the most fundamental difference concerning foreign relations centred on issues concerning the Communist Party and Soviet Russia

For political leaders seeking to involve all their citizens in a commitment to total war a critical element is the vision they present for their country during the war and into the postwar era. For Australia's political leaders this involved presenting a vision both in terms of Australia's position on the world stage and on the domestic front. Despite some apparently striking differences in their approaches to Australia's relations with other nations, it is arguable that Menzies and Curtin differed far less in foreign policy than in terms of domestic policy. In many respects perhaps the most fundamental difference concerning foreign relations centred on issues concerning the Communist Party and Australia's relations with and attitudes towards Soviet Russia.

In April 1940 the Menzies Government made all the Communist Party's publications subject to censorship and on 15 June the party was made an illegal organization. In the months that followed the Communist Party ‘continued to attempt to influence opinion against the war' and Curtin, as well as Menzies, was abused in such terms as ‘fascist monster' and ‘supporter of monopolists, bankers and profiteering warmongers'.¹ Even after the German invasion of Russia and Curtin's swearing in as prime minister, differences within the Labor Party meant that it was not until December 1942 that the ban on the party was lifted. However, during the 1943 election campaign both Fadden and Menzies expressed support for the re-imposition of the ban with Fadden implying that ‘the Government's emergency war powers were being used to effect socialism and that the Communists were a sinister force behind Labor'.² Menzies, for his part, claimed that he had changed his mind about Communism ‘being a small element' and he warned of the strength of the Communists in trade unions. Despite these developments, however, Hitler's attack on Russia, which placed the USSR alongside the Allies in the quest to defeat Germany, meant that the Communist issue remained relatively dormant until the end of the war and Curtin had more problems, for example, with local coal miners' trade union leaders than with unions led by Communist officials.

More generally, the issues concerning Menzies' and Curtin's visions for Australia's internationally are dealt with in the section ' Australia's Place on the World Stage'. Broadly speaking, Menzies has been described by David Day as holding on for too long to the hope that the British Empire would recover from its temporary weakness in 1941 and would be the basis of Australia's future international involvement.³ By contrast, Curtin's forthright assertion in December 1941 that Australia looked to America was something Menzies could not accept. However, by 1944 the differences between the two men had narrowed with Curtin's decision to recommend the appointment of the Duke of Gloucester as Governor-General and his attempts to establish a postwar executive structure for the British Commonwealth. Nor should one forget that in 1940 Menzies had made the first diplomatic appointments to Washington and to Tokyo, though a government led by Menzies would certainly have been less forthright at San Francisco on issues such as the great power veto than Evatt had been.

Australian Communist Party 'Red Army Week 1944' souvenir program
National Archives of Australia: M1415, 461.

On the domestic front, in August 1941 just before his fall from office, Menzies had made what is called his ‘New Order speech' to a group of Sydney businessmen. In this he suggested that a new order for postwar Australia was ‘being forged through new things learned because of the war':⁴

...new things about human relations, the responsibilities of government, the responsibilities of those who are masters of men and who have capital to invest.

Responding to a suggestion from the United Australia Party Executive Officer in New South Wales that radio would give him a means of bypassing the hostile press in Sydney, Menzies began a series of weekly broadcasts on Friday evenings, commencing on 9 January 1942. The broadcasts were aired through a Sydney radio station but were also relayed to Victoria and Queensland. By July 1943 Menzies had tallied 76 broadcasts and in that year he published a collection of 37 essays titled The Forgotten People and Other Studies in Democracy⁵ with the name taken from ‘the most celebrated' of the lectures and with the aim of providing ‘a summarized political philosophy'.⁶

Menzies' biographer Allan Martin explains that the first essay ‘The Forgotten People' is intended to be the keynote to the volume, followed by the text of six broadcasts on Roosevelt's Four Freedoms and then a set on ‘Democracy'. The earlier speeches in the original broadcasts were mainly non-political and drawn largely from Menzies' own experiences abroad. ‘The Forgotten People' itself was not aired until 22 May 1942 when the time of greatest peril was waning and

the Opposition was less inclined to withhold criticism of the Government and on both sides serious attention began to be paid to the problems and hopes of post-war society.⁷

In turn, the publication of the essays in 1943 reflected the continuing shift of emphasis from winning the war to a consideration of the nature, problems and hopes for postwar society. Although he had approved of the Curtin Government's establishment in 1942 of a Department of Postwar Reconstruction in succession to a Division he himself had established in 1941, Menzies by this time was expressing increasing concern that wartime governmental powers would enable ‘socialism by stealth'.⁸

Robert Menzies speaking at the Capitol Theatre, Perth, c 1940.
JCPML. Records of Robert Menzies. Robert Menzies speaking at the Capitol Theatre, Perth, c 1940. JCPML00916/2.
Original held by National Library of Australia: MS 4936 Series 9, Box 341 1939-1941, Folder 1.

'the time has come to say something of the forgotten class - the middle class'

The Forgotten People essay⁹ centred on Menzies' objections to what he called the class war.

In a country like Australia the class war must always be a false war. But if we are to talk of classes, then the time has come to say something of the forgotten class - the middle class - those people who are constantly in danger of being ground between the upper and nether millstones of the false class war; the middle class, who properly regarded, represent the backbone of this country.

The middle class he considered to be

the kind of people I represent in parliament - salary earners, shopkeepers, skilled artisans, professional men and women, farmers, and so on...They are for the most part unorganized and unselfconscious. They are envied by those whose social benefits are largely obtained by taxing them ... they are the backbone of the nation.

From his perspective the middle class

1. has a 'stake in the country'. It has responsibility for homes - homes material, homes human, homes spiritual.
2. more than any other, provides the intelligent ambition which is the motive power of human progress
3. provides more than perhaps any other the intellectual life which marks us off from the beast
4. maintains and fills the higher schools and universities and so feeds this lamp of learning.

But what really happens to us will depend on how many people we have who are of the great and sober and dynamic middle class - the strivers, the planners, the ambitious ones. We shall destroy them at our peril.

On the party political front and only two months after broadcasting ‘The Forgotten People' Menzies had produced a ‘Statement of Opposition Policy for 1942-3'.¹⁰ In the preamble to this document Menzies argued that ‘Merely to try to outbid Labour is useless and hopeless...' and that the party needed to ‘set out certain principles which will inform our own postwar programmes' and with specific policies designed for ‘the encouragement by all possible means of thrift, independence and the family home'.¹¹

Read the transcript of
'The Forgotten People' essays on the website of the Menzies Virtual Museum.

a nation ‘looking primarily to the encouragement of individual initiative and enterprise'

In the aftermath of the 1943 election Evatt's contentious fourteen powers referendum provided the opportunity for Menzies to define what were for him the limits of government power. He conceded that some controls would still be necessary when wartime hostilities ceased for ‘individual freedom must always be subject to the restraints of a society which always believes in order and good government'.¹² But in his view these had always to be ‘gently imposed and relaxed rationally'. After the defeat of the referendum proposals and on the eve of the conference to establish the new Liberal party Menzies expressed warm support for a pamphlet, ‘Looking Forward' produced by economic adviser C.D. Kemp extolling the virtues of free enterprise but warning about the need to curtail monopolies, consult in industry and foster profit-sharing schemes - a so-called ‘middle way'.¹³ In his address to the first plenary session of the second Liberal Party Convention held at Albury in December 1944 Menzies centred his remarks on

rising resentment against the manner in which the extreme wing of the Labour Party, far from having its socialistic ardour dampened by the referendum vote has been bent on making the most of the opportunities of office, regardless of the popular will.¹⁴

and the new party's constitution included a clause describing a nation ‘looking primarily to the encouragement of individual initiative and enterprise as the dynamic course of reconstruction and progress'.¹⁵

Some of these ideals were brought out during parliamentary debate in 1945 on the government's bills to confirm the role of the Commonwealth Bank as the government's central bank. Menzies insisted that wartime experiences

have conspired to induce in the minds of many people that monetary reform, as such, is the be all and end all of economic reconstruction, and that irrespective of hard work, ingenuity and the encouragement of enterprise and thrift, full employment can be provided without difficulty by central bank action.¹⁶

More broadly, in the course of the same lengthy speech, Menzies contended that the ‘whole proposal' was ‘a striking example of the government's desire to perpetuate in Australia, long after the emergencies have passed, what has been epigrammatically styled “the servile state”.¹⁷ As Allan Martin has suggested, economic orthodoxy was crucial to Menzies and while he might ‘intellectually recognize suffering caused by the Depression

... the only hope for amelioration of living conditions lay in balanced budgets...[and] the sanctity of contracts.¹⁸

In the aftermath of war for him it was essential that the old values be maintained even as the lessons referred to in the New Order speech were learned.

'To hell with the signal!'
Cartoon by Ted Scorfield
The Bulletin, 21 March 1945

'This government's policy of full employment of man power and full provision for social security is a basis not only for Australian reconstruction, but for a stable and peaceful commonwealth of nations'

Interestingly, for both Menzies and Curtin radio played a very significant role in the process of spelling out their postwar visions for Australia. In Menzies' case it had been the series of broadcasts which centred on ‘The Forgotten People' episode. For Curtin, certain fundamental outcomes of winning the war and the opportunities this would provide were detailed in his 26 July 1943 election policy speech, the first ever delivered from the national capital through a radio hook-up by a national leader.¹⁹

The government pledges itself to ensure that every man and woman of the force who, on discharge, is in need of employment, will be provided with reasonable opportunities for such unemployment ... Our energy, ingenuity and power will be devoted to ensuring that the manhood of this country will not rot in unemployment as it did after the last war...This government's policy of full employment of man power and full provision for social security is a basis not only for Australian reconstruction, but for a stable and peaceful commonwealth of nations...In banishing want, we shall have gone far to free the world from fear.

Politically, however, reassurance was necessary and three days earlier he had insisted

...we have not socialized Australia, and we do not intend to do it just because we are at war²⁰

and again shortly before polling day

my Government will not during the war socialise any industry.²¹

Essentially, Curtin endeavoured to honour these commitments but according to John Edwards in a recently published study the outcomes of the Curtin Government reflected

a long pondered and well thought out program of fundamental change that he brought to office and immediately began to implement...He [Curtin] understood that the circumstances of war offered him a chance to change the way Australia worked.²²

There may be room for interpretation and reinterpretation as to how far Curtin himself was personally responsible for, as distinct from being committed to, the achievements of his government and there were obvious examples of his lack of enthusiasm for the timing of some measures, not the least the 1944 referendum. However, any account of his postwar vision for Australia must encompass reference to the significant changes which Edwards has gone as far as to suggest make Curtin ‘the central figure in the creation of modern Australia'.

Message to the electors of Australia from Prime Minister Curtin, ALP federal election flyer, 1943.
JCPML. Records of the Australian Labor Party WA Branch. Miscellaneous correspondence ALP State Executive, Federal Elections 1943. JCPML00365/40.
Original held by J S Battye Library of West Australian History: MN 300 1719A/17.7.

monopolization of income tax revenue providing the financial means for a substantial Commonwealth Government social agenda and the funding of the postwar immigration

Even allowing for the exigencies of war, however, Curtin's vision of postwar Australian society started from a fundamentally different premise from that of Menzies. In a broadcast in March 1941 fourteen months before ‘The Forgotten people' broadcast Curtin told his British audience

In this war as you well know the backbone of the nation is in the workshop and in the factory. The workers of Australia have made that backbone a very real thing...²³

Any analysis of Curtin's early political career, his editorials and other articles in the Westralian Worker and in the local press during his period out of parliament between 1931 and 1934 also indicates a lifelong interest in economic theory allied to the socialist's concern about how to mitigate if not sweep away the shortcoming of capitalism. Unlike Menzies he was not committed to strict orthodoxy to deal with the problems and hardships resulting from the Depression and at the time of the great slump he was 'an early and vigorous opponent of a policy of spending cuts, wage reductions and tax increases' and instead ‘urged credit creation and an expansion of the money supply'.²⁴ At the time he was a voice in the wilderness (even though treasurer Theodore was also advocating many of the same policies) but his accession to the prime ministership and the exigencies of the wartime crisis enabled many of the ideas he had advocated during the depression now to become ‘permanent parts of the Australian framework'.²⁵ Treasurer Ben Chifley as head of the war time Production Executive was responsible for bringing most economic and financial matters to Cabinet while Curtin headed the War Cabinet proper but John Edwards argues that Curtin was ‘certainly' involved in the making of ‘all major economic policy decisions' during his wartime prime ministership.²⁶

The major economic and financial issues in Curtin's postwar vision which grew out of war time needs, but were to become an integral part of postwar Australia, included full employment at home, membership of global economic institutions, the transformation of the Commonwealth Bank into a ‘true central bank' and the monopolization of income tax revenue with the latter providing the financial means for a substantial Commonwealth Government social agenda and the funding of the postwar immigration policy.²⁷ For half a century the States were also denied the capacity to borrow on their own authority.

Curtin's vision of future Commonwealth-State relations needs closer evaluation. Reference has already been made to his lack of enthusiasm for Evatt's 1944 referendum proposals and he stressed that the Commonwealth only needed the power, with control over banking of particular importance, to ‘carry out its obligations' leaving the States with power ‘appropriate to their obligations and status'.²⁸ The clashes over banking between Curtin, Chifley and Menzies from 1945 to 1949 were politically torrid but in the longer run Menzies essentially did not reverse the central thrust of what Curtin had been trying to achieve with central banking namely the ‘Commonwealth's last-resort power to direct the Bank' (under whatever name).²⁹ Curtin's personal role in the production of the 1945 White Paper on Full Employment is also well documented³⁰ and of enormous importance was the expansion of the Commonwealth involvement in social security programs - widows' pensions, unemployment benefits, hospital and pharmaceutical benefits and a new maternity allowance - all made possible by the introduction of uniform taxation and confirmed by a successful referendum in 1946 which also ratified the paying of Commonwealth benefits to university students. Above all perhaps was Curtin's commitment to the ideal that the

economic system could be administered in such a way as to provide continuous employment for the vast majority of the working population³¹

and it was Curtin's government which provided ‘not only the goal but the means' to this end.³²

In many respects the wartime John Curtin was a very pragmatic and moderate socialist compared with the revolutionary firebrand who adopted Tom Mann as one of his earliest mentors. Nevertheless, it was this socialist tradition and commitment to his fellow man which underpinned Curtin's postwar vision for Australia while the exigencies of war cleared away many of the political and constitutional obstacles which had previously barred the way. While Labor's political opponents reversed the thrust of some of the wartime initiatives many of the most important central underpinnings of the vision were destined to remain.

Listen to Curtin's broadcast to the people of Britain on 6 March 1941.
JCPML. Records of the National Film and Sound Archive. John Curtin: Broadcast to Great Britain, 6 March 1941. JCPML00247/1.
Courtesy National Film and Sound Archive.

'Labor protects the mother and her child', ALP leaflet for 1943 federal election.
JCPML. Records of the Australian Labor Party WA Branch. Miscellaneous correspondence ALP State Executive, Federal Elections 1943. JCPML00365/40.
Original held by J S Battye Library of West Australian History: MN 300 1719A/17.7

'Homes for the people', ALP leaflet for 1943 federal election.
JCPML. Records of the Australian Labor Party WA Branch. Miscellaneous correspondence ALP State Executive, Federal Elections 1943, How to Vote. JCPML00365/39.
Original held by J S Battye Library of West Australian History: MN 300 1719A/17.6.