HENRY REYNOLDS REYNOLDS: Well two things I think I'd like to ask you. One, what inspired you to write this book? A big book and it obviously took a lot of time with quite a bit of research and, secondly, and more interestingly, why did you want to discuss it with me? HOWARD: Well I wanted to discuss it with you because you've got a contrary view of some aspects of Australian history from mine, and probably from Bob Menzies.
REYNOLDS: I expect so HOWARD:... and probably from other people who I've interviewed and, in the interest of balance and objectivity, I wanted to have another view, so that's why I've asked you Henry, and I thank you for taking part. Why did I want to write the book in the first place? A combination of reasons. Menzies was the founder of the Liberal party. He was of course the Prime Minister through all of my formative years. I was 10 when he became Prime Minister, 26 when he deceased. Virtually the same pattern as yourself, I think, 11 and 27... REYNOLDS: That's right, that's right. HOWARD: We lived through the same period and I remember these events. The other thing was I felt that he had had a bad wrap from some people on the opposite side of politics from him and me and I suppose I responded a little bit to the constant taunt, why don't you fellas on the centre right match those on the centre left and write a few more books about politics. In truth they were the principal reasons why I did it and in my post-active political life I've quite enjoyed writing, I enjoyed writing my autobiography. I thought this was the next thing to do and I hope if nothing else it's revoked bit more enquiry and debate from people much younger than both of us about the history of that period, and I do think as time has gone by and I've examined the material, that so much of the modern Australia we have finds its roots in Menzies. REYNOLDS: I think that quite a lot of the things that happened in the Menzies era were foreshadowed. It s very interesting about migration. Now I was fascinated just to realise how enthusiastic Menzies was about mass migration which I think is probably the
single most important thing that happened to Australia - that happened to my Australia because I remember the old Australia - and that is increasingly something which people don't understand. Just how homogeneous the old Australia was. What dramatically changed my thinking was going to North Queensland in this period. When it was an utterly different world, I mean it was a different world. It was totally unexpected, mainly because I'd grown up with this idea that if you were looking for one essential element of being Australian, it was egalitarianism. There were many other things about Australia but the sense of the fair go and egalitarianism was central to it. And in a way, I suspect that came out of the fact that Tasmania was overwhelmingly the place that had the convict heritage. Going straight to North Queensland at a time when racial conflict was at its height because it was just when you begin to get the reurbanisation of indigenous people. There's the Torres Strait Islanders who had been allowed in only a few years before to build the railway, so they began to bring their families to Cairns and Townsville. The Queensland government had just in '65 changed the laws and people could leave... Palm Island was the biggest settlement, essentially a suburb of Townsville. And at almost the same time people were being pushed off the pastoral stations because of equal wages, and so you got this big migration back into the towns, and that caused a great deal of overt conflict, and openly expressed racism of the most frankest kind. So this was a complete revelation and a shock to me. And the violence was a shock to me, there was a lot of violence. Now, coming from Tasmania, this was almost another country. And so that was what I realised that if I was going to teach Australian history to my students, many of them who had come from smaller places than Townsville, I had to take on board this
whole issue, because they knew it was important. The book that I had, the textbook at the time, Gordon Greenwood's Australia: a Social and Political History didn't mention the Aborigines. So I had to go and do the work myself, because there were no books. And that's when I started on this progression of trying to understand why this was such - well, to me - it was so un- Australian. And disturbingly so. HOWARD: And you didn't see Menzies as rowing against the tide in relation to Indigenous policy? REYNOLDS: I wasn't aware, really, of him having any particular view, I certainly didn't feel that he was antagonistic to these developments. I don't know what he thought about it, but, as I say, it was as quick a change as any in 20th Century Australia, that sudden emergence of indigenous people - the young people themselves - taking the cause in their own hands. That was a very dramatic change, and it was partly of course the influence of America - Martin Luther King - because that is very big in our history. Just as the American protest movement in Vietnam is important in Australia, and in a way, we think of American influence in all sorts of ways, but in those two areas of protest, there's no doubt the Americans coined much of the terminology and much of the tactics. The freedom rides in Northern NSW were clearly modelled on what had been happening in America. But, in a way, the American movement is for civil rights and equality. Our indigenous movement is different, because suddenly they say, "No, we want something different... we want land and we want selfdetermination. This is a different sort of cause all together. HOWARD: I thought Menzies for his time - given the background and the sort of person he was adjusted, but the most important
thing to him though was keeping a balance between the Americans and the British. REYNOLDS: Did Menzies like America, and Americans, do you think? HOWARD: My assessment is that he was very judicious in choosing between the heart and the head. Whenever he had to make a decision that affected our strategic foreign policy, defence and where it was obviously in Australian interests to go with the Americans. We did. He maintained the American position on recognising Communist China. I'm not saying that was right or wrong that he maintained it. He ignored the British desire to be part of ANZUS. Most controversially of all, of course, he committed Australian forces to Vietnam, when the British never did. REYNOLDS: When the British didn't, yes, yeah. HOWARD: And he had essentially accepted the domino theory. REYNOLDS: Like many people, I was against the Vietnam War, Now this is party because all of this happened while we were in Britain. We sort of spent nearly two years of this period, the going into Vietnam and the early years of the war, out of the country and in a country that wasn't involved. But I just wonder whether Menzies, in retrospect, felt that that was worthwhile. Do you think he felt it had been a... HOWARD: I don't think he had any doubt that what he was doing at the time was designed, in part, to retain American involvement in our part of the world. REYNOLDS: No, no, no, I understand that.
HOWARD: I had to ask myself when I wrote the book about Menzies - the longest chapter is about Vietnam - I naturally posed the rhetorical question, did I think it was right or wrong. And the only answer I could give was - if I had been in his shoes, because we're denied hindsight - would I have done the same thing? And I answered I would have, with all the circumstances that existed. What was your overall perception of Menzies as a prime minister, how do you remember him and how did you rate him at the time? REYNOLDS: Yes, what I would remember most, I think, was the Britishness, were those highly eloquent things about the monarch and about the Britishness. Now I didn't feel British. I didn't feel British... I'm not sure that my family felt British. I just sort of feel that there were people in Tasmania who were already six generations, you know, deep in the Australian continent. And in the 60s, you will remember, there was a real upsurge of Australian history and literature, and writing and drama. There really was this efflorescence of Australian-ness. And I was part of that. That just felt right to me. That this is who I was. And going to Britain in a way reaffirmed that, so I felt he was a man from an earlier generation. Whereas, as you say, there are many ways he moved. But on those sentimental things, he seemed tied very much... HOWARD: To the externalities... REYNOLDS: Tied very much to the Empire that once existed. That I feel that much of the 20th Century Australia suffered through it being part of the Empire, because I think they tied themselves to a power in decline. It wasn't obvious, but by the time of the First World War, I think Britain got more out of the relationship than Australia did. And so it was, in a way, if I had a view of Menzies, it was as a nationalist, as an Australian patriot. And it was that he was so eloquent, and sometimes his best
eloquence was put into, as you say, what came from his heart rather than from his head. HOWARD: Do you think Menzies was a man of his times or did he shape the times in which he governed. REYNOLDS: Well I think your description of him in a sense, he was an ambivalent, he had his heart and his head and in a way they sometimes went in different directions. Now I think that's a good way of seeing him. We're not suggesting he was bi-polar but nonetheless there clearly was this complexity in the man and by the time he came to power he was a very mature person, he wasn't a boy. Now there's no doubt of course he was lucky. He was lucky in the times but you know from politics that you make your own luck in many ways or you ride your luck. Luck doesn't simply just fall into your lap and Menzies was - by the time he was Prime Minister - he was a very skilled parliamentarian. Now in so many ways, yes, he began to do important things. White Australia, they began to look at Aborigines, universities, state aid for non-govt - all of these things were important and they were things which were continued with. The success of a reforming politician isn't exactly he does it and whether he's doing reforms that are then going to be the foundation of future change and there's no doubt that although the change they made were often quite small, they did lead on. So yes I think Menzies is extremely interesting. He clearly looked back almost to Edwardian Britain and there was something Edwardian about him, I mean his manners and his gestures, it came from a different era. He almost could come out of, if not an Oscar Wilde play, he could almost come out of that era - that long
lost era - of Britain s great Imperial glory, but he was living well into the sunset.