Political Biography

John Bunting’s portrait of Robert Menzies is a book for fans. Beautifully produced, with a handsome cover, tartan endpapers, and a royal blue marker, it is an ideal gift for those who agree with Bunting’s judgement – that Menzies was ‘grand and magnificent, the best man of his time’. It will also please those who, though more reserved in their admiration than Bunting, remember Menzies with respect and admiration.

Bunting was a member of the Prime Minister’s Department for the last seven years of Menzies prime ministership, and a senior officer in that Department from the beginning of Menzies long post-war reign in 1949. He feels that Menzies suffered a bad press after his retirement and has often been misunderstood; as he can speak with the authority of experience he has taken up his pen to write of Menzies as he knew him.

Sir Alexander Downer (1910–81) was a man of great courtesy, absolute integrity, honesty in reporting the things be observed. I think that these attributes are all self-evident in the book he has written about six Australian prime ministers. Also apparent was, I believe, a too subservient attitude to a Britain which was disappearing and changing throughout his life. After all, the concept of the Queen as the Queen of Australia – instead of the Queen of Britain or the Commonwealth – received acceptance only after World War II, which incidentally was a war that Alec Downer saw out living in the hell of Changi Prison Camp.

It was inevitable that the phenomenon of Don Chipp’s Democrats would spawn an industry of quickie books; so far we have had two. The Third Man (which was written by Chipp himself in collaboration with the Melbourne journalist John Larkin) and now this one: Don Chipp, written by two journalists from the Melbourne office of The Australian, Tim Hewat and David Wilson. Both books are more or less bad, revolving as they do around a sort of log-cabin-to-White-House theme which is manifestly unsuited to any discussion of Australian politics. But at least Chipp and Larkin have both met the man about whom they are writing. There is no evidence that Hewat or Wilson has; and in fact their brief and boring 113 pages, padded out with an already out-of-date policy statement and a totally unnecessary index adds nothing to the sum of human knowledge, either by way of new facts or sensible analysis.