Ben Chifley

Joseph Benedict 'Ben' Chifley was the 16th Prime Minister of Australia, serving in office from 1945 until 1949. In his career he went from being a railway engine driver living in Bathurst, New South Wales to being one of the most highly thought of prime ministers in Australian history. His image as a patriotic 'Aussie battler' was matched with his gift for sincere and warm public speaking, which cemented his appeal to the Australian electorate at the end of World War II.

Chifley was the son of an Irish Catholic blacksmith and was born in Bathurst in 1885. Educated at a local Catholic high school, Chifley worked several jobs before joining the railways. He was a locomotive cleaner at 18 and, for 15 years, continued his education in the evenings while he rose through the ranks of the railways to become a first-class driver.

Chifley grew up in the midst of the rapid growth of the union movement and the Labor Party's emergence as a political power. He was a loyal unionist and considered himself a devout Socialist. Chifley was active in the anti-conscription movement in the WWI era, and in the 1917 railway strike. The strike was to protest the government's proposed implementation of Taylorist work-efficiency models on all workers. Taylorism is a method of imposing on a worker the most efficient way of doing a certain task so as to speed up production generally. Chifley's part in the railway strike caused him many years of difficulty, resulting in a demotion for eight years.

In the wake of these events Chifley decided to represent the union cause by becoming a member of parliament. Schooling himself in economics and finance to boost his appeal to the electorate, he won the federal seat of Macquarie, located to the west of Sydney, in 1928. As Minister for Defence and Assistant Treasurer in the government of James Scullin, Chifley played a central role in the Depression-era conflicts inside the Labor Party. He was involved in the conflict within NSW Labor over policies for dealing with the Great Depression, supporting the faction of the party opposed to the maverick faction led by NSW Premier Jack Lang.

Chifley lost his seat in the 1930s but returned to parliament in a different seat and was appointed Treasurer in John Curtin's Labor government in 1941. Chifley proved to be a key leader of the economic organisation during WWII, and upon Curtin's death in July 1945, Chifley was elected leader of the Labor Party and became Prime Minister, while retaining the role of Treasurer. See image 1

Chifley had been the architect of Labor's proposed post-war reconstruction program, and when the war concluded soon after the bombing of Hiroshima, Chifley began to put this program into action. Chifley was a committed centralist, which meant he believed in putting the power over important industry and infrastructure in the hands of a central government. As Prime Minister he introduced national projects such as the Snowy Mountains hydro-electric scheme and the assisted immigration program. He also pushed through legislation that enabled the Commonwealth to become the collector of income tax and sought nationalisation of the private banks so that the federal government could have more control over the economy.

Chifley also sought to make the post-war economy stable by putting controls on inflation and the Australian dollar and limiting imports. The national debt was reduced, but rationing and general economic hardship continued for ordinary Australians. This was not helped by a series of labour disputes and strikes.

Chifley also oversaw the establishment of Trans-Australian Airlines (TAA) and the Australian National University (ANU), as well as the immigration programs that opened the way for a huge influx of British and European immigrants in the postwar era. He implemented programs for widows' pensions and unemployment and sickness benefits, and the Chifley government's support of the motor industry enabled the first Australian car, the Holden, to be produced in 1948. See animation

Although Chifley led the country for only four years, he presided over some of the most significant legislative achievements of the period after WWII. These included:

• The Commonwealth and State Housing Agreement Act 1945 (Cth), which provided for Commonwealth subsidisation of house construction;
• The Hospital Benefits Act 1945 (Cth), which provided grants to States to subsidise public hospitals;
• The Education Act 1945 (Cth), designed to expand the university system; and;
• The Nationality and Citizenship Act 1948 (Cth), which put in place a new code of nationality and citizenship.

One of Chifley's main goals, since the 1930s, was the nationalisation of the banks. This proposal met with strong opposition from the banks and in parliament, where Bob Menzies led the debate against the Banking Bill 1947, speaking for more than an hour in what has been described as one of his most impressive speeches. The banks appealed to the High Court against the proposal in 1948. The High Court ruled that nationalisation was unconstitutional. This was because the nationalisation legislation was found to infringe s. 92 of the Australian Constitution, which provides that trade and commerce between the States must remain 'absolutely free'. Thus any Commonwealth legislation which prohibited the carrying on of private banking business in the States was in breach of the Constitution.

The failure of the bank nationalisation program proved to be a major setback for Chifley and Labor. The Opposition suggested that Chifley was leading Australia toward Communism and played off the Australian public's weariness of the continued rationing after the war. Chifley lost the 1949 federal election to Menzies' Liberal-Country Party coalition. Chifley suffered a heart attack in 1950, but contested the 1951 election against Menzies, which was to be ultimately unsuccessful. In June 1951, while working at his desk in Canberra, he suffered another heart attack and died.

Chifley is best remembered for his efforts in postwar reconstruction and for a famous speech in 1949 where he spoke of the 'light on the hill' the objective of universal betterment towards which the Australian labour movement must continually strive. Although well regarded for his social welfare reforms and initial economic policies, he eventually lost the support of the electorate due to wide spread distrust of excessive government regulation of the economy.