Talk:Liberal Party (Australia, 1909)

Merger

Can someone explain how exactly the Protectionist Party and the Free Trade Party merged? It would seem like their goals were mutually exclusive. What was the new party's trade policy?--Lairor (talk) 16:37, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Labor withdrew it's willingness to participate in coalition governments. Labor wanted to be in government by itself only. Therefore it withdrew from the Deakin government and was eventually defeated in a motion of no confidence. The two non-Labor parties began to merge as an anti-Labor force, with the more liberal protectionists joining Labor while the more conservative protectionists joined the CLP. Timeshift (talk) 03:06, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Also the trade issue had been pretty much settled, with the Reid-McLean ministry having a "tariff truce" leaving a commission to examine anomalies and in later years the question was about levels not principles. The Free Trade Party pretty much moved on from that issue and renamed itself the Anti-Socialist Party in 1906. To some extent fusion was delayed by some years because of continued animosity between Deakin and Reid. Timrollpickering 12:35, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

Notes on terminology

The term "Commonwealth Liberal Party" was primarily used for Deakin's organisation not for the parliamentary party. Refer this Trove search - hardly any hits outside Victoria, only around 100 a year after Deakin's organisation changed its name and less than 100 combined after 1914. I'd say the remainder is "Commonwealth" being used as a synonym for "Federal", "Federal Liberal Party" returns many more hits during this time. Also, 1 google hit for "commonwealth liberal party"+site:adb.anu.edu.au - the article on Ivy Deakin Brookes, referring to Deakin's organisation; 0 google hits for "commonwealth liberal party"+site:biography.senate.gov.au. Unfortunately some sources have copied from Wikipedia so there's a bit of a feedback loop. Not the end of the world, but I think there's an impression that the CLP name was actually used just like the ALP or UAP instead of someone using it to distinguish from the modern Liberals. Ivar the Boneful (talk) 18:14, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

@Ivar the Boneful: I only saw this now, but this seems like another old inaccuracy that really needs fixing (and affects many more articles than the later mess you picked up today). Do you think "Liberal Party (1909-17)" would be the best title for this article? The Drover's Wife (talk) 03:52, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Yep this opens a bigger can of worms than the other one - I've been aware of it for some time but was quite glad to find a source the other day explicitly stating that it was wrong (which I've added to the article). I've been trying to avoid using "Commonwealth Liberal Party" in prose for a while. I'm not fussed about the article title, but based on other entries at the Liberal Party disambiguation page I think either Liberal Party (1909) or Liberal Party (Australia, 1909). One thing we really need to stamp out is state articles linking to this page. Ivar the Boneful (talk) 06:22, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Unfortunately some semi-official sources like the Parliamentary Library have also started using "CLP", which they might have picked up from Wikipedia. I think the truly academic sources are a bit better - e.g. Judith Brett's biography of Deakin was very clear to distinguish them, which is part of how I picked up on it. Ivar the Boneful (talk) 06:25, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

I think probably Liberal Party (Australia, 1909) - it bugs me but there's a pretty clear practical convention in place and it surely wasn't the only "Liberal Party" founded in 1909. I suspect you might be right about those sources picking things up from Wikipedia, which is very unfortunate. I have Brett's "Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class: From Alfred Deakin to John Howard" around somewhere, but I'm not sure how far it goes back. The Drover's Wife (talk) 06:35, 31 July 2021 (UTC)