The Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the Australian Liberal Party

Ian Marsh argues that the 2010 election shows that the Australian two-party system is “past its used- by date”. Do you agree? Why/why not?

The LR Party was formed in 1872 to fight both political corruption and the dissatisfaction brought from military reconstruction

The role of the minor parties within the Australian political system can be as their title suggests, quite minor. On the other hand, a minor party can influence the political proceedings of this country in more ways than one. Minor parties can highlight socio-economic problems that quite often fly under the radar of the larger political parties, or simply can broaden electoral debate. Often spawning from a social, or in the case of the Greens, an environmental movement, minor parties tend to only last through one election, due to a lack of support and relevance in the mainstream social fabric. The minor parties can become crucial players come election time, due to Australia’s law of Compulsory preferential voting. Jaensch (1983, p.21)

Political parties today started to form in the late 1600’s. In 1787, Hamilton and other leaders joined and called themselves the Federalist. The Federalist party is the party which is most qualified for the presidency because the Federalist want a central government, want to avoid foreign affairs, and also want a central banking system. First a strong central governments.

For centuries, two main political parties, the Democratic Party, and the Republican Party, have divided the United States government. The Democrats are considered the liberal political party and can trace its roots all the way back to Thomas Jefferson when they were known as Jefferson’s Republicans and they strongly opposed the Federalist Party and their nationalist views. Republicans are considered the conservative political party and try to uphold more traditional values. The Republican Party came into existence just prior to the Civil War due to their long-time stance in favor of the abolition of slavery. In 1860, they became an established political party when their nominee Abraham Lincoln was elected as President of the United States. Since their inception, the Republican and Democratic Party have had many disputes about policies. One of these major debates has focused on educational funding in the United States. The parties have different views on the education system of the country, but both agree there needs a change in some way. Democrats favor more progressive approaches to education, such as implementing the Common Core System, while Republicans tend to favor more conservative changes such as longer hours and more focused programs to better educational resources. In Virginia, Republicans from 1990 to 2013 worked to provide better educational funding more prominently than Democrats.

The Democratic Party is one of the two major political parties in the United States. Its origin dates back to the original Democratic - Republican Party founded by Thomas Jefferson.

Australia 's prime minister had changed from John Curtin to Francis Forde to Ben Chifley. He realised that Australia needed a long term plan so that the people of Australia could protect and defend themselves from potential attacks. World War 2 ended in about 1945 and communists (people who wanted everyone to be equal) started popping up in Australia. Australia was under heaps of stress due to war and other issues and they needed to populate or perish.

Also during this period of time Mr Keating was elected President of the NSW Branch of the Australian Labor Party (ALP). This is when the ALP returned to lead the Government on March 1983.

The cause of Labour Party Split was entirely from an internal conflict between key leaders of the Australian Labour Party. The Labour Party at the time were not chosen into government, but yet the Liberal Party was, who were being lead by Robert Menzies the Prime Minister of Australia at the time. The party split into two separate parties, one being the Australian Labour Party who was Anti-Communist and one being the Democratic Labour Party. The split of the Labor Party had long-term consequences on Australian politics. One of these key long-term consequences was that the Democratic Labour Party instructed their supporters to give their crucial votes to the Liberal Party therefore not allowing any chances for the Australian Labour Party to win the government seat. Santamaria who was the leader of the Democratic Labour Party proposed to keep the Labour Party from winning until they came to a conclusion and accepted his terms. In Arthur Calwell’s autobiography published in 1972 recounts his recollection of the Labour Party split in 1955. Calwell states “I have witnessed three disastrous splits in the Australian Labor Party during the past fifty-six years.” He then goes on to say that “the third in 1955 over alleged communist infiltration of the trade union movement. The last was the worst of the three, because the party has not yet healed the wounds that resulted from it.” This statement from Arthur Calwell shows us the ways in that Australian politics changed due to communism and to the extent in which the split had severely affected and impacted both parties, as they have not healed their wounds from the incident. It is through the Labor party split that we can assess the impact communism had on Australian politics from 1945 -

It could be argued, however, that the two party system which was once in place is declining, meaning more parties have a realistic chance to achieve role as government. In the last thirty years the support for the Conservative and Labour parties has been gradually decreasing, leaving them with only 67% of the vote at the 2005 general election, which was the smallest percentage they’d gained since 1918. This is an example of partisan dealignment because the working class started to transfer their party support to Conservative instead of Labour. The Liberal Democrats support was significantly increasing, leaving them with 22% of the vote in the 2005 election as well as 62 seats. Their seat numbers had been increasing since 1974 when they only had 14 seats in parliament, suggesting a change in the dominance of only two parties. Today, the Liberal Democrats, who haven’t been considered a main party since, are currently the weaker part of a coalition government, with Labour in opposition. This shows a clear end to the two party system, with three parties in significant places of power.

During this time, Liberalism also became a strong political force throughout Western Society. These liberals believed that governments should be controlled, not by institutions such as the church, but constitutionally based upon parliaments. As a result of the popularity that Liberalism had on Western Societies, a new political framework was created involving parliaments, based on voting rights of citizens. Due to this, the power of Catholic and Protestant churches were dramatically scaled down, and most governments no longer looked to the church for symbolic religious observances. One of the most notable results from the development of the liberal organization was the rise of modern political parties, intended to create an order for members of the parliament, as well as a way to distinguish parties for campaigning processes.

The Australian Labor Party is Australia's oldest political party. I will be comparing the Australian labor party and the liberal party and the greens. In the following paragraph, I will write about the labor party views on common issues in society such as gay marriage, health, and education, in the last paragraph, I compare the differences that the labor party has against another party such as the liberal and the greens. The labor party views on education are to Increased public school funding this is good because schools like ours across Australia can get more money to improve their schools and build new facilities.

American history is filled with ups and downs. Starting out with only 13 colonies, America forcibly removed themselves from the one of the strongest empires in the world. Battling against political reform, the subtraction of resources from the motherland, the debt accrued by colonists, and the bank wars, America struggles to create a self-sustaining country.

At the end of World War One in November 1918 the Labour Party emerged as a strong political Party. Prior to this it was the Liberal Party that was expected to be the main opposition to the Conservatives, with Labour as a party who used the popularity of the Liberals to become noticed. However, it soon became apparent that the Liberals were a weak and flagging party who were unable to unite as one to make decisions. It is evident that the First World War may have been an important factor in the growth of Labour and the decline of the Liberals.

Australia’s government design was taken from the British Westminster system after those who originally colonized Australia. A functional, western style democracy, there are a number of minor political parties operating in Australia but the country’s federal politics is an essential 2-party system at present, much like the United States (Our Country, 2015).