Menzies greatly enjoyed the arts, taking opportunities to see shows and meet artists during his travels, as well as frequenting the bohemian Melbourne Savage Club, where artists mixed with businessmen and politicians. Off Cape Town, more than British migrants were able to see their new prime minister long before they would set foot on Australian soil. A pre-arranged meeting saw the Arcadia pass the Australia-bound liner Strathaird. Migrants aboard the Strathaird cabled greetings to Menzies, who responded by requesting the two ships pass as closely as possible.
With less than metres separating the liners, the migrants had a clear view of the prime minister waving. Menzies had supported post-war migration, welcoming Eastern European migrants and defending German migrants in an often hostile Australia.
Yet, Menzies was an unwavering advocate of Empire, and responded warmly to British migrants such as those aboard the Strathaird. Heather Henderson ed. Menzies In Mid-Ocean , 25 June, Skip to main navigation Skip to secondary navigation Skip to content. Australian Prime Ministers Show nav. Home Prime Ministers Robert Menzies. Born 20 December Jeparit, Victoria. Died 15 May Melbourne, Victoria. Partner Dame Pattie Menzies. Party Liberal. Milestones Communist referendum defeated A referendum was held on 22 September on the issue of banning the Communist Party of Australia.
Image 1 Dec Display as: List Grid. Article 27 Mar Article 16 Dec Audio 18 Sep Article 14 Jul Article 13 Jul Article 12 Jul Article 11 Jul The Commonwealth Government and the States agreed that the universities had to be brought up to modern standards, and that the growing demand for university education had to be met.
In Sydney, the University had been built on a site of 52 hectares, selected in , conveniently near the centre of the city. The State Government arranged for the University to acquire an additional area of 18 hectares of adjacent city land on which to erect new buildings principally for the Faculties of Engineering and Architecture.
The construction of the new Fisher Library, the Edgeworth David Building for geology, the Carslaw Building for mathematics has, with other changes, transformed this old University to one with modern facilities. The University of Melbourne is conveniently situated near the city centre, and adjacent to its residential colleges, the Royal Melbourne Hospital and other related institutions.
The University has, on the limited area of this site, succeeded, by using attractive multi-storey structures, in providing modern facilities for teaching and research for its seven faculties. Worthy of note are the new medical centre, the Howard Florey Laboratories for medical research and the Baillieu Library.
The Raymond Priestley Building houses the University's administration. The Universities of Adelaide and Western Australia have each met the challenge of change on the sites selected at their foundation. When Colonel Light, in the mid-nineteenth century, planned the city of Adelaide, he placed the University, the residence of the State Governor and other civic buildings between North Terrace, one of the boundaries of the inner city, and the River Torrens.
The traditional design of red brick buildings of this University has been retained for most of the new buildings, but, once again, multi-storey structures have provided a solution. The physics laboratory is named after W. Bragg, FRS, who went to his first university post in Adelaide in The pressure of student numbers has not been quite so great in Western Australia as in the eastern States.
The University has been able to accommodate the necessary additions within the admirable site in the suburb of Nedlands along a reach of the Swan River. The beauty of this University has not been seriously affected by the addition of major new buildings. The Universities of Queensland and Tasmania had to meet the challenge of modernity by major moves to new sites. The main building and the buildings for chemistry, physics, geology and biological sciences were erected at that time in monumental stone.
The traditional architecture was not used in building the extensive additions for the University's twelve faculties. The University of Tasmania, the smallest of the original six universities, began in humble circumstances in Hobart. The new university buildings of modern architectural design, are grouped on a hill-site at Sandy Bay, a Hobart suburb a few kilometres down the Derwent River. In the Government of New South Wales decided to meet the growing demand for university education by founding the University of Technology, planned, initially, to provide professional training and research in the technologies and applied science.
This plan was liberalized in ; the curriculum was extended to include arts and medicine, and the name changed to the University of New South Wales. The site of 38 hectares, in the inner Sydney suburb of Kensington, is crowded, but adequate modern facilities are provided. The University has named the library the Robert Menzies Building. On the coast of New South Wales, both north and south of Sydney, are the cities of the major coal producing areas of the State with associated iron and steel and heavy engineering production.
The University of New South Wales acted as a foster parent to the University of Newcastle, which became independent in , and to the University of Wollongong, independent in The University of Sydney had, from , fostered the growth of the University of New England, which now dates its independence from This attractive university, situated in the city of Armidale kilometres north of Sydney in elevated pastoral country, teaches not only arts, education, economics and science but specializes in rural science and university teaching by correspondence.
By the s it was evident that the potential demand could not be met without another university in the Sydney area. Macquarie University was founded in ; it is located on a site of hectares about 18 kilometres north-west of the centre of Sydney.
Named after Lachlan Macquarie, Governor of New South Wales from to , this was one of the first universities to adopt the name of a prominent man as its title. It is now well developed; it had over students by The location of the two new universities for Melbourne took account of the rapid expansion of the domestic, commercial and industrial areas to the north and east of the city and down the Mornington Peninsula between Port Phillip and Western Port Bays. Monash University was founded in and located about 18 kilometres to the south-east of the city.
The large multi-storey Robert Menzies School of the Humanities is a conspicuous feature on the landscape. In these two universities had a total of nearly 20 students, more than Melbourne University. The name of Matthew Flinders, the navigator of the nineteenth century who charted the coasts of Australia, has been adopted by the second university in South Australia.
Beginning as a foster child of the University of Adelaide, the Flinders University of South Australia is situated on an attractive hillside site at Bedford Park about 11 kilometres from Adelaide. Following a recent tendency in university organization it had, in , created the Schools of Language and Literature and Social Sciences, Biological Sciences and Physical Sciences.
The University of Queensland, in , began to develop a university college about kilometres to the north of Brisbane, in the tropical coastal city of Townsville.
In addition to the customary faculties this University has special interests in tropical veterinary science and marine biology. The architects have designed attractive buildings well suited to the tropical climate with heavy summer rainfall. The fifth report of the Australian Universities Commission states that two new universities will be established, the Griffith University in Brisbane, and the Murdoch University in Perth.
Deakin University in Geelong, Victoria, has since been added to bring to nineteen the total of the universities of Australia. A visit to any Australian university today will reveal a scene incomparably different to that when the Murray Committee made its inspection.
Students are now well provided with union buildings and dining facilities; while few universities have room for playing fields on campus, much money has been expended on facilities for sport and recreation. Computers are now commonly used for undergraduate teaching, for higher degree work and research, and computer facilities are as much a normal university facility as the library.
Once only one veterinary faculty provided for Australia and New Zealand; now there are four, with James Cook University, in addition, specializing in tropical veterinary science. The expansion of medical teaching in nine universities has been very costly. There is a marked interest today in studies of the cultures and languages of Asia and the Pacific as alternatives to those of Europe and the classics.
Earth sciences, behavioural sciences and environmental studies represent changes in academic interest not, of course, confined to Australia. Menzies, with the help of the Murray Committee and the Universities Commission, initiated a policy of generous university growth; when he retired this forward movement continued but, with the many detailed changes in policy, the story, thereafter, inevitably loses its simplicity.
In his memoirs The measure of the years Menzies reveals his personal, and indeed emotional, interest in these events. When preparing to present the Murray report to Parliament, he told his Cabinet that he would like to sit morning, afternoon and evening. He then says: 'The Cabinet, knowing it was an outstanding event in my life, humoured me, and I am still grateful to them. He reports himself as saying, in presenting the report: 'Mr Speaker, if I may confess it, this is a rather special night in my political career.
Although the professors and lecturers of the six Australian universities of the first three decades of this century had inherited the tradition of original research as an essential complement to teaching, the relative poverty of the universities, the apathy of the governing bodies and the remoteness of Australia from the great centres of progress in science in the old world severely handicapped progress.
Nevertheless, the teaching of science was in most faculties at a high level, and there were some centres of exceptional merit. The Exhibition Science Scholarships offered one of the few opportunities for travel and study abroad; scholars such as T. Laby, FRS, returned to found distinguished research schools In the ranks of the Fellowship of the Royal Society and the Australian Academy of Science are the names of many of those who kept the achievement of original investigation alive.
When World War II began many university staff members sacrificed their personal research ambitions to take part in the national war effort. They experienced the exciting stimulus that almost unlimited money gave to many applied projects such as radar, optical munitions, camouflage, food science and the many aspects of chemistry and metallurgy of war materials.
University scientists were not content to return to quite inadequate buildings and facilities, the lack of funds for research assistance and equipment, at a time when student numbers were increasing. Some attempts had been made in the pre-war years to assist with Commonwealth funds, then a most unusual approach, thought by most Commonwealth politicians to be prohibited by the Constitution. Professor J. Madsen later Sir John Madsen , the first Professor of Electrical Engineering in Sydney, avoided this problem by inducing the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research the CSIR and the Australian Post Office to provide funds which, when distributed by the Radio Research Board, became the means of building up a fine record of ionospheric physics in several universities An approach to the Treasurer of the Commonwealth, R.
Casey considered that the Constitutional limitation required him to insist that grants be made only to university projects of direct relevance to the CSIR's programme. That the CSIR should tell the universities what research to do was anathema to Sir David Rivett, FRS, the Chief Executive Officer of the CSIR; this was in fact avoided by what can only now be described as skilful maladministration, made all the easier by the casual university administrative methods of those days. The Vice-Chancellors agreed to a proportional allocation to each university and undertook to account for its use to the Commonwealth After the war a variety of different ways were tried to satisfy the problems of university research finance.
The need for trained postgraduate research scientists, both for Government agencies and for industry, and later as university teachers, was now becoming a pressing issue. The amounts of money available were gradually increased, but not to the degree satisfactory to the universities.
The demands for modern research equipment were steadily increasing, while, with larger enrolments of higher degree postgraduate students, the universities found it difficult to finance the appointment of well qualified supervisors and technicians. The Commonwealth Committee on the Needs of the Universities, i. This became the basis of university finance until , when Menzies began to give effect to the recommendations of the Murray Committee.
By the universities were receiving money for research from a variety of sources. Various agricultural producing industries — wool, wheat and dairy industry — were providing funds, subsidized by the Commonwealth, to support research by the universities and the CSIRO The Commonwealth Bank, through its Rural Credits Development Fund, was helping also. In the United States at this time very large sums of money from the Defence vote were being spent on front line science, and some Australian university people were recipients of grants for special projects.
The Australian Universities Commission in reporting to Menzies in stated: 'The Commission believes that national needs demand the allocation of special grants to universities to meet the rising costs of postgraduate training and also to support senior staff in their task of planning and supervising this training.
This marked the beginning of special arrangements to support university research. In the House on 24 March Menzies said 17 :. When introducing the Universities Financial Assistance Bill in October , I accepted the recommendation for this initial distribution and said that I hoped the Government would shortly take an opportunity to look at the whole question of Commonwealth involvement in research in Australia.
This we have now done. After that date, we feel, the Commission should include provision for this form of research grant, bound up as it is with postgraduate teaching, in the general recommendations which it makes for capital and recurrent grants to the universities. We believe that this sum should be available for particular selected research projects to be carried out by individuals or research teams.
We will look to this committee for advice as to the allocations, within the limits of the money available, for such proposals. The committee will receive proposals, in the main, from research workers in universities, although applications from persons working outside universities will not be debarred unless such persons are working for Government authorities.
Commonwealth money from this fund will be available on the advice of the committee, subject in each case involving a university, to a matching grant from the State in which the research is to be carried out. When Sir Robert Menzies announced the Australian Research Grants scheme on 24 March, , his Government was meeting the long-felt need for stimulation of high level research in Australia. The detailed arrangements were made by Senator Gorton, the Minister assisting the Prime Minister in matters relating to education and science, and I was entrusted with the task of forming the Australian Research Grants Committee to recommend the projects which should be supported by the grant.
For the first time in Australia research workers had the opportunity to obtain finance not merely from the meagre research money available in their universities or research institutions or from that applied to the practical problems of a particular industry. The result was that research in Australian universities, starved for too long, began to flourish and in the first four years of the Committee's existence some reports on work which it had supported were published.
The terms of reference of the Australian Research Grants Committee contained the key phrase "it will base its recommendations on its own assessment of the relative merits of individual proposals".
The Committee sought written assessments by leading workers in the same line of research as the applicant and always sought excellence by supporting the most outstanding and the most promising investigators. The result is that Sir Robert's far-sighted scheme has been a lasting success, ensuring not only good research but also provision of opportunities which have aided recruitment of outstanding workers in Australian universities. Menzies was Prime Minister during the period of the greatest expansion of the activities and facilities the CSIRO had ever experienced.
Many new activities were begun and older programmes took on a new and expanded form. Studies of Australia's coal resources were started for the first time. Research on the nature of keratin, the structure of the wool fibre and its processing soon began to provide the International Wool Secretariat with the data to fight the technical battle with the synthetics. Studies of the healthy sheep and its management were aimed at higher and more efficient wool production.
New ideas on suitable beef producing cattle and pasture plants suitable for the tropical north resulted from greatly increased programmes. The unexpected myxomatosis epizootic virtually rid the country of the rabbit plague, and provided unique opportunities for studies of a wild virus disease under field conditions and animal behaviour studies of the rabbit.
Quite new ideas, for example on the absolute determination of the ohm, emerged from the National Standards Laboratory. The early post-war researches of J. Pawsey, F. These were the days of high hopes and aspirations, when the attitude, certainly approved by Menzies and Casey, was that new knowledge from front line research would transform the economic and cultural life of Australia.
That the scientists of the CSIRO were in the forefront of scientific endeavour is testified by elections to the Fellowship of the Academy and Royal Society and by the frequent awards of honours from learned societies and universities. One of these, Mr A. Richie, a grazier from the Western District of Victoria, retired from the post in May of that year and the question of his replacement arose.
The Minister-in-Charge, R. This was an interesting and somewhat surprising suggestion in view of the past association between Coles and the Prime Minister. Arthur Coles had as a young man fought at Gallipoli and in France in World War I and afterwards joined with his brother and uncle in the business enterprise that grew to be one of Australia's largest chain stores of G.
Coles and Co. With an allegiance to Menzies's United Australia Party he, and another independent, held the balance of power for the government. Gravely disturbed at the treatment of Menzies by his colleagues he withdrew his support from the United Australia Party and voted with the opposition to defeat the Fadden government that, for a short time, followed that of Menzies.
Coles, an experienced business executive, made a major contribution to the war effort as Chairman of the Rationing Commission.
As its Chairman he brought great success to the National Airlines Commission, a Labor government enterprise, which still runs Trans-Australia Airlines. He quickly became an effective colleague; because of his quiet friendly personality and his genuine enthusiasm for the purpose and activities of the CSIRO his advice and help were eagerly sought by all ranks.
The appointment was continued in when the size of the Executive was increased; Coles retired on 25 March after serving for nearly nine years. Menzies stimulated great interest among scientists by appointing R. Biographies of both men will certainly reveal the complexity of the personal relationships between them. Judged from the viewpoint of a scientist and former Chairman of the CSIRO, my impression is that Menzies recognized Casey's interest in and concern for science and his special abilities of leadership in national and international affairs.
When Sir Ian Clunies Ross died in July and my other Executive colleague, Dr Stewart Bastow, went down with his first heart attack shortly afterwards, I was convinced that there were too few full time members of the Executive to maintain the momentum of a large and rapidly growing organization. Casey, agreed with my recommendation that the number of members should be increased by an alteration in the Act When I saw Menzies to seek his agreement to this change, he told me that Casey now aged nearly 70 years wished to retire from Parliament, and asked my view of appointing him a part time member of the new Executive.
I warmly welcomed this; Casey had shown keen interest and support of the CSIRO during his ten years as Minister-in-Charge; part time members were almost honorary as they were given only a very small emolument; there was likely to be only favourable political reaction.
Casey was appointed in March and served for five years. Menzies then recommended him for a life peerage and, on his advice, Her Majesty The Queen appointed him Governor-General of the Commonwealth. In the Fellows of the Royal Society resident in Australia, together with other senior scientists, decided that it would be of benefit to the future of Australian science for there to be an Academy of the highest prestige modelled on the Royal Society of London.
The proposal was welcomed by Lord Adrian, and the Royal Society undertook to support an application for a Royal Charter. The proposal was discussed informally with the Prime Minister; Sir Robert Menzies welcomed the concept of the Fellows of the Royal Society as an initial nucleus, together with from ten to twenty other scientists of undoubted eminence in their fields.
He undertook on behalf of his government to assist in the presentation of a petition to the Privy Council, and to have the Charter prepared in time for it to be presented to the officers of the new Academy during the visit of Her Majesty to Australia. The President, Professor M. Menzies laid the foundation stone of the Academy building in Canberra in January The Commonwealth Government has, since Menzies began, supported the Academy with an annual grant to enable Australian participation in the activities of the International Scientific Unions, and also to aid its general activities in the interests of Australian science.
When Menzies became Prime Minister in the Labor Government had already taken the initiative permitted by the Constitution to found a University within the Australian Capital Territory. Accepting the advice of a distinguished group of Australian academics and public servants, the Prime Minister J. Dedman introduced a Bill into the Parliament in Canberra to found a research university distinctly different in academic structure from the Universities in the States.
The Australian National University Act , assented on 1 August , defined the functions of the University to include the provision of facilities for postgraduate research and study, the education of those persons, suitably qualified, who elected to avail themselves of the opportunities thus provided, and to confer degrees and diplomas.
The latter, the John Curtin School of Medical Research, gave expression to the interest of the war-time Prime Minister John Curtin who hoped to see the setting up of a national institution devoted to medical research.
The Act also stated that 'the University may provide for the incorporation in the University of the Canberra University College', the undergraduate teaching college preparing students for degrees awarded by Melbourne University.
Mills as its Deputy Chairman. The University was from the beginning determined to take advantage of the authority of its Act to place great emphasis on research.
The first report of the Interim Council stated the principles which were agreed to be of first importance; the establishment of the four research schools, with the duties of the staff being the advancement of knowledge through research, and the training of research workers. But equal emphasis was given to the statement that there should be no undergraduate teaching and no postgraduate vocational training in the Research Schools. The question of incorporation of the Canberra University College was 'deferred' This must undoubtedly be judged as the right decision at that time; until later events intervened, the University had nearly ten years to perfect the planning of research of the highest international quality.
Distinguished scholars were appointed to be the Deans or Directors of the Research Schools. The generous conditions of service and the excellent facilities created attracted research leaders of outstanding merit to this new enterprise.
The University began just before a period of exceptional prosperity in Australia; its income, wholly from the Commonwealth budget, it received in grants through the Prime Minister's Department. Menzies thus had ample opportunity to follow the progress of this academically outstanding child of the Federal Government. The Murray report brought into sharp focus the future planning of university education in the Capital Territory; the Commonwealth was the responsible government and the solution was for Menzies alone to decide.
Canberra University College was still, in , housed in temporary buildings but its council and staff wished for a permanent site with adequate buildings and facilities. The staff was highly qualified and enthusiastic, well able to teach more students at the undergraduate and graduate level. It wished to include science in its curriculum and to award its own degrees.
The Australian National University had, in its submission to the Murray Committee, emphasized its unique research role, and its wish to 'help to stimulate the work of the State universities by introducing into them fresh points of view, very often before they have been presented to a wider world audience' The submission included the statement: 'In the event, however, the University has not awarded undergraduate degrees; it has decided after prolonged discussions against the incorporation of the College In his public statement in December 24 he said that Cabinet had devoted much time to the question as to whether the College should be given full and independent status, or should be 'organically associated with the Australian National University'.
His decision was firm — 'We have decided in favour of association'. The reasons he gave must be regarded as sensible. Canberra at the time had a population of 50 and it would have been difficult to justify the creation of two separate universities.
Secondly, if the College was to become a separate university and was not to be a second-rate university, it would have to provide for postgraduate studies with expensive facilities for research.
As an inexperienced leader Menzies struggled to manage the UAP, which was divided over its war policies. In Menzies resigned and was replaced as prime minister by Arthur Fadden, leader of the Country Party. In , the Liberal Party, in coalition with the Country Party, won a resounding election victory, which began a period of Coalition Government that would last for 23 years.
In response to the Cold War atmosphere of the early s, believing communism was a serious threat, Menzies tried, unsuccessfully, to have the Australian Communist Party banned through a referendum.
The issue of communism, however, was to prove a much more difficult problem for his Labor Party opponents, a factor which contributed to his electoral success. This economic boom led to labour shortages, which, in turn, saw the introduction of mass migration programs from Europe, an initiative started under the Chifley Labor Government and continued by Menzies.
Culturally, during the Menzies era, Australia maintained a close affection for Britain and the monarchy, even though the importance of this relationship was less significant than its developing relationship with the United States.
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