Liberal Movement

Party system

Before parties became established in the Australian colonies in the later 19th century, all members of the colonial parliaments were independents, occasionally labelled as "liberal" or "conservative", amongst other terms. With the advent of Labor, these groups combined to form anti-Labor parties. "Liberal", in the Australian context, refers to what could be described as classical liberalism, and is distant from the modern meaning that the word has acquired in the United States and some other countries. Liberalism in Australia represents the centre-right of the political spectrum, while Labor represents the centre-left.

The first Labor party in South Australia was the United Labor Party in 1891, born out of a trade union association that recommended and supported trade unionist candidates. In response, the National Defence League (NDL) was born two years later. In 1909, the NDL combined with the Liberal and Democratic Union and the Farmers and Producers Political Union to form the Liberal Union, later known as the Liberal Federation. The ULP transformed into the Labor Party in 1910, and has been known by this name ever since. A separate Country Party subsequently emerged, representing rural interests, but this was assimilated back into the conservative side of politics with the formation of the Liberal and Country League (LCL) in 1932. The South Australian party system has not deviated from this two-party divide, and all other parties gained negligible representation or influence, until the emergence of smaller parties such as the Australian Democrats in the late 20th century, and the Greens and Family First Party in the 21st century.

Liberal representation

Political scientists Neal Blewett and Dean Jaensch characterised the LCL as a strange amalgamation of differing groups: "the Adelaide 'establishment', the yeoman proprietary (farmers and regional workers), and the Adelaide middle class". Of these groups, the middle class was the most electorally depressed, both in parliament and within the party itself, owing to a 2:1 ratio favouring regional areas both in electoral legislation and the party organisation. The establishment influenced the party with its financial backing, while the yeoman proprietary was the most numerous. Only in 1956 did the urban middle class achieve parliamentary representation through Robin Millhouse, who was elected to the urban middle class seat of Mitcham.

Millhouse was a vocal advocate of his broader constituency, championing their case in a party dominated by rural conservatives. He wrote a paper on the 'Liberal Case for Electoral Reform', arguing for a fairer electoral system, as it was biased against voters resident in the capital city, Adelaide, whether they be progressive or conservative, Liberal or Labor. Many younger urban middle class voters, who would have normally been attracted to the LCL, were abandoning the party for Labor owing to their dissatisfaction with the malapportioned electoral system known as the 'Playmander'. But this concerned the rural conservatives little, who hoped to retain their hold on power through the present system, which included a Legislative Council where suffrage was based on land ownership, resulting in a body dominated by the ruling class and the rural landholders, and a 16–4 LCL majority. Millhouse's paper was quickly ignored.

The LCL had governed, primarily under the stead of Sir Thomas Playford, for 32 years, and finally lost to Labor in 1965. A year and a half later, when Playford retired, Steele Hall was elected to replace him. A young farmer from a rural constituency, Hall had never conflicted with the party line, and was expected to uphold the existing LCL principles, having spoken out in support of the Playmander and the restrictive Legislative Council before. However, when the LCL was returned to office in 1968 under his leadership, with the help of malapportionment, Hall was under pressure. Labor had led the LCL 52.0 to 43.8% on primary votes, but owing to the Playmander, both ended with 19 seats and an independent supported the LCL and returned them to power. Large protests against the Playmander broke out, and there were strong calls for reform.

The LCL had routinely ignored such protests before, but Hall's course differed from what was expected. He appointed Millhouse his Attorney-General, and continued a raft of social reform that had begun under the previous Labor government. This was opposed by some conservatives within the party; lines began to be drawn, and factions began to appear. Hall commented in the party's newsletter that "too many people see the LCL as a party tied to conservative traditions. We must show voters that we can move with the times, that we are 'with it'."

Electoral reform

The level of malapportionment had grown to a level in excess of 3:1 in favour of rural areas, and Hall, having won the 1968 state election on 46 per cent of the two-party-preferred vote, committed himself to a fairer electoral system. Previously 39 members were elected: 13 from metropolitan Adelaide and 26 from the country. Hall's first attempt for reform was a system with 45 seats and 20 from the country; this proposal received scorn from both Labor and the rural councillors, and was seen as not going far enough by the former and going too far by the latter. A second proposal, for 47 seats with 19 in the country, was adopted with bipartisan support in the House of Assembly, but encountered opposition in the Legislative Council. The new system would make an LCL win near-impossible at the coming 1970 state election, and Hall and the LCL were aware of it. For his weakening of rural constituencies, Hall became an enemy to those councillors who stood in defence of the previous system. Hall saw the political situation as untenable and felt the LCL needed reform to cope with the removal of an artificial situation.

Labor's leader, Don Dunstan, also introduced a bill for reform of the Legislative Council, which sought to remove its wage and property based qualifications and instil adult suffrage. Hall himself stated he would approve the bill if it included a clause guaranteeing that the Legislative Council could only be abolished through a referendum. Dunstan agreed, but Hall's own party split on the issue. The bill passed the House of Assembly with Labor support, but failed in the Legislative Council where the LCL's rural conservatives dominated its restricted electoral base.

Behind the votes in parliament was a personal antagonism between Hall and Ren DeGaris, the leader of the LCL in the Legislative Council. DeGaris, who was elected to the council in 1962, was a staunch defender of its franchise and electoral boundaries. The two were the de facto leaders of the party's two factions; Hall represented the urban-based progressives, and DeGaris the rural-based conservatives. The conflict between the two extended beyond politics and on to a personal level, contributing to the polarisation of views within the LCL and making it difficult for an internal compromise to be reached on the issue of electoral reform.

After the LCL lost government in 1970, primarily owing to the electoral reform, Hall managed to be re-elected as leader. He convinced a majority of the party's membership that reform was needed, and sought to remove the influence that the party's representatives in the Legislative Council held. When the Dunstan government again introduced a bill to introduce universal suffrage to the council, Hall gained the support of 7 out of 20 members in the Assembly, but only 2 of 16 LCL members in the Legislative Council supported the bill. Internally, there was much opposition to any electoral reform when the matter was debated at party conferences.

Formation

Hall initially sought to appeal to the State Council of the LCL. Although the body had no binding authority over the parliamentary caucus, which chose the leader, Hall and his followers saw it as an opportunity for a media victory. The motion went narrowly against Hall, but it generated much attention and potential embarrassment for the conservatives.

After this, he thought of establishing his own separate party, citing small opinion polls that supported this action, but Ian Wilson, the former member for the federal Division of Sturt, convinced him to stay within the LCL and bring about internal change. Strong support emerged from within the party for Hall's stand, particularly from its youth wing, the Young Liberals. On 21 March 1972, a faction, but closer to a "party within a party" was formed: the New Liberals. On 28 March it was renamed the Liberal Movement. The conservatives strongly criticised Hall and his new movement, accusing them of undermining Eastick, disrupting the party and being disloyal.

It quickly gained support within the LCL's membership, capturing a number of party branches and began preselecting its own members. Robin Millhouse was a member of the faction, and served as the deputy leader of both the LCL and the LM. Thanks to the electoral reform that had occurred, with more urban electoral districts to contest, the urban-based LM greatly increased its parliamentary representation, with seven members in the House of Assembly (including Hall, Millhouse and future Premiers David Tonkin and Dean Brown), three in the Legislative Council, and one in the Australian House of Representatives (Ian Wilson). Soon there were factional clashes during parliamentary debate, and combative television debates. One LCL branch president publicly called Hall a "traitor". The LM managed to worry the conservatives by managing to seize control of some rural branches within electorates held by strongly anti-LM representatives, including that of DeGaris. The conservatives tried to remove Hall's endorsement for his seat, but failed. Several bitterly fought pre-selection battles followed. As a former premier, Hall was much more proficient than Eastick at dealing with the press, and used his skills to generate more media publicity, prompting Eastick to claim bias.

The LM sought to seize control of the LCL agenda by winning key positions on the state executive at the annual general meeting in September, but this was difficult as the malapportionment towards rural groups was entrenched at party level, and because the conservatives had anticipated the LM's plans. The LM President Alex Perryman challenged McLachlan for the party presidency and in a high-profile contest received 47% of the vote in a narrow defeat. He received around 90% among urban delegates and around 33% of the rural votes, the latter figure shocking the conservatives. The LM later generated more publicity by inquiring about alleged impropriety in the balloting process.

Split

Despite the LCL's defeat, the failure of the LM to gain internal supremacy over the conservatives was seen by the latter as a vindication of their policies. Pressure from the LCL's leader, Bruce Eastick, who called on the LM to disband, and the conservative wing of the party, saw machinations against the LM. Hall reiterated the LM's intention to continue, but Millhouse was removed as the LCL deputy leader in 1973, and pressure began to be mounted on the faction, which did not have any members on the frontbench; Hall did not pursue a position in the shadow ministry. Tension continued as rumours spread claiming that the LCL State Council was contemplating the forbidding and vetoing of LM members from representing the party in elections. While Hall and Martin Cameron responded by publicly vowing to stand firm, several of their LM colleagues were ambivalent when asked about the intentions if the LM were no longer tolerated within the LCL. However, Heini Becker left the LM.

On 23 March, a motion was passed at the state council that allowed it to deny membership to those who belonged to "outside political organisations", and the LM was subsequently declared to be one. Strangely, an LCL member could also be a member of the Communist Party of Australia, but not the LM. A motion by LM members to also declare the League of Rights an outside political organisation failed. The LCL conservatives were confident the LM would capitulate and reintegrate, as third parties had never been successful in South Australia. At first, LM members tried to have their banning from the LCL deemed illegal, but this failed.

It was not expected that the LM would split to form a separate party. But before it was established, Hall promptly resigned from the LCL, declaring it "hypocritical and decadent". Martin Cameron quickly followed, and Robin Millhouse consulted with members from his constituency before agreeing to resign from the LCL. Ian Wilson, who had earlier managed to convince Hall not to form a separate party, tried in vain to sway him to remain with the LCL and focus on reforming it from within. He wanted to shut down the LM in an attempt to limit the damage to the party, believing that "political groups come and go, but the ideals we aim for will never change". All other LCL-LM members did not follow; three lower house members including Tonkin and Brown, Wilson in the federal parliament, and two MLCs all stayed in the LCL. David Tonkin stated that "every one of those Liberals who resign from the League is making it more and more certain that the League will remain just as it is".

Elections and support

Federal election 1974

In order to give the LM national exposure, Hall decided to stand for the Australian Senate at the 1974 federal election. Another objective was to allow Millhouse and Cameron to become more prominent at state level and dispel the established perception of the LM as a Hall party. The move was a risk as failure would have left the LM's main drawcard out of the spotlight entirely until a state election which was not due for another two years, but Hall said the party had no future unless it could gain national stature. Another possible problem was that the media could have lost interest in the LM at a state level regardless of whether Hall won a senate position. However it was a rare opportunity, because the election followed a double dissolution (the first since 1951), meaning that all Senate seats were up for election, and thus a candidate needed only 9.1% of the vote (after preferences) to win a seat, compared to 16.7% for an ordinary half senate election.

The battle between the LCL and the LM was not seen as a large part of the national campaign, as South Australia was only a small part of the nation and most of the marginal seats that would determine the outcome were in other states. The LM gained 9.9 per cent of the vote in the Senate and Hall was elected in his own right, without the assistance of preferences. In the House of Representatives, the LM gained 8.4 per cent of the vote across the 12 South Australian seats, ranging from a high of 18 per cent in metropolitan Boothby to 1.6 per cent in rural Angas. Fortunately for Hall and the LM, the senate election resulted in Labor and the Liberal-Country Party coalition holding 29 seats each, and Hall was one of two crossbenchers who held the balance of power. The media made much of Hall's position as a powerbroker at federal level, and the Liberals responded to him in a hostile manner; for his part, Hall continued to persistently attack them as outmoded and lambasted them over the matter of electoral reform.

Hall had abandoned his rural Yorke Peninsula-based seat of Goyder to stand for the Senate, and at the 1974 Goyder state by-election the LM were concerned about how their vote would stand without the assistance of its prominent incumbent and in an area outside their urban base; the LCL had always won the seat easily. The campaign was robust, with strong accusations being traded as what was previously a safe seat became evenly poised and the subject of frantic electioneering. Surprisingly, as the LM was an urban movement, they polled 46 per cent of the vote, which was enough for David Boundy to comfortably win the seat for the LM, with the help of Country Party preferences; in fact the LM two-party preferred vote was 62.6%. Despite most of its preferences flowing to the LM, the Country Party attacked the LM for perceived hypocrisy as they had run in a rural seat despite calling for the anti-Labor forces to be separated into urban and rural divisions. This continued to be a source of tension, as the LM continued to campaign in rural seats, prompting the Country Party to threaten to deny them preferences. The LM triumph embarrassed the LCL, and Eastick survived a leadership challenge from Heini Becker in the aftermath. Over the next year, the LM focused on building the party machinery.

State election 1975

At the 1975 state election the LM had ambitions of becoming the largest non-Labor party. The campaign was focused primarily on accusations of mismanagement of the economy by Labor, with the LM seeking to positioning itself between the Liberals and Labor, as the centre-ground of South Australian politics. Advertisements attacked the Liberal Party for being a conservative party, and Labor for its perceived socialism and poor economic record. At the time, inflation and unemployment was increasing. The LM slogan was "Vote LM—You know it's right". Despite now being a federal senator, Hall was still synonymous with the LM at state level and he was central in the party's advertising. The momentum was against Labor, and it was expected that the election could come down to whether Labor would retain their marginal urban seats. The LM proposed to the Liberals to have a joint candidate in the marginal metropolitan seat of Gilles—which required a two-party preferred swing of 6%—to maximise their chances. The Liberals agreed but wanted the joint candidate to stand in Unley, and no agreement was reached.

Millhouse, now the State Parliamentary Leader of the LM, announced the LM's policy for the 1975 state election at the Adelaide Town Hall on 2 July. He outlined the LM's plans for economic rejuvenation: an end to compulsory unionism, budget and tax cuts, and measures to curb rising inflation and cost of living. Social policy included proposals for an early form of multiculturalism and promotion of 'cultural diversity' and bilingualism. Energy policy appealed to a new generation of environmentalists, and promoted conservation and promotion of solar power. He slammed the proposed City of Monarto as a 'monument to socialist folly'.

In the lower house, the LM retained both of their seats (Millhouse and Boundy), but won no new seats. Contesting 45 of the 47 seats, the LM commanded almost a fifth (18.2 per cent) of the vote in the lower house and the combined non-Labor forces gained 50.8 per cent of the two-party-preferred total. The LM was more effective in the city, recording 20.2% of the urban vote and 13.4% in rural areas. The party made several formerly safe Liberal seats marginal (including that of its leader, Eastick where they captured 20.3% in the rural district of Light). The LM withstood a concerted push by the Liberals to oust Millhouse from Mitcham, and retained Goyder. They were also strong in those seats held by LM members who did not break away during the split but stayed with the LCL. However, preferences did not flow as the non-Labor parties had wished, with up to 20 per cent of LM second-preferences flowing to Labor instead of the Liberals or Country Party.

Federal election 1975

The second consecutive double dissolution 1975 federal election in December was held owing to the dismissal of the Whitlam Government by Governor General John Kerr, and the subsequent appointment of federal Liberal leader Malcolm Fraser as caretaker Prime Minister. Prior to the dismissal, the Liberal Party had used its majority in the Australian Senate to block supply bills. Hall voted in favour of the supply bills being passed, and objected to the federal Liberals' actions. Hall had been praised for his stance on supply, but the Liberals attacked him, accusing him of being "Labor in a purple disguise" and saying that Fraser needed a compliant senate "not hampered by independents sitting on the fence". Hall countered by saying he was preferencing the Liberals and therefore not Labor-aligned, and that he was a "dedicated anti-socialist".

Hall saw the double dissolution as an opportunity to capture senate seats in all the states across the nation, and the LM sought to create bases outside South Australia. On 18 November, a LM rally was held at Melbourne Town Hall to launch a branch in Victoria. A branch was formed in Queensland and Hall travelled to Western Australia to oversee the formation of a state branch. Generally, the LM's attempts to spread its message failed owing to the dramatic and highly polarising effects of Whitlam's dismissal and the constitutional crisis, which produced angry demonstrations around the country. Amid the tumult, the media was almost completely focused on the two main parties, giving other groups almost no opportunities to capture the public imagination. The LM also found it difficult to establish a connection with the populace outside South Australia owing to its formation within a state-specific backdrop.

Attempts were made to expand the appeal of the LM through secret merger talks with the Australia Party, who initiated the idea, but these collapsed. The campaign was also hampered by the departure of two LM candidates who relabelled themselves as the Independent Liberal Movement. The first to leave the LM, C. W. Henderson, was a member of the LM Management Committee who criticised Hall's attempts to spread the party nationally. He accused Hall of having "delusions of grandeur", leading to his membership being suspended two days later. The next day, J. Henderson, the sixth member of the senate ticket, quit, saying he did not "want to be a puppet on a party string". Groves and Henderson aggressively campaigned against the LM, although they were to receive only 0.09% of the senate vote themselves.

Decline

Independent of the LM, the LCL had begun to change. It eventually supported Don Dunstan's bills for electoral reform, both to the House of Assembly and the Legislative Council, and its internal structure was reorganised and modernised, particular with the arrival of Tonkin, its first urban leader. The LCL renamed itself the South Australian Division of the Liberal Party of Australia to bring itself into line with its federal counterpart. Thus, many of the reasons for the LM's split had become null. Combined with the LM's declining membership (one third of members had not renewed) and its large debt, it found itself in a precarious position. Negotiations in 1976 began with the aim for the LM to merge into the new Liberal Party, and news of the secret talks were leaked in April. Once the news became public, Millhouse stated his complete opposition: "I will not rejoin the Liberal Party ... I have meant what I said in the past and I do not see any change in the attitude of the Liberal Party to alter my view." He said doing so would entail a surrender of honour and self-respect, and described the LM as the only "genuine Liberal party" in the nation, boldly predicting that its agenda would become dominant in society. Millhouse's stand was widely condemned by the media, who saw it as based on pride rather than pragmatism, and unhelpful for anti-Labor politics. Hall, however, wanted to unite the non-Labor forces, and acknowledged that "there is no prospect of maintaining LM electorate groups ... in simple terms, our alternatives are to swallow some little pride, and unite to fight Labor." He said to do otherwise would be to "exist in splendid selfish isolation", and said they could not survive as a relevant force by holding Goyder and Mitcham and losing upper house seats owing to a dwindling vote. Hall said the LM's reform agenda had been fulfilled, their finances were untenable and contended there was no ideological reason remaining for a split. This put him at increasing odds with Millhouse, who continued to describe the Liberals as "very conservative". Some members of the Liberals were also wary of a merger, owing to the long-standing antipathy between the two groups, and persistent criticism of them from the LM over the years.

In the meantime, the negotiations continued, with Hall prominent. During informal discussions following the 1975 state election, Millhouse had been offered the deputy leadership in a merged party, and Cameron a leading role in the upper house, but following the poor showing at the federal election and the deteriorating financial state of the LM, the offer was reduced and the posts that had been offered to Millhouse and Cameron were no longer available. However, Hall was still able to negotiate for the LM President and Treasurer to be given positions on a new executive. He also agreed to forgo any further senate bids. An agreement was put in place to protect Boundy from being ousted at a pre-selection of the new party, but this was broken at the next election. The LM was also given an equal voting share on pre-selection committees for three urban lower house seats.

Parliamentarians

Steele Hall

Robin Millhouse

Martin Cameron

John Carnie

David Boundy

All went back into the fold of the LCL successor, the South Australian Division of the Liberal Party of Australia, except for Millhouse who joined the New Liberal Movement (New LM), one of the predecessor parties that would form the Australian Democrats.