On this day, 15 June 1932, Robert Menzies is elected as Deputy Premier of Victoria in the government of Stanley Argyle.

Menzies had first entered Victorian Parliament in 1928 when he won a by-election for the Province of East Yarra Legislative Council seat. His demonstrated talents saw him quickly earn the position of Minister Without Portfolio in the Nationalist Government of William McPherson, but after eight months he resigned over a point of principle when the government tried to openly buy the support of the Country Party by underwriting a business they favoured.

Despite this taste of office, being a Legislative Councillor in the 1920s was still essentially a part time job, hence Menzies’s real commitment to a political life was made in 1929 when he decided to switch to the Legislative Assembly, winning the seat of Nunawading at the general election. That poll saw a Labor victory which essentially marked the death knell of the Victorian Nationalist Party.

By the time of the next State election in 1932, the centre-right had reformed itself into the United Australia Organisation, a political party which Menzies had played a central role in forming and in which he headed Victoria’s organisational wing. The Opposition had a relatively smooth path to victory, because in the months leading up to the election the Victorian Labor Party had been badly split over whether to support the Premiers’ Plan of economies necessary for Australia to deal with the Great Depression. During the election campaign, Menzies would for the first time play a central role as one of the UAP’s main speakers – earning considerable respect for his ability to deal with interjectors.

After a sweeping victory in which the UAP picked up 13 seats, Menzies was rewarded for his prominence by being appointed Attorney General and Minister for Railways. It was a few weeks later that the parliamentary party held its first post-election meeting and duly elected Menzies as deputy. This was arguably the result of the influence of the Young Nationalists – a youth based political organisation that Menzies had founded to inject ideas and robust debate into political discourse. The poll had seen 16 members of the organisation elected, so Menzies essentially had his own powerful faction within the party room. Menzies responded to the elevation with a speech in which he showed a political wisdom beyond his years:

‘We recognise a good deal of truth in the cynical saying that a Ministry begins to die as soon as it is born. In everything we do to carry out the policy on which we were elected, we tread on a few corns or offend a few interests, and so we begin shedding votes. This organisation intends to expand to counteract that tendency, and to maintain the confidence and enthusiasm of the people’

As Minister for Railways Menzies’s main focus would be on cost savings in Depression conditions where the budget was in an enormous black hole, and this would mean once again displeasing the Country Party by refusing to cut/subsidise transport fees. The railways were already heavily in debt, 8000 employees had been laid off in the past three years, and Menzies insisted that there was very little fat left to trim. However, through smart administrative decision-making Menzies was ultimately successful in reducing state debt (of which the bloated railway system amounted for half), operating costs, and saving several regional railways which looked likely to go under. Menzies would later describe all of this as his greatest achievement in State politics.

Within Cabinet, Menzies also opposed a Country Party push to retroactively reduce interest rates for the benefit of farmers (which Menzies decried as a violation of the sanctity of contracts). This combined with the railway issue served to precipitate a dispute so bad that the Coalition (always a precarious thing in Victoria) threatened to break apart. Menzies responded to the situation with a cutting address to the United Australia Organisation’s general meeting:

‘The Country Party purported to be an ally of the United Australia Party. What was its policy? It was concerned merely with procuring any temporary advantage for one section of the community. A Labour member of the Legislative Council had said to him with some bitterness, “The Country party would vote for Communism tomorrow if it meant 3d. more a bushell in the price of wheat” (Laughter). The United Australia Party believed in private enterprise, and in the much-abused capitalist system. It was time that the party ceased to apologise for its opinions . . . The party’s danger was that it seemed to be bargaining away its belief for a mess of political pottage.’

A change in Country Party Leadership prevented a full scale blow up, which is just as well because Argyle was soon taken ill, leaving Menzies to serve as Acting Premier for a full three months, including representing Victoria at the 1934 Premiers’ Conference. He also had to resolve a protracted strike of coal miners protesting wages cuts implemented as part of the Premiers’ Plan – something which Menzies did by persuading Cabinet to agree to give some concessions to the miners that would allow for a compromise agreement.

Menzies’s elevation into Federal politics came on the back of the retirement of former Nationalist Leader John Latham, who left vacant both the blue-ribbon seat of Kooyong and the Federal Attorney-Generalship, but it was not an opportunity that Menzies jumped at immediately – largely because he did not want to endure frequent trips to Canberra, preferring to stay in Melbourne. UAP Prime Minister Joseph Lyons even made Menzies a direct offer to appoint him Attorney General, but he only accepted this at the urging of his wife and confidant Pattie.

Though Menzies’s time as a Victorian Minister was comparatively short, it would prove to be a very important training ground for his later political success. Above all, it is what taught him to value the strength and the advice offered by the public service. In a 1933 address on the topic of public administration, Menzies explained that:

‘Continuity on the part of the administration was required by the community. Parliaments and Ministers came and went, and it was necessary that the departments should be the connecting links between the people and their Parliaments. After all, the public interest demanded that administration should be devoid of political significance, and the capable permanent head could be relied upon to see that political or party considerations did not influence him in the administration of the department under his control.’

Further Reading:

A.W. Martin, Robert Menzies: A Life Volume 1 1894-1943

Troy Bramston, Robert Menzies: The Art of Politics