Based upon the ideas of Henry George, who argued that all taxes should be abolished, save for a single tax on unimproved land values, the Single Tax League was founded shortly after World War I, and a newspaper, the People's Advocate was published.
A great proponent of the theory was J. Medway Day via his short-lived weekly newspaper The Voice.
The League's sole parliamentary representative was Edward Craigie, who was elected to the South Australian House of Assembly seat of Flinders (covering the League's west coast power base) in the 1930 state election.
Though the party first contested the 1918 state election, the onset of the Great Depression in Australia had led people to seek radical solutions and the manifesto of the League seemed as likely to solve their woes as any government devised plan.
Craigie worked tirelessly to have a single tax system instituted in South Australia but faced stiff opposition from the conservative Liberal Federation (and their successors, the Liberal and Country League), which despised the idea of a single tax, and the Labor Party, which was opposed to the League's free trade stance.