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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
Robert Menzies and the Formation of the Liberal Party
In 1944, Menzies and other leading Liberal politicians moved to reform the fragmented non-labour political organisations into a new national party. As Menzies told the first of the conferences on party re-organisation:
The picture … is one of many thousands of people all desperately anxious to travel in the same political direction but divided into various sects and bodies with no Federal structure, with no central executive, with no coordinated means of publicity or propaganda, and, above all, with no clearly accepted doctrine or faith to serve as a banner under which all may fight.
By comparison with the Liberals, the ALP was born national, with its origins in the national organisation of the new unionism and the radical nationalism of the 1890s. The Liberals' organisational roots were deep in colonial political experiences and their state organisations with their supporting leagues and committees still acted on assumptions of state sovereignty which made the national polity a secondary consideration. World War II, however, changed all that. Alan Davies has argued that one of the key moments in Australian political history is when the national polity displaced the states as the focus of political attention and energy. The psychological impact of the national emergency and the national war effort is part of the story, but of more lasting importance are the national institutions of governance which resulted from the war, and in particular the strengthening of the national economy.
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