Afternoon Light

Despite being the home of the central institution of Australian democracy, Canberra was long denied its own democratic rights. Initially envisaged as a seasonal town where people would only come when Parliament sat, even once it became a fully-fledged city and national showpiece, federal governments were keen to control it so they could fashion that showpiece how they pleased. It was only in the 1...

Enter any Australian bookshop over the last couple of decades, and you are likely to have been inundated with publications written by politicians trying to tell their life story, spill gossip and throw barbs at their colleagues. However, this was not always the case. For most of the 20th century Australian politicians were generally reluctant to write memoirs, and even when they did, someone as jo...

It was under Robert Menzies that Australia entered the nuclear age with the opening of the Lucas Heights Reactor in 1958. 65 years on, what looked to be the first step in a much bigger story remains practically the only step Australia has taken towards harnessing the potency of the atom to power our nation. As nuclear energy once again appears on the political radar, it is worth taking a look back...

Bob Santamaria is a key figure in the Menzies era. Despite being little known until the mid 1950s, Santamaria’s role as the driving force behind ‘the Movement’ helped to thwart communist influence in the Australian trade unions and precipitate the great Labor split. Though he became a highly visible public commentator in his later years, the man himself remains something of a mystery, having provi...

Since the record-breaking run of Robert Menzies, there have been 14 leaders of the Liberal Party of Australia. Each of them has been influenced in various ways by the party’s founder, as they try to take up the essential task of upholding the principles of Australian liberalism (which indeed is a political tradition which long predates Menzies himself). In this special series of the Afternoon Ligh...

Since the record-breaking run of Robert Menzies, there have been 14 leaders of the Liberal Party of Australia. Each of them has been influenced in various ways by the party’s founder, as they try to take up the essential task of upholding the principles of Australian liberalism (which indeed is a political tradition which long predates Menzies himself). In this special series of the Afternoon Ligh...

If one were to rank Australia’s most important Prime Ministers, Joseph Lyons would have to be high on the list. Not only did he lead the nation out of the Great Depression, but he was also responsible for readying the country for World War Two, presiding over five separate re-armament programs before passing away in office in 1939. Lyons’s personal journey is fascinating, as he not only went from...

The Korean War is in many respects the war that never ended. This year marks 70 years since the signing of the Armistice Agreement which ended the three-year conflict in which 339 Australians lost their lives serving as part of a United Nations force which defended South Korea from an invasion from the Communist North. The conflict was the first clear flare up of the Cold War in the Asia-Pacific a...

Since the record-breaking run of Robert Menzies, there have been 14 leaders of the Liberal Party of Australia. Each of them has been influenced in various ways by the party’s founder, as they try to take up the essential task of upholding the principles of Australian liberalism (which indeed is a political tradition which long predates Menzies himself). In this special series of the Afternoon Ligh...

Ebony Nilsson, ‘It Will Be Classified’ The Remarkable Story of Bill Marshall & ASIO’s Operatives in Australia The biographies of migrants – as individuals who move through countries, across borders and continents – can be difficult to piece together. There are often gaps in their backgrounds and stories which remain mysterious, or parts of their lives which are not explicable. This same is true of...

Robert Menzies’s relationship with the Australian media was complex. He had an intense dislike for journalists, for a long time struggled to gain traction in Sydney, and a media narrative played a key role in his downfall as prime minister in 1941. Nevertheless, no-one who had Menzies’s longevity in politics could succeed without having a certain degree of media savvy and important connections in...

The Menzies era was in many respects the golden age of the Department of External Affairs (now Foreign Affairs). The first Australian diplomatic postings outside of the British Commonwealth had been made by Menzies’s wartime government, so when he returned to power in 1949 Australia was still forging its diplomatic network. This adolescence and growth gave great opportunities for young, ambitious...

Just as the Second World War produced the United Nations, the First World War brought forth its immediate predecessor the League of Nations. Generally viewed as a failure hamstrung by the fact that America never joined and unable to forestall Axis aggression, the League nevertheless gave birth to many important international operations that were subsequently taken over by the UN and continue to th...

Robert Menzies had a great dislike for both journalists and biographers. In his memoir Afternoon Light, he decried contemporary history as little more than a ‘gossip column’ which could not be trusted to get the facts right. Nevertheless, early in his second stint as prime minister he reluctantly enlisted a brilliant writer named Allan Dawes to write a biography to help win over the Australian pub...

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:...