Hot enough for June
June Factor: We kept freedoms despite the Nazis
IT is the first week of September 1939. On September 3, prime minister Robert Menzies makes his melancholy duty speech, informing the nation that Australia is at war with Nazi Germany. Soon afterwards he introduces a national security bill into parliament. The Labor Opposition, led by John Curtin, opposes several clauses in the bill, especially threats to free speech and to the liberty of non-British citizens.
It is a cold Canberra day on September 6 when Menzies rises and addresses the House of Representatives: "However long this conflict may last, I do not seek a muzzled Opposition. Our institutions of parliament, and of liberal thought, free speech and free criticism, must go on.
"It would be a tragedy if we found that we had fought for freedom and fair play and the value of the individual human soul and won the war, only to lose the things we were fighting for."
Curtin responds: "What the right honourable gentleman has said is true, namely, that we are a democracy. It is as a democracy that we have to face this problem because it is our desire to remain a democracy when the problem has ceased to exist.
"I say that there ought to be assured to the people liberty of speech: there ought not to be the inroads, in respect of rights of public meetings, and the expression of the views of the people, which were a feature of the last war ...
"There is a radical distinction between helping the enemy and the exercise of the normal right of the Australian people to be free citizens in a country [that] is fighting for the preservation of freedom."
The debate in parliament continues for days and nights. Almost all leading figures on both sides of the house participate. The sense of an as yet unknown but fearful future elicits a rhetoric both passionate and deeply felt. There is remarkably little recourse to insult and invective.
Maurice Blackburn, Labor MHR and a member of the executive of the Australian Council for Civil Liberties, points to the bill's potential to undermine the prime minister's good intentions: "The prime minister and the leader of the Opposition spoke about the necessity to preserve free institutions and freedom.
"I agree with that and I hope that there will be in this country not merely free parliamentary discussion but also outside freedom of writing and speaking. I appreciate the fine spirit that animated the speech made by the prime minister, but we have in front of us days, weeks, months of events that will try the people's nerves.
"I hope that we shall not attack the liberty of the citizen or discriminate against those people who are descendants of strangers who came within our gates and have lived and been treated as our own."
On September 7, with the overnight temperature dropping to 2C, the house sits until 8am the next morning. The argument shifts to the danger of a bill that will allow closed trials.
Percy Spender, a government member who will be minister for the army a year later, challenges the Opposition: "Suppose that the charge were one of sabotage or espionage, there might be given in evidence something very material [that] ought to be kept secret and not disclosed to the general public."
The reply comes from Eddie Ward, who will be minister for labour and national service in the Curtin government in 1941: "I cannot see that there is anything that can override the right of the public and of the man charged to have an open trial.
"Men charged with high treason, men charged with the greatest of offences, are guaranteed an open trial, a trial by jury.
"They are guaranteed that they will be given a copy of the charge laid against them and that they will be defended at the expense of the state."
Then Ward, a fiery opponent of the conservative government, goes on to echo Menzies' warning of the tragedy of self-inflicted wounds on freedom and democracy: "I should say that the most important thing is that the people of this country shall believe that in this struggle they are preserving as much of their freedom, as much of their constitutional rights, as can possibly be preserved for them.
"It is those rights [that] make their country dear to them, that they live among a people who have certain traditions, which they have acquired and developed through long centuries of struggle. The greatest wrong [that] could be done to the people of Australia, the greatest help [that] could be given to our dictatorial enemies, would be to reduce this country to the same level as theirs, to destroy the freedom of the people."
In the words of the old exam question: compare and contrast ...
June Factor is an honorary senior fellow at the Australian Centre at the University of Melbourne.
IT is the first week of September 1939. On September 3, prime minister Robert Menzies makes his melancholy duty speech, informing the nation that Australia is at war with Nazi Germany. Soon afterwards he introduces a national security bill into parliament. The Labor Opposition, led by John Curtin, opposes several clauses in the bill, especially threats to free speech and to the liberty of non-British citizens.
It is a cold Canberra day on September 6 when Menzies rises and addresses the House of Representatives: "However long this conflict may last, I do not seek a muzzled Opposition. Our institutions of parliament, and of liberal thought, free speech and free criticism, must go on.
"It would be a tragedy if we found that we had fought for freedom and fair play and the value of the individual human soul and won the war, only to lose the things we were fighting for."
Curtin responds: "What the right honourable gentleman has said is true, namely, that we are a democracy. It is as a democracy that we have to face this problem because it is our desire to remain a democracy when the problem has ceased to exist.
"I say that there ought to be assured to the people liberty of speech: there ought not to be the inroads, in respect of rights of public meetings, and the expression of the views of the people, which were a feature of the last war ...
"There is a radical distinction between helping the enemy and the exercise of the normal right of the Australian people to be free citizens in a country [that] is fighting for the preservation of freedom."
The debate in parliament continues for days and nights. Almost all leading figures on both sides of the house participate. The sense of an as yet unknown but fearful future elicits a rhetoric both passionate and deeply felt. There is remarkably little recourse to insult and invective.
Maurice Blackburn, Labor MHR and a member of the executive of the Australian Council for Civil Liberties, points to the bill's potential to undermine the prime minister's good intentions: "The prime minister and the leader of the Opposition spoke about the necessity to preserve free institutions and freedom.
"I agree with that and I hope that there will be in this country not merely free parliamentary discussion but also outside freedom of writing and speaking. I appreciate the fine spirit that animated the speech made by the prime minister, but we have in front of us days, weeks, months of events that will try the people's nerves.
"I hope that we shall not attack the liberty of the citizen or discriminate against those people who are descendants of strangers who came within our gates and have lived and been treated as our own."
On September 7, with the overnight temperature dropping to 2C, the house sits until 8am the next morning. The argument shifts to the danger of a bill that will allow closed trials.
Percy Spender, a government member who will be minister for the army a year later, challenges the Opposition: "Suppose that the charge were one of sabotage or espionage, there might be given in evidence something very material [that] ought to be kept secret and not disclosed to the general public."
The reply comes from Eddie Ward, who will be minister for labour and national service in the Curtin government in 1941: "I cannot see that there is anything that can override the right of the public and of the man charged to have an open trial.
"Men charged with high treason, men charged with the greatest of offences, are guaranteed an open trial, a trial by jury.
"They are guaranteed that they will be given a copy of the charge laid against them and that they will be defended at the expense of the state."
Then Ward, a fiery opponent of the conservative government, goes on to echo Menzies' warning of the tragedy of self-inflicted wounds on freedom and democracy: "I should say that the most important thing is that the people of this country shall believe that in this struggle they are preserving as much of their freedom, as much of their constitutional rights, as can possibly be preserved for them.
"It is those rights [that] make their country dear to them, that they live among a people who have certain traditions, which they have acquired and developed through long centuries of struggle. The greatest wrong [that] could be done to the people of Australia, the greatest help [that] could be given to our dictatorial enemies, would be to reduce this country to the same level as theirs, to destroy the freedom of the people."
In the words of the old exam question: compare and contrast ...
June Factor is an honorary senior fellow at the Australian Centre at the University of Melbourne.
posted by professor rat at 4:51 PM
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