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

at the inner-urban Redfern-Eveleigh Railway workshops, in protest at the introduction of a card system that tracked workers’ productivity and opened the way for slower workers to be dismissed, following the American trend for stronger controls over workers to bring about improved productivity. Despite his role in negotiating a compromise, he was nevertheless dismissed by the state conservative government for striking in the first place. Chifley appealed this outrageous victimisation and was reinstated, but as a fireman, not an engine driver, losing the wages and seniority that reflected his hard work over a decade. (The election of the NSW Lang Labor government in 1925 would see all strikers restored to their previous classifications.)

Parliament was now calling this self-educated trade unionist. He unsuccessfully sought Labor preselection for the state seat of Bathurst in 1922 and 1924, but he then won preselection for the federal seat of Macquarie, which covered Bathurst, the Blue Mountains, Penrith and the Hawkesbury. He was narrowly defeated in the 1925 federal election but won the 1928 poll, which saw the parliamentary majority of the Bruce–Page government reduced to a perilously thin one.

The Depression and a Labor Disaster

Chifley’s election to parliament coincided with that of quite a few other Labor members, such as the new member for Fremantle, John Curtin, as Labor’s vote lifted under the new leadership of James Scullin and the people tired of Stanley Bruce’s inability to bring an end to industrial disputation. His interest and growing expertise in financial matters saw him elected to the Public Accounts Committee, but there was little opportunity for him to make his mark in the twelve or so months it took for the Bruce government to finally fall.

He was easily re-elected in Macquarie in the Labor landslide of 1929, which saw the party return to the Treasury benches for the first time since 1917. He remained on the Public Accounts Committee and became a firm friend and admirer of treasurer Ted Theodore. However, his incremental and loyal approach also saw him support the more conservative approach of acting treasurer Lyons during Theodore’s absence from office. ‘Loyal as ever, Chifley did what he could as a fount of calm wisdom in the parliament, and as a member of the Public Accounts Committee, to support Fenton and Lyons in their difficult task’, writes David Day.5 Chifley was also a fierce opponent of Lang’s plan to repudiate Australia’s debt commitments, understanding that this would do nothing to assist the unemployed.

The fraying of the government saw Chifley’s advance into the ministerial ranks. When three Lang sympathisers were sacked from the ministry, Chifley was elected as one replacement, becoming minister for defence and minister assisting the treasurer (Theodore). Curtin missed out on election to the ministry, for which he sought solace in alcohol.

Chifley made his mark in both of his portfolios. Within a short time of his promotion, The Sydney Morning Herald noted that Chifley had ‘blossomed into a most fruitful minister’.6 He developed useful administrative skills and contacts in the public service. He organised the distribution of surplus military clothing to the unemployed and issued strict instructions that the military were to have no association with extremist right-wing paramilitary groups such as the New Guard that were being formed in some parts of the country.

When Scullin and Theodore adopted the contractionary Premiers’ Plan, having been blocked in the implementation of their own innovative scheme, Chifley loyally supported them. For this, the Lang-controlled NSW branch of the Labor Party expelled him, although he kept his membership of the federal party.

The split in the party saw the Scullin government lose a vote in the House of Representatives and Scullin call a federal election. The result was a disaster for the government, with the Joseph Lyons–led UAP recording an emphatic victory. The federal Labor Party held just three seats in NSW, while Lang Labor won four. Chifley nearly took the federal Labor tally to four but fell just short in Macquarie, being narrowly defeated by the UAP candidate John Lawson. The broad left vote still outnumbered the conservative vote in Macquarie, but enough Lang Labor and Communist Party preferences had flowed to Lawson to see him elected. Chifley’s three-year parliamentary career had come to what might have been a permanent end.

The Royal Commissioner

Chifley, of course, still had unsatiated parliamentary ambitions. In the first instance, he busied himself with being elected to the Abercrombie Shire Council (which covered the rural hinterland of Bathurst) and membership of the local hospital committee. The 1934 federal election, however, was a disaster for Chifley, with his vote going backwards—he came third to Lawson and the Lang Labor candidate.

It was the battle against Lang that took most of his energy at that time, and for which the Labor Party would owe him a great debt. In 1934 he was elected president of the NSW branch of the federal ALP, and he therefore became the leader of the fight against the Lang Labor Party. Since the 1931 election, the federal and state parties had been completely separate entities, campaigning against each other, splitting the Labor vote and ensuring their mutual defeat. Chifley knew that a rapprochement would be necessary, but he also knew that Lang would need to be considerably weakened before the federal ALP could consider a peace in which Lang would not continue his destructive ways. Chifley played a key role in this project, agreeing to take Lang on where he was strongest: he became the federal Labor candidate against Lang in the seat of Auburn in the 1935 NSW election. This was no token effort. Chifley threw himself into this bitter campaign with gusto, losing by a respectable 2400 votes. As has been said of Chifley, ‘he worked harder and more effectively than anyone to depose Lang and restore the unity which ensured Labor’s electoral triumph in New South Wales in 1941’.7

The state election was followed by a development in Chifley’s life that had major implications for his career and for the future of economic policy in