Communist Party Referendum
Robert Menzies was elected as the first Liberal Prime Minister of Australia in 1949 on a platform that included outlawing the Communist Party of Australia. In 1951 the Menzies Government called a referendum to provide the Commonwealth with the constitutional power to implement its policy. Alan Missen and a small group of other Liberal Party members opposed the referendum proposal. Missen’s opinion piece in The Argus newspaper caused a furore in the Liberal Party. In a scathing critique of the referendum proposal, he poses the following rhetorical question: “Have we so little faith in our ability to defeat Communism in a free encounter that we must employ totalitarian methods against them?” The Liberal Party’s Victorian Division voted to suspend Missen as vice-president of the Young Liberal and Country Movement. The referendum proposal was narrowly defeated, a major setback for the Menzies Government. Missen’s defiant position on the Communist referendum caused him to be overlooked for Liberal preselection for the next two decades. For a more detailed analysis of the Communist Party dissolution debate, see University of Melbourne historical paper.
Read more about this topic: Alan Missen
Famous quotes containing the words communist and/or party:
“In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.”
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“If the Soviet Union let another political party come into existence, they would still be a one-party state, because everybody would join the other party.”
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