HOWARD ON MENZIES: Building Modern Australia
As someone who relies heavily on ABC iView and SBS On Demand
for entertainment, distraction and edification, this is disappointing
programming. As much as I like to be exposed to new ideas or points of view, I
don’t like to have my prejudices challenged. I didn’t think much of Howard as a
Prime Minister, and his obsession with the past is laughable.
My memories of the Menzies era are those of a child whose
world was limited by the decisions of others. Menzies’ own obsession with
stamping out communism meant that when we finally had a black &
white television in our home, the already crappy programming was frequently
interrupted while two eyebrows filled the screen so some bloke called Ming
could blurt on about reds under beds.
If my mother detested Menzies, this was not a sign that he
was a bad man, for my mother detested everyone. But she insisted women had
fought hard for the vote and she should take her right to vote seriously, so
when Ming had something to say on the tele, we tuned in. The volume was turned
down though, cos she couldn’t bring herself to actually listen. Of course… it
was probably just another of her sneaky tricks designed to ensure silence reigned in the house for a
while.
When I brought letters home from my local Catholic school urging
her to vote DLP, she threw them in the bin. She claimed to always vote
Communist, because the major parties were full of arseholes but she could not
bring herself to vote informal. She voted Communist because they had no hope of
winning.
What I know about Menzies, really, I learned by reading
after he retired, and when I was old enough to retrospectively understand what
it might all mean. I think we experience our parents’ and
grandparents’ lives, in part at least, by proxy. Although I did not personally live through the
first or second world wars, the everyday concerns and consequences of the
events of those years are very real to me, because they were part of the fabric
of my world when I was growing up. And this provided a context for what I later
read of the Menzies years.
With such a personal context, the decision to sell steel to
the Japanese before WWII takes on a significance for me it might not otherwise have had. One
might think I would watch this show to see how Howard, whose middle name
honours Winston Churchill, deals with that decision, but I am old and crotchety
enough to not care what Howard thinks. After all, anything Howard has to say is
little more than an opinion, and worth no more than my own.
I might, out of curiosity, be tempted to see if mention is
made of the Egon Kisch story, for it is here that I see the greatest echo of
Menzies in the Howard legacy. Kisch was an anti-fascist who, in 1934, was
invited by Australian communists to come to Australia and speak about the
excesses of German Nazism. Menzies was Attorney General in the United Australia
Party before the Liberal Party was born, and part of the move to exclude Kisch
using the infamous dictation test allowed for in the Immigration Restriction Act
1901 – cornerstone of the White Australia Policy.
The Kisch story contains all the elements of a good Australian
drama – anti-hero, freedom fighter, a David fighting Goliath. Australians love to rally behind someone snubbing their
nose at authority… and they did this in numbers. Fluent in 11 European languages, Kisch provided a great test of the dictation test itself.
I suspect Howard was paying attention when Menzies said, in Parliament;
every civilized country has the
right to determine who should or should not be allowed in
Cliché or not, the fact remains that the past really was a
place where things were done differently.
It is easy to romanticise the past, and tempting to do so when the future does not look inviting. It is equally easy to scoff, and becomes easier as we forget the details of what was really possible “back then”. Menzies was not a totally evil man, but a product of his time. Change was happening; and if more than a tad too slowly it was at least moving in the right direction. But for Howard, there is no excuse; he is not a product of that time, but the product of a lack of imagination.
It is easy to romanticise the past, and tempting to do so when the future does not look inviting. It is equally easy to scoff, and becomes easier as we forget the details of what was really possible “back then”. Menzies was not a totally evil man, but a product of his time. Change was happening; and if more than a tad too slowly it was at least moving in the right direction. But for Howard, there is no excuse; he is not a product of that time, but the product of a lack of imagination.
When I look at Howard, all I see is someone who probably
spent his early years shaving his eyebrows in the hope that one day he might
look like his hero Menzies. When he opens his mouth, all I hear is unapologetic,
wilful ignorance.
Sorry Aunty, SBS will win again.
For a more detailed blog post about the Kisch story [and
through this, the dictation test];
or if you are more bookishly inclined;
Kisch in Australia,
Heidi Zogbaum, Scribe Melbourne 2004
