A Little History of the Australian Labor Party

By Nick Dyrenfurth and Frank Bongiorno

Acclaimed historians Nick Dyrenfurth and Frank Bongiorno tell the story of the Australian Labor Party's rich history of more than 130 years and examine its central role in modern Australia.The Australian Labor Party is one of the oldest labour parties in the world and the first to form a government. From the prime ministerships of Watson and Fisher to the tragedies of Hughes and Scullin, through the 1940s legends Curtin and Chifley to governments of Whitlam, Hawke, Keating, Rudd and Gillard, A Little History of the Australian Labor Party recounts times of triumph and failure, as well as resilience.This updated edition examines Labor's recent performance in state and territory politics and takes the national story up to the Albanese government.

• Language: English
• Publisher: NewSouth
• Release date: May 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9781742238951

Nick Dyrenfurth

Dr Nick Dyrenfurth is an adjunct research fellow in the National Centre for Australian Studies at Monash University in Melbourne. Nick is the author or editor of several books on Australian politics and history, including A Little History of the Australian Labor Party (2011, with Frank Bongiorno), Heroes and Villains: the rise and fall of the early Australian Labor Party (2011), All That’s Left: what Labor should stand for (2010, co-edited with Tim Soutphommasane), and Confusion: the making of the Australian two-party system (2009, co-edited with Paul Strangio). Nick is a leading media commentator, having written for The Age, The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, Australian Financial Review, The Daily Telegraph, The Canberra Times, The Saturday Paper, and The Monthly, as well as having frequently appeared on television and radio stations across the nation.

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Cover image for A Little History of the Australian Labor Party, by Nick Dyrenfurth & Frank Bongiorno

A LITTLE HISTORY OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY

Nick Dyrenfurth is Executive Director of the social democratic think tank the John Curtin Research Centre. He is the author or editor of 12 books, including Getting the Blues: The future of Australian Labor, Mateship: A very Australian history, Heroes and Villains: The rise and fall of the early Australian Labor Party, The Write Stuff: Voices of unity on Labor’s future (co-edited with Misha Zelinsky), All That’s Left: What Labor should stand for (co-edited with Tim Soutphommasane) and Confusion: The making of the Australian two-party system (co-edited with Paul Strangio). Nick is a leading media commentator and Adjunct Research Fellow in the School of Historical Studies at Monash University, where he received his PhD and lectured for several years. He was a postdoctoral research fellow in the School of Work and Organisational Studies at the University of Sydney and secretary of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History. Nick has also worked as a Labor Party adviser and speechwriter and secretary of the ALP’s National Policy Forum.

Frank Bongiorno is Professor of History at the Australian National University and Distinguished Fellow of the Whitlam Institute, Western Sydney University. He has written widely on Australian politics and especially the Australian Labor Party. His books include The Sex Lives of Australians: A history and The Eighties: The decade that transformed Australia, which both won ACT Book of the Year. His Dreamers and Schemers: A political history of Australia also won ACT Book of the Year and the Australian Political Studies Association’s Henry Mayer Book Prize. Frank recently collaborated in an updated edition of the late Mungo MacCallum’s The Good, the Bad and the Unlikely: Australia’s Prime Ministers: From Barton to Albanese and he is a regular contributor to media on Australian history and politics. He is President of the Australian Historical Association and the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and the Australian Academy of Humanities.

‘Informative and insightful, the authors shrewdly marshal the key events, policies and personalities in Labor’s long and lively history to tell the compelling story of the party that has shaped Australia more than any other. I enjoyed it immensely.’

Troy Bramston

‘The history of Australia’s Labor Party is the story of how ordinary men and women dreamed, organised, argued and raged to form a political movement that has weathered wars, depressions, financial crises, bitter splits, rivalries and betrayals, and yet forged great alliances to shape this country into a good and safe place to live. The story of Labor is the story of a nation that was not born on a distant battlefield, but in the homes and workplaces, pubs and halls where people gathered to make the world better. This enthralling, questing book is not just great Labor history, it is great Australian history.’

Janet McCalman

A LITTLE HISTORY OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY

NICK DYRENFURTH & FRANK BONGIORNO

Logo: NewSouth Publishing.

UNSW Press acknowledges the Bedegal people, the Traditional Owners of the unceded territory on which the Randwick and Kensington campuses of UNSW are situated, and recognises their continuing connection to Country and culture. We pay our respects to Bedegal Elders past and present.

A NewSouth book

Published by

University of New South Wales Press Ltd

University of New South Wales

Sydney NSW 2052

AUSTRALIA

https://unsw.press/

© Nick Dyrenfurth and Frank Bongiorno 2024

First published 2011

This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia

Internal design Josephine Pajor-Markus

Cover design Peter Long

Cover images Bob Hawke: © Commonwealth of Australia (National Archives of Australia) 2024; John Curtin: National Library of Australia, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons; Julia Gillard: © Commonwealth of Australia (National Archives of Australia) 2019.

All reasonable efforts were taken to obtain permission to use copyright material reproduced in this book, but in some cases copyright could not be traced. The authors welcome information in this regard.

CONTENTS

Labor Prime Ministers, Premiers and Chief Ministers

Foreword

Introduction

1Political Birth: Origins to 1913

2Labor Wars: 1914–40

3Unity and Disunity: 1941–71

4Old Labor or New? 1972–95

5Hard Labor: 1996–2013

6Back to the Future? 2013–23

Notes

Select bibliography

Acknowledgments

Index

LABOR PRIME MINISTERS, PREMIERS AND CHIEF MINISTERS

Prime Ministers

Premiers

Chief Ministers

*Dates in square brackets: no longer a member of the Labor Party.

FOREWORD

By Wayne Swan,

National President, Australian Labor Party

Former Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer

I am a proud Australian Labor Party member of 50 years’ standing, having joined the ALP in May 1974 during the double dissolution election of that year. Like so many others of my generation I got active because of my belief in Labor’s central purpose: to make the world a better place for working people. From 1891 to today, we have sought to achieve this noble political mission through creating prosperity, not as an end in and of itself, but so that all Australians can share in our wealth and enjoy equal opportunities to improve their lives, whatever the circumstances of their birth and wherever their postcode may be found.

Triggered by conservative obstruction, the double dissolution election that year was won narrowly by the ALP, and secured the passing of Medibank, one of the most significant Labor reforms in our 133-year history. Following the dismissal of Gough Whitlam’s government in 1975 by Governor-General Kerr, Labor suffered one of its heaviest electoral defeats.

Whitlam’s brief ascendancy, following a near quarter century of conservative government, delivered free tertiary education, Aboriginal land rights, a stronger social security safety net, universal health coverage and many other reforms. Whitlam united and modernised the ALP like no other leader before him, but unfortunately he didn’t secure the electoral support for a long-term federal Labor government. The motivating force behind Whitlam’s program was deeply ingrained within Labor tradition and central to Hayden’s, Hawke’s and Keating’s leadership before and during the 1980s and 90s. Medicare was reinstated, capital gains were taxed and the social wage of the Accord looked after those the market might otherwise leave behind.

That Labor ethos – what I and others call Australian Laborism – remains with us in 2024. Our party is continually striving to improve the lives of working people. No policy objective is more fundamental than achieving full employment with decent wages and secure, safe working conditions underpinned by a strong social safety net with good public services.

Throughout our history we have defined ourselves by what we stand for – progress, fairness, decency and acting in the national interest. Those in the various incarnations of the Liberal Party have only ever defined themselves by what they oppose – that is, anti-Labor. It invariably falls to Labor to champion the big building blocks of economic and social reform – and for the Liberals to be the representatives of vested interests trying to hold reform back.

We had once imagined that the strength of the contest between initiative and resistance had reached a peak in the years between 1972 and 1975, but it returned with a vengeance in the period of the Rudd and Gillard governments. The attempts to demonise Labor’s actions during the GFC and exaggerated claims about deficit and debt were not just the third-rate Reaganite rantings they seemed. Anti-Laborites have always sought to demonise the concept of government actively intervening in the economy when required to protect our people.

The Liberals believe in the cleansing power of recession. This small-government, survival-of-the-fittest mentality exploded in the first Abbott budget of 2014. That budget wasn’t just an assault on social justice and the social safety net. By declaring war on low- and middle-income earners and declaring the size of government the problem, the Abbott government attacked the very essence of the Australia our movement had built over more than a century.

The trickle-down economics that underpinned the Abbott assault remained ever-present in the policies delivered by prime ministers Turnbull and Morrison. The same powerful interests that hounded the Gillard government from office continue to push their aggressive neoliberal agenda of higher inequality, wage suppression, deregulation, tax cuts for the super rich and a smaller public sector. The constant attempts by the Right to demonise mainstream social democratic tax, industrial relations, superannuation and climate policies held our country back through a decade of Liberal Party rule. Unfortunately, at the 2019 election, Labor failed to convince working people we could protect and lift their living standards. The hard Right campaign waged by the Liberals weaponised social media and harnessed anger and insecurity through scare campaigns around climate change, government spending and tax. Labor’s economic message of secure jobs and decent wages for the many rather than the few was drowned out. Those on the margin, those our party seeks to lift up, felt scared that the little they had might be lost. As has often been the case in the past, fear trumped hope.

As social democrats around the world have learned over the last decade, leading in polls is not enough. An opponent singularly dedicated to widening inequality and coarsening political debate can still prevail with a relentless campaign of division, fear and top-down envy. Over the past decade, the rise of the populist Right has become a global phenomenon, leading to a hollowing out of Centre-Left voter support among working-class and lower income earners. Race, immigration and climate change are manipulated to camouflage the Right’s wealth concentration agenda. Australia’s politics, and Australian Labor, have not been immune to these trends. Yet Labor’s narrow win in the 2022 federal election, along with coast-to-coast victories in state elections over the previous decade, prove that Labor is a modern and viable political movement that not only can challenge that agenda, but can and must prevail.

Our party is responsible for the great policy innovations that have made us both a prosperous society and also a fairer one than many countries to which we compare ourselves. We find much to admire of course in the United States and the United Kingdom, societies in many respects like our own. Yet they are also more unequal societies, where many left behind by globalisation, by increasing inequality, have turned to the Right. Often with devastating effect. They have turned to political parties or leaders that will say anything to win people’s ballots – but do nothing to advance their interests. Candidates who treat the truth as irrelevant, the law as an inconvenience and democracy as disposable. Whether it is the Liberals, the Nationals, One Nation or Clive Palmer’s vote-siphoning operations, in Australia they push conspiracy theories and seek political dividends from the ugly politics of division.

Internationally, the rising tide of fascism and right-wing populism is directly linked to wealth becoming increasingly concentrated towards those at the very top. Angry and despondent people can fall prey to populist messages or easy answers. More than ever, Labor must dispel the myths of trickle-down economics and present a clear and compelling argument for a fairer and more prosperous society. As we know, this vision can only be delivered by a long-term Labor government. To be successful, we must build our movement and make our party much larger, more vibrant, more imaginative. To defeat the radical Right, we must rejuvenate the Centre Left. We must recruit and retain significant numbers of new members, particularly in outer suburban and regional areas where the people who need our help mostly live. A society built from the bottom up, not from the top down, cannot endure unless it is supported by a party that is large and dynamic and with membership representative of and spread across the country and the demography of modern Australia. Now is the time for Labor to draw strength from its proud history of nation building and take on the extreme Right and extreme Left who are toxifying our politics. Indeed, it has always been the role of the Australian Labor Party and the union movement to command and define the Centre and the Centre Left of politics; because it is precisely where the overwhelming majority of Australians are themselves.

Everyday Australians do not spend their lives debating politics on social media or university campuses. They seek to make their lives better through hard work and aspiration, and this is where Labor must meet them. Albanese Labor has taken dramatic steps in unwinding the downward path of the Coalition’s trickle-down project with action on minimum wages, enterprise bargaining, increased ambition on climate targets, increased investment in renewable projects and major efforts to rebuild local manufacturing.

Unlike its counterparts overseas, Australian Labor is not in an inevitable or permanent decline. However, the failure of the 2023 Voice referendum campaign tells us what we must and must not do to retain power and deliver for the millions of Australians who depend on progressive policy for a decent standard of living and opportunity for their children.

Too often we underestimate the power of narrative, and quickly fall into technocratic discussions about what a particular policy is, or does, or costs. Such an approach has never been particularly good campaigning but is now completely ineffective against the disinformation machines run by the Right against social democratic parties. Winning hearts and minds turns as much on passion as it does on technical detail, and somewhere in the past few decades public discussion has become too technocratic and aloof without drawing on the passion that flows from our values. Too much of modern Labor’s political language is made up of indecipherable jargon rather than regular conversation. If our language draws on the university common room more than it does a nurses’ or tradies’ lunchroom, should we really be surprised if ordinary working people feel disenfranchised from our movement?

Having learned the lessons of 2019, Labor’s 2022 campaign did not fall into this trap. By elevating jobs and living standards to the front of public discussion, Labor spoke directly to working people and their aspirations. Over our history, Labor’s most successful leaders recognised it was their democratic obligation to build the broadest possible political coalitions. Large and stable coalitions of interests allowed Labor to advance its agenda while ensuring Labor governments did not get ahead of, or ignore, the people we aim to serve.

It’s an approach that I characterise as ‘pragmatic idealism’. Over 50 years ago, Gough Whitlam famously remarked that ‘only the impotent are pure’. Gough’s call for pragmatism remains truer than ever. There is nothing more disloyal to the sacred mission of defending the interests of working people than the heresy that says achieving power isn’t Labor’s most fundamental responsibility. Without power, without the levers of government, no positive change is possible. Winning power to put in place the big building blocks of economic prosperity and environmental sustainability is what our party must focus on.

We saw the tactics of the Right in the devastation of the Voice referendum. And the darkness they seek to stir in the souls of ordinary Australians will not stop there. The Right’s ecosystem has become expert at turning many issues into culture war fights. It can turn public opinion around incredibly quickly. This is happening right now in campaigns against renewable energy projects. Labor best counters the Right when it builds a broad-based coalition to advance the economic interests of ordinary workers and their families. We must harden up our policy positions and the narrative around them as delivering to working Australians. We have to speak louder and more often in everyday language about our commitment to protect and enhance the living standards and lifestyles of working- and middle-class Australians. We must be more assertive in battling the myths of trickle-down economics and present a clear, compelling argument for a more equal, prosperous society that rewards those who work and contribute the hardest rather than those who already have the most.

In addition to a bigger policy offering, we must as a priority grow a bigger and deeper party. We win when we build a movement, not just run a campaign. But we win big when we assure the majority of Australians that we are always for them. In doing so we can proudly draw strength from our rich, sometimes turbulent but always purposeful history of nation building. This book is an important part of winning the battle of ideas.

INTRODUCTION

The Australian Labor Party (ALP) is a special kind of political organisation. Variously described as labourist, progressive, socialist, social democratic and Centre Left, Labor is defined by its relationship with the union movement. The party was founded by working-class unionists, and unions continue to occupy a formal place in its structure as affiliated bodies. It is the oldest continuous political party in Australia and one of the oldest labour or socialist parties in the world. Labor’s many successes in forming governments across 133 years – it was the first party of its type in the world do so in 1899 – as well as its failings have typically mirrored those of the nation itself.

Inevitably, in the 21st century, a party with an ethos and structure of this kind can appear to belong to a bygone era. Unions once accounted for the majority of the Australian workforce; as recently as the early 1990s, they still covered over 40 per cent. Today, they comprise about 12.5 per cent of employees and many of these belong to unions that do not maintain an affiliation with the ALP.¹ A not inconsiderable number of unionists do not vote Labor.

All the same, 1.4 million workers are still union members and the Labor Party was never – not even in its very earliest years – a party concerned only with the citizen as a worker. Opponents of the party sometimes today ridicule it as a once-working-class organisation overtaken by ‘chardonnay socialists’ or ‘latte sippers’. In