A political biography of Sir Michael Bruxner t h e Australian Country Party is a small group that has achieved a political suc­ cess quite disproportionate to its size. T h at success, in the author’s opinion, is due largely to the quality of its leaders. The Colonel is the political biography of one of those leaders, Sir Michael Bruxner. Dr Aitkin presents Bruxner against the background of New South Wales politics between 1920 and 1960. He allows his subject’s words and deeds to speak for themselves: the reader watches the young Bruxner develop those qualities of leadership that distinguish him from his fellow actors on the poli­ tical stage, qualities that made him un­ challenged leader of his party for thirty years. This biography, one of a growing number of studies of notable Australians, is the story of a man of dignity, human­ ity, and unquestionable integrity that will appeal not only to political scientists interested in the problems of political leadership but also to the many, from city and country alike, interested in a distinguished man who served his coun­ try well in war and peace. Book designed by John Pitson Printed in Australia $A6.95 This book was published by ANU Press between 1965–1991. This republication is part of the digitisation project being carried out by Scholarly Information Services/Library and ANU Press. This project aims to make past scholarly works published by The Australian National University available to a global audience under its open-access policy. THE COLONEL M. F. Bruxner, 1927 THE COLONEL A Political Biography of Sir Michael Bruxner DON AITKIN CANBERRA AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY PRESS 1969 First published 1969 This book is copyright in all countries subscribing to the Berne Convention; reproduction, in whole or in part, without written permission of the publisher is forbidden Text set in lOpt on llpt Baskerville. Extracts and footnotes set 8pt on 9pt Baskerville. Library of Congress Catalog Card no. 69-20220 National Library of Australia reg. no. aus 68-1799 SBN 7081 0028 7 Registered in Australia for transmission by post as a book PRINTED IN AUSTRALIA BY HALSTEAD PRESS, SYDNEY To my father and mother Preface When Lieutenant-Colonel Bruxner D.S.O., newly-elected Member for Northern Tableland, first set out from his hotel for Parliament House he walked past the modestly elegant, white-painted old hospital building that housed the two chambers of the New South Wales Parliament. Like thousands of passers-by before and since, he took this to be a part of Sydney Hospital. Turning into Queen’s Square he mounted the steps of an imposing Victorian brownstone structure. This, he quickly discovered, was not Parliament House, but the Registrar-General’s Department. He was not the only new member of the 1920 parliament to make that mistake. Another was Hugh Main, the almost inarticulate Member for Cootamundra, who had scrambled into the last of the three seats for that electorate ahead of the former Premier, and greatest orator of his time, William Arthur Holman. The preference of Cootamundra electors for Main rather than Holman was one of a number of unexpected results of that election. The year 1920, indeed, marked the beginning of a new political alignment in New South Wales, in which there were three parties instead of two. For Bruxner and Main were country members of the new Progressive Party, and their ignorance of Parliament House matched the political naivete of most of their country colleagues. Few of them had ever met before, or had met the party leader. Few of them had ever had anything to do with parliamentary politics. Most of them, until recently, had been overseas as sol­ diers in the Great War. Few of them had any clear idea of what they wished to accomplish in parliament; fewer still, any idea of what was possible. Their party label they wore uneasily, and they were as anxious as the journalists to discover what it meant, and might mean. They were to decide this themselves within two years when the Progressive Party divided permanently on the question of its separate identity. Those who remained in the viii Preface party were predominantly from the country and it became an entirely country party after 1925. Renamed accordingly, it has been the most stable of the political parties in New South Wales, and the strongest and most stable of the Australian Country Parties. Its leader, for most of its existence, has been Michael Frederick Bruxner. In 1920 Bruxner was 38. He had left Australia with the 6th Light Horse in 1914 and had returned from Egypt only a few months before. He entered politics at the prompting of friends and he agreed in the first instance to try for just one term. He had been a very successful stock and station agent before he went away to war; now he had disposed of that interest and bought a grazing property to which he wanted to devote the whole of his time. In fact he was to remain in Parliament for forty-two years and he spent less than a month a year on his property. Within two years of his entry into parliament he became a party leader, and he had not ever been challenged in the position when he relinquished it in 1958. He first became a Minister in 1927 and he ceased to be one in 1941. In his role both as Leader and Minister he left his own unmistakable stamp on the institutions with which he was connected. In sum, his gifts and training fitted him admirably for the exacting life of a parliamentarian, and enabled him to be a most effective one. The delineation of these abilities, and of his political style, is the purpose of this biography. Sir Michael Bruxner as politician presented some problems for a biographer. He disliked writing, he was not by nature introspective, and he did not hoard papers or correspondence. Hansard, newspapers, and the records of the Country Party have thus been the main sources for the study, and they are described in a note on sources in the Appendix. The biography is, then, very much the record of the public man, and the nature of the private man must be deduced from it. I have written relatively little of Bruxner’s domestic life because I do not think it especially relevant to his political career; it served as the base, secured and tranquil, from which he ventured forth to battle, and to which he returned for rest and comfort. In an essay at the end of the book I set out my own interpretation of the origins of Bruxner’s political style. I do not claim this to be the only possible interpretation, although I feel it to be the most con­ vincing one. Those who believe that the biographer has no Preface ix business in involving himself in this kind of psychological reconstruction may prefer to pass it by. Tlhere remains the question of standpoint. I had not met Colonel Bruxner before 1959, nor did I know much about him. Nine years later, I would concede that the biography finds him a good man and his party a good thing. It is difficult to avoid some personal involvement with the subject of one’s biography, and perhaps an explicit partisanship is desirable, but in any case I trust that the bias which results from my own membership of the Country Party and affection for its former leader has been offset by my greater understanding of Bruxner’s role and problems. I am grateful to Mr A. W. Bazley for his help in tracing Bruxner’s military career in the records of the Australian War Memorial, and to Mr G. S. Harman, Professor R. S. Parker, and my wife, all of whom read the book in manuscript. But my principal debt is to Sir Michael Bruxner himself, for complying so amicably with my frequent demands on his patience and time. This should not be taken as indicating that the biography is eitlher official or authorised. It is neither, and it is a measure of Sir Michael’s generosity that he has not sought to read, let alone to veto, any of the manuscript. D.A.A. Canberra July 1968 Contents Preface vii 1 The Training of a Rural Leader 1 2 The New Boy 33 3 The True Blues 55 4 Junior Minister 97 5 Defeat and Recovery 125 6 Second in Command 150 7 Minister for Transport 177 8 The Downfall of Stevens 208 9 The One-Man Party 245 10 The Younger Brother as Leader 274 Appendix A Bruxner’s Election Results,1920 to 1959 279 Appendix B Country Party Representation in N.S.W. Coalition Ministries, 1927 to 1941 281 Appendix C Party Strengths in the N.S.W. Legislative Assembly, following General Elections from 1920 to 1959 ' 283 Appendix D A Note on Sources 283 Index 287 Illustrations Plates M. F. Bruxner in 1927 frontispiece facing p. 1 Bruxner with his mother, father, and brother 50 2 Major M. F. Bruxner, D.S.O., in Palestine in 1918 51 3 The True Blues 66 4 The Premier and Deputy Premier of New South Wales 1927-1930 67 5 U.A.P. Leaders 194 6 Bruxner and his team in 1939 J. T. Lang and W. J. McKell 195 7 G. Colin McKellar and Bruxner at aCountry Party conference 210 8 ‘Bruxner Country’ 211 Cartoon P- ‘Bruxner-itis’, 1923 by Hallett 74 Map N. S.W. Country Electorates: The Result of the 1932 Election 148 1 The Training of a Rural Leader Distance and topography defended the green and fertile valleys of the Clarence and Richmond rivers against the white man.