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

weaknesses the White Paper was nevertheless a remarkable document. For it involved a fundamental break with the past. It involved looking at the economy differently.’19 For the first time, unemployment was no longer seen as an unavoidable and necessary evil; rather, it was accepted that government could and would combat it. The ‘Full Employment White Paper’ provided the policy underpinnings for Chifley’s postwar program of capital works—the Australian National University and the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme most prominent among them—which would play an important role in the postwar economy.

The Postwar Prime Minister

In 1945 Curtin’s health, which had increasingly suffered from the strain of being the wartime prime minister, deteriorated to such a degree that he had to take leave. The government’s next most senior minister, Forde, was in the United States, so Chifley became acting prime minister. Until this time, commentators had widely regarded Forde, whom Curtin had defeated by a single vote in 1935 to claim the Labor leadership, as the man most likely to take over the government, while Herbert Vere ‘Doc’ Evatt’s high public profile as external affairs minister and a former High Court judge—and his assiduous management of the media—meant he also had greater public recognition than the lower-profile Chifley. But soon Chifley came to be seen as the likely successor to the prime ministership should Curtin need to vacate the office.

When opposition leader Menzies moved a motion of no confidence in the government, future Liberal prime minister Harold Holt voiced his admiration at the way Chifley demolished what he had regarded as ‘the most formidable, unanswerable arguments by Mr Menzies’.20 Chifley damned Menzies with faint praise: ‘There is no doubt about the Leader of the Opposition. He can make a wonderful case in a most brilliant and logical way. But if only he had our case to put, what a superb piece of advocacy we would get from him then.’21

Curtin was eventually able to return to active duty, but his health only gave him a temporary reprieve. A journalist who saw Curtin after visiting The Lodge, the prime ministerial residence in Canberra, noted that ‘his face was the iron grey of a man who had suffered a shock’.22 On 5 July 1945, the terrible moment finally came for Chifley and for the nation. His close friend Curtin succumbed to the heart disease that had slowly debilitated him and died at The Lodge. Chifley attended Fairbairn Airbase to farewell the prime ministerial casket on its way to Perth, but he told colleagues he was too emotional to attend the funeral.

Chifley did not originally intend to make himself available as a candidate for the prime ministership. But a number of colleagues one by one prevailed on him to run, with former prime minister Scullin telling him that it was Curtin’s deathbed wish that Chifley succeed him. Indeed, Curtin had firmly signalled his preferences shortly before his death by requesting that King George VI make Chifley a member of the Privy Council. In the end, Chifley decided to make himself a candidate, telling a Labor colleague he was not sure he had the qualities to be prime minister, but that ‘all I am sure about is that Frank [Forde] hasn’t’.23

The Caucus was more enthusiastic about Chifley’s capabilities than he was. He won the ballot with forty-five votes, compared with nineteen for Forde, eight for Norman Makin and one for Evatt (the one vote for Evatt was not Evatt’s, as he had not made his way back from New York in time for the ballot).

Chifley thus became prime minister, and he decided to retain the Treasury portfolio as well. He was still completely focused on the task of building a robust postwar economy and avoiding another recession, and felt that this task needed his personal attention. He had been comfortable handing over the postwar reconstruction portfolio to John Dedman, but did not have enough confidence in any other Cabinet colleague to entrust the Treasury to them. This was unusual but not unprecedented. Several previous prime ministers had simultaneously held other ministries, mainly the external affairs portfolio, and John Watson and Andrew Fisher among his Labor predecessors have been prime minister and treasurer. Chifley, however, would be the last prime minister to adopt this approach for any substantial length of time; Paul Keating would consider retaining the Treasury on his assumption of the prime ministership, but would decide against it.

Chifley declined to live in The Lodge. This was partly because of his aversion to the trappings of office, partly because his wife Elizabeth clearly wanted to stay in Bathurst and, in all likelihood, because he didn’t want to live in the bedroom in which his friend Curtin had so recently died.

Chifley was sworn in as prime minister just before the Allies’ final victory over Japan. It was Chifley’s voice, made gravelly by his years of pipe smoking, that made itself heard in radio broadcasts announcing the end of the war at 9.30 a.m. on 15 August. ‘Fellow citizens, the war is over’, said Chifley, who then asked Australians to ‘give thanks to God and remember those who had given their lives to make the glorious moment possible’.

Australians celebrated the end of the war, but if they hoped this would bring an end to wartime rationing, they would be disappointed. The rationing of staples such as bread, milk and petrol had been an essential element of World War II policy, more to ensure that resources were devoted to the war effort than as an economic management tool. But Chifley was determined to keep the rationing in place. There were two reasons for this. Firstly, Chifley, though a fierce Australian nationalist in some regards (he would suffer withering criticism for appointing the country’s second Australian-born governor-general) was also an Anglophile at heart. He thought that while the British people were suffering continued rationing in order to make a contribution to the rebuilding of Europe, the Australian people, out of loyalty, should do the same. Second, deep down, Chifley was also a