When was the Australian Labor Party formed?
History of the Australian Labor Party
8 May 1901
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.