Lazarus Rising
In the end, McKell did the right thing and granted the dissolution. For doing his sworn duty he incurred the lifelong hostility of some Labor people, who simply believed that he should have done the bidding of his old political party rather than discharge his constitutional responsibility. This was a precursor to a much more savage application of the Labor belief that the party always owned the man, irrespective of the circumstances, some 25 years later.
Although my parents were united in their commitment to the Liberal Party, I suspect that they voted differently on one important occasion, and that was the referendum, held on 22 September 1951, to ban the Communist Party of Australia.
At that time the Cold War was intense, the communists had taken over in China only two years before, and Soviet communism was seen as a real threat to the peace of the world. On top of this, communist officials held many senior positions in Australian trade unions. The Communist Party in Australia was regarded by many as a subversive organisation because it sought the overthrow of the economic and social order under which Australians then lived. Menzies had secured passage of a law which declared the Communist Party an illegal organisation.
The validity of that law was challenged, and the High Court of Australia declared the law unconstitutional, as being beyond the power of the federal parliament to enact. Menzies’ response had been to propose a referendum asking the people to agree to change the Constitution of the Commonwealth to give the federal parliament the power to pass the law which had previously been ruled invalid. The referendum campaign provoked intense debate and division. Menzies and his followers argued that the free world was engaged in a life-and-death struggle against communism, and Australia should not tolerate what he believed amounted to a fifth column in our country. Against that, many argued that the proposal violated free speech, and that it was never desirable to drive political movements underground.
This debate spilled over into the kitchen of our household. I recall quite clearly my mother’s strong reservations about the additional power being sought by Menzies. One night she said, ‘Menzies would be a bit of a dictator, if he had his way.’ My father would have none of this. This was the one particularly short and sharp exchange on the subject, and after that I heard nothing more. Knowing my mother’s determination once she had made up her mind, I am sure that she ended up voting against the proposal. If such loyal Liberals as my mother had reservations, then it is not surprising that the referendum went down.
This incident said a lot about my parents. They were both politically and socially conservative, but that was the result of their separate convictions. In no way did my mother automatically embrace the views of my father. Although in so many ways Mum fulfilled the traditional homemaker role typical of the times, she was a woman who held fiercely to her own independent opinions. Like my father, she had a well-developed interest in politics, and for years after Dad’s death she and I would have quite lengthy discussions about political events in Australia in the 1920s and ‘30s.
I became totally absorbed in the Petrov Affair. Vladimir Petrov had been the third secretary in the Soviet Embassy in Canberra (but in reality a low-level spy) when suddenly, in April 1954, he defected and sought political asylum in Australia, which was granted in return for Petrov providing details of Soviet spying in Australia. It was a dramatic event, complete with KGB agents arriving to take Mrs Petrov back to Moscow. There were wild scenes at Sydney Airport as, seemingly against her will, she was taken on board an aircraft, Soviet-bound. On instructions from the Government, police intervened when the plane stopped for refuelling at Darwin, and having satisfied themselves that she did not wish to return to Moscow, relieved her KGB escort. The agents returned empty-handed to an uncertain welcome in Russia, and Mrs Petrov rejoined her husband. They spent the rest of their lives in Australia.
Menzies swiftly established a Royal Commission to examine the extent of Soviet espionage in Australia. This happened on the eve of the 1954 federal election. When the ALP lost that election quite narrowly, its leader, Dr Bert Evatt, convinced himself that the whole Petrov Affair had been a giant conspiracy, orchestrated by Bob Menzies to damage the ALP by raising the communist issue on the eve of the election. As a barrister, Evatt had appeared before the commission, representing people who had previously worked for him. He attacked the Royal Commissioners who, ultimately, withdrew his right to appear.
Dad and I both listened in astonishment as Evatt told parliament that he had written to the Soviet Foreign Minister, Molotov, asking whether or not Petrov had been a Russian spy. Molotov had written back denying that Petrov had spied for the Soviet Union. Evatt actually believed Molotov. This extraordinary incident did immense damage to Evatt’s credibility, and was a clear sign of the paranoia that he had developed as a result of losing the 1954 election. It was a forewarning to many in his party of the erratic behaviour of his which was to come, and which contributed so much to the momentous split in the Labor Party in 1955.
My parents held conservative foreign policy views. They were staunchly anti-communist and saw Britain and America, in that order, as our real friends. Whenever we talked history, and this would have been in the 1950s, when memories of World War II were still relatively fresh, I was left in no doubt that my parents felt that the appeasement policies of the ‘30s, espoused by Neville Chamberlain and supported, to varying degrees, by most Australian leaders, including Robert Menzies and John Curtin, had been wrong.
Mum and Dad, especially the latter, were ardent admirers of Winston Churchill. I was born on 26 July 1939, at a time when Churchill was still out of favour, regarded as too belligerent and scorned by many in the British Establishment as temperamentally unsuited for leading the nation. Few thought that just 10 months later the House of Commons would, in desperation, turn to him. My parents gave me Winston as a second Christian name because my father had strongly supported Churchill’s opposition to appeasement and shared his forebodings about its consequences. All my life, I have taken quiet pride in the fact that my own father was on the side of history in his attitudes to the 1930s, and I have a second name and a birth date to prove it.
I have often wondered how it was that I developed such an intense interest in politics so early, and why it was that it became such a lifelong passion. A big reason was that politics was talked about at home from as long as I can remember. Being the youngest, I was exposed to politics from an early age, with my parents being willing to explain issues and never hustling me away because I was too young. My parents often disagreed with actions of governments, but were not cynical about them and always encouraged in their children respect for society’s institutions. I was brought up to believe that governments could do good things, if only they were comprised of the right people.
These were all influences which meant that I saw politics as good public service, as a way in which change could be achieved. That was important, but not as crucial as my seeing politics as an arena in which ideas and values could be debated, contested and adopted. That was the foundation of my lifelong view that politics is, more than anything else, a battle of ideas. Not only did I enthuse about the contest of ideas, I revelled in the experience of the contest itself. Debating, arguing, testing ideas about how society could be improved energised me.
The influence of parents on their children’s political views is a fascinating study. I embraced most of my parents’ political attitudes, particularly their support for private enterprise and especially of the small-business variety. Mum and Dad were often quite tough on people who worked for the Government. They thought that people in the private sector did all the work. In politics, I encountered numerous public servants who worked very hard indeed.
Dad had been a heavy smoker all his life, which no doubt aggravated his lungs, already damaged by the gassing he had suffered close to 40 years earlier during his war service. With all that is now known of the harmful consequences of smoking, we tend to shake our heads at the foolishness of a generation which so extensively embraced the habit, often, as in my father’s case, worsening a war-caused condition.
Yet, given the older belief that smoking calmed the nerves, and the horrors which these men had experienced, their nicotine addiction was entirely understandable. With none of the reasons my father had, I smoked from the age of 21 until I was 39, finally kicking the habit while I was Treasurer in the Fraser Government. I didn’t find it easy, and given what Dad had experienced in war, I could understand why he kept smoking until a few months before his death.
1954 was the last year that my father enjoyed reasonably good health. A combination of the chronic bronchitis which afflicted him as well as intense worrying about his business exacted its toll. The following year saw his health collapse dramatically: he suffered in rapid succession from pleurisy and an attack of double pneumonia. Dad spent a large part of 1955 resting at home, away from his business. He would be there when I returned from school. We would often talk politics or play chess. It was, despite Dad’s ill-health, a wonderful conjunction in our lives which drew us much closer together in the space of just a few months. Regrettably it was not to last.
Towards the end of the year he made arrangements to lease the business to a trusted associate who had operated the workshop in the garage for close to a decade. Sadly, on the very day, 30 November, that he was to hand over he died suddenly of a cerebral haemorrhage, at the age of 59. When it happened I was playing cricket for my school at Blick Oval, Canterbury. My brother Wal arrived and told me that Dad had suffered a stroke, and that I should come home. When we were both in his car he put his arm around me and simply said, ‘He’s gone.’
I missed my father intensely. We had really got to know each other so much better during the last two years of his life; we had found a great common point of interest in politics. On many occasions, years later, I would think to myself how much pride Dad would have derived from my political career. Those last months in 1955, when we spent much more time with each other, I recall even to this day.
Understandably, my life changed enormously after the death of my father. My two eldest brothers had both married only months before his death, Bob had left school and gone to teachers’ college and, as a result, I was thrown even more into the company of my mother. We talked endlessly about family history, current events and, of course, the need for me to succeed at school and go on to university.
2 INDULGING THE TASTE
Although undecided until my last year at school, I enrolled at Sydney University for a law degree. There is no doubt that I was influenced by my brother Stan having become a lawyer. He became a partner in one of Sydney’s best-known firms, Stephen Jaques and Stephen (much later Mallesons), aged only 27, and would be a most successful and highly regarded corporate lawyer as the years went by.
Thanks to Stan I had a great experience for eight weeks between school and university. He arranged a job for me as an assistant to a barrister’s clerk in Denman Chambers in Phillip Street, Sydney. In Phillip Street, each floor of barristers was looked after by a clerk; the really good ones were invaluable, such as Jack Craig, with whom Stan had arranged my job. The barristers looked after by Jack Craig were some of the best and most colourful then at the Sydney bar. They included Clive Evatt QC, brother of Bert, then still federal Labor leader. The latter often turned up and used the chambers for some of his meetings. The brothers were a big contrast. Clive was likeable and amusing. Bert was sullen and unfriendly. John Kerr was another cared for by Jack Craig. Kerr was friendly and stylish. Amongst other things, I did his banking. He had a good practice.
Another prominent one in the group was Ken Asprey QC, who became a judge, and who in the 1970s would write a report for the federal government recommending major taxation reform. I was just the office boy but, given the personalities involved and the taste of the legal profession I was able to indulge, it was a heady experience. I was very grateful to Stan for setting it up. It was my first paying job. When I served petrol in my father’s garage I was paid son’s rates!
When aged about nine, I had been identified with a hearing problem, during a routine health check conducted at my school. It was an affliction that I had been born with and, whilst something of a nuisance during my younger days, it was not until I entered my later teens that it became a real hindrance. It worsened quite markedly during my first year at university, and by my second year I had to wear a large and not particularly effective hearing aid.
Deafness made it very difficult for me at lectures. I would sit as close as possible to the lecturer with my hearing aid turned up, but still missed a lot. I owed much to some of my law school friends, who generously lent me their notes. Although I was reluctant to admit it to myself at the time, my bad hearing really meant that I could never become a barrister, something which I had had at the back of my mind for a long time. In 1960, I underwent an operation which gave me back some hearing in my right ear, and in 1963 there was a similar operation on my left ear. These two operations gave me about 60 per cent of normal hearing. This was a huge improvement, and I felt very grateful to the surgeon, the late Sir George Halliday.
Despite a restorative operation on my right ear in 1985, my hearing continued to deteriorate, but fortunately the development of modern and inconspicuous hearing aids meant that I have been able to retain reasonably serviceable hearing.
Directly enrolling for a law degree meant that all of my university time was spent at the law school in Phillip Street, Sydney. I only ever went to the main university campus to sit for exams, or attend Union Night debates, which I did fairly frequently. Lectures in Phillip Street were spread amongst the main law school building, the old Phillip Street Theatre and the Teachers Federation Building.
Some 250 enrolled in the first year, of which fewer than 20 were women. Thirty-five years later, when my daughter, Melanie, enrolled at Sydney University Law School, more than 50 per cent of the first-year intake were women.
Like all academic years the class of ‘57 had its share of students who achieved eminence in their chosen profession. It included Terry Cole, later a Supreme Court judge, a Building Industry Royal Commissioner and the man who conducted the Australian Wheat Board Inquiry. There was also Roger Gyles QC, who became a Federal Court judge and had previously been a Special Prosecutor pursuing illegally evaded tax. Murray Gleeson and Michael Kirby, later Chief Justice and a justice, respectively, of the High Court were in the class of ‘58.
My first two years were full-time, and then I commenced three years of articles with a solicitor, attending lectures early in the day and late in the afternoon. With the law school in easy walking distance, such a daily schedule worked smoothly.
My lecturers were a mixture of academics and practising lawyers. The doyen of the academics was Professor Julius Stone, Challis Professor of Jurisprudence and International Law. Julius Stone had a formidable intellect. An erudite English Jew, he had written a landmark textbook on international law. He was a lecturer of mine in 1960, the year in which the Israelis snatched Adolf Eichmann from Argentina and flew him to Israel for trial for his alleged major role in the Holocaust. There was much debate about the legality of what the Israelis had done. Stone held a public lecture on the legality of the Israeli action at the old Assembly Hall in Margaret Street, Sydney. I went to the lecture with three of my law school friends, Marcus Einfeld, Peter Strasser and Murray Tobias, all of whom were Jewish.
It was an emotional issue for them, especially for Peter, whose family had been directly touched by the Holocaust. After the lecture, the four of us stood on the steps of the hall, locked in furious argument about what Stone had said. Despite his understandable sympathy with the Jewish cause, Stone had applied his customary juridical objectivity to the issue. I fully agreed with what Israel had done. Eichmann, who played a key role in implementing the Nazis’ ‘Final Solution’ for the extermination of the Jewish people, decided upon in 1942, was convicted and hanged in Israel.
A relatively young Bill Deane tutored me in the subject of succession (probate and death duties). He became a judge of the High Court, and was appointed Governor-General, on the recommendation of Paul Keating, taking up that position just before the change of government in 1996. Deane’s first major duty as Governor-General was to swear me in as Prime Minister, on 11 March 1996.
I had graduated from the Sydney University Law School in early 1961, and in June 1962, having completed my articles, was admitted to practise as a solicitor of the Supreme Court of New South Wales. My articles were served with one of the most colourful and remarkable people I have ever known, Myer Rosenblum. As a youngster Myer had emigrated from South Africa with his family, who settled in Marrickville, not far from my father’s garage. Myer’s father became a regular customer at the garage. When Myer qualified as a solicitor and commenced his own practice, my father returned the compliment and engaged him as his solicitor.
Myer Rosenblum had very diverse tastes and talents. He had represented Australia at rugby union, having played breakaway (flanker) for the 1928 Waratahs; was a hurdler at the 1932 NSW Championships; represented Australia as a hammer thrower in the 1938 Empire Games in Sydney; and held the NSW hammer throw record for something like 20 years. A cultivated person, he played the bassoon in the Sydney Conservatorium Orchestra, spoke fluent German and Yiddish, and began to teach himself Italian when in his 50s.
My becoming articled to Myer Rosenblum followed the making of close friendships with a number of Jewish students at law school. One of them, Peter Strasser, remains a very close friend. Thus began, for me, a long association with members of the Jewish community in Australia. Those early friendships, and the experience I gained from working with much of the Jewish clientele which Myer’s firm attracted, created within me a deep respect, and in many ways affection, for the Jewish people.
As Prime Minister, I saw to it that Australia remained a staunch ally and friend of Israel. This was more than just a projection onto the international stage of my home-grown regard for Jewish people. I admired the remarkable struggle of the people of Israel against hostile Arab neighbours, and the democratic character of that country.
In 2006, Australia and the United States, almost alone amongst Western democracies, backed Israel in opposing a UN resolution condemning the latter for constructing a wall to protect its people against terrorists. I was staggered at the level of international hostility towards Israel over her action, which seemed to me to be a clear-cut case of self-defence.
Although I had joined the Earlwood branch of the Young Liberals when I was 18, participated in general campaigning for the 1958 federal election in the local area where I lived, and was briefly a member of the Sydney University Liberal Club, it was not until I had left university that I became really active in politics.
Largely due to my hearing problem, I found university quite taxing. I was reluctant to get too heavily involved in other activities until I knew that I would qualify as a lawyer. As a result, my experience was very different from that of many of my colleagues, who cut their teeth on university politics.
Once out of university, I hurled myself into Liberal Party activities, both at a local and NSW level. I took over the presidency of the local Young Liberal branch and became very active in the Youth Council, which comprised delegates from the various Young Liberal branches in the Sydney metropolitan area.
It was easy for cynics to dismiss Young Liberal activities as being entirely social and lacking in political gravitas. That was a superficial judgement. Sure there was plenty of social activity — and of course, why not? — but to those who were so inclined there were ample opportunities for political involvement. The Youth Council was a great forum for debate on contemporary political issues, and the physical participation of young people in local campaigns was especially welcome.
In those days members of parliament (MPs) did not have postal allowances; we were years away from direct-mail campaigns. Hand delivery of pamphlets to individual letterboxes, usually at night, was the staple way of getting the local candidate’s message across.
My first experience of serious organisational politics was my election, in 1962, as the Young Liberal representative on the state executive of the NSW division of the Liberal Party. This body was the power centre of the party in NSW and included the leader and deputy leader of the state parliamentary party as well as the most senior member from New South Wales of the Menzies Government. I was now involved in genuine politics.
It was then that I first really got to know John Carrick, the general secretary of the party in New South Wales, a person who would influence me enormously over the years. He was to become my political mentor. I learned more about politics from John than from any other person I have known.
He had become the party’s general secretary, the chief executive officer, in 1948 at the age of 29. During World War II, when a member of the Sparrow Force in Timor, he was captured by the Japanese and as a prisoner of war spent time working on the infamous Burma–Thailand railway. John would hold the position of general secretary for 23 years, until his election to the Senate in 1971. He became a senior minister in the Fraser Government, and served as Leader of the Government in the Senate, until that government was defeated in 1983.
Possessed of abundant energy, as well as immense organisational skills, John always realised that politics was a battle of ideas — a philosophical contest — and not merely a public relations competition. He drew many people to his orbit through the force of his intellect and his indefatigable commitment to the political cause of the Liberal Party. To him, one of the roles of a general secretary was to act as a constant talent scout for people who might contribute as members of parliament, irrespective of whether they were members of the party.
He formed a close relationship with Menzies, who much admired his tactical and strategic abilities. To my mind, one of John Carrick’s immense contributions to the continuing political success of the Liberal Party was the role he played along with others in persuading the Prime Minister to embrace a policy of direct government assistance to independent (principally Catholic) schools. This change was an important factor in the Liberal victory, federally, in 1963. Thus began the most enduring demographic shift in Australian politics in the past generation, namely the change in allegiance of a whole swag of middle-class Catholic voters, who hitherto had remained loyal to the Labor Party for none other than tribal reasons.
Until the 1960s the ALP was the party of choice for the majority of Australian Catholics. Theology played no part in this; it was driven by socioeconomic factors, with Irish Catholics being predominantly of a working-class background. The sectarianism of earlier generations served to reinforce this alignment. Although the warming of Catholics towards the Liberal Party had begun in earnest with Menzies’ state aid gesture in 1963, the first Fraser cabinet of 1975 still included only one Catholic, Phillip Lynch. Over the coming years the dam would really burst on this old divide. One-half of the final Howard cabinet in 2007 were Catholics. Once again this had nothing to do with religion, it being the inevitable consequence of a socioeconomic realignment.