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An Antipodean Phenomenon: Comparing the Labo(u)r Party in New Zealand and Australia
Ray Markey*
The New Zealand Labour Party (NZLP) and the Australian Labor Party (ALP) share many similarities in terms of their ideology, support base and electoral performance. Labour and ideas travelled regularly between New Zealand and Australia. Australian influence was evident in the early NZLP leadership, and New Zealand influenced ALP policy regarding arbitration and age pensions. Subsequently, the NZLP and ALP have enjoyed similar national electoral records and followed broadly similar policies. However, there were always important divergences, particularly in terms of the timing of consolidation and formation of government, the impact of different state structures, the degree of support from farmers, and racial policy. This article surveys the parameters of the shared experience through examining the two parties' political and social environments, their support bases and their ideology and policy.
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| The political trajectory of the Australian Labour Party (ALP) and the New Zealand Labour Party (NZLP) has been remarkably concurrent, with substantial convergence in their class nature, ideology and support base over time. Both parties have been the main working-class political organisations in their respective countries, notwithstanding challenges from the left. Unions played a key role in their formation, and continue to exert a major influence as affiliated bodies in their extra-parliamentary party apparatus.1 Both parties' political praxis has been dominated by parliamentary-oriented pragmatism, without ever adopting the Marxist platforms of European-style Social Democratic Parties in the late nineteenth century. In the 1980s, when in government, both parties also adopted market-oriented economic reform agendas. Even the parties' record of achieving national government has been remarkably similar. Of course, in many of these respects a similar congruence has been observed for both the ALP and NZLP with the British Labour Party (BLP).2 The shared British legacies of ethnicity and legal, political and trade union structures clearly influenced the manifestation of working-class political organisation in particular shared ways. |
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However, the convergence between the ALP and NZLP has arguably been greater than for either party with the BLP. The formative periods of the antipodean parties in particular were characterised by a substantial trans-Tasman community of labour. At an organisational level this was expressed in the leadership of the early parties. For example, the first ALP Prime Minster of Australia, John Christian Watson, was born in Chile but brought up in New Zealand before migrating to Australia in 1888 at the age of 21. He became an active labour leader soon afterwards.3 Harry Holland, the firebrand socialist in the Sydney labour movement during the 1890s, emigrated to New Zealand and led the NZLP from 1919 until his death in 1933.4 The first NZLP Prime Minister, Michael Savage, was Australian-born, as were four others in his Cabinet.5 The leaders of the early Tasmanian ALP were also strongly influenced by their New Zealand political experience.6 To this day the ALP and NZLP exchange expertise, particularly during elections. |
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Trade unions in each country arguably enjoy closer ties than the parties, based on a longstanding community of labour. Organisers from the Australian Seamen's Union formed a New Zealand seamen's union in 1880, and the Amalgamated Shearers Union (ASU) organised New Zealand shearers in the 1880s. In the late 1880s a New Zealand Maritime Council of unions affiliated to the Maritime Council in Australia, and subsequently New Zealand unions were drawn into the great Maritime Strike which afflicted the Australian colonies in 1890. At the leadership level, Arthur Rae was born in New Zealand before becoming a leader of the ASU and Australian Workers Union in the 1880s to 1890s, and subsequently an ALP Senator. Much of the militant leadership of the New Zealand Federation of Labour (NZFOL), the 'Red Feds', formed in 1909, was Australian, including Bob Semple, Michael Savage and Harry Holland.7 Most of these unionists became political leaders. |
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