Anti-Political Political Thought

Abstract

Australian politics absorbed a shock in the depression which affected the three parties in different ways. Labor was split and put out of office; the Nationalist Party was succeeded by a new party, the United Aus tralia Party; the Country Party had to adapt itself to movements of rural unrest. Outside the parties, new movements sprang suddenly into existence professing disillusionment with party politics. Those who battled for power in each of these situations drew on the stock of political beliefs traditionally available to them. The advocates of socialism raised their voices once more in the Labor Party; disillusioned businessmen and other friends and supporters of the Nationalists sud denly remembered traditional criticisms of party politics; the leaders of the Country Party drew on New State thinking to help them absorb the rural dissatisfaction. In short, the depression provoked party figures and other public men to state their political beliefs explicitly and often more dogmatically than usual. Non-Labor beliefs evaluating and explaining the political system were set out on a number of topics besides party politics and new States. Mistrust of democracy was evident in some of it, and much of it had a distinctly conservative character. Upper Houses safeguarded democracy against the impulses of transient majorities, according to an article in the United Australia Review.1 The Bulletin2 thought governors helped safeguard democracy. The Pastoral Review quoted Alexander Hamilton and gloomily recalled that for close on forty years it had been showing the 'folly' of democracy.3 Menzies reminded an audience that citizens had duties as well as rights and suggested that democracy was not an end in itself. Self-government, he said, could succeed only when people were prepared to abandon selfishness at the expense of others.4 The duty of government, according to the Australasian Manufac turer, was not to interfere with the working of industry, but to maintain peace, construct roads, dispense justice impartially and facilitate enter prise in various ways.5 Senator Brennan thought that the prime duty of government was not to make people rich but to protect them while they made themselves rich.6 Government ought to withdraw from 'socialist' enterprise, to stop 'coddling' individuals and 'interfering' with industries. A. C. Davidson, of the Bank of N.S.W., thought governments could not initiate new industry.7 A Farmers' and Settlers' Association conference resolved that social services did 'untold harm' by reducing 'thrift' and removing the 'self-reliance' of the people.8 A writer in the Pastoral Review argued that bureaucracy was the cause of present troubles and the ruination of democracies.9 The Empire Party, an