Dr. William A. Stoltz is a Visiting Fellow at the Robert Menzies Institute where his research focuses on the history of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service.

Dr Stoltz is the Senior Adviser for Public Policy at the National Security College. He is responsible for mobilising the College’s research and resident expertise to influence and inform current public policy debates.

Dr. Stoltz’s own research explores options for Australia to shape and influence international security, as well as Australia’s policy responses to a breadth of national security challenges.

He joined the NSC after working across Australia’s defence, intelligence, and law enforcement communities, including strategic intelligence and advisory roles within the Department of Defence, the Australian Federal Police, the Royal Australian Air Force (Reserve), and the National Intelligence Community.

He holds a PhD and Advanced Masters of National Security Policy from the Australian National University as well as a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Melbourne.

Professor Greg Melleuish is the Robert Menzies’s Institute’s first Professorial Fellow. He has joined the Institute to conduct a research project contextualising the full series of over 100 radio broadcasts which make up the ‘Forgotten People’ series, in conjunction with RMI Academic Coordinator Dr Zachary Gorman.

Greg is a Professor in School of Humanities and Social Inquiry at the University of Wollongong, where his teaching interests range from political theory, Australian politics, ancient history and world history.

Greg is an expert on Australian liberalism and conservatism, and has long been respected as one of the leading figures in this field.

Greg is the co-author of the book The Forgotten Menzies (Melbourne University Press, 2021), which is the latest of many books he has produced throughout his career. Greg has published widely in the area of Australian political ideas and intellectual history. This includes his books Cultural Liberalism in Australia, (Cambridge University Press, 1995, reprinted 2009), The Power of Ideas: Essays on Australian History and Politics, (Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2009) and Despotic State or Free Individual (Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2014), as well as a number of articles. He co-wrote the entry on Australian Political Thought (with Geoff Stokes) for the Oxford Companion to Australian Politics (2007).

His fellowship represents something of a reunion with the University of Melbourne, where he formerly taught European history.

The Robert Menzies Institute is pleased to support an oral history project documenting the stories and experiences of Commonwealth Scholarship recipients, to be undertaken by RMI Fellows Dr James Waghorne and Dr Gwilym Croucher, historians from the University of Melbourne’s Centre for the Study of Higher Education.

Robert Menzies’s reforms opened university education to a whole generation of Australians who otherwise would have been denied access to such an opportunity, hence the project has been dubbed The Menzies Generation. Menzies was adamant that having an educated nation was essential to the health of a democracy, and the reforms to tertiary education undertaken by his government reflected long-standing beliefs in the value of education that he had developed and honed through speeches, articles, and radio broadcasts through the 1930s and 1940s.

Generations of students were supported to attend university following Robert Menzies’ introduction of Commonwealth Scholarships in 1951. During the scheme’s operation up until 1973, approximately a third of all Australia’s university graduates had benefited from the scholarships. They covered tuition fees and provided a living allowance, and unlike other forms of ‘bonded’ support did not constrain students to nominated degrees or years of employment service after graduation.

These scholarships had an important role in supporting the expansion of opportunities for university education, as well as in altering public attitudes to university. It was during the Menzies era that university education first became democratised and accessible, forever changing Australia’s cultural and intellectual landscape while reflecting the values of egalitarianism and social mobility that had long be a defining part of the Australian character.

This project will build up a rich picture of the generations of students who benefited from the Commonwealth Scholarships through a series of targeted interviews. It will show how the recipients came to obtain their scholarships, how winning a scholarship altered their expectations of attending university and for their future career. It will show what living as a scholarship student was like, how well the allowances met the cost of living. Many of these individuals are now very senior and it is increasingly urgent that we capture these stories before they are lost.