Many Liberals hung on in circumstances where they would otherwise have lost. This made the decisive difference in the 1961 election, which saw a huge swing against the Menzies Government, resulting in its majority being reduced from 32 at the 1958 election, to just two. Amazingly, in Victoria, where the DLP presence was greatest, the Liberal Party did not lose a single seat. In other states, Coalition seats tumbled. The DLP had saved Bob Menzies. He and other Liberals, such as Malcolm Fraser, never forgot this.
In July of 1964 I gave up the leadership of the Young Liberals and went overseas, following the familiar Australian pattern of the time. Go to London, work for a while, then ‘do Europe', return home. Although I added, atypically then, visits to India and Israel on the way across and a period of weeks in Canada and the United States on the way home. In London I worked for solicitors at Ilford, Essex. This frequently took me to the Stratford Magistrates Court, in East London, putting me in touch with a cross-section of Londoners. Representing people charged with all manner of offences was a huge experience, one that I would like to have pursued for longer.
My time in London coincided with the election of the Labour Government led by Harold Wilson, in October 1964. The Conservatives had been in power for 13 years, having been returned to office under Winston Churchill in 1951. Naturally, I volunteered my services to the Conservative Party, and helped out in a very narrowly held Tory constituency in London, Holborn and St Pancras. Polling day was a cultural shock for an Australian. It was all about getting people out to vote, not handing out how-to-vote tickets at polling booths. Voting in Britain is not compulsory. I spent hours running up and down flights of stairs of council flats in inner London, knocking on the doors of people believed to be Conservative voters, reminding them to vote. I was still on this round at 9.30 pm, and given that the polling booths closed at 10 pm, I developed a diminishing belief that the assurances I would receive that ‘She’ll be right, gov’ meant anything. The Tories lost Holborn and St Pancras.
Winston Churchill died whilst I was living in London, and I watched his funeral procession from Ludgate Hill with an English girlfriend. Returning to her home, I then, with her family, viewed a marvellous speech by our own Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, delivered from the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral. Menzies’ eloquence and sense of history deeply impressed this small English gathering, and left an Australian supporter feeling very proud.
The Britain I experienced was a nation in clear economic decline; worse than that, it had begun to lose that priceless quality of self-belief. I would not return to Britain for another 13 years when, as a junior minister in the Fraser Government, I paid a short visit. The process that I had sensed in 1964 was much further advanced in 1977.
It was to take that remarkable woman Margaret Thatcher to turn around her nation. I don’t remember her promising any revolutions during her 1979 election campaign. She did, however, deliver one in many areas of British life. The most important one was that of self-belief. She restored Britain’s pride and sense of achievement, as well as her economy.
My brief visit to the United States, on the way home from Europe, had me staying at Columbia University in New York with my cousin Glenda Felton (later Adams), who years later would win the Miles Franklin award with her book Dancing on Coral. It was well into 1965 by the time of my visit, and already mounting opposition to American involvement in Vietnam could be felt on university campuses. Not long before, the civil rights movement, led by Martin Luther King, Jr, had grabbed national consciousness. The enthusiasm of student bodies for the civil rights cause was strong and widespread.
When I returned to Australia I found that a full-scale debate was under way, not only about Australia’s involvement, side by side with the United States, in the war in Vietnam, but also about the decision of the Menzies Government, early in 1965, to bring in conscription to obtain the necessary numbers of troops to meet our country’s commitment. This debate was to continue for another seven years, until all of Australia’s combat troops had been withdrawn from South Vietnam. In that time a huge shift in public opinion took place.
Although the introduction of conscription was always a touchy subject, the Australian public began by endorsing the sending of troops to fight with the Americans. Support for the American alliance was strong; in addition, most Australians broadly accepted the so-called domino theory, namely that if one Southeast Asian country fell to communism, then others might follow, and this could bring potential aggressors closer to Australia.
In 1966 Lyndon Johnson became the first serving American President to visit Australia. He received an enthusiastic reception, and at the federal election at the end of the year the Coalition, led by Harold Holt (who had replaced Menzies as Liberal leader in January 1966), won with a significantly increased majority. Although there remained controversy over conscription, the war itself still attracted support; Holt benefited from that. Over time that would change. As the conflict dragged on, seemingly without end, domestic support for Australia’s commitment declined, and with a spitefulness of which this country should be ashamed, many of those opposed to our military support of South Vietnam vented their hostility towards our soldiers.
Labor’s defeat brought Arthur Calwell’s leadership of the Labor Party to an end and delivered stewardship of the opposition to Gough Whitlam, whose intellect, energy and modernity were to transform the Labor Party and make it an election-winning force.
After my return to Australia I re-entered Liberal Party activities wholeheartedly, and within a few months was back on the state executive, not as a Young Liberal but as a representative of the full membership of the party; this was a big step forward, once again putting me at the centre of the party’s affairs in New South Wales. My association with John Carrick strengthened, as it did with Eric Willis, deputy Liberal leader and, by then, a senior minister in the newly elected Askin Government.
From 1967 onwards, I began to participate in debates on Australia’s involvement in Vietnam. Before long they included opponents such as Jim Cairns, the federal Labor MP and future deputy prime minister, who was a relentless critic of the Australian commitment. These were tough encounters, before large and normally hostile audiences, but the political experience was priceless. Many of them were at universities, and they were sometimes euphemistically called ‘teach-ins'.
The bulk of the audiences were strongly opposed to our being in Vietnam. Many academics were active in their criticism of the war. Often they comprised the most vocal part of an audience, asking hostile but effective questions. It is impossible to exaggerate the extent to which this experience hardened me for later political life. Being booed and cat-called by hundreds of students in my late 20s, and receiving abuse delivered without a skerrick of good humour, was not only rigorous training for later public life, it also forced me to confront and be satisfied of the strength of my own beliefs on issues. By 1968 Vietnam had begun to deeply divide the Australian community. There were bitter feelings on the conflict which would only intensify as time passed.
During 1967 I decided to seek the Liberal Party’s nomination for the state seat of Drummoyne. A redistribution of electoral boundaries carried out in 1966 had made the seat winnable for the Liberal Party. A very pro-Labor slice had been removed from the electorate, leaving a small but useful Liberal majority, based on the results obtained in the 1965 election. The electorate was comprised of the suburbs of Drummoyne, Five Dock, Abbotsford, Haberfield and Croydon, all inner-western suburbs of Sydney.
Although my real goal was federal politics, I had the naïve belief that a seat in state parliament was a stepping stone to Canberra. It might have been so in the earlier days of Federation, but it became increasingly less so from the ‘60s onwards.
Also at that time, I saw a superficial