Progressive Party (1901)

The Progressive Party was an Australian political party, active in New South Wales state politics. The question of tariff policy which, had created and divided the Free Trade Party and Protectionist Party in New South Wales in the 1890s, became a federal issue at the time of federation. Deprived of their main ideological difference, the two parties were recreated as the Liberal Reform Party aligned with the federal Free Trade Party and the Progressive Party aligned with the federal Protectionist Party. The Progressive Party collapsed in 1907, leaving the Liberal Reform Party as the main anti-Labor Party. In 1919, the Farmers' and Settlers' Association and the Graziers' Association founded a new Progressive Party, which won metropolitan and rural seats in the 1920 election.