Afternoon Light

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 Alexander Downer, leader of the Liberal Party 1994-5, about his political beliefs and experiences in the role.

Ebony Nilsson, ‘It Will Be Classified’ The Remarkable Story of Bill Marshall & ASIO’s Operatives in Australia The biographies of migrants – as individuals who move through countries, across borders and continents – can be difficult to piece together. There are often gaps in their backgrounds and stories which remain mysterious, or parts of their lives which are not explicable. This same is true of the biographies of spies, though for different reasons. Writing the biography of a Russian migrant who became an intelligence officer with the fledgling Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), was thus a challenging process. But figures like Vladimir Mischenko, also known as Bill Marshall, reveal the importance of those who work behind-the-scenes, shaping Australian history from the shadows. In this week’s episode of the Afternoon Light podcast, Robert Menzies Institute CEO Georgina Downer talks to Ebony Nilsson, a historian of Cold War surveillance, about one of ASIO’s most intriguing agents.

Robert Menzies’s relationship with the Australian media was complex. He had an intense dislike for journalists, for a long time struggled to gain traction in Sydney, and a media narrative played a key role in his downfall as prime minister in 1941. Nevertheless, no-one who had Menzies’s longevity in politics could succeed without having a certain degree of media savvy and important connections in the press. At the end of the day, Menzies was a master of political communication and exploring his relationship with powerful media entities is highly revealing of their role in Australian democratic life. In this week’s episode of the Afternoon Light podcast, Robert Menzies Institute CEO Georgina Downer talks to Bridget Griffen-Foley, historian of Australian media, about Robert Menzies’s relationship with the press.

The Menzies era was in many respects the golden age of the Department of External Affairs (now Foreign Affairs). The first Australian diplomatic postings outside of the British Commonwealth had been made by Menzies’s wartime government, so when he returned to power in 1949 Australia was still forging its diplomatic network. This adolescence and growth gave great opportunities for young, ambitious and talented people to make a name for themselves, and a classic example of this is James Plimsoll. Plimsoll had a stellar career in which he became a crucial confidant of the Korean President, served as Australian Ambassador to the United States, and topped it all off by being appointed Governor of Tasmania. His story shows how Australia found its feet on the world stage. In this week’s episode of the Afternoon Light podcast, Robert Menzies Institute CEO Georgina Downer talks to Jeremy Hearder, veteran diplomat and biographer of James Plimsoll, about one of Australia’s most stellar foreign representatives.

Just as the Second World War produced the United Nations, the First World War brought forth its immediate predecessor the League of Nations. Generally viewed as a failure hamstrung by the fact that America never joined and unable to forestall Axis aggression, the League nevertheless gave birth to many important international operations that were subsequently taken over by the UN and continue to this day. For Australia, membership of the League was an important coming of age moment, one in which we were represented separately from Britain on the world stage for one of the first times in our history. In this week’s episode of the Afternoon Light podcast, Robert Menzies Institute CEO Georgina Downer talks to James Cotton, author of The Australians at Geneva: Internationalist Diplomacy in the Interwar Years, about the UN’s ill-fated precursor.

Robert Menzies had a great dislike for both journalists and biographers. In his memoir Afternoon Light, he decried contemporary history as little more than a ‘gossip column’ which could not be trusted to get the facts right. Nevertheless, early in his second stint as prime minister he reluctantly enlisted a brilliant writer named Allan Dawes to write a biography to help win over the Australian public. While mysterious circumstances ensured that that biography was never released, its story speaks to the great impact that contemporary political biographies can have on the course of real-world events. In this week’s episode of the Afternoon Light podcast, Robert Menzies Institute CEO Georgina Downer talks to Chris Wallace, author of Political Lives: Australian prime ministers and their biographers, about the real-world impact of political biography.

The 1950s are often seen as a dull and stultified period in Australian history, epitomised by the growth of suburbia, the white picket fence and indeed the fact that we had the same prime minister for the entire decade. However, when you scratch the surface there were significant cultural changes happening, as well as a growing, though still somewhat tentative self-confidence in ourselves as a nation. This came to a head at the 1956 Olympics, the first ever to be held in the southern hemisphere, when all eyes were fixed on Australia for the first time. In this week’s episode of the Afternoon Light podcast, Robert Menzies Institute CEO Georgina Downer talks to Nick Richardson, author of 1956: The Year Australia Welcomed the World.

In the 122 years that have passed since federation, only two of our nation’s leaders have surpassed a decade serving as Prime Minister. It is notable that the second, John Howard, had a great admiration for and partly modelled his conduct on the first and still unsurpassed record holder Sir Robert Menzies. When Howard was Opposition Leader, Paul Keating would taunt him in Parliament for his connection to Menzies – but Howard not only had the last laugh at the 1996 election, but since leaving office he has spearheaded a new awareness of and appreciation for his predecessor, starting with his highly successful 2014 book The Menzies Era. It is in large part because of Howard that Menzies is now widely recognised as the man who ‘shaped modern Australia’. In this special episode of the Afternoon Light podcast, Robert Menzies Institute CEO Georgina Downer talks to former Prime Minister John Howard, who gives his personal insights into Menzies’s leadership.

Liberalism is Australia’s oldest political tradition. Even before the advent of democracy in the Australian colonies, Australian liberals fought key political battles that secured equal rights for ex-convicts, trial by jury, religious freedom, and which prevented the establishment of a bunyip aristocracy. By the time they had won the right to democracy in 1856, virtually every politician called themselves liberal and a pervasively liberal order was imposed upon the continent. In the early 20th century this liberal epoch would be eclipsed by the First World War and the onset of the Great Depression, but Menzies was able to tap into the nation’s history and culture to recall the liberal dream under a new political banner. The Liberal Party of Australia has since been Australia’s most successful political party, and a large reason for this is that it can draw upon values deeply imprinted on the Australian psyche. In this week’s episode of the Afternoon Light podcast, Robert Menzies Institute CEO Georgina Downer talks to the Institute’s Academic Coordinator Dr Zachary Gorman, who explores the founding of the Liberal Party as a key moment in the broader history of Australian liberalism.

Britain’s entry into what became the European Union was very much foreshadowed during the Menzies era, when the United Kingdom attempted to join the European Economic Community only to be vetoed by French President Charles de Gaulle. Menzies was obviously highly opposed to the move to join, not only because of its economic consequences for Australia and his sentimental attachment to the British Commonwealth, but because he understood how fundamentally important national sovereignty is to the healthy functioning of a democracy. After marathon political battles, Brexit is now an accomplished fact, but Britain faces a complex task in seizing the opportunities of independence and shedding itself of the extensive regulatory remnants of Brussels’ control, particularly with the interruptions of the recent pandemic. In this week’s episode of the Afternoon Light podcast, Robert Menzies Institute CEO Georgina Downer talks to Daniel Hannan, one of the architects of Brexit, about the state of independent Britain.