D. J. Murphy

The Dawson Government in Queensland, the First Labour Government in the World

Although there were Labour parties formed in three of the Australian colonies?New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia ?early in the 1890s and similar parties were to emerge in the other three states by the time of the first federal Labour government in 1904, it was not really until the close of the first decade of the twentieth century that there was a Labour party in the present sense, nor was it clear until then that labour would form one half of the Australian political spectrum and coalitions or alliances of antiand non-labour parties the other half. The decision of the 1908 interstate conference to adopt the title Australian Labour Party and the concluding of the lib-lab coalitions in South Australia and Queensland together with the ending of the federal lib-lab agreements were the outward manifestations of this change. But for almost the first twenty years of their existence the state Labour parties had debated within their ranks the nature of their politics and the best tactics to use. Should they try to seek power, quickly, in their own right or should they remain part of an anti conservative opposition? If the opportunity to assume office presented itself, should this be accepted as part of a lib-lab coalition or should the party maintain a certain exclusiveness and go it alone? The formation of the Labour government of Anderson Dawson which held office briefly in Queensland at the end of 1899 reflects these debates in the party and in the labour movement. Though there w7ere to be similarities among the Labour parties as they evolved, there were also to be differences in organisation, ideology and tactics which were dictated by the economic and political differences in the colonies themselves. In Queensland, it was clear before the maritime and shearing strikes that labour was going to form its own political organisation and not merely be a part of the Liberal party as its leader Sir Samuel Griffith had tried to effect throughout 18881. In April and May 1893, the first opportunity at which the new Labour party could test its organisation, sixteen Labour members w7ere returned in a house of twenty-two. However, since the two political groups of the 1880s vaguely liberal under Griffith and conservative under Sir Thomas Mclhvaith, had coalesced in August 1890 to form a kind of national government to face the depression, only a rump of seven Griffith liberals remained, to be known as the Independent Opposition, which made the Labour party at its entry to parliament the second largest party in the house and the largest opposition party. It did not immediately assume the role of formal opposition and indeed it was not until the 1909 election that it became clear that Queensland politics would be conducted between labour oriented and capital oriented parties.