THE PRESS WEDNESDAY, MAY 17, 978. Sir Robert Menzies

Press, 17 May 1978, Page 16

THE PRESS WEDNESDAY, MAY 17, 978. Sir Robert Menzies

Sir Robert Menzies, who died on Monday, was Prime Minister of Australia for so long that it will be difficult for many to think of Australia without thinking about Sir Robert Menzies. He was prominent in — even dominated — Australian politics for much longer. His remarkable ability to get his party re-elected time after time showed him to be a consummate politician. His wit, his skill as a raconteur, and his devotion to Britain and to things British have made him something of a legend. But it was his political durability that had the greatest influence on the Australian nation.

His long period as Prime Minister started just before the high wool prices that were associated with the Korean war. Australia had runaway inflation for some of those years, but it was a time of increasing affluence for many people. Besides prosperity, the Korean war brought Australia the chance to demonstrate its loyalty to its new protector, the United States. These, too, were the years of the Cold War, some of the attitudes of which were preserved longer in Australia than in the United States. Sir Robert Menzies lost few chances to identify the Australian Labour Party with the forces of international communism. His ability to dominate Australian politics was helped by the ineptitude of Dr H. V. Evat, who led the Labour Party. In spite of his idolising democratic institutions and his love of liberties, his style of Government was closer to that expected from a patrician. His eloquence and wit could be scathing; members of his Cabinet paid court to him rather than exchanged views freely with him; and his success and brilliance gave him an arrogance the like of which was not to be seen again in Australian politics until a man of very different persuasions, Gough Whitlam, rose to be Prime Minister.

Sir Robert was Prime Minister in some important years of Australia’s history. Indonesia came to the fore of Australia’s foreign policy thinking, the Commonwealth changed from the old white Commonwealth to a multi-racial organisation, and the United Nations assumed importance. Sir Robert had Mr R. G. Casey (later Lord Casey), as his Foreign Minister for a considerable period, and it was his thinking rather than that of Sir Robert which was influential over Indonesia. Sir Robert did not regard Asian countries kindly. He regretted the passing of the old Commonwealth and at Commonwealth meetings found himself in conflict with Mr Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India. As for the United Nations, Sir Robert considered that it was not a body in which much faith was to be placed. Under Sir Robert’s Prime Ministership, Australia was not hesitant about committing troops to the Vietnam war. It is tempting to think of the Menzies years as an era and his thinking as part of it. But Sir Robert looked back, not forward. His thinking was about a dream of his own. The world had already changed and was continuing to change while he was in power. The huge immigration programmes that were followed during Sir Robert’s time certainly changed Australia, but they were motivated. in part, by the desire to fill up the vastness of Australia lest Asian eyes envied it. Sir Robert’s hopes of a world devoted, as he was, to British ideals, was not possible even when he was Prime Minister. He once tried hard to keep South Africa from leaving the Commonwealth. But it slipped away, just as a great deal of the world in which Sir Robert believed, had slipped away.