Parliament
In 1928, at his second try, Chifley won the Bathurst-based seat of Macquarie in the House of Representatives. He was in general a supporter of the James Scullin government's economic policies, and in 1931 he became Minister for Defence. At the 1931 general election, the Scullin government was defeated in a landslide and Chifley lost his seat on a 16-point swing to the UAP's John Lawson. During the Depression he survived on his wife's family's money and his part-ownership of the Bathurst newspaper the National Advocate.
In 1935 the Lyons government appointed him a member of the Royal Commission on Banking, a subject on which he had become an expert. He submitted a minority report advocating that the private banks be nationalised.
After an unsuccessful effort to win back Macquarie in 1934, Chifley finally won his seat back in 1940 on a swing of 10 percent, and the following year he became Treasurer (finance minister) in John Curtin's Labor government. Although Frank Forde was nominally the number-two man in the government, Chifley became the minister Curtin most relied on. He controlled most domestic policy while Curtin was preoccupied with the war effort. He presided over the massive increases in government expenditure and taxation that accompanied the war, and imposed a regime of economic regulation that made him very unpopular with business and the press.
Read more about this topic: Ben Chifley
Famous quotes containing the word parliament:
“Undershaft: Alcohol is a very necessary article. It heals the sick—Barbara: It does nothing of the sort. Undershaft: Well, it assists the doctor: that is perhaps a less questionable way of putting it. It makes life bearable to millions of people who could not endure their existence if they were quite sober. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“A Parliament is that to the Commonwealth which the soul is to the body.... It behoves us therefore to keep the facility of that soul from distemper.”
—John Pym (1584–1643)
“The war shook down the Tsardom, an unspeakable abomination, and made an end of the new German Empire and the old Apostolic Austrian one. It ... gave votes and seats in Parliament to women.... But if society can be reformed only by the accidental results of horrible catastrophes ... what hope is there for mankind in them? The war was a horror and everybody is the worse for it.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)