Menzies unplugged: explosive interviews revealed

Robert Menzies was hugely disappointed in those who followed in his footsteps, a new book reveals.

Robert Menzies — The Art Of Politics, by The Australian’s Troy Bramston

In his retirement years, Robert Menzies watched in horror as the Liberal Party he helped create and led for two decades was plagued with instability, cycled through a series of short-term leaders and tumbled to defeat in 1972.

Menzies was “bitterly disappointed” with Harold Holt, who “fell from one disaster to ­another”. He thought it was “a terrible blunder” to make John Gorton prime minister. Billy ­McMahon was dismissed as “a fool”. And Billy Snedden was “hopeless”. None of them were up to being prime minister.

The Liberal grandee thought the party was being run by “idiots” who believed in nothing and shuddered at the thought Snedden might become prime minister. “What state of despair I am in, driven by the incompetence and the lack of courage of my present successors in the federal parliament,” he said in 1973.

Menzies was so appalled by the Liberal Party that he did not vote for it in 1972 and possibly not in 1969 and 1974. He thought Paul Hasluck was the best person to lead the party after Holt but thought salvation would come only with Malcolm Fraser.

The former prime minister was thrilled when the Liberals ­returned to power in 1975. He was a strong supporter of Fraser but later became a critic. Menzies’ daughter, Heather Henderson, recalled her father sitting in front of the television and saying: “Malcolm can do nothing right.”

Menzies’ poor opinion of his successors is revealed in full for the first time in a new biography, Robert Menzies: The Art of Politics (Scribe), published on Tuesday. It is the first biography of Menzies in 20 years and includes new ­archival documents and fresh ­interviews with family, parliamentary colleagues, staff and public servants. He was interviewed by journalist Frances McNicoll in 1972 and 1973 for a ­biography that was not completed. The explosive interviews have been sealed for almost 50 years. Only snippets from the interviews have been previously published.

Menzies judged Holt, who he referred to as “poor Harold”, to be a good minister and deputy leader. But thought he “coasted along on the momentum” gifted to him when Menzies retired in 1966, and then “made every conceivable error” before vanishing in the surf at Cheviot Beach.

“He wanted to be liked by everybody,” Menzies said. “He could not say something that he thought somebody might dislike. He didn’t realise that the job of prime minister is occasionally to be unpopular, occasionally to do things that some of his people and some of his friends don’t like.”

He suggested Holt was dependent on pills and “unbalanced” when he disappeared. “He was a nervous wreck. He was taking sedatives, tablets — what do you call those things — tranquillisers, swallowing them and eating them ... he was all of a twitter.”

Menzies thought Gorton lacked the discipline to get across policy details and was troubled by his personal behaviour. Nevertheless, Menzies encouraged Gorton to move from the Senate to the House of Representatives in 1960 with the leadership in mind. This overture was rejected.

McMahon was viewed as untrustworthy, lacking in intellect and judgment, and without credibility. Menzies described him as a “worm” and a “brute”, and ­referred to him as “little Willie”. In 1959, Menzies caught McMahon leaking from cabinet and extracted a signed confession. He threatened to sack him if he did it again.

Menzies thought Snedden was a useless opposition leader and advocated the Liberals merge with the Country Party and form a coalition with the Democratic Labour Party. “Snedden was quite a good junior minister working under cabinet direction but, as leader of a battered party in opposition, he seems to me to not have a clue,” he said.

Troy Bramston is the author of Robert Menzies: The Art of Politics, published by Scribe