THE MENZIES ASCENDENCY BOOK LAUNCH – PAUL KELLY

In 2025, the Robert Menzies Institute published the third volume in its Menzies series – titled The Menzies Ascendency – Fortune, Stability, Progress 1954–1961. The Sydney launch took place at The Sydney Institute on Monday 3 February. The book was launched by former High Court judge The Hon Michael Kirby and The Australian’s Paul Kelly. They were introduced by Robert Menzies Institute director Georgina Downer, with follow up speeches by editor Zachary Gorman and contributor to the volume Anne Henderson.

 THE MENZIES ASCENDENCY BOOK LAUNCH

PAUL KELLY

Guests and friends. I want to begin by acknowledging the director of the Robert Menzies Institute, Georgina Downer, Anne and Gerard Henderson from The Sydney Institute and Michael Kirby, a great Australian, my co- launch companion.

It’s true I never met Robert Menzies. He retired from federal parliament three years before I arrived in Canberra. But working in the Prime Minister’s Department in East Block in 1969 and 1970, I was regaled with stories of Menzies from public servants who had advised him and knew him well.

My memories of Menzies, however, are vivid, notably that compelling voice coming through the wireless. The 1963 state aid decision had an impact on our family since I attended a Christian Brothers school in Sydney. And Menzies had appeal for my parents – people shaped entirely by the depression and World War II as prime, even perfect, exemplars of the Forgotten People generation.

Our family was deeply associated with another Menzies’ government initiative that seems entirely forgotten these days. The 1951 National Service Act, providing for the compulsory call up of men turning 18 that saw during the 1950s about 500,000 men registered for a four month call up. While only a small boy at the time I came from a military family deeply involved in that national service program. It shaped much of my parents’ lives from where we lived, how often we moved, what states I went to school in, and occasionally it involved visits to the military training ground by Menzies and Dame Pattie whom I saw across the parade grounds as a small boy.

Last year I was privileged to deliver the opening address to the conference that produced the papers for this book. I recall at the time a discussion I had with my late friend John Nethercote, who told me of a conversation he had with Menzies’ biographer Allan Martin. Martin had said to John, “You were the first person who told me I was doing important work rather than wasting my time on Menzies.” It reveals an intellectual torpor that long surrounded attitudes to Menzies, particularly from the academy in this country. This reached a zenith of sorts, with Donald Horne’s 1964 book, The Lucky Country, when he said Menzies did little that really mattered. Horne said that Menzies’ great talent was to preside over events and look as if he knew what they were all about. In short, it wasn’t worth studying Menzies. Such attitudes, I think, were mired in several deeper delusions.

We’ve often been told that, although Australian life improved dramatically between 1949 and 1966, when Menzies was a dominant prime minister, that such gains in Australian life supposedly had nothing whatsoever to do with Menzies. A remarkable paradox. Another factor is that Menzies’ political success has not been forgiven by his opponents. In his second prime ministership, Menzies served nearly 17 years and won seven elections. He is the decisive slayer of Labor’s dreams. His longevity in office will never be equalled or succeeded. Accordingly, there’s been a high motivation on the part of his opponents to denigrate Menzies’ achievements, since his electoral success cannot be contested.

I also believe another factor, inhibiting assessments of Menzies, is the sheer longevity of his government. Indeed, there were several shorter political eras contained within the 17 years Menzies ascendency. While Menzies was prime minister, the United States had four presidents, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson.

Accordingly, there are many different manifestations of Menzies. Consider these: the champion of free enterprise against bank nationalization, the violator of civil liberties trying to ban the Communist Party, the Queen’s man, the full employment specialist, the champion of home ownership, the anti-communist, Cold War, pro-American warrior, the upholder of White Australia, the education prime minister, the architect of the Vietnam War commitment, the manufacturing industry specialist and protectionist and the messiah for the Forgotten People. Grappling with Menzies in his full portrait – his best and his worst over a long period – is a daunting task. Many don’t try, seizing instead on a single convenient simplification.

I therefore applaud the approach of The Menzies Institute to analyse the Menzies’ period in phases. This phase being the 1954-61 period, following the two earlier volumes. I’ve always seen the Menzies’ prime ministership in four phases: the survival period, 1949 to 1954, the consolidation, 1954 to 1961, the recovery from 1961 to 1963 and the transition from 1963 to 1966, when the nation began moving past the Menzian vision. The current book is important because it’s not an apologia for Menzies. It has intellectual integrity. Witness the justified critique of Menzie’s role in the Suez crisis and some tough criticism of Menzies from Michael Kirby in his compelling foreword to the volume. The period is bookended by two decisive elections, 1954 and 1961.

The 1954 election is a turning point. This was Labor’s best chance to liquidate the Menzies ascendancy before it got momentum. Menzies’ defeat of Dr Evatt’s prime ministerial expectations was a political and psychological breakthrough moment. The aftermath saw the split in the Labor Party, the defection of primary votes to the Democratic Labor Party whose preferences helped to keep the Menzies government in power from that point.

In her chapter opening the book, Anne Henderson offers the convincing case that Dr Evatt’s manic blunders were pivotal in events leading to the split. Menzies was its great beneficiary. So much so, that some academics argue it was the split that delivered his longevity in office. My assessment is that Menzies would have won the 1955 and 1958 elections even without the split. But the 1961 election was different. The DLP saved Menzies at this election, an assessment strongly made by John Howard. So, the Labor split is critical. Without the split the Menzies’ period would have terminated in 1961. His prime ministership would have been 11 years or five terms. Still the longest serving.

For me, the strength of this book is its sheer diversity. Sixteen chapters that integrate policy and politics, illuminating much of the Menzies age. I can’t mention them all, but the Selwyn Cornish chapter on Menzies’ role and deliberations on the creation of the Reserve Bank is surely pathbreaking. In the chapter on education Andrew Norton further confirms that Menzies’ personal commitment as prime minister was decisive, in acceptance of the Murray Report and the dramatic expansion of university funding. Menzies created a funding model that had an enduring benefit. In his account of the Suez crisis, Robert Bowker documents the full extent of the rift between Menzies and Eisenhower and the extent to which Menzies’ approach to Suez was dominated and misled by his profound and emotional attachment to Britain. Michael de Percy explores Menzies’ commitment – in a different time – to a nuclear technology option for Australia. An option that died with the McMahon and subsequent governments.

John Howard once said of Menzies, “Menzies’ greatest legacy as a statesman was to lay the foundation of modern Australia.” This turns the Donald Horne critique upside down.

Many critics have argued that subsequent governments after Menzies saw their principal job as rescuing Australia from the Menzian Legacy. Indeed, this almost became a conventional wisdom. But history is constantly being reinterpreted. One emerging theme I think is a more generous reinterpretation of the 1950s. President Eisenhower has more recently been ranked number five in the list of best presidents. The creativity and dynamism of the 1960s is now undercut by a deeper recognition of the dysfunctional social and political forces unleashed in the 1960s and following decades.

The Menzies’ age of stability, economic progress, belief in country and social cohesion looks more appealing today than it did in the final decades of the twentieth century. Does the age of Donald Trump suggest the age of Robert Menzies might see an even more positive reassessment in the future? And there is another factor, since John Howard left office – in the past 18 years Australia has had seven changes of prime minister. The sense of governing instability at the national level is entrenched. As time advances, more people interested in history are prone to ask the question – how did Menzies do it? Who made his success? Who was Menzies?

As this book suggests he did it ultimately because Menzies was a mirror of the Australia he governed. It was a nation still emerging from the shadow of depression and war.

Australia at the time, was a conservative, but aspiring country. Steeped in traditional values but ready to change and try new things. Menzies captured this mood for a prolonged period. He knew there was an art to politics and his method was to manage change with reassurance. I congratulate The Menzies Institute for this illuminating book, The Menzies Ascendancy – Fortune, Stability, Progress, 1954 to 1961. It’s been a great privilege for me to co-launch the book with Michael Kirby and I look forward to the completion of the project.