Australian Political History

The recent emergence of online social media has had a significant effect on the contemporary political landscape, yet our understanding of this remains less than complete. This article adds to current understanding of the online engagement between politicians and the public by presenting the first quantitative analysis of the utilisation of the social network tool Twitter by Australian politicians. The analysis suggests that politicians are attempting to use Twitter for political engagement, though some are more successful in this than others. Politicians are noisier than Australians in general on Twitter, though this is due more to broadcasting than conversing. Those who use Twitter to converse appear to gain more political benefit from the platform than others. Though politicians cluster by party, a relatively 'small world' network is evident in the Australian political discussion on Twitter.

This article considers the role of Sir Frank Packer and his media outlets in the
demise of Sir John Gorton in 1971 and the elevation of Sir William McMahon
to the leadership of the Liberal Party and the Prime Ministership of Australia.
It identifies Packer’s long association with McMahon and traces the part played
by Australian Consolidated Press in the intra-party struggle of the late 1960s
and the early 1970s. The article argues that while Packer and some of his
employees, particularly the Daily Telegraph’s political correspondent Alan
Reid, helped to destabilise Gorton’s leadership, it is much too simplistic to
suggest, as many observers have, that a ‘Packer plot’ was executed in 1971. The
article, which examines what is represented as a key instance of a media
proprietor exercising undue influence in the political process, serves as a
historical case study of the relationship between the news media and political
parties in Australia.

English School approaches to international politics, which focus on the idea of an international society of states bound together by shared rules and norms, have not paid significant explicit attention to the study of security in international relations. This is curious given the centrality of security to the study of world politics and the recent resurgence of English School scholarship in general. This article attempts to redress this gap by locating and explicating an English School discourse of security. We argue here that there is indeed an English School discourse of security, although an important internal distinction exists here between pluralist and solidarist accounts, which focus on questions of order and justice in international society respectively. In making this argument, we also seek to explore the extent to which emerging solidarist accounts of security serve to redress the insecurity of security in international relations: the tendency of traditional security praxes to privilege the state in ways that renders individuals insecure.

This thesis describes the office of Australian treasurer (the equivalent of finance minister in most European countries) and how it has evolved over time, distinguishing between those occupants who only sought to manage the economy and finances and those who sought fundamental reforms.

This Master's dissertation explores the context in which the Royal Commission on Intelligence and Security, 1974-1977 came to be. The Whitlam government wanted to reform the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) so as to depoliticise it and make it more effective in combating genuine threats to the state, including global terrorism. In early 1973 the Government's reform was stalled as a result of the Attorney-General's raid on ASIO offices. The Prime Minister announced in late 1973 that an inquiry into ASIO would arise at some point. The Australian Labor Party took the idea of a judicial inquiry into Australia's intelligence and security apparatus to the 1974 election. Within weeks of returning to office the Whitlam government decided to launch the Royal Commission. The Royal Commission's terms of reference ensured that an intelligence apparatus would continue to be available to the Commonwealth. Labor had decided to keep ASIO prior to the 1972 election. This was despite it experiencing two decades of ASIO's ideological partisanship, which had consequences for Labor. Such a decision was not inconsistent with its history, having been an anti-communist party from the 1920s and responsible for ASIO's creation in 1949. The decision to erect the Royal Commission was also widely supported by major Australian newspapers. When the Royal Commission finished in 1977 a lasting bipartisan consensus on ASIO was emerging.

This is an extended version of a paper delivered to the Labour and Anzac Conference at the National Archives of Australia, 21-22 September 2012. The paper was published in a revised form in Labour History, no. 106, (May 2014), and is also uploaded on this site.

On Monday 3 August 1914, the government of Joseph Cook authorised a cable to London offering an expeditionary force. The leaders of the Labor Party voiced no criticism. This article explores the background to Labor’s acquiescence. In the context of a looming federal election, a number of factors came into play. As the international crisis opened, Liberals alleged that Labor would jeopardise Australia’s security. Labor had been prominent in supporting Irish Home Rule in 1914, inviting charges of disloyalty. Andrew Fisher had been hurt politically by such charges in the recent past. The Labor leaders Fisher and Pearce were also aware that they had authorised planning for an expeditionary force when in office, 1910–13. Since the Boer War, Labor had retreated from suggestions that Australia might shun an imperial war. Instead, in fear of Asia, Labor preached absolute loyalty to Britain and the internationalist spirit remained weak in Labor’s ranks.

An unpublished paper presented at the one-day symposium led by Dr Christine Winter, "A Southern War: Australia, the Pacific and WWI", Australian National University, 28 November 2014. The paper explores Australian military planning before the First World War, with a special emphasis on naval planning, stressing the willingness of war planners to contemplate offensive action, and expeditionary warfare on the part of Australia.

The Australian Assistance Plan (AAP) was an innovative and highly controversial program of social welfare reform initiated during the Whitlam era, promoting a new approach to community development, regionalism and federalism, reframing citizen involvement at the local level. This ‘pioneering experiment in community development’ saw federal government funding directed to local regions through a new mechanism of Regional Councils for Social Development (RCSD). It aimed to provide greater recognition for voluntary activity, and encourage community engagement in areas of specific local need. Thirty-five RCSDs were established across Australia, administered by the newly-formed Social Welfare Commission.

By comparing and contrasting the formation, character and challenges of the RCSD in Newcastle and the Western Adelaide RCSD we aim in this paper to probe how these two Councils set about implementing the AAP legislation, assess how regional issues shaped the AAP agenda, and provide some examples of how the AAP influenced specific localities. Using records of the Newcastle and Adelaide RCSDs, this project will be the first detailed historical examination of the AAP at the regional level.  We are seeking to connect social welfare history with a diverse and burgeoning literature on ‘new regionalism’ and voluntary action, thus exploring the history of innovative public policy and the role of citizenship participation in its specific regional milieu.

Australia made a significant contribution to the development of the idea of
Greater Britain and the life of the imperial federation movement. This thesis
proposes that many Australians identified with the cause, seeing in it an
opportunity for Australia to renegotiate its place within the Empire and leverage a greater say in imperial affairs. Encouraged by innovations in transport and communication technology that seemed to draw the Empire closer together, people in Britain and its settler colonies like Australia began to imagine the possibility of a globe-spanning imperial polity. Not content to leave the prospect of Empire unity to chance, the most ardent proponents of Greater Britain became champions of an imperial federation. Australians played a special role in this movement: and were not only critical to the formation of the Imperial Federation League, but would subsequently assume leadership over it when the parent league in London dissolved in 1894. This thesis takes an expansive view of the Australian contribution by going beyond a nationalist frame and locating it within its imperial context. The fluidity of dual Australian and imperial identity, as well as the mobility and interaction of key players in different parts of the Empire, necessitates this approach for a wholistic understanding. The nuanced interplay of specific Australian interests with British and other colonial interests can be better appreciated in such a picture. Filling a gap in the historiography, this thesis expands our knowledge of the Australian contribution to the development of the idea of Greater Britain and the political project of imperial federation. It does this by highlighting the presence of Australia and Australians in the development of key ideas, texts and organisations. In spite of its eventual failure, the history of this movement is critical to deepening our understanding of British imperialism and its manifestations within settler colonies like Australia.

Review of a combative study of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). This book argues that ASIO has, since its formation in 1949, acted as a partisan political 'police' force, ridden roughshod over civil liberties, engaged in illegal activities, all with the aim of creating and managing a compliant, docile citizenry.

In this dialogue, I speak with distinguished Australian photographer Juno Gemes about a retrospective collection of her work that she is in the process of compiling at her studio on the banks of the Hawkesbury River in New South Wales. Provisionally titled Something Personal: Chronicles of the Movement 1978-2022, it will include photographs produced during a long-term collaboration between Gemes and her friend Frances Peters-Little, a Gamilaraay Yuwaalaraay filmmaker and historian with whom I also spoke for this dialogue. Combined, these conversations provide insight into the social relations, protocols, and ethics that shape and inform Gemes' ongoing photographic practice.

Sir Arthur Fadden served as treasurer for nine years and brought down eleven budgets. In his first budget he faced the challenges of funding military expenditure in World War II. Returning to the Treasury in the early 1950s, there were again challenging times as the Korean war boom exacerbated inflationary pressures. In response Fadden brought down the ‘horror budget’, the first explicitly Keynesian approach to fight inflation. Critics called it ‘too much, too late’ but inflation was squashed and the economy grew well for the rest of the decade. In many ways, Fadden’ period as treasurer coincided with a golden age for the Australian economy.

Jim Cairns was the only academic economist to become Treasurer. But despite his qualifications, even his own assessment was that his tenure as Treasurer was unsuccessful. While a driving force behind the 1974 budget, he was Treasurer for only seven months and was one of only a handful of Treasurers not to bring down a budget. Cairns was an idealistic dreamer, but did little to realise his visions of a fairer society during his troubled treasurership.

Recent scholarship has demonstrated the importance of the “new liberalism” in the development of industrial arbitration in Australia. While some of this scholarship has focused on the influence of T.H. Green’s critique of contract little attention has been paid to the evolutionary background to the new liberal reforms and to conceptions of the state in late nineteenth and early twentieth century jurisprudence. This paper endeavours to situate the debates over industrial arbitration within the context of British and Australian political and legal thought of the period, covering themes including British idealism, evolutionary theory, historical jurisprudence, and theories of group personality. While in Britain there was some resistance to the extension of state power in the form of pluralist political thought, the overwhelming trend in the Australian case was towards state regulation of industrial affairs.

Conservative Australian governments, in common with their counterparts in the US and the UK, used political terror, enforced through physical violence, civil ordinance laws, incarceration, sackings and injunctions against strike action to retain their hold on political power during World War I, the 1920s and the 1930s. This pressure was crucial to the inter-war success that the Right enjoyed in defining the political character of Australian nationalism. Nevertheless, the Australian government was considerably less successful than governments in the US, for example, in wiping ‘Bolshevism’ and labour activism more generally from the political scene in Australia. This is demonstrated, most obviously, by the election of a federal Australian Labor Party government in 1929. After a sustained attack on labour radicalism throughout the 1920s, the election was virtually a plebiscite on the conservative Bruce government’s proposal to abolish the Commonwealth Arbitration Court. This lack of success was the result of a range of political, social and psychological factors, all of which impeded the growth and potency of Australian anti-communism. While passionate and sincere in their beliefs, Australia’s founding anti-communists nevertheless failed to steer Australia towards the kind of authoritarian and even fascist society for which many wished. To a significant extent, they failed because they lacked determination, political courage and craft. However, their influence was also limited by the political and social power of the labour movement, which was far greater than in the US.

This thesis describes the office of Australian treasurer (the equivalent of finance minister in most European countries) and how it has evolved over time, distinguishing between those occupants who only sought to manage the economy and finances and those who sought fundamental reforms.

Now largely forgotten, Edgar George Holt (1904–1988) was a leading journalist and public relations officer in the middle decades of twentieth–century Australia. This article examines his prominent journalistic career in the 1930s and 1940s, his presidency of the Australian Journalists’ Association, and his work as the Liberal Party of Australia's public relations officer from 1950 to the early 1970s. The article explores the evolution of his cultural and political views, considering how a literary aesthete and poet came to be at the forefront of the 1944 newspaper strike and then an important player in Australian conservative machine politics and the emerging industry of political public relations.

Chifley was a ‘true believer’ in the Labor Party and in the role that government could play in stabilising the economy and keeping unemployment low. He was an active treasurer, initially working well with Prime Minister Curtin and then serving as both Prime Minister and Treasurer himself. He managed the war economy competently and achieved a smooth transition to a peacetime economy, although he allowed inflationary pressures to build up in the post-war years. Among his economic reforms were increased welfare payments, uniform income taxation and developing central banking powers (through direct controls rather than market mechanisms) for the Commonwealth Bank.

Frank Crean was effectively shadow treasurer for a decade or more before becoming treasurer. But soon after achieving the post he was facing the most turbulent global economic conditions since the depression as the quadrupling of oil prices saw the emergence of stagflation in almost all advanced economies. Crean was a decent man and technically competent but not politically strong enough for the challenge.

More than fifty years have passed since the staging of the 1948 American Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land, described as ‘the last of the big expeditions’. Three Australian-produced films were made from silent footage taken during the Expedition. These incorporated narration, sound effects and music. To compose the music for the films, Expedition leader Charles P Mountford called on the services of husband-and-wife Alfred and Mirrie Hill. To help inspire them in the composition process, Mountford supplied the Hills with recordings of traditional Aboriginal song collected during the Expedition—their transcriptions of traditional song formed the basis of scores for the three films: Aborigines of the Sea Coast, Birds and Billabongs, and Arnhem Land. The technical limitations of the equipment then available for field recording had a profound effect on the composers’ interpretations of the songs.

Following a brief discussion of ethnographic film-making in Australia and the political climate which led to the staging of the  Expedition, this chapter interrogates the process of composing the film scores using appropriated traditional song. With examples from the film scores and the songs that influenced their composition, the chapter offers a view to wider community attitudes on appropriation of cultural artefacts in Australia after the second world war.

The Defence Preparations Act 1951 was conceived as a solution to an ideological as much as the constitutional dilemma the Menzies government faced as a result of the inflationary crisis of 1950-51.  Drawing  on  Cabinet  Notebooks,  we  argue  that  the  government  used  the  Act  to facilitate  peacetime  access  to  capital  issues  controls  under  the  defence  powers,  but  also  to reassure  its  supporters  and  the  public  that  turning  to  direct  economic  controls  was  not  a vindication of the “socialism” it promised on election to stand against. While the Act enabled the government to convince the High Court that imposing anti-inflationary controls was linked to defence preparations, it was also a way for it to maintain ideological coherence as it sought
to breach a principal tenet of its political philosophy."

William McMahon was Australia’s first treasurer formally trained in economics. He brought extraordinary energy to the role. The economy performed strongly during McMahon’s tenure, although there are no major reforms to his name, and arguably pressures were allowed to build which led to the subsequent inflation of the 1970s. Never popular with his cabinet colleagues, McMahon’s public reputation was tarnished by his subsequent unsuccessful period as prime minister.

The interwar years saw the initiation of a number of important periodicals that reflected the emerging vitality of public intellectual life in Australia. One such publication was The Morpeth Review, a quarterly that appeared between the years 1927 and 1934. Edited by three Anglican intellectuals — E. H. Burgmann, Roy Lee, and A. P. Elkin — it included contributions from prominent historians, political scientists, anthropologists, cultural critics, and theologians. Though its range of concerns was broad, it was guided by a basic vision of intellectual and social life that aimed at reconciling the conflicting elements of modernity. Such conflicts included the divide between the world of work and the family, the divide between classes, between nations, and between church and state, or more broadly, between the secular and the religious spheres. This article will suggest that in the endeavour to reconcile such competing elements The Morpeth Review expressed a kind of political theology that was modernist in inspiration (welcoming science and the critical consciousness) and drew on several overlapping traditions of thought including liberal Anglicanism, Christian socialism, and British idealism, all of which rejected the modern tendency to compartmentalise life and with it to relegate religion to the private sphere.

Les Bury was a Treasury employee who rose to become Treasurer. Although one of the best qualified treasurers, with a serious interest in economics, he only had a short time in the job and was by most accounts well past his peak before he became treasurer. He was ahead of his time in advocating broader measures of wellbeing, taking steps towards replacing some income tax with indirect tax and supporting the compilation of forward estimates.

‘Red Ted’ Theodore served an interrupted term as treasurer in Scullin’s government during the Great Depression. He took office days before the Wall St crash. He was well read in economics, and was an early advocate of Keynesian ideas. However, the Scullin government was impeded by a hostile Senate, a recalcitrant Commonwealth Bank and a divided Labor Party, which made it extremely difficult for Theodore to implement his policies. In addition, corruption allegations led
Theodore to stand aside as treasurer during a crucial period. Losing his seat at the subsequent election, Theodore then pursued a successful business career.

Casey was a protégé of former treasurer SM Bruce. After assisting Lyons on Treasury matters while Lyons was both treasurer and prime minister from 1932, Casey formally became treasurer in 1935, serving for 3½ years. While not trained as an economist, Casey was very diligent and took an interest in the views of economists. He developed proposals for banking reform based on a Royal Commission. Casey developed a plan for national insurance and shepherded it through parliament, but to his disappointment it was dropped as World War II approached. Casey later gave distinguished service as diplomat, foreign minister and governor-general.

Harold Holt is regarded as one of the most amiable and diligent treasurers. His reputation as treasurer was enhanced by strong economic growth and low inflation and  unemployment, although the 1961 credit squeeze was a blot in his copybook. He oversaw the establishment of the Reserve Bank and the smooth introduction of decimal currency. Sadly his career as treasurer and prime minister was overshadowed by the political difficulties in his last year and the tragic circumstances of his death.

John Christian Watson was Australia’s second (and youngest) treasurer, and the first national Labour prime minister and treasurer in the world. His government did not last long enough for him to bring down a budget. But his cautious pragmatic approach proved influential for subsequent Labour governments.

William Watt was a protégé of Alfred Deakin and succeeded him as Australia’s leading parliamentary orator. He served as Victorian Treasurer and Premier before moving to federal politics, where he rose to be Treasurer and handled the transition from war to peacetime economy. Watt was also Acting Prime Minister for over a year before clashes with Billy Hughes led him to resign. After a successful term as Speaker, he retired from politics with, to many eyes, promises unfulfilled.

Frank Crean was effectively shadow treasurer for a decade or more before becoming treasurer. But soon after achieving the post he was facing the most turbulent global economic conditions since the depression as the quadrupling of oil prices saw the emergence of stagflation in almost all advanced economies. Crean was a decent man and technically competent but not politically strong enough for the challenge.

A printer who rose to publish and edit newspapers, William Higgs served in the Queensland parliament and the Senate before taking a seat in the House of Representatives and becoming Treasurer in Billy Hughes' wartime Labor government. Higgs was arguably the most radical politician to hold the post, but Hughes' singular focus on the war limited Higgs' scope to make broad social reforms. He was an early advocate of the independence of the Commonwealth Bank.

This article surveys the relationship between Australian's longest serving prime minister. Sir Robert Menzies, and the controversial media proprietor Sir Frank Packer. It begins by briefly discussing the progressive liberalism that characterised the Daily and Sunday Telegraphs in the 1930s and 1940s. It then considers Packer's flirtations with the affairs of the United Australia Party and the Liberal Party in the 1940s, and the way in which Menzies, as leader of the opposition, viewed the press proprietor. The main part of the article explores the value that the prime minister and the Liberal Party placed on the support of the Packer media outlets, and the form that this support took. The article goes some way to describing how media tycoons and political correspondents interacted with politicians in the days before press releases and professional lobbyists became highly sophisticated news management devices.

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, it was inevitable that governments across the world would re-examine their security laws and the powers of their law enforcement and intelligence organisations. In the United States, the Bush Administration pushed through Congress the United States Patriot Act, which empowered the government to detain an ‘enemy combatant’ (either an alien or an American citizen) indefinitely, without having to lay charges, hold a committal hearing or provide access to legal counsel. The FBI was thereby authorised to undertake covert investigations without having to furnish reasonable evidence of planned or actual illegality, regaining powers that were taken from it by Congress thirty years ago.
In the wake of the BaIi bombing on 12 October 2002, which caused the greatest loss of Australian life in a single event since the Second World War, it was easy to forget that the Howard Government began striving to endow the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) with similar powers to that conferred on the FBI almost immediately following the events of September 11. It formulated legislation that would enable ASIO, for the first time in its history, to arrest citizens and hold them, incommunicado and deprived of legal assistance for forty-eight hours, without charge for up to seven days and deprived of the right to silence during interrogation.
This article explores historical precedents for expanding the powers of ASIO and its predecessors, the Counter-Espionage Bureau and the Commonwealth Investigation Branch, and warns of the kinds of untoward consequences of this expansion that can be expected in contemporary times.

Billy Snedden was Treasurer in very challenging circumstances, with the global financial system undergoing intense change and the government in which he served in political difficulty. This made it hard for him to address effectively the emerging inflationary pressures.

George Turner, a former Victorian treasurer and premier, was Australia’s first treasurer, and despite battling ill-health brought down the first four federal budgets. He was a cautious treasurer whose budgets were balanced, and he limited federal expenditure. Revenue was raised from somewhat protectionist tariffs, and most of it was redistributed to the states. Turner was so widely respected for his diligence and competence that the leaders of all three major parties of the time reputedly offered him the post of treasurer.

John Forrest entered the first federal parliament with an established reputation as a disciplined explorer and long-standing state premier. While narrowly missing out on becoming prime minister, he served four times as treasurer. In his first term, he followed in the conservative footsteps of Turner. He was later faced with reorganising federal finances when the arrangements governing the first decade of Federation were coming to an end. In his final term, he faced the challenges of funding Australia’s involvement in the First World War.

Stanley Melbourne Bruce, a wealthy businessman with an aristocratic air, served as treasurer in 1922, bringing down one budget, during his meteoric rise to the prime ministership. He stressed the need to bring ‘businesslike’ practices into government and promote development under his slogan ‘men, money and markets’. A number of commissions and inquiries were set up to inform policymaking, and Bruce looked favourably on establishing independent boards to manage
some government operations. Bruce established a sinking fund to retire the debt accumulated during the First World War. He also tried to rationalise industrial relations arrangements.

Earle Page brought down six budgets while serving as Bruce’s treasurer. He was fortunate in when he was treasurer, after the war and before the Depression, which allowed him to ease tax burdens. Bruce and Page established the Loan Council  and introduced ‘tied grants’ to the States. Page moved the Commonwealth Bank further towards being a central bank and gave it responsibility for the note issue.

A personal account of student activism on the Sydney University campus during the 1960s by two activist/participants of the time, Rowan Cahill and Terry Irving. The talk was part of the campaign by Sydney University students to mobilise for the National Rally for Education Rights held on 26 March 2014.