Fed: Cabinet notebooks show 1950 deliberations

AAP General News (Australia)
02-12-2001
Fed: Cabinet notebooks show 1950 deliberations

By Max Blenkin

CANBERRA, Feb 12 AAP - Australia's longest-serving prime minister Robert Menzies was
determined to ban the Communist Party in 1950 and to cause as much grief as possible to
Labor in the process, cabinet notebooks reveal.

The papers, released today by the National Archives of Australia, show Menzies government
ministers were even predicting it could force a split in the Labor Party.

And in a forerunner to Menzies' decision to send troops to Vietnam in 1965, he declared
the only reason Australian soldiers were going to Korea at the outbreak of the Korean
War in 1950 was because the United States was there already.

Unlike the cabinet papers which are released each year under the 30-year rule, cabinet
notebooks are restricted for 50 years.

That's because the notebooks, studiously recorded by the cabinet secretary and others,
give an insight into views held by individual ministers, warts and all.

During the war years 1939-45, cabinet notebooks were conscientiously maintained. But
the practice lapsed until August 1950 when Arthur Stanley Brown, secretary to the prime
minister's department, decided to start again.

Australian National University historian Dr John Knott said the notebooks contained
nothing that fundamentally overturned the contemporary understanding of Menzies government
cabinet deliberations in 1950.

The year 1950 featured some big issues.

Number one was clearly the war in Korea. Cabinet initially opposed calls for a contribution
of Australian troops on the grounds that Australia was doing its bit to fight communism
in Malaya.

But stung into action by Britain's imminent announcement of a military contribution,
the government, less Menzies who was overseas, said troops would be despatched.

Menzies' initial reticence quickly became overt enthusiasm, telling the US that British
and New Zealand troops would soon be joining Australians and Americans in the Korean frontline.

Although the Korea operation was conducted under the United Nations banner, the cabinet
notebooks reveal a quite different reason for Australian involvement.

"We are pretending that Korea is a UN operation. But we would not be in it unless the
US were in and we are in it because they are," Menzies is recorded as saying.

Moves to ban the communist party reverberate even today.

The government introduced its prohibition bill in April 1950. It proceeded smartly
through the House of Representatives but stalled in the Labor-dominated Senate.

Dr Knott said Menzies may well have been genuine in his belief that dissolving the
communist party was necessary.

"But this did not stop him or his ministerial colleagues from revelling in the in the
discomfort it caused the Labor opposition," he told reporters in a briefing today.

Transport Minister George McLeay suggested the government should concentrate on the "commo bill".

"Within a week they (the ALP) may be split in two," he said.

Menzies suggested the government should take every opportunity to show how Labor was
dodging "the commo bill.".

As it was Labor actually backed the bill but had grave reservations about key aspects.

It was then successfully challenged in the High Court. A move to amend the constitution
granting parliament the power to ban communists was defeated at a referendum in September
1951.

AAP mb/daw/cd/de

KEYWORD: MENZIES

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