Afternoon Light

The 1950s are often seen as a dull and stultified period in Australian history, epitomised by the growth of suburbia, the white picket fence and indeed the fact that we had the same prime minister for the entire decade. However, when you scratch the surface there were significant cultural changes happening, as well as a growing, though still somewhat tentative self-confidence in ourselves as a nat...

In the 122 years that have passed since federation, only two of our nation’s leaders have surpassed a decade serving as Prime Minister. It is notable that the second, John Howard, had a great admiration for and partly modelled his conduct on the first and still unsurpassed record holder Sir Robert Menzies. When Howard was Opposition Leader, Paul Keating would taunt him in Parliament for his connec...

Liberalism is Australia’s oldest political tradition. Even before the advent of democracy in the Australian colonies, Australian liberals fought key political battles that secured equal rights for ex-convicts, trial by jury, religious freedom, and which prevented the establishment of a bunyip aristocracy. By the time they had won the right to democracy in 1856, virtually every politician called th...

Britain’s entry into what became the European Union was very much foreshadowed during the Menzies era, when the United Kingdom attempted to join the European Economic Community only to be vetoed by French President Charles de Gaulle. Menzies was obviously highly opposed to the move to join, not only because of its economic consequences for Australia and his sentimental attachment to the British Co...

Robert Menzies’s relationship with the United States was complex. While he respected their vital role as Australia’s ‘great and powerful friend’ and protector, and grew to appreciate their shared values, he was acutely aware that they were different to Britain and his first visit to America provoked quite hostile views. Menzies knew that with great power comes great responsibility, and he had some...

The 19th and 20th centuries were some of the most momentous periods of change in human history. The former saw the immense economic power of capitalism and the industrial revolution create levels of unheard-of wealth. The latter saw a battle over how to spread that wealth, with opposing models of the communist command economy facing off against a liberal capitalism tempered by the rise of the welf...

In this special summer series of the Afternoon Light podcast you can enjoy the presentations delivered at our November 2022 conference entitled ‘Coming to Power, Learning to Govern and Gathering Momentum 1943-1954’. This sixth episode features David Furse Robert’s paper looking at ‘Percy Spender: the Colombo Plan, the ANZUS Treaty and the Japanese Peace Treaty’ and Lyndon Megarrity’s paper explori...

In this special summer series of the Afternoon Light podcast you can enjoy the presentations delivered at our November 2022 conference entitled ‘Coming to Power, Learning to Govern and Gathering Momentum 1943-1954’. This fifth episode features William Stoltz’s paper on ‘The Founding of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service’ and David Lee’s paper looking at ‘Economic Management During the Kore...

In this special summer series of the Afternoon Light podcast you can enjoy the presentations delivered at our November 2022 conference entitled ‘Coming to Power, Learning to Govern and Gathering Momentum 1943-1954’. This fourth episode features Lucas McLennan’s paper examining ‘Menzies and the "Movement": Two pillars of Australian anti-communism’ and Lorraine Finlay’s paper exploring 'What liberty...

In this special summer series of the Afternoon Light podcast you can enjoy the presentations delivered at our November 2022 conference entitled ‘Coming to Power, Learning to Govern and Gathering Momentum 1943-1954’. This third episode features Tom Switzer’s paper on ‘Liberalism Applied? Policy shifts in the transition from Chifley to Menzies’, Andrew Blyth’s paper on ‘Early Think Tanks and their i...

In this special summer series of the Afternoon Light podcast you can enjoy the presentations delivered at our November 2022 conference entitled ‘Coming to Power, Learning to Govern and Gathering Momentum 1943-1954’. This second episode features Troy Bramston’s paper on ‘Robert Menzies: The Art of Power’ and Charles Richardson’s paper on ‘Menzies, Evatt and Constitutional Government’ (begins at 19:...

In this special summer series of the Afternoon Light podcast you can enjoy the presentations delivered at our November 2022 conference entitled ‘Coming to Power, Learning to Govern and Gathering Momentum 1943-1954’. This first episode features the keynote address delivered by the Honourable George Brandis KC, Nicolle Flint’s paper on ‘Menzies’s Miracle? The Foundation of the Liberal Party of Austr...

Australia is far from the only country that started out as a settler colony built on the dispossession of Indigenous peoples, nor is it alone in having a complex path in coming to terms with the resulting legacies. Each story has its own nuances, similarities and contrasts, that can help reveal what we have gotten right and what we have gotten wrong. One obvious parallel is the United States, whic...

Long time Country Party Leader Earle Page was possibly the most important side character in Australian political history. He engineered the fall of Billy Hughes, won a coalition on generous terms that has shaped the centre-right of politics ever since, and served as second in command for the aptly named Bruce-Page Government and also for much of the Lyons Ministry. But he was also a man of vision,...

One of the main reasons that the Robert Menzies Institute has been set up at the University of Melbourne, beyond the fact that Menzies was both a student and chancellor of the institution, is that he bequeathed the university his personal library of over 4000 books. Housed in the Leigh Scott Room in the Baillieu Library, the collection is a cultural artefact that reveals insights into who Menzies...

John Curtin and Robert Menzies remain arguably the most revered prime ministers on their respective sides of Australian politics. The two men shared a mutual respect for one another, and a sense of cordiality that crossed party lines, even if that was severely tested by Eddie Ward’s ‘Brisbane Line’ fabrication. As two prime ministers who shared the burden of leading the nation through its greatest...

Australia’s relationship with India has been slow to prosper. For all our cultural ties and mutual love of cricket, until recently the shared legacy of Empire tended to stunt rather than facilitate the two nations coming to understand each other. These issues were epitomised by the relationship between Menzies and Nehru, two record-setting leaders who could bond over a love of parliamentary democr...

It is little remembered that in the race to produce the world’s first nuclear weapon, Britain took an early lead before changing tact to focus on assisting America’s efforts. In the immediate aftermath of World War Two, the United States shut off their wartime ally from access to the technology they had helped to create, and the United Kingdom was forced to lean on the Commonwealth to become a nuc...

William Cooper was a pioneering Indigenous activist, notable for his famous petition to King George VI for an Aboriginal representative in the Australian parliament, his call for a day of mourning after 150 years of colonisation, the walk-off of the Yorta Yorta people from Cummeragunja reserve in 1939, and his opposition to the establishment of an Aboriginal regiment in the Second World War. In hi...

Australia’s relationship with China has always been fraught with both difficulty and opportunity. It was Menzies who established Australia’s first diplomatic mission to China during World War Two, and he had a lot of sympathy for the beleaguered ally that was the Chinese Nationalist Government. It was subsequently quite disheartening to see them defeated in the Chinese Civil War, but the Menzies G...

One of the defining features of the Menzies era was a long economic boom where, apart from the occasional short hiccup, growth remained high while inflation and unemployment remained low. The eternal debate is to what extent did the Menzies Government facilitate this prosperity? While Menzies maintained a significant role for the state and the levers of Keynesian economic control that were already...

During the month of October, the Robert Menzies Institute has been very proud to host former Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom Lord Jonathan Sumption on a tour of Australia in which he has captivated audiences with a number of prominent speaking engagements, most notably the RMI Oration and Gala. Sumption’s views on the pivotal importance of the rule of law and the precarious futu...

Robert Menzies holds the record as Australia's longest serving prime minister, but he is certainly not Australia's longest serving ‘democratically’ elected political leader. That record is held by Thomas Playford, who was Premier of South Australia for an astonishing period from 1938 until 1965. This period corresponded with both of Menzies’s stints as prime minister, and the Federal leader had a...

One of the more obscure achievements of the Menzies Government was establishing Mawson Station, Australia’s first permanent base on the once uninhabited southern continent. This difficult endeavour was done partly in the name of science, but also to secure Australia’s claim to 42% of the territory which had its origins in the ‘historic age’ of exploration. This claim remains disputed, and the ins...

The Colombo Plan is one of Australia’s most successful and best remembered foreign policy initiatives. It is commonly associated with an influx of visiting students from our region who helped to breakdown the prejudices of white Australia and lay the groundwork for education to become one of our greatest exports. However, the Colombo Plan was bigger than Australia and it was broader than education...