Editing Andrew Fisher (section)

== Early political career ==

=== Queensland politics ===
[[Image:Andrewfisher.JPG|thumb|left|upright|Fisher as a Queensland MP, {{circa|1899}}]]
In 1891, Fisher was elected as the first president of the Gympie branch of the [[Australian Labor Party|Labour Party]]. In 1893, he was elected to the [[Legislative Assembly of Queensland]] as Labour member for the [[Electoral district of Gympie]] and by the following year had become Labour's deputy leader in the Legislative Assembly. In his maiden speech, he pushed for a 50% decrease in military spending and declared support for a federation.{{sfn|Day|2008}} He was also active in the Amalgamated Miners Union, becoming President of the Gympie branch by 1891.<ref name = "Fisher16">Fisher, Kathleen (2006) "From pit boy to prime minister: Andrew Fisher", in ''National Library of Australia News'', XVI (9), June 2006, p. 16</ref> Another policy area that captured his attention during this term, was the employment of workers from the Pacific Islands in sugar plantations, a practice that Fisher and Labour both strongly opposed. He lost his seat in 1896 following a campaign in which he was charged by his opponent [[Jacob Stumm]] with being a dangerous revolutionary and an anti-Catholic, accusations that were propagated by the newspaper ''Gympie Times''.{{sfn|Day|2008}}

The 1896 establishment of the ''Gympie Truth'', a newspaper that he was to partly own,<ref name=adb>{{Australian Dictionary of Biography  |first=D. J. |last=Murphy |author-link=Denis Murphy (Australian politician) |title=Fisher, Andrew (1862–1928) |id2=fisher-andrew-378 |year=1981 |access-date=14 August 2022}}</ref> was part of his response. Intended as a medium to broadcast Labour's message, the newspaper played a vital role in Fisher's return to parliament in 1899. This time, he was the beneficiary of a scare campaign, in which conservative candidate Francis Power was consistently painted by the ''Gympie Truth'' as being a supporter of black labour and the alleged economic and social ills that accompanied it.{{sfn|Day|2008}} In that year he was Secretary for Railways and Public Works in the seven-day government of [[Anderson Dawson]], the first parliamentary Labour government in the world.<ref name=adb/>

=== Federal politics ===
[[Image:Labor 1901b.jpg|right|thumb|Labour Party MPs elected at the inaugural [[1901 Australian federal election|1901 election]], including [[Chris Watson|Watson]], Fisher, [[Billy Hughes|Hughes]], [[King O'Malley|O'Malley]], and [[Frank Tudor|Tudor]]]]
The state Labour parties and their MPs were mixed in their support for the [[Federation of Australia]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Federation Political Groups – to 1901 and beyond  |work=[[National Library of Australia]]  |url=http://www.nla.gov.au/guides/federation/politics.html  |access-date=31 August 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070830162636/http://www.nla.gov.au/guides/federation/politics.html  |archive-date=30 August 2007 |url-status=live 
}}</ref> However Fisher was a firm believer in federation, supporting the union of the Australian colonies and campaigned for the 'Yes' vote in Queensland's 1899 referendum.<ref name=adb/>  Fisher stood for the [[Division of Wide Bay]] at the inaugural [[1901 Australian federal election]] and won the seat, which he held continuously for the rest of his political career.<ref name = "Fisher16"/> At the end of 1901, Fisher married [[Margaret Fisher|Margaret Irvine]], his previous landlady's daughter.<ref name=apmb>{{cite web | title =Andrew Fisher, Before office | work =Australia's Prime Ministers | publisher =[[National Archives of Australia]] | url =http://primeministers.naa.gov.au/primeministers/fisher/before-office.aspx | access-date =9 February 2010 | archive-date =23 September 2009 | archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20090923003840/http://primeministers.naa.gov.au/primeministers/fisher/before-office.aspx | url-status =dead }}</ref>

Fisher supported the [[White Australia policy]] but also argued that any Kanaka who had converted to Christianity and married should be allowed to remain in Australia.{{citation needed|date=September 2022}}

Labour improved their position at the [[1903 Australian federal election|1903 election]], gaining enough seats to be on par with the other two, a legislative time colloquially known as the "three elevens". When the Deakin government resigned in 1904, [[George Reid]] of the [[Free Trade Party]] declined to take office, resulting in Labour taking power and [[Chris Watson]] becoming Labour's first prime minister for a four-month period in 1904. Fisher established and demonstrated his ministerial capabilities as [[Minister for Trade (Australia)|Minister for Trade and Customs]] in the [[Watson Ministry]]. The fourth Labour member in the ministry after Watson, Hughes, and [[Lee Batchelor]], Fisher was promoted to Deputy Leader of the Labour Party in 1905.{{citation needed|date=September 2022}}

[[File:Andrew_Fisher_1904.jpg|left|thumb|upright=0.9|Fisher in 1904, around the time of the [[Watson government]]]]
George Reid adopted a strategy of trying to reorient the party system along Labour vs non-Labour lines – prior to the [[1906 Australian federal election|1906 election]], he renamed his [[Free Trade Party]] to the Anti-Socialist Party. Reid envisaged a spectrum running from socialist to anti-socialist, with the [[Protectionist Party]] in the middle. This attempt struck a chord with politicians who were steeped in the [[Westminster system|Westminster tradition]] and regarded a [[two-party system]] as very much the norm.<ref>[https://www.cis.org.au/app/uploads/2015/04/images/stories/policy-magazine/2009-autumn/25-1-09-charles-richardson.pdf Fusion: The Party System We Had To Have? – by Charles Richardson CIS 25 January 2009]</ref>

=== Party leader ===
At the 1906 election, Deakin remained prime minister even though Labour gained considerably more seats than the Protectionists. When Watson resigned in 1907, Fisher succeeded him as Labour leader, although Hughes and [[William Spence]] also stood for the position. Fisher was considered to have a better understanding of economic matters, was better at handling caucus, had better relations with the party organisation and the unions, and was more in touch with party opinion. He did not share Hughes' passion for free trade or that of Watson and Hughes for defence (and later conscription). In political terms he was a radical, on the left-wing of his party, with a strong sense of Labour's part in British working-class history.{{citation needed|date=September 2022}}

At the 1908 Labour Federal Conference, Fisher argued for female representation in parliament:

{{cquote|I trust that not another Federal election will take place without there being a woman endorsed as a Labour candidate for the Senate.<ref name=adb />}}

With a majority of seats in the Labour-Protectionist government, Labour caucus by early 1908 had become restive as to the future of the Deakin minority government. With the Deakin ministry in trouble, Deakin spoke to Fisher and Watson about a possible coalition, and following a report agreed to it providing Labour had a majority in cabinet, that there was immediate legislation for old-age [[pension]]s, that New Protection was carried and that at the following election the government would promise a progressive [[land tax]]. No coalition was formed, however the pressure from Labour brought about productive change by Deakin: he agreed to a [[royal commission]] into the post office, old-age pensions were to be provided from the surplus revenue fund and £250,000 set aside for ships for an [[Australian Navy]]. New Protection was declared invalid by the High Court in June, Fisher found the tariff proposals of Deakin unsatisfactory, while caucus was also dissatisfied with the old-age pension proposals. Without Labour support the Deakin government collapsed in November 1908.<ref name=adb/>

During the parliamentary ballots that selected Yass-Canberra as the site of the national capital, in October 1908, Fisher voted consistently for [[Dalgety, New South Wales|Dalgety]].<ref>{{Cite news|date=9 October 1908|title=Capital Site |work=Argus|url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article10169204|access-date=10 October 2021}}</ref>