A Liberal State

In a speech launching his new book, David Kemp reflects on the key principles underpinning our nation’s liberal project and the challenges faced in bringing that project to fruition. The following is an edited transcript of the speech.

I’m delighted that Josh Frydenberg agreed to launch this book. Josh, as the occupant of the seat of Kooyong, is the heir of Robert Menzies. He is the person to whom the torch in Australia has been handed. So thank you so much, Josh, for your generous comments about myself and about the book.

The book actually has a plot to it. And as we're now well past the end date of the period covered in the book, I don't mind revealing the plot. And the plot is this: that by the time Robert Menzies entered parliament (and it was first of all the state parliament) Australia's liberal goals were under threat, and Menzies decided to do something about it. The ‘plot’ is what happened next.

Menzies came into parliament knowing that achieving a liberal country, in a democracy where politicians are surrounded all the time by pressure groups of varying power, that want to see their own interests advanced, is actually an enormously difficult task.

Australia is a unique country, and achieving liberal goals is the great task that liberals in Australia have set themselves since the country's foundation. Australia is a country founded at the time of the eighteenth century Enlightenment. It was the first country in the world to be able to embody not only the historic political experience of Britain in terms of the rule of law and parliamentary government and civil liberties, but the first to be able to try to put into practice the ideals of the Enlightenment without the kind of historic impediments that existed elsewhere.

Australia’s founding ideas included, firstly, that laws should be based on the principle of the public interest - the shared interests of everybody, - and not just the interests of the powerful, the aristocracy, the powerful economic monopolies. Laws should be in the interest of everybody.

Another one of those ideas was that freedom, economic freedom, actually works. That the idea, held by the governments of the 18th century, that somehow or other you made your country wealthy by sinking other people's treasure ships, granting monopolies and telling people how to spend their capital was foolishness, and the way to economic prosperity, indeed to the abolition of poverty, was to mobilise the energies of every individual person in looking after their own self-interest within a framework of just laws. A good society had to be organised around individual people and personal freedom.

And the third great idea whose implications I trace in these books is the idea on which William Wilberforce, the Christian evangelical, based his campaign against slavery: that regardless of the colour of your skin, we are all part of one common humanity.

Now, these were revolutionary ideas, and Australia was the first great attempt to put them into practice without the problems of the medieval regulation of Europe or the violent birth of Canada or the revolution in France or the powerful ruling aristocracy of Great Britain. Australia was able to start afresh on that enlightenment liberal project.

Menzies, because of his background in the law and because he came from a liberal family understood that. But when he entered parliament, he could see that there was an enormous risk of this project going off track, that the interests that had managed to get so many privileges for themselves - protected industries, the trade unions with their legal privileges under compulsory arbitration, white Australia – together with the rise of extreme socialist ideas, were running counter to the liberal project and undermining it. And it wasn't a surprise to him that when the Great Depression struck there was a loss of faith in a liberal society. Menzies went into politics to lead the revival of liberalism.

This book gives an interpretation of what Menzies did to achieve that – an interpretation that is so far not otherwise represented in the literature on the history of Australia. It paints a picture of Menzies as the person who, by sticking to principle, standing up to the special interests, resigning over principle at times, because he was horrified at what the government was proposing to do, he was the person who stood up against an anti-capitalist, anti-competitive, anti-liberal, conventional wisdom that had gripped Australia under Jack Lang, and the Curtin and Chifley governments, each of whom supported special privileges and socialism, and said, "There's another way to revive Australia." He stood for liberal principles throughout the 1930s.His great achievement was the formation of the Liberal Party in 1944, and he devoted his election speeches to spelling out what the principles of liberalism were.

Essentially, what Menzies said was: "I will give you an instrument, a political instrument - the Liberal Party - that will allow you to pursue the values of liberalism in Australia in a democratic setting and in a parliamentary setting. And I will equip you to deal with that interest pressure, and I'll give you the case to make." And that's the liberal case that he spent so much time during his election campaigns explaining to people. Through the Liberal party, through party discipline, through having a party with a philosophy, a party based on individual membership, not vested interests, he believed they would be able to control that special interest pressure battle that surrounds every politician and to lead public opinion.

He set out, in his sixteen and a half years as Prime Minister after 1949, to implement public interest policies that were based on liberal principles. He opposed sectarianism and religious hatred. He detested racist attitudes. He sought to get rid of politics based on the class war - he called it the ‘foul doctrine of the class war’, and through his policies, his leadership, he absolutely transformed the political culture that he inherited in 1949, so that by 1966, Australia was a completely different country.

He introduced historic education reforms, a huge immigration program, policies to encourage private enterprise and private effort, but the agenda of the issues he confronted hadn't been completed when he left office.

One of the things I try to do in this book, and again, I think you won't find this anywhere else, is that he tried to erode the fear of people of a different colour that had underpinned white Australia, doing so through his immigration program, the Colombo plan for Asian students, welcoming students from Asia to Australia and establishing good relations with Asian countries. He had already opposed racist propaganda against the Japanese in the wartime. Under Menzies all Aboriginal Australians were guaranteed the vote in federal elections in 1962.

He also set out to undermine industry protection. He never, so far as I know, gave a speech in defence of it. Every speech he gave about industry protection had as an underlying message, "Isn't it funny how businessmen are always trying to get some special privilege for themselves rather than being competitive and efficient?" And the tariff board was asked to come up with economically sound decisions. He knew, of course, that they couldn't. And of course that was ultimately the end of industry protection. White Australia went within a year of Menzies’ retirement.

In such ways Menzies, in addition to the reforms he did implement, set out to erode deeply entrenched historic illiberal policies and attitudes, that had arisen in Australia as a result of democratic politics and socialist thinking, including eroding support for them in the culture and the community. Of course, those who came after him picked up that banner and went forward with more liberal policies: Holt and Gorton and McMahon. The government that did more than anyone else to do that I think was the Howard government, and the present government is seeking to carry on that tradition.

So that's the plot. This is how one man, by standing for political ideas and not being frightened to advocate them, making the case against an overwhelming conventional wisdom and political correctness, turned Australia around and rescued the liberal project. And I think that's an exciting story. I've written this book, and the previous books, so that those who want to find out what difficulties the liberal project faced and how they were overcome can discover what happened and perhaps gain an insight into how the world actually works.

Politics in the end, as John Howard said, as Robert Menzies said, is a battle of ideas. And if you don't know what the ideas are, you're not going to win the battle. So this book sets out in a very simple way, I think, what these key ideas are. Not in an abstract way that may be suitable for professional economists or political scientists or philosophers, but in a way that is both accurate and interesting for the ordinary reader. It's not a book of philosophy, but it does attempt to explain ideas such as those of Keynes, Popper, Hayek, Friedman or Ayn Rand which influenced the way liberal and other political leaders understood how to achieve liberal ends.

So I think it's an exciting story. And it's a great saga, this fourth volume, and the man at the centre of it, the hero of this volume is Robert Menzies. He has a very good claim to be the greatest Australian, because he went out there into the public square, he fought for what he believed, and he won the battle. And the modern Liberal Party is the heir of that victory.

One important theme through this book, which I won't elaborate on now, is the dispossession of indigenous people and the rise of Indigenous leaders during the twentieth century who were able to claim the equal rights of citizenship they were promised at the time of the British arrival. How they were treated by the British when they arrived is spelled out in the first volume. In this volume, there's a chapter on Paul Hasluck, who accompanied the Western Australian Royal Commission to the North of the state in 1934. He later became the Minister for Territories, and therefore the minister responsible for indigenous affairs in the Northern Territory. It also tells the story of some remarkable Aboriginal leadership that occurred.

I’d like to thank the Cormack Foundation, first of all. Fred Grimwade and Peter Hay are here, and Charles Goode, who's not here, for their support for these books. That support is deeply appreciated. I want to thank Nick Cater, without whom none of this would've happened. It was Nick who spotted the project and decided that he would do what he could to get it to the public. Someone who isn't here tonight, but I'm going to mention, because plenty who are here know him, is Denis White, a close friend of mine from Monash University who gave me the benefit of his thought and put many hours into reading drafts. I also thank John Nethercote, who was meticulous in his reading of the manuscripts.

I want to thank Melbourne University Publishing particularly Cathy Smith, the overall editor of this series, who did a lot of work on getting the permissions for the illustrations. The range of illustrations gives you a sense of the book. I also thank Cathryn Game, who was the text editor and who's read every word of every manuscript and questioned me about quite a number of them. I appreciate her efforts.

And of course, I particularly thank my family to whom I've dedicated these volumes. My brother, Rod, and my sister, Rosemary, who are both here tonight. Particularly my wife, Ann Marie. She's been tremendously self denying in allowing me to spend so much time writing. Darling, I thank you very much for all the support you've given me in writing these books. You've been a tremendous inspiration and continue to be so.

Finally, thank you all for coming along tonight, I realise that a number of you have made considerable efforts to be here, and I do appreciate that. I do hope that you find this book both readable and enlivening and enthralling, but if you really want to get into the project, my project, not the liberal project, start with volume one.

This is an edited transcript of a speech delivered by the Hon Dr David Kemp AC at the launch of his new book A Liberal State. The book was launched by the Treasurer, the Hon Josh Frydenberg MP in Melbourne on 04 March. Purchase the book here. Watch the launch event below.