Alan Missen - Communist Party Referendum

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.