JOSEPH COOK – PRIME MINISTER OF AUSTRALIA’S FIRST CENTRE RIGHT GOVERNMENT

Joseph Cook was the Australian prime minister who announced Australia had joined what became World War I. The Royal Australian Navy was transferred to the British Admiralty and a contingent of 20,000 volunteer troops were committed for overseas combat. Cook’s Liberals endorsed Labor’s war policy as well as its recruitment drives. But this is not by any means the sum of Joseph Cook’s contribution to Australia. Born in penurious circumstances in the UK, Cook became an emblem of the opportunities for the working classes of Britain in Australia. His rise to prominence also embraced both sides of politics, with his practical support for free trade giving way to the earliest beginnings of a right of centre party of government. Dr Zachary Gorman is the academic coordinator at the Robert Menzies Institute at Melbourne University.  Among a number of publications, his Joseph Cook- Biographical Monograph 19 has just been published by Connor Court. To speak about the legacy of Joseph Cook, Zachary Gorman addressed The Sydney Institute on Wednesday 31 May 2023.

JOSEPH COOK – PRIME MINISTER OF AUSTRALIA’S FIRST CENTRE RIGHT GOVERNMENT

ZACHARY GORMAN

Today marks the 110^th anniversary of the first time a centre-right party won an outright majority at a federal election, and they did it under a largely forgotten Liberal leader named Sir Joseph Cook. Cook’s life story is a remarkable immigrant’s tale of Australian social mobility, and this sense of the boundless opportunities available to those willing to work hard in Australia shaped a liberal world view that remains highly relevant today.

Above all, Cook had a profound belief in the power of human agency – the ability for the studious and moral individual to improve their lot in life and to improve the world around them. He saw that progress happens when individuals shoulder their burdens and encourage others to do likewise. Little of it could be legislated into existence, and indeed if the individual hid in the crowd, eschewing their responsibilities and relying on groupthink progress would halt altogether, and decline swiftly set in.

There had certainly been centre-right federal governments before that of Cook, namely those of Edmund Barton, George Reid and, more debatably, Alfred Deakin (who relied explicitly on Labor support until the fusion of the fiscal parties in 1909, and who therefore was often effectively centre-left). However, all of them were either minority governments, fractious coalitions or the initial fusion which lacked a clear electoral mandate and indeed was utterly smashed when Deakin led it to the 1910 election.

It was Cook who proved that a united Liberal Party which self-consciously sat on the right of Australia’s political divide could be electorally successful and, at a time when the modern Liberal Party is at a historic low point, his story and values can provide important lessons for the present.

Normally when the Liberal Party needs to go soul-searching it turns to Sir Robert Menzies, and I am hardly in a position to disparage this instinct considering I work for the Robert Menzies Institute. However, the well-spring of Australian liberalism goes far deeper than 1944, and indeed it predates political parties altogether.

Cook was politically active in the era when the Australian political divide first emerged, both in the dying days of colonial politics and the earliest stages of the federal arena, and his story reveals the how and the why of the emergence of the Australian party system, and the philosophical lines of cleavage which continue to define our nation.

Indeed remarkably, not only was Cook the first Liberal to win a federal election outright, he was also the first parliamentary leader of the New South Wales Labor Party. Cook was thus the first in a long line of what have disparagingly been called “Labor rats”, the modern examples of which range from Warren Mundine, Mark Latham and, according to her recent maiden speech the Victorian MLC, Moira Deeming.

Because he left Labor and became more conservative, or at least explicitly Burkean over the years, Cook has often been attacked for political inconsistency. His previous biographer John Murdoch described him as “floating as if a cork on a lifeboat after a particularly unpleasant storm”.

But I would contend that Cook was actually a conviction politician, whose views on specific issues certainly evolved with the passage of time, but who always believed deeply in the necessity of freedom of conscience, self-reliance and self-improvement. It is that clarity and strength of belief that the modern Liberal Party has been sorely lacking in recent years.

On this issue of consistency and conviction, it is worth pointing out that there is even some debate over whether Cook was ever a member of what we now know as the Labor Party, because his branch of the Labour Electoral League was declared “bogus” by the central executive for supporting him in opposing the caucus pledge. In one debate with Billy Hughes, who was ironically throwing stones at Cook for his rat status, Cook made it clear that he believed the original Labor Party of 1891 and the pledged party which emerged in 1894 were entirely separate entities.

But before we get to the split over the pledge, it is crucial to understand Cook’s remarkable journey before he even entered politics. Cook was born in the Staffordshire mining town of Silverdale in 1860 as the eldest son of a poor but aspirational family. As a child he only owned one pair of shoes and his dwellings were often infested with rats. He entered the mines as a pit boy at the age of 9, had very limited schooling, and became the family’s primary breadwinner at the age of 12 when his father was killed in a mining accident.

For many this would have been a crushing burden that would have overwhelmed, but Cook rose to the occasion and became a highly responsible head of the household. This was partly because he had a tremendous understanding of the importance of living up to one’s duty which came from the family’s devout Methodism. Indeed, Cook was so religious that he took up lay preaching and almost became a full-time preacher when he was offered a position to study at the New Connexion College at Ranmoor – only to have to decline the opportunity to continue to provide for his mother and siblings.

Also stemming from Cook’s Methodism was the deep belief in human agency – to which I have already referred. Cook never thought that the circumstances of his birth would determine his fate – and his family encouraged him in that self-belief. His favourite author was the American Ralph Waldo Emerson who wrote on empowering themes, and Cook became something of an autodidact, fitting in study wherever he could around his work in the mines. Later in life when a journalist asked him about his experiences as a miner, Cook said with a wry smile that it was an “occupation for a philosopher”.

His self-improvement was assisted by the fact that Cook married a schoolteacher called Mary Turner, who would help him with his arithmetic and read aloud for Cook to practise his shorthand. After an economic downturn forced Cook to leave Silverdale, it was Mary’s brother who encouraged them to move to Australia, a risk he took because, as one person put it, “having brought up one family under very hard conditions” he was determined not to have to repeat the process. Sailing out of Plymouth on Christmas Day 1885, Cook had to leave a pregnant Mary temporarily behind in England, as he travelled to Sydney, got a mining job in Lithgow, and began constructing a family home with his own hands – laying a solid foundation for both him and Mary that would eventually support a family of nine children.

When Cook was later High Commissioner in London during the 1920s, he would sell Australia to potential migrants as “the land of the better chance” and this is what it certainly proved to be for him. He supplemented his mining work by becoming an accountant, keeping books for mine owners and the local council, and he became a prominent figure in Lithgow as President of his Union Lodge, actively campaigning on public issues, such as fighting to stop a mine being built under the Lithgow water reserve.

A moderate rather than a radical, Cook tried to resist joining in the Great Maritime Strike in which coal-miners stopped working so as to rob the maritime bosses of fuel, but when the strike’s failure led unionists to believe that they would have a better chance at achieving change by getting elected to parliament, he put his hand up to be a candidate for the fledgling Labor Party. At the 1891 NSW election, which was the first the party contested, Cook comfortably topped the poll for Lithgow’s local seat of Hartley.

Cook supported core Labor policies like the 8-hour day, coal mines regulation and race-based immigration restrictions. But he was also a strong believer in free trade, which he thought provided economic opportunities and ensured that goods were as cheap as possible for poor working people. One of the main slogans used by free traders at the time was to call for the “free breakfast table” in which basics like salt and sugar would be made more affordable for struggling families, and the same logic could be applied to manufactured goods. One time Cook would even suggest that nobody should be Minister for Trade and Customs unless they had had at least 10 children – leaving even his own fruitful loins as falling short of the prerequisite.

The so-called “fiscal issue” of Free Trade versus Protectionism was then the main dividing line of politics, and what were arguably NSW’s first political parties had emerged at the 1887 election when candidates split into camps based on their attitude towards the issue. There were conservatives and radicals on both sides of the debate, and Labor itself was heavily divided over the issue, so much so that in its first term the party’s parliamentary members repeatedly split apart.

The external party grew very frustrated at this, and determined to enforce discipline ahead of the 1894 election. One thing they did was get the parliamentary party to finally elect a leader, after they had previously tried to govern by committee in the hope of remaining clear equals. Cook was elected as the first leader based on his powers as a speaker, but also because his studious nature and work ethic meant that he had memorised parliamentary procedures and also had one of the best attendance records in the parliament.

But the external party also tried to enforce discipline by instituting the “pledge”, to vote as the majority of caucus decided on any issue relating to Labor’s platform or the fate of the government. Considering in the previous term the Parkes Government had gone down over a simple adjournment motion, the latter basically meant that caucus would decide absolutely everything.

For liberals this was an absolute assault on not just freedom of conscience, but the role of an MP who was meant to represent their district and rule in the public interest, rather than submitting to an outside and frankly sectional force. Judith Brett has gone so far as to suggest that the pledge became the dividing line shaping Australia’s party divide, as it was the issue that made the left-leaning Deakin end up on the centre-right when he otherwise agreed with many Labor policies. Liberals have had issues trying to square this belief in freedom of conscience with necessary party discipline over the years, but certainly the Victorian Division’s recent expulsion attempt was an anathema to more than a century’s worth of liberal tradition.

For Cook, the pledge was a violation of everything he stood for. As a devoutly religious man he needed to be able to vote according to his conscience, his whole struggle through life had involved earning a moral and material independence for himself where he would be able to make decisions on his own as a man, and he was also just insulted that the extra-parliamentary party thought that the current crop of MPs were essentially failures.

Cook declared that he would “refuse to be a slave” and proclaimed his independence from the extra-parliamentary organisation in an extended manifesto that attracted the support of a majority of the parliamentary party. Elected as one of 8 surviving “independent” Labor members at the 1894 poll, he ultimately joined George Reid’s Free Traders when as Premier Reid offered him the ministerial position of Postmaster General. And it is worth noting that in that role Cook was responsible for a number of important innovations like introducing some of the first pay phones, pushing for underground telephone lines, and the adoption of the bicycle for faster letter delivery.

If freedom of conscience, and also protecting the healthy working of a Westminster parliamentary system from the control of outside forces – which as an aside is an issue once again echoed in Liberal opposition to the Voice – were core components of Australian liberalism which Cook exhibited, what were the others?

One was a belief in equality, but certainly not equality of outcomes. As a Christian, Cook felt that people were equal in the sight of God and that they should go out of their way to help one another, but he was equally aware that it was the need to struggle and improve which had made him into the man that he was. Cook gave speeches where he insisted that the solution to society’s ills was not legislation alone, but the improvement of human character. People needed to live up to their responsibilities as he had, or as Menzies would later put it be “lifters” rather than “leaners”. During the anti-socialist campaign of 1905-6, Cook would argue that to average out humanity and subsume the individual into the mass would lead to the erosion of morals and eventually the reversal of human progress.

This also ties into the core liberal belief in opportunity, which in an immigrant society such as Australia is all important. From the time he first became a Minister, Cook was viewed as an embodiment of the nation’s social mobility and, when he was eventually knighted in 1918, the Sydney Morning Herald lauded him as “a striking example of the opportunities offered to all citizens of a free democracy”.

But coming back to equality as a liberal ideal, liberals had been fighting for legal and political equality since the Colony’s earliest days. Issues like ensuring ex-convicts had equal rights, preventing the creation of a legally predominant Church of England and a bunyip aristocracy, were all great liberal achievements of the nineteenth century. In Cook’s day, the fight was to abolish plural voting which allowed people to vote in more than one electorate if they owned multiple properties, and instead to ensure that there would be what was emotively dubbed “one man, one vote”.

Once again, this issue is to some extent raised by the Voice. In Cook’s day, it was raised by another divisive referendum, that on federation – a Senate which gave equal representation to each state regardless of population overturned a democratic principle that had only recently won recognition and that is why Cook and many other New South Welshmen voted “No” in the first poll in 1898. Though Cook was also a strong believer in the liberal concept of subsidiarity – the belief that political decisions are best made at the most local level which is practicable – and was therefore also opposed to unnecessary centralisation.

Cook was more consistent than some liberals on equal voting in that he was an early advocate of female suffrage – likely a reflection of his respect for Mary’s opinion on important matters. As prime minister, one of the policies that Cook fought for was postal voting to ensure that everyone had equal access to the franchise, whereas the Fisher Labor Government had abolished postal votes because they believed that it was something only utilised by rich women who didn’t want to deal with encountering the riff-raff at the polling booth and who would inevitably vote against them.

Cook ultimately risked the first double dissolution in Australian political history in an attempt to abolish preference to unionists in government employment – a direct assault on equality which considering Labor’s politicisation of the union movement essentially made a man’s political affiliation determine his ability to access a taxpayer funded salary.

Speaking of taxpayer money, Cook also practised the often-preached liberal principle of minimising spending so as to take as little money off the people as possible, at a time when the relationship between spending and taxation was understood far more directly because direct taxes had only recently been introduced. Cook practised parsimony not only as prime minister, but also as Treasurer under Billy Hughes in the early 1920s, and even when he became High Commissioner in London – quite the comfortable diplomatic posting – Cook led a major retrenchment in the bloated staff of Australia House.

Finally, Cook was also a dedicated Australian patriot, whose tremendous sense of perspective made him appreciate how much better off Australia was than the old countries of Europe, not just in terms of opportunity but also home ownership and wealth distribution. He even gave a speech in parliament defending Australian larrikins, suggesting that blithesomeness, gaiety and animal spirits were “the result of the natural rebound from the dull grey industrial Gradgrind existence of older countries”. Likewise, he argued against socialism on the basis that Australia was so successful and prosperous that it would be the last place in the world where you would want to risk a revolution trying to further outdo the rest of humanity.

So, if Cook was a prototypical and consistent Liberal leader, which is essentially what I am arguing, why is he so little remembered?

Well, this brings us back to the political narrative. When the federal parliament was first elected in 1901, Cook was persuaded to stand for the seat of Parramatta to improve the Free Traders’ chances at taking the seat – even though he was initially inclined to stick with State politics in the hope of becoming Premier.

The poll saw Cook comfortably elected, while nationally it produced a similar three-party system to what had existed in NSW, with a Protectionist Government, Free Trader Opposition and a smaller crossbench Labor Party.

However, the combination of Labor winning enough seats to rival the fiscal parties at the 1903 election, and it adopting the first version of the socialist objective in 1905 which called for the “nationalisation of monopolies and the extension of the industrial and economic functions of the state”, led George Reid to suggest that the greatest threat to Australia’s liberal freedoms and economic system was Labor rather than protectionist tariffs. He subsequently embarked on his famous anti-socialist campaign, touring the nation trying to convince people of the necessities of a two-party system in which elections would directly determine who was in government, as opposed to the hung parliaments in which this had been left up to the machinations of politicians. Reid’s campaign was a vast logistical exercise which involved long periods away from the House of Representatives, and it was only made possible by Cook who was elected deputy leader of the Anti-Socialists and served as an effective Opposition Leader during Reid’s long absences.

Deakin was initially sceptical of the Anti-Socialist push, and indeed he wrecked the Reid-McLean Government which was a short-lived coalition between the fiscal parties. At the 1906 election Reid’s Anti-Socialist campaign saw him achieve a notable swing, and receive over 47 per cent of the Senate vote, but the small rump that remained of Deakin’s party was able to hold onto office and pass a new protectionist tariff with Labor support.

Nevertheless, Deakin saw that the writing was on the wall and that a two-party system was inevitable. His centrist party ended up going right rather than left due to a number of factors including the pledge, the extent of Labor’s socialism and even a debate over how to build Australia’s navy. Reid graciously stepped aside to facilitate the fiscal parties coming together because he knew how much Deakin irrationally hated him, leaving his deputy Joseph Cook to become leader of the Anti-Socialists and then deputy of the Deakin-Cook Fusion Ministry, also known as the Commonwealth Liberal Party.

Cook became Minister for Defence at a time when strategic concerns were at the top of the public agenda, and he can lay claim to being the founder of the Australian Navy, commissioning the first flagship HMAS Australia and a number of other vessels. He also passed the substantial 1909 Defence Act, set up the Royal Military College at Duntroon and laid the earliest groundwork for an Australian Air Force by offering a £5000 prize for the design of a military aircraft.

At the 1910 election, Deakin got smashed as a prototypical Labor-light leader, and eventually he retired for health reasons which saw Cook take over as Opposition Leader with a little over 100 days left until the next election. Helped by a series of Labor referendum proposals which seemed to make the threat of socialism quite tangible, Cook embarked on a national tour in which he tirelessly railed against Labor’s high taxation and a cost-of-living crisis quite similar to that which we are experiencing today. As an alternative, he put forward a positive vision “to develop the immense resources of our wonderful continent; making it the home of millions of free, enlightened, and prosperous people” – a political program which would involve both decentralisation and high levels of immigration under the impetus of “populate or perish”.

On the back of this, on this day in 1913, the Liberals picked up 7 seats, which was admittedly only enough for a single seat majority considering Deakin had managed to lose 16 seats at the previous poll, but which was nevertheless a landmark achievement.

It was not enough to take control of the Senate, which then was not elected on proportional representation, meaning that the party which got the higher vote in a given State tended to take all of its seats. Faced with an obstructionist Upper House, Cook decided to risk a double dissolution because unlike the recent Coalition Government, he was a man who “feels deeply, and… scorns the arts of the time-server” who was happy to stay in office achieving nothing.

However, things came unstuck when the political campaign was interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War. The Governor General made Cook abandon his speaking tour, while Labor benefitted from the light load of Opposition and its strong union organisation to be able to keep up campaigning throughout, ultimately winning back office.

What the result of the election would have been without the outbreak of conflict we will never know, but it is notable that the natural fault lines of Australian politics being Liberal versus Labor had already clearly emerged, only to be obscured by the circumstances of the war. Cook had three sons serve in the AIF, one of whom, “Sid”, landed at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915 and was shot through the face, but miraculously survived. Utterly convinced that the war was about Australia’s survival, Cook came reluctantly to support conscription as Opposition Leader – but his hesitation and delay ensured that it did not immediately become a party issue, and instead Billy Hughes was given time in office to be able to make up his own mind on it. When Hughes’s decision tore the Labor Party asunder, Cook decided to keep the prime minister in office in the name of national unity, and he ultimately sacrificed the original Liberal Party which was absorbed into the Nationalists under the imperative of winning the war at any cost.

Cook would go on to do other important things. He was de-facto deputy prime minister from 1917-21 at a time when the official title did not exist, and he served as Treasurer as mentioned. He was an official signatory to the Treaty of Versailles and even helped to draw up the borders of Czechoslovakia in a generous manner that would precipitate Hitler’s later calls for annexation. From 1921 to 1927, Cook not only filled the role of High Commissioner in London, going to great lengths to secure finances for the schemes of the Bruce-Page Government and raising Australia’s first loan of US Dollars, but he was also the chief Australian representative at the League of Nations in Geneva. Based on this, he was later involved in a controversy surrounding Italy’s invasion of Abyssinia in the mid-1930s.

Passing away in 1947 when a federal Liberal Party had finally remerged but had yet to find success, Cook has tended to be forgotten because his time in office was quite short. Nevertheless, his impact on Australian politics, and particularly the evolution of the Australian centre-right, are far greater than his 450 days as prime minister would make it appear.

While obviously there are aspects of his career that have aged very poorly – he was a strong supporter of White Australia as were the vast majority of politicians across all parties at the time; Cook is otherwise the embodiment of what the Australian centre-right needs to be if it is to once again to find success: a beacon of hope for people of modest means but with great aspirations, an example for migrants who come to this country because they like how it is and hope to share in its bountiful fruits, and a clear demonstration that hard work and dedication will take you far in Australia.