Ironically, despite the fact that I've read a few books about the decade you're referring to, I've never heard of the policies of that era referred to as the "Deakinite Settlement". I had to look up this phrase, and found out that it was created by an author 80 years after the fact. That book, published in 1992 about the politics of the 1980s, is a bit too current for my tastes!

The political leaders of the 1900s didn't think of what they were doing as a "settlement". It was just them muddling through, competing and compromising and making deals to get legislation through a messy parliament that contained three roughly equal parties with different priorities.

Here's some of the books on my bookshelf:

The First Decade of the Australian Commonwealth, by Henry Gyles Turner.

This was published in 1911, and it's a blow-by-blow account of that 10-year period in the federal parliament, by a contemporary writer. I find it very informative.

So Monstrous a Travesty, by Ross McMullin (2004).

This is a history of the Labor government that existed for 4 months in 1904: the world's first Labour government at a national level.

Alfred Deakin, a biography by Professor John La Nauze, published in 1962.

[Side note: I own La Nauze's personal copy of The Federal Story, the memoir written by Alfred Deakin.]

Alfred Deakin was a key figure in Australian politics for that decade - as indicated by the fact that an author eight decades later named the primary legislative output of that time after Deakin.

Deakin's appointment as Attorney-General in 1901 under Edmund Barton meant he was involved in most key legislation of that first parliament. He then became Prime Minister three times during that decade. Even as the Opposition Leader, if he wasn't making the laws, he was negotiating them.

Happy reading!