Australasian Convention Debates 1898, p. 1739), there may have been no
federated Australia if it had not been for Protestant activists in the wider
Australian community, and their strong support for Federation. With the
closeness of the vote in the key state of NSW, where Federation was rejected
first time around, it may well have been the enthusiasm of these Protestant
activists for Federation which enabled the vote to succeed in that state.
Part of the high point of Protestant political and social activity in Australia
during this period was the creation of the Australian Labor Party, although it
was generally recognized, in NSW at least, that Protestants supported the Free
Trade Liberals. Catholics had tended to support the Protectionist Party, which
made sense, as the doctrine of free trade had very strong roots in a particular
form of Protestant theology (Melleuish 2014a). The ideological situation of
the 1890s was quite confused; the Free Traders dabbled for a time with
introducing a land tax, and George Reid’s abolition of most tariffs in NSW,
combined with his introduction of income tax, benefited the working classes.
Only with Reid’s anti-socialism campaign of 1906 did the ideological divisions
assume a degree of clarity. The early Labor Party attracted many strong Prot-
estants, including two members of the Churches of Christ, but over time it
shed many of these people, including future Liberal Prime Minister, Sir Joseph
Cook (Linder 1997–98). At the same time, the old Protectionist Party began to
disintegrate.
Judith Brett (2002) has argued that when fusion between the Free Trade and
Protectionist Liberals came in 1909, the reason many Protectionists joined
with the Free Traders had nothing to do with ideology but much to do with
conscience. The Labor Party asserted the supremacy of party once a decision
had been made. For many Protestants this was inconsistent with the role of
conscience, which is why so many of them, such as Cook, left the party in the
1890s. It is worth emphasizing that it was Protestants whom Labor shed, from
the 1890s through to the conscription battles of 1917. It was not just a matter
of conscience; being Protestant meant being pro-empire and pro-British,
which did not bode well with increasing radical socialist opposition towards
the war within the labour movement (Linder 1997–98). This is not to say that
Labor politicians of Catholic origin could not be pro-British and pro-empire,
as in the case of John Curtin (Curran 2011), but it is also interesting that
Curtin was buried by a Presbyterian minister (Williams 2013, p. 107).
But perhaps it is the enigma of Sir Robert Menzies who best illustrates the
coming fate of the liberal–British–Protestant connection in the second half of
the twentieth century. Menzies is reputed not to have been a particularly
religious man in terms of such things as churchgoing. But of all the prime
ministers of Australia he was the one whose speeches owe the most to the
Bible. Menzies was a master of the spoken word and he used his mastery to
support liberal ideals and the Britishness of the British Empire. He drank
Greg Melleuish and Stephen A. Chavura