QUIZ: Dec winners; January question
Ross McMullin has provided another question to test and extend your knowledge of ALP history. The answer will be revealed next month. Correct entrants will receive hearty praise and admiration.
Date: 08 January 2008
John Winston Howard and his hero, Robert Gordon Menzies, had much in common.
As is well known, each of them had a lengthy period in office as Liberal prime minister. Also, each had a previous distinctly unsuccessful stint as party leader. As well, each had a paltry list of worthwhile achievements for a PM in office for so long: the expansion of tertiary education and the expansion of Canberra under Menzies were the equivalent of Howard’s intervention in East Timor and initiative on gun controls.
Also well known are the grubby stains on Howard’s record. They include Iraq, playing the race card, sordid dog-whistling, deceitfulness re children overboard and much else, detaining children indefinitely behind razor wire, David Hicks, and all the other ways he pandered to and brought out the worst in Australians rather than their best. Some fierce critics of Howard have claimed that Menzies was a leader of more stature and genuine liberal instincts who would not stoop to such obnoxious conduct. However, this impression is dubious.
Menzies, like Howard, was fond of shallow short-term opportunism. Menzies, like Howard, used hate and fear to win elections. Menzies, like Howard, played politics with national security. Menzies, like Howard, displayed crass subservience to our “great and powerful friends”, with disastrous consequences for Australia’s national interest. And Menzies, like Howard, proclaimed the virtue of his sound fiscal credentials, although part of the credit for Australia’s economy during his stewardship was due to the previous Labor government’s reforms rather than what his government did.
Moreover, Menzies, like Howard, had a tainted record on civil liberties concerns such as freedom of speech. While this was evident in various controversies after World War II, there was also a notorious episode during the 1930s when Menzies was Attorney–General in Australia’s conservative federal government headed by Joe Lyons.
As well as the injudicious support Menzies afforded to fascist regimes, he became prominent in the government’s hard line against a visiting European writer who was an outspoken critic of Hitler and the Nazis. This writer, who was banned from arriving in the country by the government, made a celebrated entry by jumping off his ship and breaking his leg. After a High Court judge (H.V. Evatt) overruled the government’s ban, the writer made a number of well-attended speeches in Australia, to the embarrassment of the authorities and, in particular, Menzies.
Who was this writer?
TO SUBMIT YOUR ANSWER, CLICK HERE (please include your name, suburb & state/territory)
THE ANSWER AND THE WINNERS
The answer to the previous Quiz is: Nelson
Lemmon.
Correct answers were received from:
Malcolm Thurston, Nicholls,
ACT
Alan
Collins, St Andrews NSW
Morris Allen, Eden Hills SA
David Payne, Wagga Wagga NSW
Robert Bozinovski, Keilor Downs VIC
Niall Johnson, Warriewood NSW
Ian
Caldwell, Belmont VIC
Trevor Scroop, Greenacres SA
Jim Saltis Randwick NSW
David Tansey, Kingston ACT
Ken Maher, Dickson ACT
John Gallagher, Randwick NSW
Chris Bollmeyer, Grange SA
Robert Pask, Bentleigh East VIC
Ian Hundley, Balwyn North VIC
Ben Dineen
Brad Snell Karratha
WA
Don McKenzie, Emerald Beach
Nick Agocs, Dianella WA
Adam Yearsley, Athelstone SA
Bill Agnew, Grays Point NSW
Brian Cullen, Carlton VIC
Brian McInnes, Leura NSW
Chris
Picton, Adelaide SA
Bev Turbit, Toronto NSW
Greg Brian, North Strathfield NSW
Michael Grounds, Strathfieldsaye VIC
Jordan Stanley, Mangerton NSW
Glenn
Kefford, Erskineville, NSW
Brian Wilson, Bomaderry NSW
Gary Benton
Danni Smith, Brunswick VIC
Phillip Daly, Parafield Gardens SA
Tony Kennedy, Caulfield South VIC
Daniel Thomas Kambah ACT
Greg Roberts, Mount Lawley WA
David White, Ferntree Gully VIC
Aydan Casey,
Marrickville
NSW
Debbie Smith, Chisholm ACT
