Yet there is another explanation why, from 1918, there were two anti-Labor
parties when there had been only one before. And that is that there had not
been one before. Until they fused in 1909 the anti-Labor parties had been two:
Protectionist and Free Trade. The cause of Protectionism was not exclusively
urban; it had knitted together certain urban and rural interests. But, a victim of
its own success, once Protection had become the established policy of the
country, and no longer furnished a shibboleth to sort the Gileadite from the
Ephraimite, its urban seats defected to Labor, and the rural ones to the new
Commonwealth Liberal Party. What the Country Party was reopening, then,
was not some papered-over split between bush and city, but the difference in
outlook between Protectionist and Free Trader. Consider the ten seats held by
official Protectionists in 1906 and not subsequently won by Labor;‘anti-Labor
Protectionist’seats. If we exclude two won by Protectionist candidates of 1906
who contested the 1922 election under Nationalist colours we are left with
eight: of these, six were won by Country Party.^21 Further to the same conclu-
sion, all the leaders of the Country Party from 1921 to 1990 represented seats
that in the initial Federation election of 1901 were won by Protectionists.^22
The identification of the Country Party with the old Protectionist Party shorn
of its urban wing is underlined by the fact that the accession of the Country
Party to the Cabinet did not, contrary to the obvious interest of export-
orientated farmers, provide a counterweight to the pre-existing‘principle’of
protection to manufactures (Reitsma 1960, p. 21). The two ardent Free Traders
of the new party were exiled to the backbench, while, from 1923, rural
producers were given ex officio representation on the Tariff Board, joining
the representatives of manufacturers and importers.
The adherence of the new Country Party to protection suggests that the
interpretation of the Country Party as promoting the interests of agriculture is
superficial. The adherence of the Country Party to protection suggests its
underlying position is better approximated as‘Property but not Market’.In
the days of its origin this formula served well foodstuff-producing agriculture,
faced with Labor’s aspiration to abolish freehold title and city-based con-
sumers’demand for cheap food. But‘Property but not the Market’is a formula
of far broader application than the encounter of farmer and townsman.
Property but not the Market is a formula deployed in numerous other circum-
stances with distinct success. It was the economic creed of Catholic Christian
Democracy, including its representative in Australia after the Second World
War, the Democratic Labor Party (DLP). The DLP and the Country Party were a
goodfit, and in Western Australia the two parties ultimately amalgamated.
(^21) Cowper, Gippsland, Richmond, Riverina, Bendigo, and Swan.
(^22) Cowper, Barker, Darling Downs, Indi, Richmond, and New England. Queensland, a redoubt
of the Country Party from the late 1930s, returned no Free Trade members in the 1901 parliament.
Australia’s Electoral Idiosyncrasies