Lazarus Rising

It was an emotional issue for them, especially for Peter, whose family had been directly touched by the Holocaust. After the lecture, the four of us stood on the steps of the hall, locked in furious argument about what Stone had said. Despite his understandable sympathy with the Jewish cause, Stone had applied his customary juridical objectivity to the issue. I fully agreed with what Israel had done. Eichmann, who played a key role in implementing the Nazis’ ‘Final Solution’ for the extermination of the Jewish people, decided upon in 1942, was convicted and hanged in Israel.

A relatively young Bill Deane tutored me in the subject of succession (probate and death duties). He became a judge of the High Court, and was appointed Governor-General, on the recommendation of Paul Keating, taking up that position just before the change of government in 1996. Deane’s first major duty as Governor-General was to swear me in as Prime Minister, on 11 March 1996.

I had graduated from the Sydney University Law School in early 1961, and in June 1962, having completed my articles, was admitted to practise as a solicitor of the Supreme Court of New South Wales. My articles were served with one of the most colourful and remarkable people I have ever known, Myer Rosenblum. As a youngster Myer had emigrated from South Africa with his family, who settled in Marrickville, not far from my father’s garage. Myer’s father became a regular customer at the garage. When Myer qualified as a solicitor and commenced his own practice, my father returned the compliment and engaged him as his solicitor.

Myer Rosenblum had very diverse tastes and talents. He had represented Australia at rugby union, having played breakaway (flanker) for the 1928 Waratahs; was a hurdler at the 1932 NSW Championships; represented Australia as a hammer thrower in the 1938 Empire Games in Sydney; and held the NSW hammer throw record for something like 20 years. A cultivated person, he played the bassoon in the Sydney Conservatorium Orchestra, spoke fluent German and Yiddish, and began to teach himself Italian when in his 50s.

My becoming articled to Myer Rosenblum followed the making of close friendships with a number of Jewish students at law school. One of them, Peter Strasser, remains a very close friend. Thus began, for me, a long association with members of the Jewish community in Australia. Those early friendships, and the experience I gained from working with much of the Jewish clientele which Myer’s firm attracted, created within me a deep respect, and in many ways affection, for the Jewish people.

As Prime Minister, I saw to it that Australia remained a staunch ally and friend of Israel. This was more than just a projection onto the international stage of my home-grown regard for Jewish people. I admired the remarkable struggle of the people of Israel against hostile Arab neighbours, and the democratic character of that country.

In 2006, Australia and the United States, almost alone amongst Western democracies, backed Israel in opposing a UN resolution condemning the latter for constructing a wall to protect its people against terrorists. I was staggered at the level of international hostility towards Israel over her action, which seemed to me to be a clear-cut case of self-defence.

Although I had joined the Earlwood branch of the Young Liberals when I was 18, participated in general campaigning for the 1958 federal election in the local area where I lived, and was briefly a member of the Sydney University Liberal Club, it was not until I had left university that I became really active in politics.

Largely due to my hearing problem, I found university quite taxing. I was reluctant to get too heavily involved in other activities until I knew that I would qualify as a lawyer. As a result, my experience was very different from that of many of my colleagues, who cut their teeth on university politics.

Once out of university, I hurled myself into Liberal Party activities, both at a local and NSW level. I took over the presidency of the local Young Liberal branch and became very active in the Youth Council, which comprised delegates from the various Young Liberal branches in the Sydney metropolitan area.

It was easy for cynics to dismiss Young Liberal activities as being entirely social and lacking in political gravitas. That was a superficial judgement. Sure there was plenty of social activity — and of course, why not? — but to those who were so inclined there were ample opportunities for political involvement. The Youth Council was a great forum for debate on contemporary political issues, and the physical participation of young people in local campaigns was especially welcome.

In those days members of parliament (MPs) did not have postal allowances; we were years away from direct-mail campaigns. Hand delivery of pamphlets to individual letterboxes, usually at night, was the staple way of getting the local candidate’s message across.

My first experience of serious organisational politics was my election, in 1962, as the Young Liberal representative on the state executive of the NSW division of the Liberal Party. This body was the power centre of the party in NSW and included the leader and deputy leader of the state parliamentary party as well as the most senior member from New South Wales of the Menzies Government. I was now involved in genuine politics.

It was then that I first really got to know John Carrick, the general secretary of the party in New South Wales, a person who would influence me enormously over the years. He was to become my political mentor. I learned more about politics from John than from any other person I have known.

He had become the party’s general secretary, the chief executive officer, in 1948 at the age of 29. During World War II, when a member of the Sparrow Force in Timor, he was captured by the Japanese and as a prisoner of war spent time working on the infamous Burma–Thailand railway. John would hold the position of general secretary for 23 years, until his election to the Senate in 1971. He became a senior minister in the Fraser Government, and served as Leader of the Government in the Senate, until that government was defeated in 1983.

Possessed of abundant energy, as well as immense organisational skills, John always realised that politics was a battle of ideas — a philosophical contest — and not merely a public relations competition. He drew many people to his orbit through the force of his intellect and his indefatigable commitment to the political cause of the Liberal Party. To him, one of the roles of a general secretary was to act as a constant talent scout for people who might contribute as members of parliament, irrespective of whether they were members of the party.

He formed a close relationship with Menzies, who much admired his tactical and strategic abilities. To my mind, one of John Carrick’s immense contributions to the continuing political success of the Liberal Party was the role he played along with others in persuading the Prime Minister to embrace a policy of direct government assistance to independent (principally Catholic) schools. This change was an important factor in the Liberal victory, federally, in 1963. Thus began the most enduring demographic shift in Australian politics in the past generation, namely the change in allegiance of a whole swag of middle-class Catholic voters, who hitherto had remained loyal to the Labor Party for none other than tribal reasons.

Until the 1960s the ALP was the party of choice for the majority of Australian Catholics. Theology played no part in this; it was driven by socioeconomic factors, with Irish Catholics being predominantly of a working-class background. The sectarianism of earlier generations served to reinforce this alignment. Although the warming of Catholics towards the Liberal Party had begun in earnest with Menzies’ state aid gesture in 1963, the first Fraser cabinet of 1975 still included only one Catholic, Phillip Lynch. Over the coming years the dam would really burst on this old divide. One-half of the final Howard cabinet in 2007 were Catholics. Once again this had nothing to do with religion, it being the inevitable consequence of a socioeconomic realignment.

When education became ‘free, compulsory and secular’ in the 1860s, Australian Catholics resolved to maintain their own school system, at enormous ongoing cost both to parents and the faithful. There was no government help for them. The prevailing view, in a much more sectarian age, was that those who sent their children to Catholic schools should bear the full cost of that choice: the free public system was available to Catholics and Protestants alike. As the decades rolled on, Catholic resentment grew, especially as, there being 20 per cent or so of the school-age population in Catholic schools, the state was relieved of a large financial burden.

By the 1960s attitudes had changed. There was more recognition of the immense sacrifice made by Catholics to keep their education system; sectarianism had begun to crumble and there was a realisation that state schools would not cope if the Catholic system collapsed.

Menzies, the self-styled ‘simply Presbyterian', became persuaded of the justice of the Catholic argument. In the 1963 election campaign he promised money for all schools in Australia to construct science blocks. Inspired politics, it was also cultural balm, and aided the decline of sectarianism. This symbolic breakthrough led over time to extensive funding of independent schools in Australia, with the greatest help going to those who were in most need.

The Menzies thrust was not easily accepted throughout the Liberal Party and internal debate continued to rage. Early in 1964 I pushed a pro-state aid motion through the Youth Council, which struck real turbulence. The Liberal leader in New South Wales (later premier), Bob Askin, remained very sensitive about opposition to the policy within the party and was still to summon the courage to assert the merits of it at a state level in the way that Menzies had federally. During a telephone conversation with me, Askin remonstrated about the pro-state aid position of the Young Liberals, even musing that perhaps the Young Liberals might have to be closed down if they continued to cause trouble. That did not change the Youth Council’s view.

Askin was an earthy and instinctive politician who loved horseracing, rugby league and card playing. He won four elections for the NSW Liberals, far ahead of any other Liberal leader in that state.

The 1963 election was a real triumph for Menzies. He called it a year early and increased his slender majority of two to 22. For me, the personal high of that election was the victory of Tom Hughes QC in the electorate of Parkes. I was still living in Earlwood, which was in this electorate, and was Tom’s campaign director. He needed a swing of some 6 to 7 per cent, something he did not believe that he would achieve. It was a classic grassroots campaign, attracting much high-profile attention.

Tom Hughes came from a well-known family of Sydney’s eastern suburbs. He had served in the RAAF in World War II. He was intelligent and engaging. I took an instant liking to him, and we have remained friends ever since. His Bellevue Hill address did not bother the Liberal locals in Parkes. They liked the way in which he quickly adapted his speaking style from the courtroom to the back of a truck.

Tom had close links with the Packer family, which led to him being dubbed ‘Packer’s pea for Parkes'. He enlisted their help to produce a local campaign newspaper, called the Parkes Examiner. I spent several hours, a week out from the election, in the office of the now defunct magazine the Bulletin, with Clyde Packer, elder brother of Kerry, Tom Hughes and Tom’s younger brother, Robert, working on the newspaper. Robert was at that time quite an accomplished cartoonist. Clyde Packer’s editorial skill did wonders with the copy written by Tom and me.

The incumbent Labor member for Parkes, Leslie Haylen, had a left-wing reputation. He had visited China, and we decided on a cartoon which depicted Haylen dancing arm in arm with the Chinese leader, Mao Zedong. They were doing the ‘Peking two-step'. This was 1963 after all; the Cold War was still in full swing, and consorting with the Chinese communist leadership was not calculated to impress middle Australia.

The 1963 election took place under the shadow of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. ‘Where were you when Kennedy was assassinated?’ forever and a day would become a question asked of my generation. I was at home in Earlwood, about to leave and meet Tom Hughes in the Campsie shopping centre for some campaigning. My brother Bob telephoned me at about 8.30 am, and said simply, ‘Kennedy has been shot dead in Dallas.’ What more could be said! When I arrived at the campaign headquarters on the way to the Campsie shopping centre, volunteers had already assembled to help with pamphlet distribution. One of them, Roddy Meagher, a brilliant barrister who went on to become a much-admired judge of the Court of Appeal in New South Wales, speculated about the possibility of the Russians taking advantage of the situation.

Whatever one’s politics, and whatever one’s opinion of the quality of Kennedy’s presidency at that time, it was impossible to shake the view that a remarkably talented and attractive young president, offering much hope for the future, had been cut down before he really had a chance to prove himself.

In 1964, as NSW Young Liberal leader, I was a delegate to the federal council meeting of the party in Canberra in April. It was a memorable event for me, as it included my one and only meeting with Sir Robert Menzies. It was at the traditional cocktail party for federal council delegates at the Lodge hosted by the Prime Minister. He was a big man, with a commanding presence, who chatted amiably with the six Young Liberals present. The great man demonstrated his reputed passion for martinis by mixing some for his guests.

Thirty-two years later, on my first weekend at the Lodge as Prime Minister, Janette and I invited Menzies’ daughter, Heather Henderson, and her husband, Peter, over for a drink. We mixed and drank martinis in memory and honour of her late father. I have not had one since; I don’t like them, shaken or stirred, but proper respect had been paid.

There was an unhealthy air of smug self-satisfaction at that 1964 Federal Council meeting. Several speeches, including one from Menzies himself, suggested that the Liberal Party would remain in office indefinitely. As things turned out it was to be more than eight years before the party finally lost, but nonetheless the tone seemed wrong. Perhaps I was not sufficiently attuned to the ‘natural party of government’ sentiment amongst Liberals from Victoria. Henry Bolte had been Premier since 1955 and the Liberals would hold office in that state for a further 18 years.

By contrast, Labor seemed to have an iron grip on power in New South Wales. Moreover, there had been a very heavy swing against the Liberal Party in New South Wales at the 1961 federal election, prior to the 1963 resurgence. By contrast, again despite the recession, the Liberal Party had given no ground to Labor at the 1961 election in Victoria. This had been due, overwhelmingly, to the great bulk of DLP preferences flowing to Menzies.

The DLP emerged from the great Labor split of the mid-1950s, which played a major role in keeping Labor from office until 1972. The split was caused by a clash between, on the one hand, Labor trade unionists and branch members worried about communist influence in the unions and, on the other hand, the rest of the ALP, who regarded the activities of those worried about communist influence as having ulterior motives, subversive to the true interests of the Labor Party.

Those concerned about communist influence banded together in what were called industrial groups, in turn strongly supported by a Catholic lay organisation known as the Movement, led by B.A. (Bob) Santamaria, certainly the most influential person in post-World War II politics never to serve in parliament. Possessed of high intelligence and strong Catholic beliefs, he was a compelling and articulate critic of communism within both the ALP and elsewhere. He was a person for whom I developed enormous respect.

In 1955 the ALP’s National Conference declared membership of the industrial groups as out of bounds for ALP members. Many rank-and-file branch members, especially in Victoria, reacted against this and left the Labor Party. Seven federal Labor MPs resigned to form a new parliamentary Party, later called the DLP. As most Catholics then supported the Labor party, the split caused huge tension within the Church. Senior prelates took different positions: Archbishop Daniel Mannix of Melbourne backed the DLP, whereas his Sydney counterpart, Cardinal Norman Gilroy, urged Catholics to ‘stay in [the ALP] and fight'.

The new party, at first called the Labor Party (Anti-Communist) made a crucial decision to give its second preferences to the Coalition ahead of the ALP when Menzies called an early election for late in 1955, in part to capitalise on the ALP split. Menzies had already seen the split destroy Victoria’s Cain Labor Government; this catapulted Henry Bolte to office, with the help of Labor Party (Anti-Communist) preferences in May 1955. This preference decision was largely justified by the belief of the new party that the ALP’s foreign policy was not sufficiently anti-communist. Even though all of the seven MPs who had resigned from the ALP lost their seats to the Labor Party in the 1955 poll, that preference decision had far-reaching consequences. It conferred a huge advantage on the Liberal Party in marginal seats, not only in 1955 but also in subsequent elections. Normally 90 per cent of DLP preferences flowed to Liberals.

Many Liberals hung on in circumstances where they would otherwise have lost. This made the decisive difference in the 1961 election, which saw a huge swing against the Menzies Government, resulting in its majority being reduced from 32 at the 1958 election, to just two. Amazingly, in Victoria, where the DLP presence was greatest, the Liberal Party did not lose a single seat. In other states, Coalition seats tumbled. The DLP had saved Bob Menzies. He and other Liberals, such as Malcolm Fraser, never forgot this.

In July of 1964 I gave up the leadership of the Young Liberals and went overseas, following the familiar Australian pattern of the time. Go to London, work for a while, then ‘do Europe', return home. Although I added, atypically then, visits to India and Israel on the way across and a period of weeks in Canada and the United States on the way home. In London I worked for solicitors at Ilford, Essex. This frequently took me to the Stratford Magistrates Court, in East London, putting me in touch with a cross-section of Londoners. Representing people charged with all manner of offences was a huge experience, one that I would like to have pursued for longer.

My time in London coincided with the election of the Labour Government led by Harold Wilson, in October 1964. The Conservatives had been in power for 13 years, having been returned to office under Winston Churchill in 1951. Naturally, I volunteered my services to the Conservative Party, and helped out in a very narrowly held Tory constituency in London, Holborn and St Pancras. Polling day was a cultural shock for an Australian. It was all about getting people out to vote, not handing out how-to-vote tickets at polling booths. Voting in Britain is not compulsory. I spent hours running up and down flights of stairs of council flats in inner London, knocking on the doors of people believed to be Conservative voters, reminding them to vote. I was still on this round at 9.30 pm, and given that the polling booths closed at 10 pm, I developed a diminishing belief that the assurances I would receive that ‘She’ll be right, gov’ meant anything. The Tories lost Holborn and St Pancras.

Winston Churchill died whilst I was living in London, and I watched his funeral procession from Ludgate Hill with an English girlfriend. Returning to her home, I then, with her family, viewed a marvellous speech by our own Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, delivered from the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral. Menzies’ eloquence and sense of history deeply impressed this small English gathering, and left an Australian supporter feeling very proud.

The Britain I experienced was a nation in clear economic decline; worse than that, it had begun to lose that priceless quality of self-belief. I would not return to Britain for another 13 years when, as a junior minister in the Fraser Government, I paid a short visit. The process that I had sensed in 1964 was much further advanced in 1977.

It was to take that remarkable woman Margaret Thatcher to turn around her nation. I don’t remember her promising any revolutions during her 1979 election campaign. She did, however, deliver one in many areas of British life. The most important one was that of self-belief. She restored Britain’s pride and sense of achievement, as well as her economy.

My brief visit to the United States, on the way home from Europe, had me staying at Columbia University in New York with my cousin Glenda Felton (later Adams), who years later would win the Miles Franklin award with her book Dancing on Coral. It was well into 1965 by the time of my visit, and already mounting opposition to American involvement in Vietnam could be felt on university campuses. Not long before, the civil rights movement, led by Martin Luther King, Jr, had grabbed national consciousness. The enthusiasm of student bodies for the civil rights cause was strong and widespread.

When I returned to Australia I found that a full-scale debate was under way, not only about Australia’s involvement, side by side with the United States, in the war in Vietnam, but also about the decision of the Menzies Government, early in 1965, to bring in conscription to obtain the necessary numbers of troops to meet our country’s commitment. This debate was to continue for another seven years, until all of Australia’s combat troops had been withdrawn from South Vietnam. In that time a huge shift in public opinion took place.

Although the introduction of conscription was always a touchy subject, the Australian public began by endorsing the sending of troops to fight with the Americans. Support for the American alliance was strong; in addition, most Australians broadly accepted the so-called domino theory, namely that if one Southeast Asian country fell to communism, then others might follow, and this could bring potential aggressors closer to Australia.

In 1966 Lyndon Johnson became the first serving American President to visit Australia. He received an enthusiastic reception, and at the federal election at the end of the year the Coalition, led by Harold Holt (who had replaced Menzies as Liberal leader in January 1966), won with a significantly increased majority. Although there remained controversy over conscription, the war itself still attracted support; Holt benefited from that. Over time that would change. As the conflict dragged on, seemingly without end, domestic support for Australia’s commitment declined, and with a spitefulness of which this country should be ashamed, many of those opposed to our military support of South Vietnam vented their hostility towards our soldiers.

Labor’s defeat brought Arthur Calwell’s leadership of the Labor Party to an end and delivered stewardship of the opposition to Gough Whitlam, whose intellect, energy and modernity were to transform the Labor Party and make it an election-winning force.

After my return to Australia I re-entered Liberal Party activities wholeheartedly, and within a few months was back on the state executive, not as a Young Liberal but as a representative of the full membership of the party; this was a big step forward, once again putting me at the centre of the party’s affairs in New South Wales. My association with John Carrick strengthened, as it did with Eric Willis, deputy Liberal leader and, by then, a senior minister in the newly elected Askin Government.

From 1967 onwards, I began to participate in debates on Australia’s involvement in Vietnam. Before long they included opponents such as Jim Cairns, the federal Labor MP and future deputy prime minister, who was a relentless critic of the Australian commitment. These were tough encounters, before large and normally hostile audiences, but the political experience was priceless. Many of them were at universities, and they were sometimes euphemistically called ‘teach-ins'.