Short sketches of Aussie heads of government from Federation through Kevin Rudd’s first term, nearly all by different biographers. Prime ministers up to World War I were builders; through World War II adapted Australia’s role in the changing British empire; through the early 1970s economic growth was balanced with social cohesion; and through the Howard era Australia was ‘reentering’ the global economy and engaging with Asia. Nearly all tenures ended in political failure; the Treasurer is frequently PM in waiting. Many of the biographers, notably McIntyre and Day, are Howard’s ‘black arm-banders’.
• Deakin was the outstanding early PM (despite similarities with Barton), enshrining pro-British views, White Australian immigration to quell labor unrest, the balancing of export-led economy and domestic protection – the ‘national mastery of material circumstances’. Oddly, none of the contributors identify Welsh’s observation that the Federation constitution contained virtually all elements of the welfare state
• Fisher is credited for irreversible integration of Labor Party as a governing party, by dint of pragmatism
• Hughes prioritized centralized control for national, economic efficiency – nevermore to be trust by Labor, never by business
• Menzies’ longevity inherently involved failings, but do not cast him as fossilized – he he had longstanding ability to express, guide the beliefs of common Australians and was a man of principle. It’s remarkable his successors weren’t Labor. The collection suffers from the decision to treat him only once, in the WWII years
• Curtin renounced revolution for responsibility. Chifley took advantage of wartime controls and postwar credit, but overstepped h in attempting to nationalize banking
• McEwen built up Trade to rival Treasury, was the apotheosis of protection
• The Labor Party’s success over 1980s-2000s was founded in Whitlam’s administrative and political reforms. His economic beliefs were founded in 1960s Keynesianism, however, and his budgets were unsuccessful
• Fraser was ultimately orthodox and therefore reliant on maneuver disguised by Olympian demeanor
• Hawke’s reforms make him the greatest PM since Menzies, notwithstanding his fallout with Keating. The latter was a brilliant Treasurer but more partisan as head of government, albeit (apparently) the first of the Asianists
• Howard’s biographer opines he changed the country economically for the better and socially for the worse. His challenging multiculturalism as concluding there’s no value in social cohesion is left unaddressed