Free Trade Party

George Reid, Prime Minister of Australia 1904–1905

The party was centred on New South Wales, where its leaders were Sir Henry Parkes and Sir George Reid. It dominated New South Wales colonial politics before federation. It first contested the 1887 New South Wales election.

At the 1901 elections for the first Commonwealth Parliament, the Free Traders, who campaigned in some states as the Revenue Tariff Party, formed the second largest group in the Australian House of Representatives, with 25 seats. Reid became the Parliament's first Opposition Leader with William McMillan as his deputy, later becoming Prime Minister in 1904–05. Dugald Thomson became deputy leader of the party in early 1904 following McMillan's retirement. Thomson would himself hand over the Deputy position to Joseph Cook on 28 July 1905 following the fall of the Reid Government.

A separate Tasmanian Revenue Tariff Party contested the 1903 federal election in Tasmania and won two seats but also sat and merged with the Free Trade Party in federal Parliament.

After the question of tariffs had largely been settled, Reid cast around for another cause to justify his party's existence. He settled on opposition to socialism, criticising both the Australian Labour Party and the support offered by it to the Protectionist Party, led by Alfred Deakin. Reid adopted a strategy of trying to reorient the party system along Labour vs non-Labour lines – prior to the 1906 election, he renamed the Free Trade Party to the Anti-Socialist Party. Reid envisaged a spectrum running from socialist to anti-socialist, with the Protectionist Party in the middle. This attempt struck a chord with politicians who were steeped in the Westminster tradition and regarded a two-party system as very much the norm.[1]

The Labor Party and the FTP/ASP continued to grow in electoral strength at the expense of the Protectionist vote. Some Protectionists continued their exodus to Labor and the ASP.

When Deakin proposed the Commonwealth Liberal Party, a "Fusion" of the two non-Labour parties, Reid resigned as party leader on 16 November 1908. The following day, Joseph Cook was made leader until the parties merged.[2]

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• Liberalism in Australia
• Liberalism worldwide
• 1901 Australian federal election
• 1887 New South Wales colonial election

• McMinn, W. G. (1998). "Reid, Sir George Houstoun (1845–1918)". Australian Dictionary of Biography. Melbourne University Press. ISSN 1833-7538. Retrieved 19 July 2012 – via National Centre of Biography, Australian National University.