First Among Equals by Kim; Derry Hogue; Wildman Read Free Book Online

leader Earle Page, who served as caretaker prime minister for twenty days, clashed with the UAP’s new leader, Robert Menzies. Page was forced to resign as leader of the Country Party and was replaced by Archie Cameron. When Menzies became prime minister, Cameron appointed Fadden as a party representative in the ministry.
    Tragically, on 13 August 1940, three UAP ministers were killed when their plane crashed on approach to Canberra. Fadden was meant to have been on this flight, but had instead travelled by train. Ironically, Menzies then appointed Fadden the new minister for air and civil aviation.
    With Labor fast regaining strength, the coalition barely survived September’s federal election. Power struggles within the Country Party resulted in Cameron losing the leadership in a ballot in October 1940. With the vote then split between Page and McEwen, Fadden was appointed leader to break the deadlock. He then became treasurer, a member of the all-party Advisory War Council and acting prime minister when Menzies travelled to London in January 1941.
    When Menzies returned to Australia in May 1941 he found the coalition dissatisfied with his leadership and conspiring against him. In August that year Menzies was forced out and, as the frontrunner in the UAP, Fadden stepped in as prime minister. With the Coalition still deeply divided, Fadden’s government was defeated on the floor of the House of Representatives less than six weeks later when Labor’s John Curtin moved against Fadden’s budget. The governor-general appointed Curtin as his successor.
    Fadden continued as opposition leader. In the 1943 election the conservative parties suffered major losses, enabling Menzies to rise again and seize control of the UAP leadership which he eventually renamed the Liberal Party. While Fadden’s relationship with Menzies was a tenuous one, the two men built a strong Liberal-Country Party coalition which continues today. Thus, when Menzies was returned to power in 1949, Fadden was appointed treasurer and went on to deliver a record eleven budgets.
    Fadden retired from politics in 1958 but failed to be appointed as chair of the Commonwealth Bank, as he had hoped. He was knighted in 1961 for his services to politics and worked on his autobiography, They Called Me Artie, which was published in 1969. Fadden died at his Brisbane home on 21 April 1973.

    JOHN JOSEPH AMBROSE CURTIN
    THE WAR PRIME MINISTER
    TERM
    7 October 1941-5 July 1945
    W idely regarded as one of Australia’s greatest prime ministers, John Joseph Ambrose Curtin was the country’s fourteenth prime minister and Labor’s fifth federal leader. Coming to power during World War II, Curtin, a reformed alcoholic, faced an unprecedented and complex situation. Unfortunately, the stresses of war took their toll and on 5 July 1945 Curtin became the second prime minister to die in office.
    The son of a police constable, Curtin was born at Creswick, Victoria, on 8 January 1885. The eldest of four children, he was educated at a series of public and private schools in Melbourne and various Victorian country towns, before his father’s ill health forced him to retire and move the family back to Melbourne.
    At the age of thirteen Curtin left school to help support his family. He worked briefly for both the Age and the Rambler newspapers before joining the Titan Manufacturing Company in 1903. During his time with the company, Curtin was influenced by Frank Anstey, then a member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly, and Tom Mann, a British trade union leader who visited Australia in the first decade of Federation, and soon became active in the Victorian Socialist Party and the Political Labor Council.
    In March 1911 Curtin left Titan to become secretary of the Victorian Timber Workers’ Union. With the threat of war growing, Curtin shifted his focus fromsocialism to the prevention of war. In 1914 he stood unsuccessfully as the Labor candidate for