Ben Chifley 1885-1951

Some major achievements

• Prime Minister and Treasurer, 1945-49
• Federal Treasurer, 1941-45
• Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Power Act 1949

Memorials and monuments

• Chifley Square, Sydney
• Chifley Library, Australian National University
• Chifley Cottage, Bathurst, New South Wales

Ben Chifley, the train driver who became prime minister

Courtesy National Library of Australia.

Background and experience

Ben Chifley was born in Bathurst, New South Wales. When he was five years old, he went to stay with his grandfather on a farm about 20 kilometres away. Grandfather Chifley thought that his favourite grandson would not get much attention if he stayed at home while his parents were caring for a new baby.

In the end, Ben stayed for nine years, and was his widowed grandfather’s companion. They lived in a simple bush hut and Ben learned to milk the cows and bag potatoes. He attended a ‘part-time’ school, which had a teacher for only two days a week.

When Ben was 13, his grandfather died and Ben went back to his family. He started going to a Catholic high school but left after about two years because his limited schooling made it hard for him to keep up with the other students. By the time he was 17 he was working for the New South Wales Railways and by the time he was 24 he was driving huge train engines.

Although Chifley went to night school for 15 years, he always regretted that he had not had a chance to study more. He once told his nephew that ‘I’d rather have had Mr Menzies’ education than a million pounds’. (See biography of Robert Menzies which follows.)

In 1917, railway workers in Sydney went on strike to protest about their working conditions. Ben Chifley and other workers at Bathurst joined the strike out of loyalty to their mates, even though their own working conditions were different. The strikers were sacked. When Chifley finally got his job back it was as a cleaner and not as an engine driver. This experience helped Chifley decide to stand for parliament for the Australian Labor Party.

Political life and times

Chifley lived through the economic depression of the 1930s, when many people suffered great hardship. Afterwards, he always wanted to improve people’s standards of living.

He was federal Member of Parliament for Macquarie, New South Wales, from 1928 to 1929 and again from 1940 to 1951. He was federal treasurer from 1941 to 1949.

When he became prime minister at the end of World War II in 1945, Chifley worked to get Australia back on its feet by introducing mass immigration, the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme and other large projects. His government increased Australia’s wealth by expanding industry - for example, he promoted the development of the Holden, the first car designed and made in Australia.

I try to think of the labour 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 for the betterment of mankind not only here but anywhere we may give a helping hand. If it were not for that, the labour 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 labour movement will be completely justified.

From Chifley’s 1949 speech ‘For the betterment of mankind’ in Chifley, JB 1952, Things Worth Fighting For, MUP, Carlton, Vic, p 65.
Reproduced with permission of MUP and the Australian Labor Party.

Challenges and responses

One of the greatest challenges for Chifley was in 1949 when a coal miners’ strike began in New South Wales, and spread quickly to all States. The miners demanded increased wages, long service leave and a 35-hour working week, but the mine owners thought these claims were unrealistic.

The situation was complicated by the increasing influence of the Communist Party of Australia, which wanted workers to own and control industry. Coal shortages (which reduced power supplies) and a cold winter meant that industry was not working properly and many people were suffering.

Chifley was in a difficult position. He supported the union movement and the workers’ claims for better wages and conditions. But, at the same time, he could not afford to allow people to suffer because of coal shortages. In the end, he decided to break the strike by ordering that trade union money could not be used to support striking workers, and by sending soldiers to do the miners’ work.

Many workers felt betrayed. They thought that the Labor Party should support workers and their trade unions, not act to break a strike.

Sir Robert Menzies 1894-1978

Some major achievements

• Prime Minister, 1939-41 and 1949-66
• Founder of the Liberal Party of Australia, 1944
• Knighted, 1963
• Expanded access to secondary education and built new universities

Memorials or monuments

• The Menzies School of Health Research, Northern Territory
• Menzies Building, Monash University
• Menzies Monument, Jeparit

The Right Honourable Robert Menzies PM broadcasting to the nation the news of the outbreak of war, 1939

Courtesy National Library of Australia.

Background and experience

Robert (Bob) Menzies’ family lived in the small country town of Jeparit, Victoria, where Bob went to the local state primary school. He was a good student.

At that time, most people did not have a secondary school education and there were no state secondary schools in Victoria. There were private secondary schools but the Menzies family could not afford to pay their fees. The only way Bob could continue with his education was to win a scholarship to a private secondary school.

He sat for a scholarship examination in 1907 and was the top student in the whole of Victoria. His scholarship allowed him to go to private schools in Ballarat and then Melbourne. Later he won another scholarship to the University of Melbourne, where he studied law.

The Fairfax Photo Library.

Vida Goldstein 1869-1949

Some major achievements

• Leader of the women’s suffrage movement in Victoria for more than 20 years
• First woman to nominate for election to the Commonwealth Parliament
• Founder and editor of two successful women’s newspapers, The Australian Woman’s Sphere (1900-05) and The Woman Voter (1909-19)
• Campaigner for children’s courts and better treatment of young offenders
• Peace activist

Memorials or monuments

• Goldstein, federal electorate

Vida Goldstein, Australian delegate to the International Women Suffrage Conference in the United States in 1902

Painting by Phyl Waterhouse 1917-89. Courtesy National Library of Australia and Ms June Davies.

Background and experience

Vida Goldstein was born into a well-off family in Portland, Victoria. She went to a private secondary school in Melbourne and her university entrance examination results in 1886 were excellent. She was also good at tennis, billiards and horse riding.

Goldstein decided not to go to university or join in the busy social life of her wealthy friends. She became a teacher. In her spare time, she also wanted to help her mother, who was working to help people who lived in Melbourne’s slum areas. Goldstein visited rat-infested, unsewered homes and met people who wanted to change these conditions. She studied theories about the causes of poverty and unemployment, and solutions to these problems.

The Woman Voter supported Vida Goldstein’s Senate campaign in 1910.

Courtesy National Library of Australia.

Political life and times

Goldstein spent her life trying to gain equal rights for women. She set up and supported a number of women’s organisations and campaigned for women to be able to vote and to sit in parliament in other countries as well as in Australia. She believed that governments need women’s ideas, especially in dealing with poverty, unemployment and women’s and children’s issues.

In her time, Goldstein was a powerful public speaker and her best known political slogan was that ‘all the men in Parliament cannot represent one woman as adequately as one woman can represent all women’ (1909). She stood as an independent candidate for the Commonwealth Parliament five times between 1903 and 1917 but was not elected, although she did have a lot of support from voters.

Beliefs and aims

Edith Cowan 1861-1932

Some major achievements

• One of Western Australia’s first women magistrates in the Children’s Court, 1915-32
• Australia’s first woman parliamentarian, 1921-24
• Introduced the Women’s Legal Status Bill which removed the ban on women practising law and other professions (Western Australia), 1923

Memorials or monuments

• Edith Cowan University, Western Australia
• Cowan, federal electorate

Edith Cowan, social worker and Member of Parliament

Courtesy Edith Cowan University.

Background and experience

When Edith Brown was seven years old her mother died. Edith was then sent from her home near Geraldton, Western Australia, to a girls’ boarding school in Perth. She had to cope with another tragedy when her father was found guilty of the murder of his second wife and executed.

At 18 years of age, Edith married James Cowan, who became a magistrate in Perth. Through her husband’s work, she saw how families suffered when their men were sent to gaol. Later she became an active member of organisations that tried to improve conditions for women and children. Edith had five children of her own.

When she became a magistrate of the Perth Children’s Court herself, Edith was able to work hard to protect the rights of children. She held the position of magistrate for 18 years.

From Leason’s cartoon ‘The New "House" Wife’, Bulletin, 31/3/1921.
Courtesy National Library of Australia.

Political life and times

Western Australian women won the right to vote in 1899 but were not able to stand for parliament until 1920. Edith Cowan campaigned for both these reforms.

In 1921 she stood as a Nationalist candidate for the Legislative Assembly of Western Australia because she thought not enough was being done about the rights of children and women. In the election, Cowan defeated an experienced male politician by 46 votes. She was the first woman elected to an Australian parliament.

In her first speech in parliament, Cowan talked about what could be done to help children, women, wage earners and pensioners. She had some immediate success. When she complained that mothers taking prams on suburban trains had to pay a ‘pram fare’, the Minister for Railways replied that he would withdraw the charge at once.

I stand here today in the unique position of being the first woman in an Australian Parliament. I know many people think perhaps that it was not the wisest thing to do to send a woman into Parliament, and perhaps I should remind Hon [honourable] members that one of the reasons why women and men also considered it advisable to do so, was because it was felt that men need a reminder sometimes from women beside them that will make them realise all that can be done for the race and for the home. I have been sent here more from that standpoint than from any other ... The views of both sides are more than ever needed in Parliament today. If men and women can work for the State side by side and represent all the different sections of the community, and if the male members of the house would be satisfied to allow women to help them and would accept their suggestions when they are offered, I cannot doubt that we should do very much better work in the community than was ever done before.

From Cowan, E, Debut speech in the House of Assembly (WA) 21/7/1921, Hansard, pp 15-19.

Challenges and responses

Australia fought on the side of Great Britain in the World War I (1914-18) and over 330,000 Australian men and women went overseas. Most of them were soldiers or nurses and almost two-thirds were wounded or killed.

Cowan did not support the War and did not see it as a solution to international problems. But as the War went on she saw that there were practical things to be done for the ordinary people involved.

Western Australia was the first port of call in Australia for hospital ships coming back from the War and Cowan helped organise a welcoming committee for the people on the ships. She also established a Soldiers’ Institute to provide soldiers with meals, rest and recreation. Cowan worked with the Red Cross and supported the idea that people who had returned from the War should be offered jobs before other people.

After the War, Cowan supported the League of Nations, which was set up in 1919 to promote world peace and cooperation. She was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in recognition of her work during the War.