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

a kernel of truth in it. Chifley had lent money as a trustee to other people as a respected member of the community. Excepting one occasion, he had derived no personal benefit from the loans. None of this mattered, however, and the prime minister was once again distracted, off-message and on the defensive.

Labor hoped that Menzies’ failure as wartime prime minister and Labor’s track record during war and peace, together with Chifley’s attractive persona, would be enough to win the election. But the Australian people had moved on from the war and had more confidence in Menzies’ abilities to bring about the desired freeing of economic constraints. The election result was emphatic. A redistribution saw the number of seats in the House expand dramatically. Labor won an extra four seats, but the Liberal – Country coalition won an extra forty-eight seats with a 5 per cent swing to it, giving it a seventeen-seat majority.

Afterwards

Chifley considered resigning the leadership of the Labor Party after the 1949 election, but he was not confident that his certain successor, deputy leader HV Evatt, had the temperament necessary for Labor’s rebuilding (history would judge him right in this regard). He decided to stay in office until one of his preferred successors, Tom Burke (member for Perth and father of future Western Australian premier Brian Burke) or Kim Beazley (member for Fremantle and father of future Labor leader Kim Beazley Junior), had had enough time to prepare for the leadership.

Chifley did not have an easy time as leader of the opposition. When Menzies moved to ban the Communist Party, the Labor Caucus was wedged between those who wished to oppose the legislation as an unacceptable breach of human rights and those who wished to see it pass out of a combination of electoral pragmatism and a loathing of communism. Chifley was determined to press for changes to the most objectionable parts of the legislation and to only allow the Bill to pass if those changes were forthcoming. But Menzies provided inadequate concessions, and so Chifley opposed the legislation, giving an impassioned and principled plea for civil liberties as he did so.

The Australian Labor Party then let its leader down. A change of heart by the Western Australian party executive saw the majority on the federal executive change, and the executive instruct the parliamentary party to allow Menzies’ legislation to pass. If the Labor Party ever needs a reminder as to why the parliamentary Caucus should be the master of its own destiny when it comes to policy, this is it. The executive made the wrong policy decision and, in the process, humiliated its leader. Chifley had to backtrack on his previous, principled statement, having decided to put the party first.

Eventually, the Communist Party Dissolution Bill was declared an unconstitutional infringement of human rights by the High Court, and Chifley’s successor as Labor leader would lead an inspirational and successful campaign against a referendum to overrule the High Court decision. But Chifley’s Labor Party, not through his choosing, would be on the wrong side of history. Chifley’s protégé, Tom Burke, had engineered the change of heart. Urged by his close friends to exact some retribution, Chifley refused, saying Burke had ‘a lot of young kiddies to care for’ and therefore his career should not be threatened.

Chifley was not of a mind to be as accommodating when it came to Menzies’ plans to amend the Commonwealth Bank Act. Menzies wanted to change Chifley’s model of Commonwealth Bank management with the appointment of an independent board with oversight of the governor. Chifley saw this as unwarranted outside interference in the management of the bank, potentially allowing a re-run of the bank’s obstruction during the Depression. Chifley told Labor’s federal executive on this occasion that if they opposed him, he would resign the party leadership.

Labor was able to defeat Menzies’ legislation in the Senate. This gave the government, if the legislation was defeated again, the ability to call a double-dissolution election. Labor was growing increasingly confident of its chances if an election were to be held when it was due, given that inflation was growing and the government was struggling with its response. The government was likely to win an early election, however, as the inflation had yet to take hold. To avoid the latter scenario, Labor decided to subject the Commonwealth Bank legislation to a long Senate committee process rather than oppose it, hopefully denying Menzies the trigger he needed to call the early election. This was based on Evatt’s advice to Chifley that a referral to a Senate committee would not amount to a rejection of the legislation. This was poor guidance. Menzies gambled on advising governor-general Sir William McKell that the deferral of the legislation amounted to a rejection, giving him the constitutional trigger necessary for new elections for both the House of Representatives and the Senate. McKell considered the situation and concluded that his obligation as the King’s representative was to accept the advice of the elected prime minister. An election was duly called.

Menzies’ strategy worked. The Coalition lost five seats to Labor, so Labor members matched the Liberals in terms of numbers, but the addition of Country Party members gave the coalition government a still-handy majority.

Chifley had been easily re-elected as the member for Macquarie and was unanimously re-elected Labor leader after the election, but the 1949 poll was to be his last election. In 1951, Australia celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of Federation. One of the events was a ball at Parliament House. Strongly disliking the pomp and ceremony of such occasions, Chifley declined an invitation to attend. He stayed in his room at the Kurrajong Hotel, where he suffered a fatal heart attack. Word was passed during the ball to Menzies, who, genuinely moved, brought the function to an early close with the tragic announcement:

It is my very sorrowful duty during this celebration tonight to tell you that Mr Chifley has died. I don’t want to try to talk about him now because,