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Or more correctly, an Australian centre-left social democratic party, without official trade union links

(Btw, this probably belong in before-1900, but the POD could conceivably be very early 1900's so I put it in this form).

What would Australia be like with such a party.

I am thinking of Australia having a European style social democratic party, with no official link with unions but instead being largely financed by them (like the relationship between Liberals and business OTL).

Australia, along with the UK and NZ are the only nations to have major labour parties, with an official link, so the ATL party is the 'default' pattern so to speak.

Basically in the ATL rather than left-of-centre thought coming out of the unions, I would assume it would instead be coming out of the universities, more of an 'intellectual socialism' so to speak.

How would this affect the success of the ATL Labor Party (or whatever it would be called). I suggest it would be more successful as it would have a much wider appeal to the middle-class (there would be no image of it being beholden to militant unionists).

Also, I think it would affect the structure of political parties in Australia. The OTL ALP is one of the most centralised parties in the world. I think that the ATL ALP would be far more decentralised, no strong organsational wing, no Pledge, etc. This because I can't see a party dominated by middle-class intellectuals wanting to be bound by the '36 faceless men' as Menzies put it, which OTL Labor was until the late 1960's.
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