MENZIES VERSUS EVATT: THE GREAT RIVALRY OF AUSTRALIAN POLITICS – Anne Henderson

No two contestants in Australian political history could be said to have affected each other as much as Robert Menzies and Bert Evatt – one to have helped to establish a workable platform – the United Nations – to bring nations together in the cause of peace, the other to establish himself as Australia’s longest serving prime minister and become acknowledged globally as the leader who made steadfast Australia’s alliances in the Pacific. Anne Henderson’s Menzies Versus Evatt – The Great Rivalry of Australian Politics traces this contest through the 1940s and 1950s. On Thursday 10 August 2023, former Australian prime minister The Hon John Howard AC joined former justice of the High Court of Australia Michael Kirby AC to launch the book – a memorable occasion for The Sydney Institute.

MENZIES VERSUS EVATT: THE GREAT RIVALRY OF AUSTRALIAN POLITICS

ANNE HENDERSON

Thank you all for coming – we couldn’t do this without you.

To my book launchers – two icons of Australian public life – many, many thanks. I am really honoured to have you launch this book.

To Connor Court and Anthony Cappello, the publisher – congratulations on a fine product.

To Paige Hally – bouquets for a terrific cover.

This book began with a look back on one of Australia’s most divisive referendums – the 1951 referendum on the Communist Party Dissolution. It ended in such a close vote, after the Yes case had been so far ahead just two months before (70-80 per cent), only to be rejected.

I interviewed both John Howard and Michael Kirby. They recalled the atmospherics of the campaign as very young Australians. Prime Minister Robert Menzies headed the case for Yes and Opposition leader Bert Evatt headed the case for No.

I exchanged emails with Penelope Seidler who recalled being made to feel an outsider at her conservative girls school. She was the niece of Bert Evatt.

In one of the PM’s rowdy meetings, Menzies replied to a heckler who greeted him with “Heil Hitler” by saying, “You call me Hitler and Dr Evatt calls me Goebbels – make up your mind.”

In all of this, I found there was a larger story – two giants of Australian politics and the law so directly opposed. As leaders, Menzies and Evatt contested three federal elections and a referendum.

No two contestants in Australian political history affected each other as much as Menzies and Evatt. But no book has tracked, in particular, the contest between them over successive bouts.

Lord Carrington, who knew both Evatt and Menzies, once wrote that all they had in common was their love of cricket. He was of course – referring to their personalities and approach to politics.

My book examines that divide and its consequences. The rivalry was also personal, often bitter. And especially intense once Robert Menzies emerged from his low point as leader of the new Liberal Party to defeat Labor in the 1949 election. Bert Evatt then entered his own political nadir before emerging as federal Labor leader following the death of Ben Chifley in June 1951.

The friction and tension between Menzies and Evatt reached a climax in the years 1951-1955. At that time, debate over communism in Australia and fears surrounding national security dominated national debate. Especially with the defection of Soviet spies Valdimir and Evdokia Petrov in April 1951.

Bert Evatt had triumphed, post war, as one of the key figures in the establishment of the United Nations. He truly believed it could bring world peace. But with the Cold War there was a change in the vibe as we say in these digital times. And one that Evatt never quite mastered. In the 1950s, he continued to distrust what he called “Imperialist” Japan and saw Soviet Russia as a reliable global citizen.

According to Paul Hasluck, Evatt thought Stalin wanted to win the war when, in fact, he wanted to win the world. Menzies, on the other hand, saw Soviet communism as the threat that had replaced Nazism.

The record shows that in the years of the Chifley Government, Australia’s External Affairs Department was viewed with suspicion by the UK and US due to the leaks over years from the Department to the Soviets. There was also mistrust in Minister Bert Evatt and departmental head John Burton.

Menzies became aware of this on his visit to the UK in 1948 – hence his promise to ban the Communist Party in the 1949 election campaign. In office, Menzies regained the US and UK’s trust.

By the time of the Petrov defection, Menzies had developed a belief that Bert Evatt was a national security risk. In 1954, he told Canberra journalist Frank Chamberlain that he would leave politics that year but for Dr Evatt whom he said was a menace to Australia and must be kept out of office by “hook or by crook”.

The intensity of Evatt’s rivalry, political and personal, with Menzies increased his paranoia in the fallout from the Petrov defection, leading Evatt to become consumed by the Royal Commission to the extent of attacking sections of his own party and bringing on the Labor split.

As Paul Kelly writes in the Foreword to the book, the rivalry between Menzies and Evatt took on a Shakespearean quality. I would add that, for Doc Evatt, it had the hallmarks of a Greek tragedy.

Thank you all for coming tonight – enjoy the book.

Let’s hear it for our two distinguished book launchers here – John Howard and Michael Kirby

*****

Menzies versus Evatt  – Q&A

Gerard Henderson: Was Menzies just an Imperial sort of guy, or was he a bit more than that?

John Howard: It’s an unfair depiction of Menzies just to dismiss him as an old fashioned imperialist. He believed in the monarchy, he believed in British values. He felt a surge of enjoyment when he first arrived in Britain in the 1930s because that was his upbringing and his background. But remember, Menzies rebuffed the British when it came to the formation of the ANZUS Treaty; they wanted to be part of it. Menzies might have liked Britain, but he always bought American when it came to defence equipment. And he was the prime minister who irretrievably committed this country to the most unpopular war it’s ever been involved in and that is the Vietnam War. Menzies’ decision to commit an infantry battalion in 1965, was in response to the entreaties of a centre-left American president. Remember this – the biggest commitment made by this country to American military was done by a centre-right prime minister to a centre-left president.

Sure, Menzies was unashamedly British to his boot heels, and nothing was wrong with that. It was the temper of the times. And you know, I’ve often said the luckiest thing that happened to this country was to be colonised by the British. It’s true – better than the others who would have colonised us inevitably. That’s my view. I defend Menzies against the charge that you can write him off as just being an old fashioned Imperialist. There was a lot more to the bloke than that.

Michael Kirby: I certainly agree that neither of these very distinguished Australian politicians should be stereotyped. In fact, it’s interesting that when he was arguing the Communist Party Dissolution referendum, Evatt repeatedly said that the fault of the legislation was that it was breaching British values and British justice. Over and over, he referred to that. So, the lesson is, as John has just said, that both of them were the products at the time, both of them were the product of their upbringing. Each of them brought their own values to their role. And each of them was a very, very clever person. And we’ve got to get more people of that calibre into our politics. Because that was something which, apart for everything else, made politics very exciting, interesting. And, John, I think you were in China at one stage, and somebody raised with you the referendum, and you said, looking back on it, you thought it was a big mistake. And it shouldn’t have been persisted with. And I think I saw hints of that in what you just said today.

John Howard: In China at that time, and addressing a gathering of the cadres of the Chinese Communist Party, they said to me, how do you maintain that you want good relations with China when you meet the Dalai Lama? I said to them, that if we can have a referendum to ban the Communist Party and reject it, why can’t you be comfortable with me meeting the Dalai Lama? I think the contrast was lost on my audience.

Anne Henderson: As someone who voted Yes in the Republican referendum, I fully appreciate Menzies’ respect and continued support for our links with the British Westminster system, and the way in which the law and politics in Australia is conducted. When you read those old Hansard debates, the quality of the speeches is amazing. Although they do go for a long time, two hours and so forth. But I respect that too. I find it very hard to lose that. It is stability plus, and there’s great things in it. Michael is a monarchist. But I can be more conservative on other political issues than Michael. I still think it’s time for an Australian Head of State. The problem is we haven’t got an idea in our head of how we’re going to make that work. And that’s where the referendum in 1999 went down. No one has solved that problem. So, for the moment, let’s make the best of what we got.

Gerard Henderson: You [Michael Kirby] sat on the High Court for a long time. You would have read many judgments. How do you think they stand up?

Michael Kirby: Isaacs, Evatt, Dixon, Wyndeyer – some justices have a way of conceptualising the issues and seeing the problem of the time in a broader concept and a broader context. Amongst the justices, Evatt I believe has stood up. He was a very smart man. He wrote several very important books. The King and his Dominion, Governors and so on, during the time that he was on the High Court. He was a very able and a big achiever with a big ego to match. His flaw was that he was a lawyer in politics. And he was a man who looked on problems in a legal way instead of in a political way. And he wasn’t really a team player. That’s the point Anne brings out in the book. He was a man where, as she rather unkindly but accurately said, it was all about him. As Sir Paul Hasluck – quoted in the book – said, he was a man who was a child, having a child’s desire to achieve, to please his mother and to be a very successful scholar.

Evatt won a doctorate, not an honorary doctorate, but a real doctorate from the University of Sydney. That’s why he was called Dr Evatt. He was a genuine, brilliant intellectual. But he had the flaws that Anne brings out in the book and Menzies had his flaws. That’s the interesting thing about the book. The towering figures of my youth. The Commonwealth scholarships that John and I won were a creation dreamed of by the Labor government and then implemented vigorously by the Menzies government. They weren’t a bad system and they produced people like John and me, products of public schools with the opportunities to go to university. That was a very important achievement in a sense of both of them.

Gerard Henderson: Let’s have a final comment from John Howard. In a sense, you’re a beneficiary of Bert Evatt, unintentionally, because Bert Evatt presided over the split in the Labor Party. We have heard from Michael about Evatt the lawyer, a very distinguished lawyer. Give us a feeling about Evatt the politician, as a politician, you are looking back.

John Howard: I can debate Michael about the UN and Doc Evatt, but we don’t have time. His greatest achievement was to defeat the 1951 referendum because he thought it involved a huge assault on human rights. That was an enormous achievement. But he lost his political judgement after he lost the 1954 election and issued the statement attacking the industrial groups and the influence, effectively of Catholics in the Labor Party. It was the principal cause of the great split in the Labor Party. As I have said before, if the Labor Party had had the federal constitutional structure of the Liberal Party, the split would never have occurred.

Evatt he was a great person who lost his judgement. Of course, he magnified that loss of judgement with his attack on the Royal Commission in the Molotov embrace, a move that was unbelievable. Molotov had been Soviet foreign minister for so long and he’d survived in that position. He’d survived the death of Stalin, the brief interregnum of Malenkov and then Khrushchev.

Politics does involve a lot of judgement and part of that judgement is how you handle people. You’ve got to be a team player. Menzies was far more of a team player the second time around. I probably was the second time around; you learn. You’ve got to. You can’t do it all yourself. Menzies learned that and it was one of Hawke’s great virtues. I regard Hawke as the greatest Labor Prime Minister – I stress the adjective – this country has had. He had great people skills, he had great judgement. That was something Bert Evatt lacked. But I don’t want to denigrate his intellect. I think he was an extraordinary figure. And he did champion human rights to the end. And that’s something you’ve got to respect.