectionist Party was in Victoria. There, politics had taken a quite different turn to the NSW (or British) model. Liberalism is a broad church, and there is Under the influence of David Syme, editor nothing necessarily illiberal about support for of the Melbourne Age and Deakin’s mentor, social welfare measures and concern about liberalism in Victoria had become associated economic hardship. Even free trade should with tariff protection and a general hostility to probably not be regarded as a non-negotiable the free market. As Greg Melleuish says, Syme element. And Deakin was not a conservative—he ‘put together a potent mixture of protection, was, for example, the only early Australian leader statism and populism which ... continues to haunt to decline the English honour of appointment to Australian politics.’3 the Privy Council. But under Syme’s guidance, Victoria’s liberals and conservatives had come protection had become part of a fundamentally together in a coalition government from 1883; by illiberal package, driven by fear of the outside the time this government fell in 1890, Duncan world and contempt of individual liberty.
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