The Money Men by Chris Bowen (superbooks4u .txt) 📕

in protest and/or challenged Scullin’s leadership on a platform of seeking a clear mandate for his proposals. However, if he had done so, history’s judgement would have more clarity.

In Theodore’s defence, it is only possible to imagine his degree of emotional and physical exhaustion after having grappled with the Depression for two years, as well as having fought the most sensational corruption allegations in the nation’s history to that point. Mungana also robbed of him of the moral authority and popularity necessary to successfully fight on in defence of his plan.

All in all, for his brilliance and dedication, Theodore is entitled to be remembered as one of our better treasurers. What is even clearer is that his potential as treasurer was so much greater than the eventual dividend the nation received from his service. This marks him as our most tragic treasurer.

5

JOSEPH BENEDICT (BEN) CHIFLEY

A Treasurer Striving

Born: September 1885, Bathurst, NSW

Died: June 1951, Canberra

Treasurer: 7 October 1941 – 18 December 1949

BEN CHIFLEY WAS federal treasurer at the most pressing time in Australia’s history. Within two months of his taking office, Japan had entered World War II, and an Australian invasion was anticipated and had to be prepared for. For most of the war, Chifley had the responsibility of engineering an economy in which all available resources were dedicated to national survival, which was far from the situation he inherited. Fortunately, Chifley had a well-developed understanding of economics and finance, and he used this to good effect, proving an adept and skilful manager under wartime pressures and managing to keep inflation low.

Chifley didn’t see his role simply as a manager of Australia’s wartime finances, however. He wanted to build for the peace. A deeply empathetic and passionate man, Chifley was very concerned that an end to the war and all the economic activity associated with it, combined with the return of thousands of demobilised service-men, might see a return to the depression-like conditions that had only just been expunged from the nation. The war required greater centralisation of power with the Commonwealth, as well as a much greater degree of economic intervention from all levels of government, and Chifley was determined to wield these new powers in the postwar era. On John Curtin’s death, which effectively coincided with the end of the war, Chifley became the last person to combine the roles of Australian prime minister and treasurer for any substantial period of time, deciding he needed the authority of both roles to fulfil the great task of ensuring an improved standard of living for those who had lived through the travails of World War II. In this regard, Chifley was successful. By 1946, Chifley could point to the fact that hundreds of thousands of men had been demobilised, with no increase in unemployment—factory employment had actually increased from its wartime peak.

But Chifley’s role during the war was greater than that even of a powerful and respected treasurer. He was a confidant and consigliere to a prime minister dealing with tremendous stresses and strains. Chifley did not even expect to be named treasurer when Labor took office in 1941. It was widely expected that Labor’s deputy leader, Frank Forde, would take the Treasury portfolio. But Curtin told Chifley he wouldn’t be accepting the commission as prime minister unless Chifley agreed to be treasurer. Curtin would consult Chifley on every major decision, both economic and military.

Beginnings

Ben Chifley was born in September 1885 in Bathurst to Patrick Chifley, a blacksmith, and his wife Mary Anne Corrigan. Ben’s grandfather, also named Patrick, had settled in the Bathurst area two decades earlier, and at age five Ben went to live on his grandfather’s farm at Limekilns around 80 kilometres from Bathurst. Biographer David Day suggests the move was a psychological wrench for Chifley, who would have felt ‘feelings of betrayal and rejection, with his position as eldest son being effectively taken by his younger brother’.1

Chifley received a sporadic education while living with his grandfather, as the local school was only open two days one week and three days the next. It was not until his grandfather died when he was fourteen and he returned to Bathurst to be with his parents that he received a full-time education at Patrician Brothers for the last few years of his formal education. After a short stint working in the local general store, he joined New South Wales Railways as a cleaner and then a fireman. Over the next decade he received regular promotions until 1914, when he reached what might have been considered the career pinnacle for someone of his background and education: the position of first-class engine driver.

It was not only on the railways where Chifley worked hard at self-improvement. He also undertook night study at the Workers’ Educational Association and Bathurst Technical School for four nights a week, for fifteen years. He was a voracious reader, consuming history, classics, economics and fiction books. He never wore his comprehensive self-education on his sleeve, but years later as a member of the Commonwealth Literary Fund, he would surprise fellow members with an in-depth knowledge of esoteric Australian authors and poets.

Chifley gradually became more involved with the trade union representing railway workers, the Locomotive Engine Drivers’, Firemen’s and Cleaners’ Association.2 From 1912 he began to be called on as a witness in industrial tribunals in support of the union case. As Professor Duncan Waterson writes, ‘He developed a mastery of complex issues concerning wages and conditions, and dealt with evidence in a cool and reasoned manner.’3

In 1914 Chifley married Elizabeth McKenzie in the Bathurst Presbyterian Church, choosing to wed her despite the strictures regarding marrying outside his Catholic faith. (Ben and Elizabeth are both buried in Bathurst Cemetery: he in the Catholic section, she in the Presbyterian.) They would lose their only child in a miscarriage.4

Chifley participated in the 1917 General Strike but was also involved in negotiations for a return to work. The strike actually began in the NSW Railways,