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Leadership in the Liberal Party: Bolte, Askin and the Post-War Ascendancy

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Leadership in the Liberal Party: Bolte, Askin and the Post-War Ascendancy Leadership in the Liberal Party: Bolte, Askin and the Post-War Ascendancy Norman Abjorensen December 2004 A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The Australian National University Declaration I hereby declare that the work presented in this thesis is, to the best of my knowledge and belief, original, except as acknowledged in the text, and that the material has not been submitted in whole or in part, for a degree at this or any other university. Norman Abjorensen 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Tables…..5 Acknowledgements…..6 Abstract…..7 Introduction: Getting Dinkum…..8 (i) The Nature of State Politics…..9 (ii) The Post-War World …..13 (iii) The Liberal Party in State Politics…….14 (iv) Defining a Political Era…..21 (v) Parallel Lives?…..24 (vi) Structure, Sources and Methodology…..29 1. The Origins of Liberal Revival….35 1.1 Conflicting Narratives of the 1940s: Golden Age or Crisis…..36 1.2 Towards a Liberal Revival…..45 1.3 Failure of Leadership (1): Victoria: Revival Then Chaos…..51 1.4 Failure of Leadership (2): NSW: The Seeds of Liberal Despair…..64 1.5 ‘Dinkum’ Leadership and the Post-War Zeitgeist…..71 (a) A Sceptical Electorate…..71 (b) Leadership and the Liberal Party…..74 2. Leadership and the Post-War Ascendancy: The New Rhetoric of Prosperity …..91 2.1 The Background…..92 2.2 The Liberals’ King Tide…..100 2.3 Emancipation of the Catholic Vote…..116 2.4 Liberal Resurgence in the West…..122 2.5 South Australia and the Playford Era…..127 2.6 A Liberal Australia…130 3. Bolte: Victoria’s Liberal Phoenix…..139 3.1 From Harry to Henry…..140 3.2 Billy from the Bush…..152 3.3 The Deputy Leader and the Liberals’ Civil War…..158 3.4 Leader by Accident…..168 3.5 The Premier: ‘Get to Know the People’…..179 3.6 Government the Bolte Way…..185 3.7 Bolte and the Liberal Party…..196 3 3.8 The Public Perception…..207 3.9 The Bolte Legacy…..212 4. Askin: The Emergence of a Leader…..215 4.1 From the Other Side of the Tracks…..216 4.2 ‘I’ll Nominate that Man’…..221 4.3 Another Leader, Another Loss…..240 4.4 1959: The Wind Shifts…..247 4.5 Courting the Catholic Vote…..262 4.6 Victory at Last…..270 4.7 The Public Askin…..281 4.8 The Private Askin…..290 5. Conclusion: The Liberals and Leadership…..294 5.1 Towards a Typology of Leadership in the Liberal Party…..295 5.2 Typical Australians, atypical Liberals?…..331 Bibliography…..336 4 Tables 1. War service among Members of Federal Parliament 1951-1956…..94. 2. War service among Members of the Cain (Labor) and Bolte (Liberal) Cabinets, Victoria, 1955-1956…..95. 3. Election Results in the Bolte Era 1950-1973…..104 4. Personal consumption per head in Australia…..108 5. Election Results in the Askin Era 1959-1973……115 6. Religion of Labor and Non-Labor Members 1901-80……120 7. Comparison of Liberals elected in NSW 1947-53…..224 8. The Askin Cabinet (1965) and Military Service…...280 9. Comparative voting at Federal elections 1949-74……297 10. Comparative voting at Victorian State elections 1955-1973…...298 11. Leadership Types…..301 5 Acknowledgements I could not have hoped for a more inspiring and encouraging panel of supervisors than I had in Professor John Warhurst, Mr Ian Hancock and Mr David Adams who, while unrelentingly exacting in their demands, strove to bring clarity and focus to my thinking and my words, and corrected many of my excesses of journalese. Their criticism was unfailingly constructive and I remain in awe of their collective academic excellence and professionalism of which I was a most fortunate and grateful beneficiary. Professor Frank Lewins kindly attended to my travel and accommodation needs and offered constant encouragement for which I am grateful. Vicki Dunne MLA indulged my erratic hours and academic needs with kindness and good humour when I worked on her staff, once quipping she had hired not only Norman, but also Henry and Bob as well. Creighton Burns, when editor of the Age, encouraged my delving into Victorian political history and published many of my musings, and the Hon Sir John Carrick set me on the track with New South Wales. Though long dead, Henry Bolte and Bob Askin many years ago indulged an impertinent young reporter just enough to whet his appetite to know more. I also pay tribute to the late Peter Blazey, a larger than life character, with whom I spent many hours discussing Henry Bolte. Brian Loughnane, Scott Morrison and Lynton Crosby helped with access to Liberal Party records, and another former employer, the Hon Dr David Kemp, was an early inspiration. Most of all, however, I thank my family: Carmel surrendered a husband and Sebastian and Mairead a father for more weekends than I care to remember. But they never wavered in their support, and for that I cannot find words adequate to express what I feel about the debt I owe. 6 Abstract The formation of the Liberal Party of Australia in the mid-1940s heralded a new effort to stem the tide of government regulation that had grown with Labor Party rule in the latter years of World War II and immediately after. It was not until 1949 that the party gained office at Federal level, beginning what was to be a record unbroken term of 23 years, but its efforts faltered at State level in Victoria, where the party was divided, and in New South Wales, where Labor was seemingly entrenched. The fortunes were reversed with the rise to leadership of men who bore a different stamp to their predecessors, and were in many ways atypical Liberals: Henry Bolte in Victoria and Robin Askin in New South Wales. Bolte, a farmer, and Askin, a bank officer, had served as non-commissioned officers in World War II and rose to lead parties whose members who had served in the war were predominantly of the officer class. In each case, their man management skills put an end to division and destabilisation in their parties, and they went on to serve record terms as Liberal leaders in their respective States, Bolte 1955-72 and Askin 1965-75. Neither was ever challenged in their leadership and each chose the time and nature of his departure from politics, a rarity among Australian political leaders. Their careers are traced here in the context of the Liberal revival and the heightened expectations of the post- war years when the Liberal Party reached an ascendancy, governing for a brief time in 1969-70 in all Australian States as well as the Commonwealth. Their leadership is also examined in the broader context of leadership in the Liberal Party, and also in the ways in which the new party sought to engage with and appeal to a wider range of voters than had traditionally been attracted to the non-Labor parties. 7 Introduction: Getting Dinkum dinkum adjective 1. Also,dinki-di, dinky. true; honest; genuine. dinkum Aussie; the dinkum article. 2. seriously interested in a proposed deal,. scheme, etc.: Are you dinkum about it? – adverb 3. truly. – noun 4. an excellent or remarkable example of its kind; You little dinkum. – phrase 5. dinkum oil, correct information. 6. fair dinkum, an assertion of truth or genuineness. (Macquarie Dictionary). POLITICAL history in Australia as well as political journalism has come almost invariably to mean a focus on the Commonwealth as the locus of power and the exclusive subject of political interest. This ‘one dimensional’ approach to both scholarship and journalism has been correctly characterised as ‘doomed to incompleteness and distortion’ by its neglect of the two-dimensional system that exists in Australian political life.1 A visiting American scholar in the early 1960s observing the issue of interstate relations in Australia expressed surprise that the subject had been largely neglected, attributable in part, he wrote, ‘because the whole field of State government has been neglected in Australia’, and that for years ‘Australian scholars evinced no interest in the subject at all’.2 Federalism is not just a historical fact in Australia, but a ‘fundamental characteristic’ of the system of government.3 The effect of this lack of attention paid to the States, especially in regard to the differences between them, is to miss a key dynamic in the Federal system which effectively shapes the outline and operation of Australian politics.4 As long ago as 1960, S. R. Davis, in the introduction to his ground-breaking The Government of the Australian States, was moved to lament the predilection of scholars for ‘the life of the national government, presumably for the excitement of probing at the heart of things, 1 Brian Galligan, ‘Introduction’ in Galligan (ed.), Australian State Politics, Longman Cheshire, Melbourne, 1986, p. x. 2 Richard H. Leach, Interstate Relations in Australia, University of Kentucky Press, Kentucky, 1965, p. 9. 3 Jean Holmes and Campbell Sharman, The Australian Federal System, George Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1977, p. 29. 4 Jean Holmes, The Government of Victoria, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1976, p. 1. Leadership in the Liberal Party: Introduction or the simplicity of dealing with one system of government’.5 It was a decade later before the theme was again addressed by John Rorke6 who echoed the sentiments of Davis when he wrote that ‘there can be no real grasp of national politics until the political operations at State level are known’. Just how important the States are can be seen in the large proportion of the work of the Commonwealth and its departments devoted to dealings with the States, estimated by one writer to involve ‘perhaps as many as half of all Commonwealth government programs’.
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