Menzies Enters the Victorian Parliament
Handbill from Menzies’s first election campaign. Published in A.W. Martin Volume 1 ‘courtesy of Mr G. Menzies’.
On this day, 9 October in 1928, Robert Menzies is sworn in to the Victorian Legislative Council, having been elected as the representative of the East Yarra Province. Robert was taking up a family tradition of parliamentary service: his father James had held the Victorian seat of Lowan, his uncle Hugh had held the Victorian seat of Stawell, another uncle Sydney Sampson had held the Federal seat of Wimmera, and his wife’s father John Leckie had held the Victorian seat of Benambra and then the Federal seat of Indi before finally ending up in the Senate. From an early age, Robert had thus been inculcated with the notion that men of intelligence and repute had a duty to serve their community and take an active part in political life, even when it may not have been in their pecuniary interest to do so.
At the time of his election Menzies was a young but already well-known lawyer, having won the landmark Engineers’ Case in the High Court of Australia. Even though this victory helped to centralise power in the hands of the Commonwealth, Menzies’s first political foray was as an advocate of states’ rights and subsidiarity, campaigning against a Bruce Government referendum which sought to obtain additional Commonwealth powers over trade unions, employers’ associations, trusts, and combinations in restraint of trade. The referendum gave Menzies an opportunity to try his hand at public speaking, a skill he readily developed with the help of some honest feedback from his uncle Sydney.
Having worked up an appetite for politics, Menzies decided to stand for an Upper House seat in the hope that the Council’s less demanding schedule would leave him plenty of time to practise at the Bar. As a believer in states’ rights, the strength of the Council as a ‘house of review’, and economy in public spending, Menzies naturally identified himself with the Nationalist Party, then the major party of the centre-right. However, even though Menzies reflected establishment values, like many contemporaries he was quite critical of the existing culture of Victorian politics.
Menzies first tried to win the East Yarra Province at the Upper House election of June 1928, but he was comfortably beaten by seasoned community leader and fellow Nationalist candidate George Swinburne. Tragically, just three months later Swinburne collapsed and died while preparing to speak on a Bill in the Council Chamber. Menzies won the ensuing by-election, though interest in the contest for a safe Nationalist seat was limited and voter turnout was low at 19%. This prompted both Menzies and his defeated opponent to state their support for the introduction of compulsory voting at the declaration of the poll.
Despite his initial hopes for a light workload, Menzies was quickly swept up into the heart of events, serving as a Minister without portfolio in the Government of William McPherson. Within less than a year Menzies resigned this position when he refused to support concessions to the Country Progressives that would have funded loss-making rural enterprises. Menzies intensely disliked sectional interests manipulating politics for their own ends like this, and he became heavily involved in a group called the ‘Young Nationalists’ which sought to re-invigorate Victorian politics. One of their main aims was to get the Nationalists to stand up for honest political principles, rather than allowing themselves to be manipulated by big business.
By the time of the 1929 general election Menzies decided to stand for the Lower House, a clear sign of growing ambition, winning the seat of Nunawading. Menzies’s time in the Legislative Council would thus prove short-lived, but it was still a vital steppingstone on a remarkable upward trajectory that would see Menzies become Prime Minister by the age of 44.
Further Reading:
A.W. Martin, Robert Menzies, A Life: Volume 1 1894-1943 (Melbourne University Press, 1993).
Troy Bramston, Robert Menzies: The Art of Politics (Scribe Publications, 2019).