THERE was a time, hard as it might be to imagine, when the Australian Labor Party struck fear into the hearts of the establishment, and it is this very fear that has shaped the Australian political landscape to this day. This year marks the centenary of one of the truly seminal political events - and one of the least understood - when those sworn enemies, the Protectionists and the Free Traders, finally buried their blooded hatchets to unite in common cause against the feared and rising Labor Party. To understand the magnitude of that event it is necessary to point out that in the politics of the time it was the equivalent of the Catholic Church and the various Protestant denominations laying aside their centuries of difference, as though they never existed, to unite against a common foe. For much of the first decade of Australian federation, instability was the political norm; it was, as Alfred Deakin memorably described it, as though three cricket elevens had taken the field at the same time, with one of the three (Labor) “playing sometimes with one side, sometimes with the other, and sometimes for itself.” It was thus little wonder that in the first nine years of the Commonwealth, seven ministries rose and fell along with five prime ministers - Edmund Barton, Deakin, Chris Watson, George Reid and Andrew Fisher...