B. A. Santamaria - Anti-communist and Social Conservative

Anti-communist and Social Conservative

During the 1960s and 1970s Santamaria regularly warned of the dangers of communism in Southeast Asia, and supported South Vietnam and the United States in the Vietnam War.

He founded the Australian Family Association and the Thomas More Centre (for Traditional Catholicism) to extended the work of the NCC. However, his political role gradually declined. The death of the 99-year-old Archbishop Mannix (in 1963) ended the Roman Catholic Church's support for the NCC, even in Victoria. In 1974 the DLP lost all its seats in the Senate, and was wound up a few years later. Santamaria ran the NCC in a highly personal and (according to his critics) autocratic way, and in 1982 there was a serious split in the organisation, with most of the trade unionists leaving it. The Grouper-controlled unions then returned to their ALP affiliation.

But Santamaria's personal stature continued to grow, through his regular column in The Australian newspaper and his regular television spot, Point of View (he was given free air time by Sir Frank Packer, owner of the Nine Network). A skilled journalist and broadcaster, he was one of the most articulate voices of Australian conservatism for more than 20 years. He was greatly admired by conservative politicians such as Malcolm Fraser and John Howard. Santamaria claimed that Robert Menzies told him that he twice voted DLP (this being confirmed by Menzies' family), and that the DLP was the party Menzies thought he had founded.

Santamaria had the satisfaction of living to see the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the world Communist movement. But he was also hostile to free-market capitalism, and to abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia and other liberal and secular trends of the modern Western world. He was consistent in his support of spiritual, religious and family values and opposed those policies he believed threatened these pillars.

For these reasons he was a strong critic of secular humanism in his later years. Politically he could best be described as a Christian Democrat. In the eighties and nineties, he opposed the 'economic-rationalist'/market-based economic policies of the Australian Labor Party and Liberal/National Coalition alike. He came to despise politicians of all parties who failed to oppose these things, and towards the end of his life said several times that his political career had been a complete failure.