Tom Price leads world's first stable Labor government in South Australia 1905-09, in alliance with liberals

Tom Price was another teetotal Methodist premier of South Australia.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia

Premier Tom Price formed South Australia’s first Labor minority government and the world’s first stable Labor Party government at the 1905 election with the support of several non-Labor MPs to form the Price-(Archibald) Peake administration. This administration was elected again at the 1906 double dissolution election, with Labor falling just two seats short of a majority.

As a stone cutter, Tom Price helped build the South Australian parliament house where he would become the Labor party’s first premier in 1905.

The effect of stone cutting on his lungs had forced Price to migrate with his wife to Adelaide in 1881. His background in England as a teetotal Wesley Methodist fed into pursuing social issues through slum work and the Liberal Reform Association and Irish Home Rule League. In Adelaide, Price become president of the Operative Masons' and Bricklayers' Society of Australia, and delegate to the United Trades and Labor Council. He was also a founder of the Building Trades Council and the Democratic Club.

In 1891, Price won the seat of Sturt (Torrens from 1902) for the United Labour Party in the House of Assembly. He advocated improved workers' accommodation, land reform, compulsory education and votes for women. A member of the Central Agricultural Bureau 1897-1900, Price broadened the party's base from the urban craft unions to include small farmers. He also had a cooperative approach to employers. These practices upset the party's radical elements, led by the Australian Workers' Union.

In 1899, Price replaced party leader Egerton Batchelor, who wanted Labour to be solely a working-class party.

As the first Labor premier from 1905 until his death in 1909, Price brought in laws for wages boards, a minimum wage and nationalisation of several companies to set up the Municipal Tramways Trust; the costly administration of the Northern Territory was surrendered to the federal government and free state secondary schools were introduced.

In 1908, Price officially opened Adelaide High School – the first secondary school in Australia.