First Among Equals Read online

  In 1884, at the age of 22, Hughes emigrated to Queensland, where he remained briefly before settling in Sydney two years later. While boarding in the suburb of Moore Park, Hughes began a de facto relationship with his landlady’s daughter, Elizabeth Cutts. In 1890 the couple moved to Balmain with their two children. A year later they opened a shop from where he sold political pamphlets and did odd jobs. Hughes’ shop became a centre for political debates, resulting in the formation of the Australian Socialist League in 1891.

  In 1894 Hughes spent eight months in central New South Wales organising the Amalgamated Shearers’ Union. That same year he then won the legislative seat of Lang for the Labor Party, which he retained until 1901. While in parliament he became the secretary of Sydney’s Wharf Labourers’ Union and founded the Waterside Workers’ Federation in 1899.

  Following Federation, in March 1901 Hughes won the seat of West Sydney. After studying law part-time, he was admitted to the Bar in 1903. A year later he was appointed the minister for external affairs in Watson’s first Labor government. In 1906, Elizabeth died of heart disease. In 1910, Hughes met Mary Campbell, a daughter of a New South Wales grazier, and married her a year later.

  Hughes went on to serve as attorney-general in Fisher’s three Labor governments. However, an ambitious Hughes wanted the Labor leadership for himself. Hoping to defuse the situation, Fisher offered Hughes the office of high commissioner in London. Hughes refused and Fisher resigned and took the post himself in 1915, leaving the primeministership to Hughes.

  Dubbed ‘the Little Digger’ for his staunch stance on compulsory military service, Hughes immediately began campaigning to expand Australia’s war effort. After travelling to Britain and then visiting Australian troops on the front line in France, Hughes returned to Australia in 1916 and immediately launched a ‘yes’ campaign to introduce conscription through a referendum. The question of compulsory military service, however, not only divided the country, but ultimately his party. Following the referendum’s defeat on 28 October 1916, Hughes was expelled from the New South Wales Labor executive and the Wharf Labourers’ Union.

  At a bitter caucus meeting on 14 November, Hughes and his followers walked out. They then formed the National Labor Party and, after negotiations with Liberal leader Joseph Cook, created the National Party, which, with Hughes at the helm, easily won the May 1917 election.

  Faced with the heavy loss of Australian lives in the war and a sustained drop in recruitment, Hughes called another referendum. Held in December 1917, the referendum was again defeated, this time by a wider margin, and Hughes resigned. However, as no other party had the numbers to take power, governorgeneral Munro-Ferguson asked Hughes to form an administration.

  In 1919 Hughes and Cook travelled to Europe to attend the Versailles peace conference where he lobbied for Australia to become a full member of the League of Nations and secured Australian control over New Guinea. Back home he easily won the December 1919 election, though was only able to hold on to the prime-ministership for another two years. Following the federal election at the end of 1922, the new Country Party headed by Earle Page refused to serve under Hughes, forcing him to resign on 2 February 1923. Stanley Melbourne Bruce was his successor.

  After being forced out of the National Party, Hughes then went on to serve under the United Australia Party (UAP) governments of Joseph Lyons, Robert Menzies and Arthur Fadden. Always controversial, Hughes was forced to resign from the party in 1935 after publishing a book, Australia and War Today, which openly criticised the Lyons’ government use of economic sanctions to combat German rearmament.

  However, in 1936, Hughes returned to cabinet as minister for health and repatriation and was then reappointed as the minister for external affairs in 1937. In 1939 Hughes made another bid for the leadership but was narrowly defeated by Menzies, once again becoming deputy leader. Following the outbreak of World War II, Hughes was appointed to the Advisory War Council.

  In 1944 Hughes joined Menzies’ newly formed Liberal Party and became the member for Bradford. He remained in parliament until his death in October 1952. His state funeral in Sydney was one of the largest in Australian history, attracting more than 100,000 people. His 51-year, seven-month record stint as a serving member of parliament has not been broken to date.

  STANLEY MELBOURNE BRUCE

  THE QUINTESSENTIAL ENGLISHMAN

  TERM

  9 February 1923-22 October 1929

  The ascension of Stanley Melbourne Bruce, a decorated war hero, to the prime-ministership in 1923 marked a distinct turning point in Australia’s political history. An Australian by birth, he was the quintessential Englishman, complete with spats and Rolls Royce. Moreover, he was the first prime minister not to have sat in a colonial parliament, nor to have been involved in the movement for Federation.

  Bruce was born on 15 April 1883 in Toorak, Melbourne. The youngest of five children of John Munro Bruce and Mary Henderson, Bruce was educated at Melbourne Grammar School. In 1902, a year after his father’s death, he moved to England to study Law at Cambridge University. After graduating Bruce settled in London where he practised as a barrister and was chairman of the London board of his family’s thriving Melbourne-based importing business.

  In 1913 Bruce married fellow Melburnian Ethel Dunlop Anderson. A year later when World War I broke out, he was commissioned as an officer in the British Army and fought at Gallipoli and on the Western Front, winning both the Military Cross and the Croix de Guerre avec Palme. Wounded in action, he was invalided to London. Returning to Melbourne in 1917 to run the family business, Bruce soon became involved in Australia’s war-recruitment campaign. Attracting the attention of the National Party, he was persuaded to run for the federal seat of Flinders in May 1918. Bruce won the seat comfortably and retained it for the next four elections.

  In 1921 while Bruce was in Europe on business, the incumbent prime minister, William Morris Hughes, pressed him to represent Australia at the League of Nations. Upon returning home Hughes rewarded Bruce with the treasury portfolio. After Hughes was forced to resign in 1923, Bruce became Australia’s eighth prime minister after only five years in politics.

  Bruce quickly adopted a ‘men, money and markets’ policy for economic development within an Imperial framework. He argued that if Australia was to continue to take in British immigrants, then the British Empire was obligated to protect Australia’s growing industry through preferential tariffs, a point he made clear at the 1923 Imperial Conference held in Britain.

  During his tenure as prime minister, Bruce hastened the development of Canberra as the national capital, which had been suspended while Australia was at war. The first meeting of federal parliament in Canberra took place on 9 May 1927 after an opening ceremony attended by the Duke of York (later King George VI).

  With the 1917 Russian Revolution still recent history, Bruce exploited the fear of Communism, introducing anti-union legislation and proposals such as abandonment of the arbitration system. Between 1927 and 1929 mounting industrial tensions led to violent strikes in all major industries including timber and mining. Despite the ongoing conflict and the Labor Party’s efforts to censure the government, Bruce won another term in the 1928 election.

  Frustrated by the ongoing disputes, in 1929 Bruce tabled the Maritime Industries Bill abolishing the federal arbitration system and transferring powers to the states. However, the bill was defeated, ultimately bringing down the government. At the subsequent election on 10 October 1929, Labor won in a landslide victory. More surprisingly, Bruce lost his own seat, becoming the only sitting prime minister until John Howard, 79 years later, to suffer such a fate.

  While Bruce eventually won back the seat in 1931, he resigned two years later to become high commissioner in London. Serving in the post for twelve years, Bruce was well respected by the British ‘establishment’ and in 1947 was raised to peerage as the Viscount Bruce of Melbourne, the only Australian ever to receive this honour. He later represented Australia on various b
oards of the United Nations and was appointed the chancellor of the Australian National University. Bruce died in London on 25 August 1967 at the age of 84.

  JAMES HENRY SCULLIN

  THE ILL-FATED PRIME MINISTER

  TERM

  22 October 1929-6 January 1932

  When Australia’s ninth prime minister, James ‘Jim’ Henry Scullin, assumed office in October 1929 it was a major victory for the Labor Party which had spent thirteen years in opposition. Yet Scullin’s triumph was short-lived as events such as the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression conspired against him and ultimately brought down his government two years later.

  Scullin was born in Trawalla, Victoria, on 18 September 1876. He was the fifth of nine children to parents John and Ann, who had emigrated from Derry in Ireland. Scullin was educated at local state schools, before leaving at the age of fourteen to work as a grocer in Ballarat. He continued his education through night school and honed his public-speaking skills as a member of the Catholic Young Men’s Society.

  In 1903, Scullin joined the Political Labor Council, a forerunner of the Australian Labor Party, and later became an organiser for the Australian Workers’ Union. At the December 1906 federal election he stood as a Labor candidate for the seat of Ballarat, though was beaten by incumbent prime minister, Alfred Deakin.

  In 1907, at the age of 31, Scullin married Sarah McNamara, the Ballarat-born daughter of Irish immigrants. Three years later he won the federal seat of Corangamite at the general election, but lost it in 1913. After his defeat, Scullin became the editor of the Ballarat Evening Echo, a position he held for eight years.

  A strong opponent of conscription, Scullin actively campaigned against Hughes’ 1916 and 1917 referendums. At the December 1916 Labor Party conference, Scullin moved a motion to expel party members who had supported conscription. The motion was carried, but the issue split the party and Hughes broke away to form the National Labor Party.

  After unsuccessfully contesting a seat in the Victorian parliament in 1920, Scullin eventually reentered federal parliament as the Labor candidate for Yarra at a by-election on 18 February 1922. He retained the seat for 27 years. In 1928 he was elected as Labor leader following the resignation of Matthew Charlton. One year later, after the fall of the Bruce-Page coalition, Scullin and Labor swept into power in a landslide win. However, one week after he was officially sworn in as prime minister, the Wall Street stock market crashed, triggering the Great Depression.

  Scullin reacted quickly to the economic emergency, implementing various measures such as abandoning the gold standard, ending assisted immigration and increasing import tariffs. But with unemployment spiralling and expenses rising, the government was unable to repay foreign loans. By mid-1930, when parliament resumed, unemployment had more than doubled to 21 per cent. The Labor government was beset by internal conflict over how to respond to the crisis — then treasurer Ted Theodore favoured slow economic reflation, while other ministers, like Joseph Lyons, advocated traditional deflationary economic policies.

  In July 1930, the government suffered a heavy loss when Theodore was forced to resign to face fraud charges in Queensland dating back to his time as premier of the state. Scullin subsequently took over the treasury portfolio. With alarm growing over Australia’s over-borrowing, the Bank of England sent senior official Sir Otto Niemeyer to Australia to pull the country into line. Niemeyer met federal and state ministers in Melbourne in August 1930 and proposed severe cuts in wages, spending and living standards.

  Scullin then went to the Imperial Conference in London, leaving the conservative Lyons as acting treasurer. However, unemployment continued to climb and his government began to disintegrate. In a dramatic meeting in October 1930, Lyons unsuccessfully tried to win caucus approval of the Niemeyer plan. Defeated, Lyons and his supporters resigned from cabinet in protest and formed the United Australia Party (UAP).

  On returning home Scullin convinced caucus to reinstate Theodore as treasurer. However, problems soon arose when the Labor premier of New South Wales, Jack Lang, and his followers made allegations of corruption against Theodore. When Scullin refused their demand for an inquiry, the ‘Lang Labor’ group aligned with the opposition, now led by Lyons, in passing a ‘no confidence’ motion against the government, forcing an early election.

  At the election on 19 December 1931, Scullin’s government was defeated by a landslide, losing all but fourteen seats and the UAP, led by Lyons, came to power. After losing another election in 1934, Scullin resigned from the Labor leadership but remained in parliament, becoming an advisor to later Labor prime ministers John Curtin and Ben Chifley. Suffering from ill health, he retired in 1949. Scullin died at his home in Melbourne on 28 January 1953 at the age of 77.

  JOSEPH ALOYSIUS LYONS

  FROM DISSIDENT TO PRIME MINISTER

  TERM

  6 January 1932-7 April 1939

  One of the country’s most genuinely likeable leaders, Joseph Aloysius Lyons notched up a number of firsts during his seven years as prime minister: he was the first and only Tasmanian to take office, and he was the first prime minister to win three consecutive elections. He was also the first prime minister to die in office, passing away just sixteen days short of breaking William Hughes’ then-record term in office.

  The fourth of eight children of Irish immigrants Ellen and Michael Lyons, Joseph Aloysius Lyons was born at Stanley in north-western Tasmania on 15 September 1879. At the age of nine Lyons was forced to work while he studied, after his father lost the family’s savings on the 1887 Melbourne Cup and suffered a nervous breakdown. But with the financial assistance of his aunts he became a student teacher, completing his training in 1901.

  In 1907 Lyons was offered a studentship at the newly opened Teachers’ College in Hobart. While at the college Lyons began campaigning for improved working conditions for teachers and joined the Workers’ Political League. Criticised by the Education Department for his activism, Lyons responded by resigning and standing for state parliament. In 1909, at the age of 30, Lyons entered state parliament, winning the seat of Wilmot. In 1914 he became deputy leader in John Earle’s Labor government and was given the treasury, education and railway portfolios.

  On 28 April 1915 Lyons created a sensation when he married Enid Burnell, a seventeen-year-old Methodist. Despite an almost twenty-year age gap, they went on to become one the country’s greatest political ‘powerhouse’ couples, with Enid becoming the first woman elected to the House of Representatives in 1943.

  When the Labor Party split over conscription in November 1916, Earle resigned and Lyons was elected to replace him. He then spent seven years as opposition leader before winning the premiership in 1923 when Walter Lee’s Nationalists fell after several members deserted the party. Lyons served as the premier of Tasmania until 1928 when the Nationalists were returned to government by a narrow margin.

  In 1929 Lyons quit state politics and contested the federal seat of Wilmot at the next general election. Winning comfortably, he joined Scullin’s cabinet as postmaster-general and minister for works and railways. Lyons also served as treasurer while Scullin was overseas from August 1930 to January 1931. However, following a bitter battle with caucus over the implementation of severe cuts in salaries and government spending to aid economic recovery, and the reinstatement of Theodore as treasurer, Lyons resigned from cabinet on 26 January 1931 in protest.

  In March 1931 he, along with other Labor Party defectors, merged with the Nationalist Party to form the United Australia Party (UAP). When Scullin was forced to call an election following the move against him by dissident ‘Lang Labor’ members, the UAP won a decisive victory and Lyons became the third former Labor minister to become a non-Labor prime minister.

  Once in office, Lyons, who for the first three years of his tenure served as prime minister and treasurer, began cutting government spending and reducing debt. However, New South Wales premier, Jack Lang, defied the federal government and withheld interest payments on
British loans. Forced to pay the state’s massive debt, Lyons then passed the Financial Agreement Enforcement Act to recoup the money. When Lang persisted in his opposition, the stalemate was resolved when Lang was dismissed from office by the governor of New South Wales, Philip Game.

  With the crisis now behind him, Lyons began campaigning for the 1934 election, becoming the first prime minister to take advantage of new technologies such as radio and airline travel. While Lyons was successful in securing power, he was forced to form a coalition with Page’s Country Party.

  Lyons then won a third term in 1937. However, with a new world war imminent, an ambitious Robert Menzies, who had been elected to parliament in 1934, began to manoeuvre against him. On 22 March 1939, when cabinet decided to defer the implementation of its national insurance scheme, Menzies, who was now Lyons’ deputy, resigned from cabinet. A few days later, on 7 April 1939, Lyons suffered a heart attack and died in a Sydney hospital, becoming the country’s first prime minister to die while in office. Lyons was buried in Devonport, Tasmania, following a state funeral in Sydney.

  CHAPTER 3

  WORLD WAR II AND ITS AFTER-EFFECTS (1939-49)

  On 3 September 1939, after German troops invaded Poland, Australia entered World War II. The war and its after-effects had a significant impact on the policies and tenures of the prime ministers — Page, Menzies (Menzies is covered in Chapter 4), Fadden, Curtin, Forde and Chifley — who served from 1939 to 1949.

  With the onset of war the economy soon revived as wartime production increased the country’s prosperity. However, after Joseph Lyons’ death in April 1939, the coalition government began to show signs of internal strains, going through a quick succession of prime ministers: Page, Menzies and Fadden. At the same time the Labor Party, still reeling from the ‘Lang Labor’ split, took some time to recover before securing power again in May 1940 with Curtin, followed by Forde and Chifley.