Prime Ministers of Australia

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/wiki/Prime Ministers of Australiawork

A Relatively Brief Summary of Each Australian Prime Minister.

• Edmund Barton (Protectionist Party) was Australia's first prime minister, from 1901 to 1903. Conservative, rich and racist -- the first law his government passed was the foundation of the White Australia Policy, which effectively banned non-white people from immigrating to Australia. Media nickname "Toby Tosspot", owing to his fondness for the bottle. Resigned to become a High Court judge. He was actually pretty terrible as a Prime Minister, lazy, ineffectual and not all that clever, but he was The First. He was a pretty so-so High Court Judge, too.
• Alfred Deakin (Protectionist Party) succeeded Barton, and was Prime Minister on three non-consecutive occasions between 1903 and 1910. Among people familiar with history, Deakin is remembered rather more favourably than Barton. His policies were small-l liberal, but no one remembers that. Deakin is also known for believing he could commune with dead politicians, who advised him on tactics.
  • (1903-1904) The first time he was Prime Minister, however, he didn't really do much at all. He won re-election in 1903, but a swing to Labour gave all three parties near-equal representation in the House. He ended up resigning in frustration after a year.
• Chris Watson (Labour Party), Prime Minister for four months in 1904 after Deakin's resignation. He was the ALP's first ever Prime Minister, and the first Prime Minister to come from a Labour Party in the entire world... but didn't really do much in his brief tenure. Also noteworthy for having become Prime Minister without being an Australian citizen or even a British (Empire) subject: he was born in Valparaíso (Chile) to a German-Chilean father and a New Zealander mother, and was never naturalised.
• George Reid (Free Trade Party), Prime Minister 1904-1905. Formed government during a brief period where the unofficial alliance between the Protectionists and Labour fell apart -- spent a much longer period of time as Leader of the Opposition. He was of a liberal bent, but again no one remembers that. Later became Australia's first High Commissioner in London.
• Alfred Deakin again (Protectionist Party).
  • (1905-1908) Fifteen months and two prime ministers after first resigning the position, Deakin became PM again. Successfully passed protectionist legislation... after which there wasn't much left that distinguished his party from the Free Traders/Anti-Socialists, resulting in them losing supporters. Managed to hold onto minority government after the December 1906 election despite having won the least number of seats of the three parties, but it didn't last another two years.
• Andrew Fisher (Labour Party) was also Prime Minister on three non-consecutive occasions between 1908 and 1915. Left-wing and reformist, although still in favour of conscription, he was one of Labour's most successful Prime Ministers in the early 20th century.
  • (1908-1909) Fisher first became PM of a minority government in 1908 after forcing Deakin out. This time around, he only lasted seven months before Deakin took back the government.
• Alfred Deakin yet again (Commonwealth Liberal Party).
  • (1909-1910) With the Protectionist Party bleeding supporters to Labour and to the Anti-Socialists, and most of their support being directed to Deakin himself, Deakin organised a merger of the Protectionists and the Anti-Socialists into the "Commonwealth Liberal Party" with himself as leader, giving them a majority and effectively creating Australia's modern two-party system. It backfired: a good deal of liberal Protectionists felt that Deakin had sold out his principles, and voted him out in the next election.
• Andrew Fisher again (Labor Party -- they dropped the "u" during his tenure, in 1912).
  • (1910-1913) Won big in the 1910 election, becoming the first person to be elected the head of a majority government in Australia. Passed a huge number of reforms, only one of which was officially changing his party's name to a misspelling. Lost the 1913 election by one seat.
• Joseph Cook (Commonwealth Liberal Party), Prime Minister from 1913 to 1914. Former member of the Free Trade Party. Governed with a one-seat majority and a hostile senate -- this led to a double-dissolution election after one year, which he lost.
• Andrew Fisher yet again (Labor Party).
  • (1914-1915) Having won back the position of Prime Minister, he didn't keep it very long, resigning after a year.
• Billy Hughes (Labor Party, then National Labor Party, then Nationalist Party) succeeded Fisher. He was kicked out of the Labor Party in 1916 over the issue of conscription (which he supported and most of the party didn't), but stayed Prime Minister by merging his small band of expelled supporters into the Commonwealth Liberal Party to form the Nationalist Party, which formed the new government and won a huge majority in 1917. Hughes stayed Prime Minister until 1923, when his party dumped him as leader so that they could enter into coalition with the Country Party to stay in government (the Country Party being leery of Hughes's Labor background). Hughes spent his entire career jumping from party to party -- Labor to National Labor to Nationalist to independent to Australian to United Australia to independent to Liberal. He sat in Parliament for fifty-one years, a record.
  • Ever wondered how Australia got cool Pacific colonies like New Guinea when it was still part of the British Empire? Billy Hughes annoyed David Lloyd George into giving Australia the territories during the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.
    • Hughes was also quite racist, and a vehement supporter of the White Australia Policy. At the Paris Peace Conference he was the most vocal opponent of Japan's Racial Equality Proposal (acting as a cat's paw for David Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson, who also opposed the proposal but less openly); the proposal's resultant defeat made Japan quite annoyed.
    • Bizarrely, Hughes genuinely feared an ethnic German uprising in Australia in the midst of WWI, and even had the police draw him secret escape and counter-militia measures, for when the German hordes descended upon the government. Unsurprisingly, and as the police consistently told him, this was totally pointless. Most ethnic Germans had been in Australia for generations. On another note, Hughes also shot invective at Irish and Catholic Australians during his pro-conscription campaign, despite the fact that huge numbers of Irish Australians actively volunteered for service.
    • Hughes was also instrumental in insisting that the Treaty of Versailles should oblige Germany to pay war reparations, ganging up with French PM Georges Clemenceau to browbeat Lloyd George into backing the measure. Reparations, of course, played a huge part in the collapse of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Nazism. If only Woodrow Wilson's style had been less Holier Than Thou professorial lecturing and more annoying politicking....
• Stanley Bruce (Nationalist Party), Prime Minister 1923 to 1929. When the Country Party forced Billy Hughes to resign as PM as a price for entering coalition with the Nationalists, Bruce was picked as his replacement. He was a conservative, stuck-up, condescending bastard who constantly wore an expression of deep disdain for those around him. Bruce ended up being brought down by the man he replaced: in 1929, Hughes and a few other Nationalists crossed the floor on a crucial bill and were expelled from the Nationalists, forcing a federal election -- an election which Bruce not only lost, but in which he became the first sitting Prime Minister to actually lose his own seat in Parliament.
• James Scullin (Labor Party), Prime Minister 1929 to 1932, and the first Catholic PM. Was sworn in two days before the Wall Street Crash, which made his entire tenure as Prime Minister all about the Great Depression. Ended up acting as Treasurer as well after the first one, Ted Theodore, was forced to resign in scandal. Spent the entire second half of 1930 in England begging for a loan; he left James Fenton as acting PM and Joseph Lyons as acting Treasurer, who drastically changed government policy to cut spending while he was away. After returning he tried to reinstate Theodore as Treasurer -- as a result, his party suffered two splits at once: a faction of rightists (who included Fenton and Lyons) thought Theodore was too radical, and defected to the opposition; another faction (known as "Lang Labor", led by Jack Lang) thought Theodore wasn't radical enough. An early election was forced and Scullin lost in landslide.
• Joseph Lyons (United Australia Party), Prime Minister 1932 to 1939. Formerly a Labor minister under Scullin, he left the party along with four other MPs in 1931 -- they combined with the Nationalist Party plus three other independent MPs to form the United Australia Party (the Liberal Party's immediate predecessor). Is generally remembered favourably. The first Australian prime minister to die in office.
• Sir Earle Page (Country Party), served as caretaker Prime Minister for nineteen days in 1939, taking over after Lyons' death. Only served as PM until the United Australia Party, as the dominant party in the Coalition, could elect a new leader -- who turned out to be Robert Menzies, whom Sir Earle hated. The second-longest-serving federal MP in Australia, after fellow former PM Billy Hughes. Also the only sitting Prime Minister to have been knighted (several others were also knighted, but only after their times in office).
• Robert Menzies (United Australia Party), Prime Minister on two non-consecutive occasions between 1939 and 1966, and Australia's longest-serving PM. Hugely anti-communist, and massive Britphile -- once proclaimed that Australians were "British to [their] bootstraps", and had ambitions to become Prime Minister of the UK someday (obviously, never fulfilled). He ended up founding the Liberal Party, and is regarded as a founding father of modern Australian conservatism.
  • Menzies conservative? Maybe compared to today's standards, but at the time he was regarded as far more 'small l' liberal than the Labor Party. He would later say about the party he founded "We took the name 'Liberal' because we were determined to be a progressive party, willing to make experiments, in no sense reactionary but believing in the individual, his rights, and his enterprise, and rejecting the socialist panacea."
    • Note that the 'individual' referred to here is the 'White' individual specifically, as Menzies passionately believed in the White Australia policy. Whatever his economic progressivism, Menzies was a dedicated social conservative. Notably, he did not see a difference between Australians and Britons. In 1950, his Australia Day speech extolled the greatness of the British Empire, and he even told his crowd ‘You and I are Australians. We are also British. We do not and cannot think of the people of the other British nations as a foreign people’.
    • Whether he was considered "conservative" at the time or not, modern Australian conservatives do still look up to Menzies in that way.
  • (1939-1941) His first time as Prime Minister, however, wasn't so successful. He first took over soon after Lyons died, but proved to be not very good as a wartime Prime Minister and was unpopular fairly quickly. Held onto government after the 1940 election returned a hung parliament, but was forced to resign the following year.
    • He had the nickname "Pig Iron Bob" due to his promotions of iron exports to Japan in the thirties. The joke (and it says a lot about Australians that this is a joke) is that the Japanese gave it back soon after.
• Arthur Fadden (Country Party), became Prime Minister in 1941 after Menzies' resignation, despite being from the Country Party and not the UAP. He only lasted 40 days before the independents who held the balance of power switched their support to Labor -- which may have been some small consolation to Menzies.
• John Curtin (Labor Party), Prime Minister 1941 to 1945, and also the first known agnostic PM. Led Australia during World War II, and is credited with starting Australia's close alliance with the US. Considered one of our great Prime Ministers, for his war-time leadership, great oratory and general sympathy for the poor guy. Had ill health all through his tenure and ended up being the second Australian Prime Minister to die in office.
• Frank Forde (Labor Party), caretaker Prime Minister for seven days in 1945 after Curtin's death -- the shortest tenure in the history of the country. Naturally, he isn't remembered for much else. Was also remembered for being the longest-lived Prime Minister (having lived to age 92 years, 194 days) until his record was surpassed by Gough Whitlam in 2009.
• Ben Chifley (Labor Party), Prime Minister 1945 to 1949. Became Prime Minister one week after John Curtin died, and was re-elected the following year (defeating former Prime Minister Robert Menzies, the first leader of the Liberal Party). The last truly socialist Prime Minister of Australia, and one of the most influential. Is something of a hero of the Australian left. Ended up suffering a huge backlash in 1948 for trying to nationalise the banks and was branded a commie, and lost in landslide to Menzies in a rematch election the following year.
  • Chifley is best remembered for his "light on the hill" speech, which is seen as encapsulating the Australian Labor movement's ideals and aspirations. The appropriate section is quoted below:

Chifley: I try to think of the Labor movement, not as putting an extra sixpence into somebody's pocket, or making somebody Prime Minister or Premier, but as a movement bringing something better to the people, better standards of living, greater happiness to the mass of the people. We have a great objective -- the light on the hill -- which we aim to reach by working the betterment of mankind not only here but anywhere we may give a helping hand. If it were not for that, the Labor movement would not be worth fighting for. If the movement can make someone more comfortable, give to some father or mother a greater feeling of security for their children, a feeling that if a depression comes there will be work, that the government is striving its hardest to do its best, then the Labor movement will be completely justified.

• • Chifley is also notable for instituting the first mass-migration program to include non-British immigrants, with Australia under his watch accepting large numbers of refugees from across post-war Europe. However, as the migration program was primarily motivated by Australia being underpopulated and a fear that they needed to "populate or perish", special care was taken to ensure that all the immigrants were suitably white and theoretically able to be culturally assimilated. Still, it was a first step.
• Robert Menzies again (Liberal Party), for a long time this time.
  • (1949-1966) Founded the Liberal Party while out of power, merging the United Australia Party with several minor parties, and became its first leader. Was widely regarded as unelectable until the whole debacle in 1948, after which he went on to win back the Prime Ministership. Cruised through his time as PM without serious opposition due to the ALP-DLP split. It was during his tenure, in 1962, that the right to vote in federal elections was extended to indigenous Australians. He lasted forever and ever and ever, governing for 17 years straight and finally not so much resigning as ascending to Camelot.
    • He also made one of the classic heckler putdowns:

Heckler: I wouldn't vote for you if you were the Archangel Gabriel! Menzies: If I were the Archangel Gabriel, you wouldn't be in my constituency.

• • • It was also during the post-war period that Menzies staunchly resisted attempts to from the Department of Immigration to rollback the White Australia Policy. When in 1964 one of his ministers, Hubert Opperman, argued the policy was based on discrimination Menzies argued discrimination against non-Whites was 'the right sort of discrimination'. Menzies was essentially the last gasp for this rigid race-based ideology, as Holt and following Prime Ministers were open enough further ease restrictions on Asians and other non-White people, and drop the interchangeability of 'British' and 'Australian'.
• Harold Holt (Liberal Party) -- Prime Minister from 1966 to 1967, taking over after Menzies' retirement and winning re-election later that year. Didn't make much of a mark during his relatively short tenure: he was mainly known for being a strong supporter of the Vietnam War (which was popular at the time), expanding Australia's troop commitment and coming up with the quote "All the way with LBJ." What he's much more famous for nowadays is how he died -- or rather, how he disappeared without a trace. One day in December 1967, after a few drinks and a tough day at the office, Harold Holt plunged into the surf at Portsea to impress a woman generally considered his mistress, and was never seen again.
  • And in true Australian spirit, in Melbourne we named a council swimming pool after him.
  • Harold Holt's death was the subject of many conspiracy theories that continue to this day. Theories range from him having deliberately committed suicide, to having faked his own death, to having been kidnapped in the water by a Chinese submarine.
    • And some Aussies love mocking the conspiracy theories.
• John McEwen (Country Party), caretaker Prime Minister after Holt's disappearance from 1967 to 1968... well, actually it was only 23 days, but it lasted over the New Year. It was expected that the Holt's deputy leader William McMahon would take over as PM in short order -- but McEwen, who hated McMahon, officially said "No way in hell" and refused to let McMahon's candidacy even be considered. Eventually, the job went to...
• John Gorton (Liberal Party), Prime Minister 1968 to 1971, and the first known atheist PM. Gorton eventually got the job of Prime Minister after a lot of factional in-fighting within the Coalition over who'd take over. Gorton ended up losing much of his initial popularity, just scraping re-election in 1969 and losing a leadership challenge to William McMahon 18 months later.
  • Gorton was Prime Minister during the Lunar landings of 1969. He also presided over the greatest loosening of censorship laws Australia has ever seen (spear-headed by Minister for Communications and his good mate, Don Chipp). And as a youth, one of his schoolmates was Errol Flynn.
• William McMahon (Liberal Party), Prime Minister 1971 to 1972. After being barred from becoming Prime Minister in 1967 and with an increasingly-unpopular John Gorton in the top job, McMahon finally seized his chance to become PM after McEwen's retirement. Never actually won an election: he became PM through a leadership challenge and lost the election the following year. William McMahon is generally remembered for being the father of actor Julian McMahon, for rumours that he was gay, and for being the guy who lost a federal election to Labor after 23 years in power.
• Gough Whitlam (Labor Party), Prime Minister from 1972 to 1975 and oldest still-living former PM. Made an astonishing number of reforms during his brief tenure. Huge increases in education funding, universal health care, decriminalisation of homosexual acts, withdrawal of troops from Vietnam, the complete public abandonment of the White Australia Policy, introducing the Racial Discrimination Act, granting Aboriginal land rights, ambitious new cultural policies, urban renewal projects for Australia's impoverished communities, and free tertiary education. Faced several scandals in government and severe inflation, owing largely to the fact that his ministers (none of whom had ever held government before) wanted to accomplish all their projects as quickly as possible and damn the consequences -- in his own words, "Crash or crash through". In 1975, a hostile senate refused to pass the government supply bill (i.e. the budget) unless an early election was held. Governor-General John Kerr broke the face-off by firing Whitlam, appointing Opposition Leader Malcolm Fraser as caretaker PM. Though Whitlam advised supporters to "maintain the rage", Fraiser won the election by a landslide a month later. The left adores Whitlam for his reforms (and despises John Kerr), while the right hates him with a passion. He's still alive, and as of January 2009 is also officially the longest-lived Prime Minister of Australia to date.
• Malcolm Fraser (Liberal Party), Prime Minister from 1975 to 1983. Won the 1975 election against Whitlam after getting media support from Rupert Murdoch's papers, the numerous scandals by Whitlam government ministers, and giving the reassurance that, unlike Gough, you could trust him not to change too much too quickly. His time as PM isn't approved of by the left or right -- the left revile his government because of his role in "The Dismissal", while the right regard his government as a wasted opportunity because he wasn't enough like Margaret Thatcher. Since being voted out of office has become more left-wing in his views (or maybe he was always just a repressed small-l liberal) and has patched things up with Gough. These days, the Liberal Party consider him a dirty hippie, while the left still hate him. Malcolm needs a hug.
  • No.
  • He gets respect from liberals (not Liberal party Liberals that is, the other (not mutually exclusive) kind) who respect his humanitarianism, particularly his embrace of (following Vietnam) what is likely the largest single intake of Asian refugees the country has ever seen (similar refugees in the modern day are locked up, often for years, while security goes through paperwork).
• Bob Hawke (Labor Party), Prime Minister 1983 to 1991, elected with a landslide majority less than a month after becoming Labor leader. Famous for his blokeiness: he held the world record for drinking an entire yard glass of beer (eleven seconds, during his days at Oxford), and after Australia's win in the 1983 America's Cup he proclaimed "Any boss who sacks a bloke because he doesn't turn up for work today is a bum!" After decades of almost unbroken defeats, Hawke developed an innovative new strategy for the Labor Party: be the Liberal Party instead. Hawke actually presided over the most extensive and thorough regime of deregulation and privatization the Australian economy has ever seen, before or since. Even centrist and leftist academic economists accept the benefits brought by his reforms. Defeated in a leadership challenge by Keating in 1991.
• Paul Keating (Labor Party), Prime Minister 1991 to 1996. Is remembered for being PM during the "recession we had to have", in his words, and for making the Redfern speech. Despite low popularity he won the "unwinnable" 1993 election often attributed to his small-l liberal Liberal (told you it was confusing) opponent Dr John Hewson being unable to explain the GST in layman's terms on national television, but lost the 1996 election due to John Howard taking out the lower-middle-class support base -- "Howard's battlers". Has the honour of being the only Australian Prime Minister to have a musical dedicated to him: Keating! The Musical.
• John Howard (Liberal Party), Prime Minister 1996 to 2007. Famed for his huge eyebrows and ridiculous voice, loved by political cartoonists everywhere. A friend of George W Bush, Howard instituted policies for dealing with asylum seekers which were rather controversial. Won a narrow victory (losing the popular vote) in 1998, exploited voters' fears of illegal brown people coming to Australia to win the 2001 election, and cruised to a victory in 2004 over the loudmouthed and slightly unhinged Mark Latham. Actually had two ministers named Abbott and Costello (who often give off the vibe of absolutely hating one another). The last straw was the introduction of his WorkChoices program in 2007, which gave huge amounts of power to employers in bargaining & contracting while massively undercutting workers' ability to collectively bargain -- lost the election that year, and became the second ever sitting PM of Australia to lose his seat. Depicted in a negative light in Keating! The Musical, and generally despised by the Australian left for (what they perceived to be) his philistinism, his delight in offending the sensibilities of minority groups, his dog-whistle politics on race, his regressive economic policies, his toadying to the Americans, his opposition to the Kyoto protocol. A whole lot of (anti) political music has been written about him (see Like A Dog by Powderfinger and The King is Dead by The Herd for some examples.)
• Kevin Rudd (Labor Party), a.k.a. "Kevin07", "Kevin24/7", "Kevvie" or "K-Rudd", Prime Minister 2007 to 2010. Looks a lot like an overgrown schoolboy, speaks Mandarin, and sometimes uses unnecessarily complex language (eg "detailed programmatic specificity"). Presented himself as a moderate fiscal conservative. He started to implement a 40% profit tax on mining companies. Perhaps his worst failure is the home roof insulation debacle, where companies trying to take advantage of the insulation scheme cut corners which, combined with the foil-based insulation material and a lack of following proper procedures, resulted in 4 people actually dying from electrocution. His Prime Ministership was a mixed bag of huge advancements , programs of questionable value, and lack of change. He's in about as many rap songs as John Howard, usually in reference to replacing him.
  
  Rudd was ousted in a leadership challenge on 23-24 June, 2010 (when his own party pulled a Praetorian Guard on him), being replaced by then-Deputy PM Julia Gillard. After the following election, he was appointed to Gillard's Cabinet as the Foreign Minister, but abruptly quit the role in February 2012 under some incredibly silly circumstances. He subsequently mounted a failed campaign to regain the Prime Ministership. Despite this, polls show he remains more popular with the general Australian public than Julia Gillard.
• Julia Gillard (Labor Party), Prime Minister from 2010. Australia's first female Prime Minister, she replaced Kevin Rudd after a leadership challenge and called an early election. The election on 21st August 2010 resulted in a hung parliament, with both major parties ending up four seats short of the necessary 76-seat majority, after which Gillard negotiated to remain in government with the support of one Greens MP and three independents. Has generally been portrayed by satirists, comedians, and the press in general as a backstabber for ousting Rudd (cartoonists also tend to drastically exaggerate her nose). Her political platform consists of a lot of social conservatism (i.e. reduction in overall immigration, and attempts to follow Howard's offshore processing of asylum seekers to avoid 'European-style social unrest') but with less economic statism than Rudd tended to advocate. While she herself does not support same-sex marriage, like her predessors, she did allow the party to hold a conscience vote on the matter in late 2011, and as a result supporting marriage equality is now part of the Labor platform. Whether or not her opposition offers a viable alternative is a matter this wiki shall not discuss.