Australia’s liberal inheritance was not inevitable and it is not guaranteed. What a nation chooses to remember determines what it values; what it forgets gradually disappears from its civic life.

Sir Robert Menzies, Australia’s longest‑serving Prime Minister, shaped the modern nation through a liberal philosophy grounded in freedom, opportunity, and responsibility. His ideas transformed Australia socially and economically, and remain central to our democratic character.

Yet this legacy is increasingly at risk – vulnerable to amnesia, misinterpretation, and neglect.

The Robert Menzies Institute exists to meet that challenge. Through scholarship, curation, and public engagement, the Institute restores Australia’s liberal heritage to its rightful place not as nostalgia, but as a living tradition for future generations.

In pursuit of this mission, the Institute delivers major national exhibitions, publishes original scholarship, convenes historians and public thinkers, and preserves irreplaceable historical artefacts.

In April 2026, the Institute opened a major new exhibition, Robert Menzies: The Man who Made Modern Australia.

Curated by Alex McDermott, it tells the story of Australia’s dramatic transformation during Robert Menzies’s 18 years as the nation’s prime minister.

The Institute warmly thanks Charles Kiefel AM, who generously sponsored this important exhibition.

The Institute also thanks Philip Crutchfield KC who, in 2025, donated his valuable collection of Sir Robert Menzies’s Commonwealth Law Reports.

The Institute’s fifth Annual Conference focused on Menzies and the British Commonwealth of Nations. It marked the beginning of a new trilogy on the theme Forging Australia: The Global Forces that Shaped a Nation, with future conferences on Menzies and America (2026) and Menzies and Asia (2027).

In February 2026, we launched  The Menzies Legacy, the fourth and final book in our four-book series on Robert Menzies’s life and impact on Australia. Edited by Institute historian Dr Zac Gorman and published by Melbourne University Press, it brings together essays by Australian historians and public intellectuals on Menzies’s policies and their impact from 1961 and beyond.

The Institute’s weekly history podcast, Afternoon Light, hosted by CEO Georgina Downer, marked its 250th episode in February 2026. It is now the largest digital archive of long-form conversations on Australian history. Since its launch, the podcast has attracted more than 30,000 downloads, making it one of the most popular Australian history podcasts.