Nationalist Party of Australia
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Nationalist Party of Australia
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|---|---|
| Leader | Billy Hughes, Stanley Bruce, John Latham |
| Founded | 1917 |
| Dissolved | 1931 |
| Preceded by |
Commonwealth Liberal Party National Labor Party |
| Succeeded by | United Australia Party |
| Ideology |
Nationalism Liberal conservatism Social democracy (minority) |
| Political position | Centre-right |
The Nationalist Party of Australia was an Australian political party. It was formed on 17 February 1917 from a merger between the conservative Commonwealth Liberal Party and the National Labor Party, the name given to supporters of World War I conscription in Australia from the Australian Labor Party led by Prime Minister Billy Hughes. The Nationalist Party was in government (at times as part of a coalition) until electoral defeat in 1929. From that time it was the main opposition to the Labor Party until it merged with pro-Joseph Lyons Labor defectors to form the United Australia Party in 1931, which was the predecessor to the Liberal Party of Australia, founded in 1944.
In October 1915 the Australian Prime Minister, Andrew Fisher of the Australian Labor Party, retired; Billy Hughes was chosen unanimously by the Labor caucus to succeed him. Hughes was a strong supporter of Australia's participation in World War I, and after a visit to Britain in 1916, where the Military Service Act 1916 had been passed earlier in the year, he became convinced that conscription was necessary if Australia was to sustain its contribution to the war effort. A majority of his party, most notably Roman Catholics and trade union representatives, was opposed to this, especially given the British government's reprisals against the Irish Easter Rising of 1916. In October Hughes held a plebiscite to try to gain approval for conscription, but the proposition was narrowly defeated. Daniel Mannix, the Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, was his main opponent on the conscription issue. The defeat did not deter Hughes, who continued to vigorously argue in favour of conscription. This produced a deep and bitter split within the Australian public, as well as within his own party. The extent to which he engineered this split has been hotly debated ever since, and was even at the time regarded as ironic by many in the Labor movement, given Hughes' violent hostility to earlier Labor dissidents like Joseph Cook.
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