Menzies Sworn in as Prime Minister
The Bible on which Menzies was sworn in, signed by the Governor General Lord Gowrie. From the Menzies Collection, photographed on display as part of the Robert Menzies Institute Exhibition at the University of Melbourne.
On this day, 26 April 1939, Robert Gordon Menzies is sworn in as the Prime Minister of Australia at Government House, Yarralumla. Menzies had been commissioned to form a government by the Governor-General Lord Gowrie, though this was to be a minority government as under the direction of Earle Page the Country Party had sensationally abandoned the Coalition arrangement. The United Australia Party held just 26 of 74 seats in the House of Representatives, and Menzies privately confessed that he did not think that he would last more than six weeks in his post. In the event he would last more than two years, laying the groundwork for the successful wartime defence of the nation in tremendously difficult circumstances.
Menzies’s ascension to become Prime Minister had been fraught with obstacles. He had resigned from the Lyons Cabinet over a point of principle a month earlier, forfeiting his position as Deputy Leader of the UAP and Joseph Lyons’s designated successor. When tragedy struck and Lyons passed away on Good Friday the 7th of April, it was fortuitous for Menzies that the deputy leadership had not been filled, otherwise its holder could well have assumed the top job almost automatically.
In light of the uncertainty surrounding the UAP leadership Country Party Leader Page was sworn in as a temporary Prime Minister, and he took it upon himself to do whatever he could to stop Menzies succeeding him. This animosity was born out of the fact that Page and Menzies had clashed frequently in the Lyons Cabinet, and also that Menzies had a toxic relationship with the Country Party in general. This stretched all the way back to the 1920 Victorian election, when Robert’s father James had lost his seat to a Country Party challenger, but it was also based on Menzies’s philosophical objection to the influence of sectional interests in politics.
Page had good reason to think that the Country Party could veto a potential UAP leader, for in 1922 he had succeeded in negotiating the ousting of Nationalist Leader Billy Hughes as a condition of the original Coalition. Quite uniquely, this would become known as the Bruce-Page Government, in recognition of the latter’s importance to it. Notably after Harold Holt’s death Country Party Leader John McEwen would likewise veto the ascension of Liberal Party Deputy Billy McMahon, though there is some question as to whether McMahon would have been defeated by the Liberal Party itself without this intervention.
Page let it be known that the Country Party would leave the Coalition should Menzies become PM, and he hatched a scheme to draft his old partner Stanley Bruce into the role despite him not then having a seat in the Federal Parliament. In the end Bruce attached unreasonable conditions to any acceptance of an offer of political resurrection, and the plan never got off the ground. There was also some talk of drafting in NSW Premier Bertram Stevens, but this was also dismissed as being too difficult.
The UAP scheduled to meet at 11am on 18 April to decide the leadership question. Dramatically, on his way to Parliament House Menzies tripped and fell, causing significant injuries which required a visit to the hospital. The meeting had to be reconvened for 2pm, with Menzies arriving with a bandaged arm to contest his and the country’s fate.
When the meeting resumed Treasurer Richard Casey, who should have been a leading candidate, jeopardised his own position by floating the Bruce proposal which was rejected in favour of finding a leader from within the room. Four candidates stood, and as Thomas White and Casey were eliminated, the contest narrowed to Menzies and the 76-year-old veteran Billy Hughes. Menzies won the vote narrowly, 23 to 19 by some accounts. Page’s intervention may well have helped Menzies, as there was a backlash against the way in which the Country Party had increasingly dictated terms to its senior Coalition partner in the waning days of the Lyons Government.
Page was determined however, and he was not about to let the UAP party room have the last say on the matter. When Parliament met two days later, he gave notice of his resignation as Prime Minister and then proceeded to launch into a tirade against Menzies whom he considered completely unsuitable for national leadership on the basis of ‘three incidents’. These included Menzies’s resignation, and also an infamous speech where he had lambasted a lack of national leadership in what was interpreted to be an attack on Lyons. Most provocatively, Page accused Menzies of cowardice for not enlisting in the First World War, and falsely suggested that Menzies had resigned from the University Rifles so as not to have to fight.
The acrimonious speech completely backfired. It was never likely to win the sympathy of the Labor Opposition, many of whom had not served in the war and instead had frequently been involved in the anti-conscription campaign. The press was appalled, the Sydney Morning Herald said Page’s speech ‘was a violation of the decencies of debate without parallel in the annals of Parliament’, the Melbourne Argus thought that Page emerged from it ‘with a stain on his record which would seem to be permanent’.
Even Page’s party was shocked. Led by Queenslander Arthur Fadden, four Country Party members publicly distanced themselves from their leader and announced that they would sit separately in the Parliament. In the coming months Page would lose his leadership, and by March 1940 the Coalition would be re-forged by the pressures of war.
The initial lack of Country Party representation meant that Menzies was short of experienced candidates for Cabinet postings. Consequently, he assumed the Treasurer role himself, and promoted his future successor Harold Holt from the backbench. In the evening after the swearing in, Menzies addressed the nation with an earnest radio broadcast:
‘Fellow Australians, today I am introducing myself to you as your prime minister. I come after Mr Lyons, a leader who had your affection and respect — a simple and understanding man. I come as one who has been freely accused of grave defects — aloofness, superiority, and one thing and another. The truth is that my apparent aloofness is just one of the fantastic ideas that obtain currency…I am a singularly plain man, born in the little town of Jeparit, on the fringe of the Mallee, educated at Ballarat, in a state school, and then by scholarship at a public school and Melbourne University. Apart from having parents of great character, intelligence and fortitude, I was not born to the purple. I have made my own way, such as it was and is, and I want you to believe me when I say that I do not hold the prime ministership as an occasion for foolish vanity. I find in it a responsibility so great that it might well deter better men than I can ever hope to be.’
Further Reading:
George Fairbanks, ‘Menzies Becomes Prime Minister, 1939’, The Australian Quarterly, Vol. 40, No. 2, June 1968.
A.W. Martin, Robert Menzies, A Life: Volume 1 1894-1943 (Melbourne University Press, 1993).
Troy Bramston, Robert Menzies: The Art of Politics (Scribe, 2019).