Don Bradman remained non-party political, says Rodney Cavalier

Former Sydney Cricket Ground Trust chair and Labor Party figure Rodney Cavalier says it is no surprise Donald Bradman was not a Labor voter.

Don Bradman.

Former Sydney Cricket Ground Trust chair and Labor Party figure Rodney Cavalier says it is no surprise Donald Bradman was not a Labor voter following the emergence of a 47-year old letter from Bradman to then prime minister Malcolm Fraser.

Dated December 15, 1975, just two days after the election that saw the Whitlam government voted out of office, Sir Donald’s letter urged Fraser to address the difficulties facing private enterprise and critiqued the “arrogance and propaganda indulged in” by his Labor opponents.

The letter took aim at the Whitlam government’s approach to business along with the union movement, with Sir Donald arguing the public needed to be “re-educated to believe that private enterprise is entitled to rewards as long as it obeys fair and reasonable rules”.

Mr Cavalier, a cricket authority and chair of the Sydney Cricket Ground Trust from 2012 to 2014 as well as a former NSW state government Labor minister, said Sir Donald’s public statements “did not trespass into party politics”.

“He did not claim his cricket skills gave him a right to speak beyond the game.”

But Mr Cavalier said it was clear Sir Donald’s private political convictions were not supportive of Labor, noting he was “raised in a town that has always voted conservative”.

Sir Donald grew up in Bowral in the NSW Southern Highlands, and Mr Cavalier said he married into an “establishment highlands family” and that his career choices of real estate and stockbroking outside his cricketing life were “unlikely to expose him to Labor influences”.

“That Don Bradman was not a Labor voter is not a surprise,” Mr Cavalier said.

However, Mr Cavalier said when Sir Donald moved to Adelaide he lived in the electorate of Norwood, which Don Dunstan held for the Labor Party between 1953 and 1979.

He noted Sir Donald was not “publicly hostile to state Labor in South Australia”.

While Dunstan served as SA Labor premier from 1970-79, Mr Cavalier said it was John Bannon, the Labor premier from 1982-92, who knew Sir Donald “better and longer than anyone in politics”.

“Don was a regular visitor to John’s neighbour, the Australian Test cricketer, Tim Wall. John knew Don without knowing of his eminence,” Mr Cavalier said.

“In future time together at cricket and other events, John did not detect hostility from Don to him, to Labor or to his government.

“This is true of other labour identities who encountered Bradman – Clem Attlee, Ben Chifley, Doc Evatt and later Bob Hawke.”

Mr Cavalier said the letter from Sir Donald also revealed “how severely hysteria infected conservative circles in 1975”.

In his reply to Sir Donald, written on December 22, Fraser said he was “very much aware of the difficulties facing private enterprise” and that his government would introduce measures “towards their alleviation”.

The correspondence between Bradman and Fraser was uncovered by Federation University academic Verity Archer.