Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that answer the question.
Query: When was the Australian Labor Party formed?
At Federation, the Labour Party did not have any national organisation. It was some years before the party would have any significant structure or organisation at the federal level. The first election to the federal Parliament in 1901 was contested by state Labour parties in five of the six states - in Tasmania, where there was no Labour party, King O'Malley was elected as an independent labour candidate. In total, they won 15% of the vote and 14 of the 75 seats in the House of Representatives and eight Senate places, and two Independents joined the party. The 24 Labour members met as the federal parliamentary Labour Party (informally known as the Caucus, comprising members of the House of Representatives and the Senate) on 8 May 1901 at Parliament House, Melbourne, the meeting place of the first federal Parliament.[7][8] Caucus elected Chris Watson leader, decided to call the party Federal Labour Party and to support the Protectionist Party minority government against the Free Trade Party. Federal Labour under Watson increased its numbers to 23 in the House and 8 in the Senate at the 1903 federal election and continued to hold the balance of power and support the Protectionist Party. In April 1904, however, Watson and Deakin fell out over the issue of extending the scope of industrial relations laws concerning the Conciliation and Arbitration Bill to cover state public servants, the fallout causing Deakin to resign. Free Trade leader George Reid declined to take office, which saw Watson become the first Labour Prime Minister, and the world's first Labour head of government at a national level (Anderson Dawson had led a short-lived Labour government in Queensland in December 1899), though his was a minority government that lasted only four months. He was aged only 37, and is still the youngest Prime Minister in Australia's history.[9] After Watson's government fell, Deakin became prime minister again for a short period, to be followed by the Free Trade Party's Reid, who had Labour's Conciliation and Arbitration Act 1904, which was the cause of the political upheaval, passed.
A United Trades and Labor Council meeting with the purpose of creating an elections committee was convened on 12 December 1890, and held on 7 January 1891. The elections committee was formed, marking the inception of what is today known as the Australian Labor Party (South Australian Branch). Originally known as the United Labor Party of South Australia, the party enjoyed immediate success, electing parliamentarians just four months later, and immediately held the balance of power with 10 of 54 seats resulting from the 1893 election, allowing radical liberal Charles Kingston to defeat the conservative John Downer government. Kingston served as Premier of South Australia for a then-record of six and a half years, usually implementing legislation with Labor support. Thomas Price formed the state's first Labor minority government and the world's first stable Labor Party government at the 1905 election with the support of several non-Labor MPs to form the Price-Peake administration, which was re-elected at the 1906 double dissolution election, with Labor falling just two seats short of a majority. So successful, John Verran led Labor to form the state's first of many majority governments at the 1910 election, just two weeks after the 1910 federal election where their federal counterparts formed Australia's first elected majority in either house in the Parliament of Australia, the world's first Labor Party majority government at a national level, and after the 1904 Chris Watson minority government the world's second Labor Party government at a national level. The Australian Labor Party at both a federal and state/colony level pre-dates, among others, both the British Labour Party and the New Zealand Labour Party in party formation, government, and policy implementation. In less than two decades the party in South Australia went from inception to majority government, and would continue to this day as one of the two major parties in the bicameral Parliament of South Australia, the other being the Liberal Party of Australia (South Australian Division) created in 1974, and its predecessors.
The seat has had three periods of existence. The seat was first formed in 1904 and abolished in 1955, recreated in 1976 and abolished again in 1992, and again re-established in 2002. It has always been held for Labor, apart from two months in 1955 when incumbent MP Peter Randles defected to the Australian Labor Party (Anti-Communist) in the Australian Labor Party split of 1955.
The Protestant Labor Party was a minor Australian political party that operated mainly in New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia in the 1920s and 1930s. It was formed by Independent MP Walter Skelton, member for Newcastle in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly 1922–27. In 1925 he was elected to the Assembly under the Protestant Labor label, but when single-member constituencies were re-introduced in 1927 he was defeated in Wallsend. At the 1927 South Australian election, Thomas Thompson was elected under the Protestant Labor Party banner to the two-member seat of Port Adelaide but failed re-election in 1930. In 1938 the party elected George Morris to the Legislative Assembly of Queensland as the member for Kelvin Grove, but the party was soon moribund and he sat out his term as an independent. The party was formed in an attempt to counter the perceived Roman Catholic dominance within the ALP. Aside from the sectarian issue, its policies were broadly in agreement with the ALP.
When the Labor party wins sufficient seats to be able to control a majority in the Legislative Assembly, the party leader becomes the State Premier and Labor will form the government. When Labor is the largest party not in government, the party leader becomes the Leader of the Opposition. To become a Premier or Opposition Leader, the party leader must be or within a short period of time become a member of the Legislative Assembly.
By 1909, Australia had evolved a two-party system at the federal level, with the conservative Commonwealth Liberal Party and the progressive Australian Labor Party having both alternately won power via general election. This system was upset in November 1916, when the Labor party split over the issue of conscription; Prime Minister Billy Hughes and his pro-conscription supporters left the Labor party and formed a minority government as the "National Labor Party", before merging with the Liberals in February 1917 to form the Nationalist Party of Australia with Hughes as their leader.
Following the disappearance of the previous Lang Labor group, the Australian Labor Party (NSW), Lang formed a new party, which contested the 1940 federal election.
There was a significant change in the party system during the Sixth Parliament. There was a split in the Australian Labor Party on 14 November 1916, when the then Prime Minister Billy Hughes walked out of a meeting of the Labor caucus over the issue of conscription along with twenty-four of his supporters, who were all then expelled from the party. Hughes and his followers became the informal "National Labor Party", which formed a minority government until merging with the Commonwealth Liberal Party on 17 February 1917 to form the Nationalist Party of Australia.
After the federation of Australia, Higgins was a member of the Australian Parliament as a member of the Protectionist Party, but was in broad agreement with the Labor party's social reforms. When the Labor Party sought to amend the Conciliation and Arbitration Bill to cover state railway employees, Higgins was one of the radicals who supported the amendments and helped bring down Deakin's government. When Labor formed a minority government in 1904, Higgins became Attorney-General in the Labor ministry, because Labor had no suitably qualified lawyer in Parliament.
The Australian Labor Party split of 1931 was caused by severe divisions within the Australian Labor Party over their economic response to the Great Depression in Australia. Amidst intense disagreement between economically conservative and radical elements of the party, two senior ministers in the Scullin Labor government, Joseph Lyons and James Fenton, resigned from Cabinet in January 1931. Lyons, Fenton and their supporters would subsequently merge with the conservative opposition Nationalist Party of Australia to form the new United Australia Party, led by Lyons with the last Nationalist leader, John Latham, as his deputy.
In 1916 the Labor Prime Minister, Billy Hughes, decided that conscription was necessary if the strength of Australia's military forces at the front was to be maintained. The Labor Party, Irish Australians, Catholics and the trade unions (heavily overlapping categories) were bitterly opposed to conscription, and Hughes and his followers were expelled from the party when they refused to back down. In 1916 and again in 1917 the voters rejected conscription in national plebiscites. (See History of Australian Conscription) Hughes united with the Liberals to form the Nationalist Party, and remained in office until 1923, when he was succeeded by Stanley Bruce. Labor remained weak and divided through the 1920s. The new Country Party took many country voters away from Labor, and in 1923 the Country Party formed a coalition government with the Nationalists.
The Majority Labor Party, sometimes called the Majority Australian Labor Party, was an Australian political party formed by federal Australian Labor Party MP James Catts in 1922. It did not win any seats in parliament.
Hughes, at the time a member of the ALP, had become prime minister when Andrew Fisher retired in 1915. The Australian Labor Party split of 1916 over the conscription issue had led Hughes and 24 other pro-conscription Labor MPs to split off as the National Labor Party, which was able to form a minority government supported by the Commonwealth Liberal Party under Joseph Cook. Later that year, National Labor and the Liberals merged to form the Nationalist Party, with Hughes as leader and Cook as deputy leader. The election was fought in the aftermath of the 1916 plebiscite on conscription, which had been narrowly defeated. The Nationalists won a decisive victory, securing the largest majority government since Federation. The ALP suffered a large electoral swing against it, losing almost seven percent of its vote from 1914. The swing was magnified by the large number of former Labor MPs who followed Hughes out of the party.
In standard Australian English, the word "labour" is spelled with a . However, the political party uses the spelling "Labor", without a . There was originally no standardised spelling of the party's name, with "Labor" and "Labour" both in common usage. According to Ross McMullin, who wrote an official history of the Labor Party, the title page of the proceedings of Federal Conference used the spelling "Labor" in 1902, "Labour" in 1905 and 1908, and then "Labor" from 1912 onwards. In 1908, James Catts put forward a motion at Federal Conference that "the name of the party be the Australian Labour Party", which was carried by 22 votes to two. A separate motion recommending state branches to adopt the name was defeated. There was no uniformity of party names until 1918, when Federal Conference resolved that state branches should adopt the name "Australian Labor Party" – now spelled without a . Each state branch had previously used a different name, due to their different origins.
The ALP was not founded as a federal party until after the first sitting of the Australian Parliament in 1901. Nevertheless, it is regarded as descended from labour parties founded in the various Australian colonies by the emerging labour movement in Australia, formally beginning in 1891. Labor is thus the country's oldest political party. Colonial labour parties contested seats from 1891, and federal seats following Federation at the 1901 federal election. The ALP formed the world's first Labour Party government, as well as the world's first social democratic government at a national level. Labor was the first party in Australia to win a majority in either house of the Australian Parliament, at the 1910 federal election. The Australian Labor Party at both a federal and state/colony level predates, among others, both the British Labour Party and the New Zealand Labour Party in party formation, government, and policy implementation. Internationally, the ALP is a member of the Progressive Alliance network of social-democratic parties, having previously been a member of the Socialist International.
Leaders of the Australian Labor Party Australian Labor Party (New South Wales Branch) Australian Labor Party (Victorian Branch) Australian Labor Party (South Australian Branch) Australian Labor Party (Australian Capital Territory Branch)
The National Civic Council is an Australian Catholic Action group formed in 1957 out of the Australian Catholic social studies movement under the leadership of B.A. Santamaria. Precursors to the NCC were active in the Australian Labor Party, but were expelled from the party by less conservative members during the 1955 Labor Split. The expelled members of the party went on to form the Australian Labor Party (Anti-Communist) and the subsequent Democratic Labor Party.
The Barton Government which came to power following the first elections to the Commonwealth parliament in 1901 was formed by the Protectionist Party with the support of the Australian Labor Party. The support of the Labor Party was contingent upon restricting non-white immigration, reflecting the attitudes of the Australian Workers Union and other labour organisations at the time, upon whose support the Labor Party was founded.
When the Labor party wins sufficient seats to be able to control a majority in the Legislative Assembly, the party leader becomes the State Premier and Labor will form the government. When the party is not in government, the party leader becomes the Leader of the Opposition. To become a Premier or Opposition Leader, the party leader must be or within a short period of time become a member of the Legislative Assembly.
The Australian Labor Party (South Australian Branch), commonly known as South Australian Labor, is the South Australian Branch of the Australian Labor Party, originally formed in 1891 as the United Labor Party of South Australia. It is one of two major parties in the bicameral Parliament of South Australia, the other being the Liberal Party of Australia (SA Division).
In 1933, in the wake of the Great Depression and the 1931 Labor split, Howard was elected to the South Australian House of Assembly for Adelaide, representing the Lang Labor Party, a faction of the Labor Party supporting the ideas of Jack Lang, the Premier of New South Wales. In April, however, he and fellow Lang Labor MP Bob Dale left the party after disputes with leader Doug Bardolph, forming their own breakaway group, the South Australian Lang Labor Party. In June 1934 the various Labor factions were reunited. Howard was defeated at the next election in 1938.
The Western Australian state division of the Australian Labor Party was formed at a Trade Union Congress in Coolgardie in 1899. Shortly afterwards the federal Labor Party was formalised in time for Australian federation in 1901. The WA Labor Party achieved representation in the Western Australian Parliament in 1900 with six members, and four years later the party entered into minority government with Henry Daglish becoming the first Labor Premier of Western Australia.
The Australian Labor Party (NSW), commonly known as Lang Labor, was a political group arising from a major breakaway from the Australian Labor Party in New South Wales that operated from 1931 to 1936, when the two groups were reconciled.
Thomas Price formed the state's first Labor minority government and the world's first stable Labor Party government at the 1905 election with the support of several non-Labor MPs to form the Price-Peake administration, which was re-elected at the 1906 double dissolution election, with Labor falling just two seats short of a majority. So successful, John Verran led Labor to form the state's first of many majority governments at the 1910 election, just two weeks after the 1910 federal election where their federal counterparts formed Australia's first elected majority in either house in the Parliament of Australia, the world's first Labor Party majority government at a national level, and after the 1904 Chris Watson minority government the world's second Labor Party government at a national level.
In March 1931, the Labor Party split on the left as well, when Eddie Ward, a supporter of radical anti-austerity Premier of New South Wales Jack Lang, won a by-election, and was refused entry to the Labor caucus, resulting in six Lang supporters forming a Lang Labor party on the crossbench. In November, the United Australia Party and Lang Labor succeeded in defeating the Scullin government, resulting in the 1931 federal election in December. The election resulted in a landslide victory for the United Australia Party and the election of Lyons as Prime Minister.