Australian Labor Party (ALP) - Policy, Structure, History, ALP federal leaders, Current ALP State Premiers / Territory Chief Ministers

Australia's oldest political party, founded in 1891 in New South Wales following the defeat of the trade unions in the 1890 strike. The party spread to all States by the mid-1900s and formed the world's first labour government in Queensland in 1899 for one week. It has always been a social democratic party, committed to evolutionary not revolutionary change. Despite a commitment to ‘socialism’, it has generally been moderate and pragmatic when in government. Two major splits in the ALP occurred: in 1916–17 over conscription, and in 1955 over attitudes to communism. ALP has had varied success in winning federal government (1908–9, 1910–13, 1914–15, 1929–32, 1941–9, 1972–4, 1983–96), but managed to stay in office in the recession of the early 1990s. Its most important national figures have been Prime Ministers W M (‘Billy’) Hughes (1915–16), James Scullin (1929–32), John Curtin, 1941–5), Ben Chifley (1945–9), Gough Whitlam (1972–4), R J L (‘Bob’) Hawke (1983–91), and Paul Keating (1991–6). The party has always had fewer members than its main rival, the Liberal party.

Australian Labor Party
Leader	Kim Beazley
Founded	1891
Headquarters	Centenary House 19 National Circuit BARTON ACT 2600
Political Ideology	Social democracy
International Affiliation	Socialist International
Website	Australian Labor Party
See also	Politics of Australia Political parties Elections

The Australian Labor Party (ALP) is Australia's oldest political party. At the state and territory level, since the 2002 SA election Labor has been in government in all six states and both mainland territories - the first time Labor has achieved this. The party's current federal parliamentary leader is Kim Beazley, and its National President for 2006 is Warren Mundine.

Policy

The policy of the Australian Labor Party is contained in its National Platform, which is approved by delegates to Labor's National Conference, held every three years. According to the Labor Party's website, "The Platform is the result of a rigorous and constructive process of consultation, spanning the nation and including the cooperation and input of state and territory policy committees, local branches, unions, state and territory governments, and individual Party members.

In practice, the Platform provides only general policy guidelines to Labor's federal, state and territory parliamentary leaderships. The policy Labor takes into an election campaign is determined by the Cabinet (if the party is in office) or the Shadow Cabinet (if it is in opposition), in consultation with key interest groups within the party, and is contained in the parliamentary Leader's policy speech delivered during the election campaign. When Labor is in office, the policies it implements are determined by the Cabinet, and sometimes bear little resemblance to official party policy, or even to what was in the policy speech at the previous election.

The Labor Party is commonly described as a social democratic party (or sometimes as a democratic socialist party), but in fact it has no formal ideology.

Although Labor has never been a socialist party, it has always had a minority of convinced socialists in its ranks.

The current National Platform gives a general indication of the policy direction which a future Labor government would follow, but does not commit the party to specific policies. While making it clear that Labor is fully committed to a market economy, it says that: "Labor believes in a strong role for national government — the one institution all Australians truly own and control through our right to vote."

Although in office from 1983 to 1996 Labor pursued many policies associated with neo-liberalism, such as privatisation, tariff reductions and deregulation of the financial system, since 1996 Labor has reacted to the Howard government's policies by moving back to more traditional Labor policies, with an emphasis on "fairness" in outcomes in the economy, education system, health system and industrial relations system. These are values which all mainstream political parties nominally subscribe to, but in practice Labor's interpretation of them is substantially different to that of the Liberal Party, which under John Howard has fully embraced the neo-liberal agenda.

Structure

The Australian Labor Party is a democratic and federal party, which consists of both individual members and affiliated trade unions, who between them decide the party's policies, elect its governing bodies and choose its candidates for public office. The great majority of trade unions in Australia are affiliated to the party, and their affiliation fees, based on the size of their memberships, makes up a large part of the party's income. The party consists of six state and two territory branches, each of which consists of local branches which any Australian citizen or permanent resident can join, plus affiliated trade unions. The party has about 50,000 individual members, although this figure tends to fluctuate along with the party's electoral fortunes.

The party holds a National Conference every three years, which consists of delegates representing the state and territory branches (many coming from affiliated trade unions, although there is no formal requirement for unions to be represented at the National Conference). The National Conference approves the party's Platform and policies, elects the National Executive, and appoints office-bearers such as the National Secretary, who also serves as national campaign director during elections.

The national Leader of the Labor Party is elected by the Labor members of the national Parliament (the Caucus), not by the conference. Until recently the national conference elected the party's National President, a largely honorary position, but since 2003 the position has rotated among people directly elected by the party's individual members. The two Vice-Presidents are Barry Jones, a veteran party figure who was a minister in the Hawke government, and Dr Carmen Lawrence, a former Premier of Western Australia and minister in the Keating government.

The Labor Party contests national, state and territory elections. They are also sometimes required to donate a portion of their salary to the party, although this practice has declined with the introduction of public funding for political parties.

The Labor Party has always had a left wing and a right wing, but since the 1970s it has been organised into formal factions, to which many party members belong and often pay an additional membership fee. On some issues, such as opposition to the Howard government's industrial relations policy, all the unions are in agreement and work as a block within the party. Pre-selections, particularly for safe Labor seats, are often bitterly contested, and have frequently involved practices such as branch stacking (signing up large numbers of nominal party members to vote in pre-selection ballots), personation, multiple voting and even fraudulent electoral enrolment.

History

No exact date can be given for the founding of the Australian Labor Party, originating as it did from the various colonial labour movements. Party mythology says the first Labor branch was founded at a meeting of striking pastoral workers under a ghost gum tree (the "Tree of Knowledge") in Barcaldine, Queensland in 1891.

After Federation, the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party (informally known as the Caucus) first met on the 8 May 1901 at Parliament House, Melbourne, the meeting place of the first Federal Parliament. This is now taken as the founding date of the federal Labor Party, but it was some years before there was any significant structure or organisation at a national level. (The formal name Australian Labour Party was adopted in 1908, with the American spelling of "Labor" adopted from 1912.)

The ALP during its early years was distinguished by its rapid growth and success at a national level, first forming a minority national government under Chris Watson in April 1904, and forming its first majority government under Andrew Fisher in 1910.

One of the party's early innovations was the establishment of a federal arbitration system for the resolution of industrial disputes, which formed the basis of the industrial relations system for many decades.

The party was historically committed to socialist economic policies, but this term was never clearly defined, and no Labor government ever attempted to implement "socialism" in any serious sense.

In the 1970s and beyond, the party, through the efforts of Gough Whitlam and his supporters within the party, gave up its theoretical commitment to socialism and became a social democratic party. Indeed, during the 1980s the party was responsible for the introduction of many economic policies such as privatisation of government enterprises (such as the Commonwealth Bank, which was itself established by an earlier Labor government), and deregulation of many previously tightly-controlled industries, which are normally the province of conservative governments.

From its formation until the 1950s Labor and its affiliated unions were the strongest defenders of the White Australia Policy, which banned all non-European migration to Australia.

The Labor Party has suffered three major splits:

In 1915 over the issue of conscription, when Prime Minister Billy Hughes supported the introduction of conscription, while the majority of the party opposed it. After failing to persuade the Australian voters to support a referendum approving of conscription which bitterly divided the country in the process, Hughes and his followers were expelled from the Labor Party. He formed the Nationalist Party of Australia in alliance with the conservatives and remained Prime Minister until 1923. In 1931 Lyons left the party and joined the conservatives, forming the United Australia Party as successors to the Nationalists and becoming Prime Minister in 1932. During the 1950s the issue of communism and support for communist causes or governments caused great internal conflict in the Labor party and the trade union movement in general. They were expelled from the ALP and formed the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) whose intellectual leader was B.A. The DLP helped the Liberal Party of Australia remain in power for almost two decades but was successfully undermined by the Whitlam Labor Government during the 1970s and ceased to exist as a parliamentary party after the 1974 election.

The Labor Party served as a development ground for several conservative leaders. Conservative Prime Ministers Joseph Cook, Billy Hughes and Joseph Lyons were all ex-members of the Labor Party, with both Hughes and Lyons holding very senior positions in the party (Prime Minister and Premier respectively). Non-Labor premiers such as William Holman also began their careers in the Labor Party.

Through its membership of the Socialist International, the ALP is affiliated with other democratic socialist, social democratic and labour parties in many countries.

ALP federal leaders

Chris Watson 1901-08 (Prime Minister 1904) Andrew Fisher 1908-15 (Prime Minister 1908-09, 1910-13, 1914-15) Billy Hughes 1915-16 (Prime Minister 1915-23, expelled from Labor Party 1916) Frank Tudor 1916-22 Mathew Charlton 1922-28 James Scullin 1928-35 (Prime Minister 1929-32) John Curtin 1935-45 (Prime Minister 1941-45) Ben Chifley 1945-51 (Prime Minister 1945-49) Dr H.V. Evatt 1951-60 Arthur Calwell 1960-67 Gough Whitlam 1967-77 (Prime Minister 1972-75) Bill Hayden 1977-83 Bob Hawke 1983-91 (Prime Minister 1983-91) Paul Keating 1991-96 (Prime Minister 1991-96) Kim Beazley 1996-2001 Simon Crean 2001-03 Mark Latham 2003-05 Kim Beazley 2005-

List of ALP federal leaders by time served

Current ALP State Premiers / Territory Chief Ministers

Peter Beattie (Premier of Queensland) Steve Bracks (Premier of Victoria) Mike Rann (Premier of South Australia) Clare Martin (Chief Minister of the Northern Territory) Jon Stanhope (Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory) Paul Lennon (Premier of Tasmania) Morris Iemma (Premier of New South Wales) Alan Carpenter (Premier of Western Australia)

Past ALP State Premiers and Territory Chief Ministers

. Ryan (1915–19) Anderson Dawson (1899, world's first leader of a parliamentary socialist government)

Western Australia

Dr Geoff Gallop (2001-05) Dr Carmen Lawrence (1990–93, first female premier of an Australian state) Peter Dowding (1988–90) Brian Burke (1983–88) John Tonkin (1971–74) Albert Hawke (1953–59) Frank Wise (1945–47) John Willcock (1936–45) Philip Collier (1924–30, 1933–36) John Scaddan (1911–16) Henry Daglish (1904–05)

South Australia

Lynn Arnold (1992–93) John Bannon (1982–92) Des Corcoran (1979) Don Dunstan (1967–68, 1970–79) Frank Walsh (1965–67) Robert Richards (1933) Lionel Hill (1926–27, 1930–33) John Gunn (1924–26) Crawford Vaughan (1915–17) John Verran (1910–12) Thomas Price (1905–09)

Tasmania

Jim Bacon (1998–2004) Michael Field (1989–92) Harry Holgate (1981–82) Bill Neilson (1975–77) Eric Reece (1958–69, 1972–75) Edward Brooker (1947–48) Robert Cosgrove (1939–47, 1948–58) Edmund Dwyer-Gray (1939) Albert Ogilvie (1934–39) Joseph Lyons (1923–28) John Earle (1909, 1914–16)

Australian Capital Territory

Rosemary Follett (1989, 1991–95, first female head of an Australian state or territory)

Other past Labor politicians

Lance Barnard Jack Beasley Kim Beazley, senior Lionel Bowen Clyde Cameron Jim Cairns Rex Connor Frank Crean Fred Daly Al Grassby Ted Holloway Brian Howe Lionel Murphy Graham Richardson Ted Theodore Eddie Ward Ralph Willis John Button

For current ALP federal politicians, see:

List of members of the Australian House of Representatives List of members of the Australian Senate