Afternoon Light

Malcolm Turnbull, ‘You’ve got to recognise some political realities’ Liberal Leadership

Since the record-breaking run of Robert Menzies, there have been 14 leaders of the Liberal Party of Australia. Each of them has been influenced in various ways by the party’s founder, as they try to take up the essential task of upholding the principles of Australian liberalism (which indeed is a political tradition which long predates Menzies himself). In this special series of the Afternoon Light podcast, we intend to speak to each of the surviving leaders of the party about their connection to Menzies, philosophical beliefs, and time spent heading the centre-right of Australian politics.
In this week’s episode of the Afternoon Light podcast, Robert Menzies Institute CEO Georgina Downer talks to Malcolm Turnbull, Prime Minister and Leader of the Liberal Party of Australia between 2015-2018, about his beliefs and experiences in the role.

Andrew Norton, ‘The utilitarian aspect has dominated’ Australia’s Universities

When the Australian Commonwealth was formed in 1901, the Constitution left education as a matter for the States and Australia had only a handful of tertiary institutions. However, as the nation grew to maturity the importance of having an educated populace grew with it. It was Menzies who first appreciated the central role that Australia’s universities could play in the national story, as he introduced Commonwealth Scholarships that gave widespread access to those with talent and ambition, and greatly increased funding to universities in a manner that would see the birth of many institutions which are now household names. Since Menzies’s time, universities have become an essential part of the Australian economy, but they face a wide array of challenges and may not be living up to the purpose he saw in them.
In this week’s episode of the Afternoon Light podcast, Robert Menzies Institute CEO Georgina Downer talks to Professor Andrew Norton, an expert and researcher on Higher Education Policy.

Zachary Gorman, ‘This Empowerment Philosophy’ Sir Joseph Cook

The first Liberal leader to win a Federal election outright was not Robert Menzies, it was in fact a little-remembered prime minister named Joseph Cook. Remarkably, Cook was also the first leader of the NSW Labor party and his story reveals the how and the why of the emergence of the Australian party system, and the philosophical lines of cleavage which continue to shape our nation. Born in an English coal mining town in 1860, Cook entered the mines as a pit boy at just age nine, and his life is a remarkable tale of human agency and Australian social mobility. It was this lived experience of opportunity and success which ultimately turned Cook into a powerful and persuasive advocate of the enduring values of Australian liberalism.
In this week’s episode of the Afternoon Light podcast, Robert Menzies Institute CEO Georgina Downer talks to Zachary Gorman, author of a new biographical monograph on Australia’s sixth prime minister Joseph Cook.

Gary Humphries, ‘A City of Carpetbaggers’ Canberra’s Political Development

Despite being the home of the central institution of Australian democracy, Canberra was long denied its own democratic rights. Initially envisaged as a seasonal town where people would only come when Parliament sat, even once it became a fully-fledged city and national showpiece, federal governments were keen to control it so they could fashion that showpiece how they pleased. It was only in the 1980s, under the greater imperative of cost efficiencies for the federal budget, that the ACT gained its own legislature, and ever since it has maintained a distinct political culture quite unlike the rest of the country.
In this week’s episode of the Afternoon Light podcast, Robert Menzies Institute CEO Georgina Downer talks to Gary Humphries AO about the ACT’s political history.

Joshua Black, ‘Scandals or Spectacles’ Australian Political Memoir

Enter any Australian bookshop over the last couple of decades, and you are likely to have been inundated with publications written by politicians trying to tell their life story, spill gossip and throw barbs at their colleagues. However, this was not always the case. For most of the 20th century Australian politicians were generally reluctant to write memoirs, and even when they did, someone as jovial an interesting as George Reid managed to produce a frightfully dull and dreary volume. It is only quite recently that a culture of decorum and statesmanship that prevented politicians from speaking candidly in retirement, has given way to a frenzy of honesty, or at least self-justification.
In this week’s episode of the Afternoon Light podcast, Robert Menzies Institute CEO Georgina Downer talks to Joshua Black, from the ANU’s National Centre of Biography, about the phenomenon of Australian political memoir.

Michael de Percy, ‘Developing our own capability’ Australia’s Nuclear Journey

It was under Robert Menzies that Australia entered the nuclear age with the opening of the Lucas Heights Reactor in 1958. 65 years on, what looked to be the first step in a much bigger story remains practically the only step Australia has taken towards harnessing the potency of the atom to power our nation. As nuclear energy once again appears on the political radar, it is worth taking a look back and seeing what potential Australians once saw in nuclear and what could have been.
In this week’s episode of the Afternoon Light podcast, Robert Menzies Institute CEO Georgina Downer talks to Dr Michael de Percy about how Menzies represents Australia’s unrealised nuclear potential.

Gerard Henderson, ‘Bob was a bit like that’ B.A. Santamaria

Bob Santamaria is a key figure in the Menzies era. Despite being little known until the mid 1950s, Santamaria’s role as the driving force behind ‘the Movement’ helped to thwart communist influence in the Australian trade unions and precipitate the great Labor split. Though he became a highly visible public commentator in his later years, the man himself remains something of a mystery, having provided contradictory autobiographies and propounding eccentric political ideas. While Santamaria proudly boasted that he never voted Liberal, in Menzies’s retirement, the two Bob’s would often share a drink and a warm chat in Menzies’s Malvern home.
In this week’s episode of the Afternoon Light podcast, Robert Menzies Institute CEO Georgina Downer talks to Gerard Henderson, author of two books on B.A. Santamaria, a central figure behind the 1950s Labor split.

Brendan Nelson, ‘You have to give people incentives’ A journey to liberalism

Since the record-breaking run of Robert Menzies, there have been 14 leaders of the Liberal Party of Australia. Each of them has been influenced in various ways by the party’s founder, as they try to take up the essential task of upholding the principles of Australian liberalism (which indeed is a political tradition which long predates Menzies himself). In this special series of the Afternoon Light podcast, we intend to speak to each of the surviving leaders of the party about their connection to Menzies, philosophical beliefs, and time spent heading the centre-right of Australian politics.
In this week’s episode of the Afternoon Light podcast, Robert Menzies Institute CEO Georgina Downer talks to Dr Brendan Nelson AO, Leader of the Liberal Party of Australia between 2007-8, about his beliefs and experiences in the role.

Scott Morrison, ‘We are political tradies… we fix the stuff that needs fixing’ Liberal Governance

Since the record-breaking run of Robert Menzies, there have been 14 leaders of the Liberal Party of Australia. Each of them has been influenced in various ways by the party’s founder, as they try to take up the essential task of upholding the principles of Australian liberalism (which indeed is a political tradition which long predates Menzies himself). In this special series of the Afternoon Light podcast, we intend to speak to each of the surviving leaders of the party about their connection to Menzies, philosophical beliefs, and time spent heading the centre-right of Australian politics. In this week’s episode of the Afternoon Light podcast, Robert Menzies Institute CEO Georgina Downer talks to Scott Morrison, Prime Minister and Leader of the Liberal Party of Australia between 2018-2022, about his beliefs and experiences in the role.

David Bird, ‘A parish pump politician from the potato plots of Tasmania’ Joseph Lyons

If one were to rank Australia’s most important Prime Ministers, Joseph Lyons would have to be high on the list. Not only did he lead the nation out of the Great Depression, but he was also responsible for readying the country for World War Two, presiding over five separate re-armament programs before passing away in office in 1939. Lyons’s personal journey is fascinating, as he not only went from being a Labor Tasmanian Premier to a centre-right PM, but the reason he did so was because he had been forever scarred by his father’s decision to bet the family’s resources on the Melbourne Cup. Plunged into poverty by this act of recklessness, he held that budgets must be balanced and debts repaid as an article of deep conviction. In this week’s episode of the Afternoon Light podcast, Robert Menzies Institute CEO Georgina Downer talks to David Bird, who has written two books relating to Joseph Lyons, the PM under whom Menzies deputised.