The conventional wisdom that Liberal leader Robert Menzies used the Petrov defection to deny H.V. Evatt the Lodge is a myth, writes a historian.

Over decades, disappointed Labor leaning historians and commentators looked back on the federal election of 1954 and claimed Robert Menzies had “pulled a rabbit out of his hat” to gain advantage against Labor in an election campaign Labor had seemed likely to win.

On April 13, 1954, just weeks before voting day on May 29, Menzies announced in the House of Representatives that the Third Secretary and Consul in the Soviet Embassy in Canberra, Vladimir Petrov, had defected and had requested through ASIO to be given political asylum.

Menzies made clear that he had only been informed of the development a few days earlier. The PM went on to announce that the government would immediately begin the process of setting up a royal commission to investigate espionage activities in Australia, stemming from surveillance by ASIO and information handed over by Petrov.

The process would take time, but the PM believed that the public was due this preliminary information, saying, “while it would have been agreeable for all of us to defer an appointment of such importance until after the new parliament has been established, there can, as I am sure all parties here will agree, be no avoidable delay of investigation into what are already beginning to emerge as the outlines of systematic espionage and at least attempted subversion”.

Evatt was absent from parliament on the evening of April 13, having left late that afternoon for Sydney where he was attending an annual reunion at his alma mater, Fort Street High School.

Hearing of Menzies’ announcement around 9pm in Sydney, he was livid at not being informed in advance so that he could have stayed in Canberra to be in the House or Representatives.

Evatt’s statement to the press the following day stressed that Labor stood shoulder to shoulder with the government and that if “any person in Australia has been guilty of espionage a Labor government will see that he is prosecuted according to law”.

Menzies was true to his word in avoiding any reference to Petrov or the [royal] commission in the election campaign.

Evatt was certain the announcement of Petrov’s defection had been timed in the last days of the parliamentary session before the election to boost the government’s stocks as a strong force in protecting Australia’s security. He wanted, as his private secretary for 20 years, Alan Dalziel, has written, to “be thought just as tough, just as ruthless, in dealing with spies and traitors as Menzies”.

In hindsight, and after decades of research by historians of both the left and the right, it has been shown that Menzies had indeed not known of the defection until a few days before April 13 and, moreover, had little alternative than to go forward with a royal commission.

As Menzies has written, only at the beginning of April did he learn of the defection and the name of the defector. He had been warned in February by head of ASIO Charles Spry that a defection was coming, but ASIO gave no more information. The timing was entirely dependent on the secret service.

A meeting at the Lodge between the PM, Charles Spry, ASIO’s Ron Richards, who had handled the Petrov defection, and an interpreter, previewed the documents, but as Menzies has written, “No attempt was made to conduct an exhaustive examination of the documents … What I needed was a general understanding of the nature of the documents, and this I obtained.”

Having agreed to back the government over the setting up of a royal commission, Evatt believed there should be more than one commissioner appointed, to which Menzies immediately agreed. The terms of reference of the royal commission were approved without division of parliament.

In the event, the election campaign would not be fought on the issue of Petrov, apart from a solitary mention by [Deputy Prime Minister Arthur] Fadden which was reported. The Petrov defection would be Evatt’s post-election destiny and one which would cripple him. But in the campaign of 1954, Petrov was put aside.

What is important about Evatt’s reaction to the announcement of Petrov’s defection on April 13, in Evatt’s absence, is his anxiety to match the government in assuring voters he was as determined and capable as Menzies in dealing with espionage.

After three days of strongly supporting the government’s stand on Petrov and the commission, on Friday, April 16, Evatt launched an attack on Menzies in a statement to the press which accused the PM of “sly insinuations” and making a “crude attempt” to disparage the previous administration’s security-service handling.

Thus, he had put himself in the extraordinary position of agreeing with the government on the royal commission one day, while condemning it for setting it up a few days later.

In fact, Menzies was true to his word in avoiding any reference to Petrov or the royal commission in the election campaign. All Evatt did, at this early point in the campaign, was confuse electors and suggest he had ground to make up in his opposition to communism. Exactly what he wanted to avoid.

Well after the election, Evatt would allege conspiracies against him in the calling of the [royal] commission. It begs the question whether the tag of being soft on communism, after leading the “No” vote campaign in the Communist Party dissolution referendum and his High Court appearances for communist unions, had left a shadow Evatt wanted to avoid.

In the press, as the defection became public, various commentators made predictions the Petrov affair was a gift for the Menzies government. Their assumptions were that the drama would fill newspapers up to the election. But it did not.

The serious revelations only came later; Evatt was mostly harmed by his intervention in the commission well after the election.

In fact, with the experience of elections over the next half century in Australia, it is possible to explain the voter shift in support from Labor to the Coalition in 1954 without any impact of the Petrov Royal Commission, as well as how the Menzies government retained office, albeit with an estimated 49.3 per cent of the votes to Labor’s 50.3 per cent.

The 1954 election loss for Labor is comparable to the federal election in 1998, when Labor leader Kim Beazley managed a majority of the overall two-party preferred votes but failed to gain a majority of seats, at a time when the Howard government was believed to be looking at defeat.

So, how did Menzies defeat Evatt in 1954? In the wash-up of the publicity surrounding the Petrov defection, journalist Frank Chamberlain was one commentator who saw the affair advantaging Menzies. However, in one of his pieces he also noted that, even before the Petrov defection, government stocks were on the rise and the electoral mood had already been “moving ominously against Labor”.

Evatt’s strong suit on human rights, the law and social equality did not suggest experience in financial affairs. And, as the post-war years of peace time development and expansion would demand, economics was coming into play with voter preference, despite concerns about global instability.

Voters, faced with reconstruction in peace time around family life and employment opportunities, sought answers to inflation and the cost of living, a shortage of building materials, and concerns about security, financial and otherwise, in the future.

Menzies captured their hopes in his opposition to excessive government control with socialisation and his support for home ownership, alongside an appeal to women with his belief in solid family values and domestic harmony.

On May 4, at Melbourne’s Canterbury Memorial Hall, Menzies opened his campaign before 1000 supporters, with another 300 listening outside from amplifiers, saying that the government would stand on its record of combating inflation and strong defence with the added promise of government assistance for housing loans, an easing of the means tests for pensioners, tax reduction and an increase in pensions.

He said he was “willing to be judged, not just upon new promises, but upon past promises faithfully performed”. Leaving after the talk in his car, Menzies was mobbed by a crowd of 500.

Evatt opened his campaign on May 6 in Sydney’s Hurstville before an equally enthusiastic crowd of supporters. It was a speech peppered with promises which he maintained could be paid for by using loans for development works rather than, as was the Coalition’s way, using taxpayers’ money.

His government would end the means test for pensioners, increase pensions and child endowment, offer easy home loans with housing commission deposits as low as 3 per cent, abolish sales tax on household goods and furniture, abolish the property disqualification clause for aged pensions, use all petrol tax for road maintenance, and much more.

An editorial for the Sydney Morning Herald opined: “Dr Evatt’s policy is not devoid of sound and progressive proposals. But they are overlain by the sheer bulk of the material designed to purchase Labor’s entry to office.”

The left-leaning Argus added that Evatt had made “more promises to electors than any post-war Australian political leader”. The page-one headline was “‘Security for All’ Labor’s pledge, says Dr Evatt”. It was a cute line.

Five days before voting day, an editorial in the Melbourne Age crystallised the major question mark over Labor’s promises. These, it said, were “a list of monetary increases which must inevitably lead to another burst of inflation”. It added that the government could point to success in halting inflation and that there was plenty of evidence that costs and prices were under control.

The leading newspapers of all the other states ran editorials backing the Menzies government and arguing that Evatt’s promises would threaten Australia’s economy. Moreover, Evatt had not explained how they would be paid for.

The Menzies government was returned at the 1954 election with a reduced majority. For all that, with a majority of seven in the House of Representatives and control of the Senate, this was a position governments seven decades on would have envied.

It took some decades for Labor leaders and supporters to face the disappointing fact that Labor leader Bert Evatt had been his own worst enemy, and Labor’s, in what happened to Labor during and after the Petrov Royal Commission. As with the legacy of former Labor prime minister Gough Whitlam years later, the tendency to revere such a brilliant mind among more mundane Labor operatives clouded perspectives.

For years Evatt’s supporters lauded his brilliance and argued that his demise as Labor leader and loss in federal elections to Robert Menzies was all part of a devious conspiracy orchestrated by Menzies to bring the Labor leader down.

This is an edited extract of Menzies Versus Evatt, The great rivalry of Australian Politics (Connor Court).

Written by Anne Henderson. Originally published in Australian Financial Review on 09 August 2023.