unionists, fought to improve conditions for the
poorer section of the population by means of leg-
islation, but in practice it was not a Marxist–
socialist party and supported a privately owned,
free-enterprise economy with a minimum of state
financial controls. At state and federal level the dif-
ferences between the parties were more a matter
of personalities, emphasis and attitudes than any-
thing profoundly ideological. Labor’s long period
in opposition from 1949 to 1972 increased fac-
tional tensions within the party, but it achieved
a sustained period in office from 1972 to 1975
and after 1983. The Country Party has its base in
the rural areas and represents the farmers and
their special interests. Vehemently anti-socialist, it
is a minority party but as coalition partner of the
Liberal Party its influence has been greater than
its numbers. The Liberal Party too is largely con-
servative, reluctant to extend welfare and keen
to prevent the trade unions from exerting too
much influence. A small Communist Party has its
strongest support among some trade unionists.
On the whole, Australian politics revolves less
around ideologies than around the appeal of indi-
vidual politicians and special-interest groups.
As prime minister, John Curtin led a Labor
government which earned Australia’s gratitude for
the successful prosecution of the Second World
War. Welfare provisions were modestly extended
and Canberra’s federal muscle in policy making
was greatly strengthened in 1942 by taking over
from the states the sole right of imposing income
tax. The states remained jealous of their consti-
tutional rights and the tug of war between them
and the federal government continued as a recur-
ring feature of post-war Australian politics.
As early as December 1942 Curtin’s govern-
ment made plans for a better post-war Australia,
setting up a department of post-war reconstruc-
tion. The guiding inspiration was more Roosevelt’s
New Deal and Keynes than socialist doctrine. Able
young economists worked on a masterplan under
Ben Chifley, the minister responsible. It was
Chifley who on Curtin’s death in 1945 became
prime minister. What haunted Australians, as it
haunted the rest of the Western world, was the
prospect of a return to the 1930s and mass unem-
ployment. So planning was undertaken in relation
to housing, farming, industry and training.
Australians were to be assured that they would
have work and adequate housing for the family.
The extension of welfare provision was more mod-
est: pensions for widows were granted, but persis-
tent efforts to extend state cover against illness,
even the minimal proposals for free medicines, fell
foul of the powerful medical lobby, which fought
tooth and nail against any form of ‘socialised medi-
cine’ and which especially abhorred the model of
Britain’s National Health Service, the most
important achievement of Britain’s post-war
Labour government.
Ben Chifley’s attempts to extend welfare bene-
fits and to maintain in peacetime the federal pow-
ers Canberra had secured in war were challenged
by the states, whose claims were generally support-
ed by a conservative High Court. The most impor-
tant of Chifley’s reforms was to secure government
control over monetary policy by nationalising
Australia’s central bank, the Commonwealth Bank,
in 1945, though an unpopular and unnecessary
attempt to extend control over all private banks
was eventually struck down by the High Court.
Conditions were favourable for the Australian
economy in the post-war years, there being a high
demand for its wool, meat and wheat, which
ensured good prices, growing prosperity and
labour shortages. Chifley’s sound financial man-
agement and limited federal engagement in indus-
try left the bulk of the Australian economy in
private hands. Unlike the British Labour Party, the
Australian Labor Party was ready to work with and
profit from private enterprise, attempting only to
regulate the market and rejecting nationalisation.
Chifley’s Labor Government would have no
truck either with militant trade unionism, which
was now recovering after the hardship and
exploitation of working men before the war.
Strikes were blamed on the communists, and the
opposition tried to tar Chifley’s cautious and prag-
matic administration with this brush. But the
prime minister continued to insist that settlement
of trade union demands should be reached
through the Arbitration Court, which he refused
to dismantle. The Arbitration Court was conserv-
ative, as was clearly shown for instance in its rejec-
tion of equal pay for women in 1950, but granted