To fulfil our mission to foster research into academic discussion on Menzies, the Robert Menzies Institute is hosting a series of four annual conferences bringing together historians and other thinkers to develop a collection of papers which will make a major contribution to the existing historiography on Menzies and the Menzies era. Once published in four volumes by Melbourne University Press, these will become a comprehensive reference on Menzies.

The Robert Menzies Institute is pleased to announce its second annual conference will be held on Thursday 17 and Friday 18 November 2022 in the Old Quad at The University of Melbourne.

The theme of this year’s conference is ‘Coming to Power, Learning to Govern and Gathering Momentum: 1943-1954’.

1943 marked a crucial turning point in Australian political history, as the wartime election saw the utter destruction of the United Australia Party as an organisational force. Out of its ashes, Robert Menzies would reforge the non-Labor side of Australian politics around his new vision of liberalism, one which had deep roots in the Australian political culture. The battle to be fought was one over what kind of society post-war Australia would be, and Menzies staked a claim to be on the side of the individual and their enterprise. Once the election was won, there was much to be done in transforming rhetoric into viable policies and navigating the troubled geopolitical waters of the early Cold War.

In this, the second of four annual conferences, our speakers will dissect what was arguably the most pivotal period in Robert Menzies’s entire career. In a little over a decade Menzies went from being what looked like a political has-been, to a man who had matched the existing record for federal election wins. This was a time of key policy developments, with the defeat of bank nationalisation, the signing of the ANZUS treaty, the start of the Colombo Plan, and much more. It was a time in which Menzies tried to resolve some of the key philosophical and moral questions of governance: what is the legitimate role of the state in a liberal democracy and how do you balance the exercise of its power with the maintenance of the freedom of the individual?

Papers to be presented at the conference include:

Thursday 17 November

Nicolle Flint, ‘Menzies’ Miracle? The Foundation of the Liberal Party of Australia’

Anne Henderson, ‘Menzies and the Banks’

Troy Bramston, ‘Robert Menzies the Art of Power’

Charles Richardson, ‘Menzies, Evatt and Constitutional Government’

Tom Switzer, ‘Liberalism Applied? Policy shifts in the transition from Chifley to Menzies’

Andrew Blyth, ‘Early Think Tanks and their impact on the Menzies Government’

Christopher Beer, ‘The forgotten people by the sea? Liberalism, affluence and the Central Coast of New South Wales during the 1950s’

Friday 18 November

Lucas McLennan, ‘Menzies and the “Movement”: Two pillars of Australian anti-communism’

Lorraine Finlay, ‘What liberty for the enemies of liberty? Reflections on Menzies and the attempts to ban the Australian Communist Party’

William Stoltz, ‘The Founding of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service’

David Lee, ‘Economic Management During the Korean War’

David Furse-Roberts, ‘Percy Spender: the Colombo Plan, the ANZUS Treaty and the Japanese Peace Treaty’

Lyndon Megarrity, ‘International Students before and after Colombo’