Tom Price's world-first Labor government in South Australia in 1906 the legacy of world-first legalised unions in 1876
Premier Tom Price (in foreground) and his team for the world's first stable Labor government in South Australia in 1906.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia
Thomas Price, a former stonemason, became the first Labor premier of South Australia in the 1905 elections and headed the world’s first stable Labor government a year later.
He headed a minority government, relying on coalition support from liberals, who been kept in power with Labor backing since 1893. Liberals leader Archibald Peake was treasurer and attorney general.
Elected again in a 1906 double dissolution, Price headed the world’s first stable Labor government. (Queensland’s Labor minority government in 1899 lasted only a week.)
Price died in 1909 and Peake became premier until John Verran took Labor to its first majority government in 1910 – another world first.
United Labor, South Australia’s first political party, was the result of another first for South Australia: leading the British empire in 1876 by legalising trade unions. This enabled the United Trades and Labor Council in South Australia to be created in 1891. Within weeks, it had formed an elections committee with John McPherson as secretary.
Ironically, John Verran’s Labor government fell in 1912 when Verran was unable to deal with serious industrial disputes. Returned as premier, Peake created an industrial arbitration court that set a minimum wage for state awards but limited the right to strike.
Labor returned to power at the 1915 election under Crawford Vaughan, who lost his majority after the Labor Party split over conscription for World War I service. Out of that split came a National Labor group that became part of coalition government with Peake’s Liberal Union.
The fluid nature of party politics came after the 1918 elections, where an Archibald Peake coalition government won a solid majority. His attempt to change the industrial code was defeated by the combined vote of the Labor and National parties, leading Peake to form a totally Liberal government. Peake died of a cerebral haemorrhage hours after the new ministry was sworn in.
