Australian Polity, Volume 9 Number 3 - Digital Version

By any fair assessment, Robert Gordon Menzies
has been one of the most illustrious alumni of
the University of Melbourne. President of the
Student Representatives’ Council, editor of the University
magazine, he graduated with first class honours in law
before completing a Masters’ degree. Menzies read with
the future Chief Justice of Australia, Sir Owen Dixon,
and was admitted to the Victorian Bar, specialising in
constitutional law. He was appointed a King’s Counsel
in 1929, the year after being elected to the Victorian
Legislative Council. He subsequently served in the
Legislative Assembly, becoming Attorney-General and
Deputy Premier.
Robert Menzies was elected to the Australian Parliament
in 1934 and was appointed Attorney-General in the
Government of Joseph Lyons. Upon the death of Lyons
in 1939, Menzies became Prime Minister of Australia,
serving in the role until 1941. He was one of the founders
of the Liberal Party in 1944, subsequently serving as
Prime Minister from 1949 – 1966, Australia’s longest
serving leader.
Given Menzies place in the life of Australia, it is not
unexpected that the University of Melbourne would
assist the establishment of a Robert Menzies Institute at
the campus. Although not as prolific as US presidential
libraries, there are similar bodies focussing on the life
and contributions of other Australian Prime Ministers,
both Liberal and Labor.
Apparently, this is an afront to a group of leftwing students
at the university who organised a campaign to block the
establishment of the Institute.
of a biography on Paul Keating, writes in Robert Menzies
– the art of politics, Menzies was hardly alone in his views
at the time, noting that in a letter to Neville Chamberlain,
“Menzies was not uncritical of Nazi Germany. Yet he
concluded this letter with a degree of praise for Hitler
who had lifted ‘the German spirit’ among his people.
Menzies reflected the views of the British and
Australian governments, which thought that the
complaints of the Sudeten Germans were legitimate,
and that Hitler’s ambitions were limited. This was a
significant misjudgement. But Menzies, like Lyons and
Chamberlain, was far from alone in making it. John
Curtin, leading a Labor Party with strongly pacifist
elements, also supported appeasement.
Bramston is not uncritical of Menzies, but his more
nuanced view of history and the challenges facing Britain
and Australia at the time are lost on Mr Joyce.
Perhaps the most astonishing claim to condemn Menzies
is because of the Liberal Party’s funding of universities.
Joyce seems to forget that it was the Menzies government
which significantly expanded the tertiary education
sector in Australia.
What is most disappointing is that a student of the
University of Melbourne prefers to cancel debate and
discussion rather than promote it. Better not have an
Institute that provides the opportunity to research and
discuss Menzies’ contributions, even to criticise them,
according to the likes of Joyce.
Writing in the Jacobin magazine, the self-described
“leading voice of the American left”, one of the protesters,
a Charlie Joyce, accused Menzies of not being a
true liberal, but a “ruling-class crusader and a racist
authoritarian who was implacably opposed to workers.”
Adopting the usual leftwing trope, Joyce writes that
“Menzies subsequently became a committed advocate
of appeasing the Nazi regime,” as well as Japan. For this
and other ‘crimes’, such as being a monarchist, Menzies
must be cancelled.
But as Troy Bramston, a former Labor adviser and author
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