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John Curtin (8 January 1885 – 5 July 1945) was an Australian politician who served as the 14th prime minister of Australia from 1941 until his death in 1945. He held office as the leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), having been most notable for leading the country through the majority of World War II, including all but the last few weeks of the war in the Pacific. Curtin's leadership skills and personal character were acclaimed by his political contemporaries, and he is frequently ranked as one of Australia's greatest prime ministers and political leaders.
Curtin left school at the age of 13 and became involved in the labour movement in Melbourne. He joined the Labor Party at a young age and was also involved with the Victorian Socialist Party. He became state secretary of the CFMEU in 1911 and federal president in 1914. Curtin was a leader of the "No" campaign during the 1916 referendum on overseas conscription, and was briefly jailed for refusing to attend a compulsory medical examination. He moved to Perth the following year to become the editor of the Westralian Worker, and later was state president of the Australian Journalists' Association.
After three unsuccessful attempts, Curtin was elected to the House of Representatives at the 1928 federal election, winning the Division of Fremantle. He is the only prime minister to have represented a constituency in Western Australia. He remained loyal to the Labor government during the party split of 1931. He lost his seat in Labor's landslide defeat at the 1931 election, but won it back in 1934. The following year, Curtin was elected party leader in place of James Scullin, defeating Frank Forde by a single vote. The party gained seats at the 1937 and 1940 elections, with the latter resulting in a hung parliament. The ALP eventually formed a minority government in October 1941, when the Fadden government lost a confidence motion.
The Japanese attacks on Malayan campaign and Pearl Harbor occurred two months after Curtin became prime minister, and Australia entered the war against Japan. The failure of the British army and navy against Japan and bombing raids on northern Australia created the fear of an imminent Japanese invasion. Curtin realized that only a dependence upon the United States could protect Australia. Curtin led the nation's war effort and made significant decisions about how the war was conducted. He placed Australian forces under the command of the American general Douglas MacArthur, with whom he formed a close relationship. On the home front he successfully negotiated the issue of overseas conscription that had split his party during World War I. The ALP won almost two-thirds of the seats in the House of Representatives at the 1943 election, which remains a party record. Curtin died in office in July 1945, after months of ill health attributed to the stresses of the war. Many of his post-war reconstruction plans were implemented by his successor Ben Chifley, who in 1946 led the ALP to consecutive victories for the first time.
Curtin began his education at St Francis' Boys School, a Christian Brothers school attached to St Francis' Church. He later briefly attended St Bridget's School in Fitzroy. He also attended Macedon Primary School in Macedon. In 1894, Curtin and his family moved to Charlton, a small country town in north-west Victoria. His father had failed to prosper in Melbourne, which was in the middle of an economic downturn. In Charlton, he took over the lease of a pub owned by his brother-in-law, John Bourke. Curtin was enrolled in the local state school, as a Catholic school had not yet been established. He excelled academically, and was seen as a potential "scholarship boy". However, he and his family left Charlton in 1896. Struggling financially, they spent the following two years moving around country Victoria, as his father managed pubs in Dromana, Drouin, and Mount Macedon. Curtin attended the local state schools, ending his formal education in 1898 at the age of 13.
As a youth, Curtin was a talented sportsman. Between 1903 and 1907, he played as a half-forward flanker for the Brunswick Football Club in the semi-professional Victorian Football Association (VFA). His teammates gave him the nickname "Bumble". His nephew Claude Curtin played for Fitzroy in the Victorian Football League (VFL). Curtin also played cricket for the Brunswick Cricket Club, where he had a reputation as a solid batsman. He remained involved in both sports throughout the remainder of his life, as an administrator and supporter. He was said to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of cricket statistics.
He wrote for radical and socialist newspapers. From 1911 until 1915, Curtin was employed as state secretary of the CFMEU. He was elected federal president of the union in 1914. During World War I he was a militant anti-conscriptionist; he was briefly imprisoned in December 1916 for refusing to attend a compulsory medical examination, even though he knew he would fail the exam due to his very poor eyesight. He also stood (unsuccessfully) as the Labor candidate for Balaclava in the 1914 federal election. The strain of this period led him to drink heavily and regularly, a vice which blighted his career for many years. He proposed to Elsie Curtin on St Kilda Beach, and they were married on 21 April 1917 in the dining room of a private home in West Leederville.
Curtin moved to Perth, Western Australia, in 1917 to become an editor for the Westralian Worker, the official trade union newspaper. He settled in the suburb of Cottesloe where his residence is now heritage-listed as "John Curtin's House". He enjoyed the less pressured life of Western Australia and his political views gradually moderated. He joined the Australian Journalists' Association (AJA) in 1917 and was elected its Western Australian President in 1920. He wore his AJA badge (WA membership #56) every day he was prime minister. In addition to his stance on labour rights, Curtin was also a strong advocate for the rights of women and children. In 1927, the Federal Government convened a Royal Commission on Child Endowment, and Curtin was appointed as a member of that commission.
In September 1939, the Second World War commenced when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. In line with the king's declaration of war, Prime Minister Robert Menzies declared war on Germany and announced Australia's support for the British war effort. In 1941, Menzies travelled to Britain to discuss Australia's role in the war strategy, and to express concern at the reliability of Singapore's defences, only to be drawn into Winston Churchill's disastrous Greek campaign. While he was in Britain, Menzies lost the support of his own party, and was forced to resign as prime minister. The Coalition elected Arthur Fadden, the leader of the Country Party, as Menzies' replacement, even though the UAP was the senior partner in the Coalition. Curtin adroitly refused calls from his own caucus to bring about the defeat of the government through a motion of no confidence.
Curtin made crucial decisions linking Australia to the United States. On 28 December, the Sydney Daily Telegraph published a public statement of his government's new attitude:
This speech was one of the most important in Australia's history, marking a turning point in Australia's relationship with its founding country, the United Kingdom. Many felt that Prime Minister Curtin was abandoning Australia's traditional ties to the British Isles without any solid partnership in place with the United States. This speech also received criticism at high levels of government in Australia, Britain and the US; it angered Churchill, and Roosevelt said that it "smacked of panic". The speech nevertheless achieved the effect of drawing attention to the possibility that Australia would be invaded by Japan. Before this speech, the Australian response to the war effort had been troubled by attitudes swinging from "she'll be right" to gossip-driven panic. By 1943, when the threat of Japanese invasion had passed, Curtin increasingly returned to a commitment to the British Empire. Downplaying nationalism, he said that Australia comprised "seven million Britishers". He saw the United States as a predatory economic and military power that would threaten Australia's own ambitions in the Pacific. Australia moved closer to New Zealand, and suggested a lesser role for the United States after the war. Washington was annoyed.
Concurrently, the Curtin government enacted the Statute of Westminster Adoption Act 1942, under which Australia accepted the dominion status which Britain had conferred in 1930, but which the Australian federal government had not accepted until then. The Adoption Act took effect retroactively as of 3 September 1939, the outbreak of World War II. Although politically a product of the government's policy of re-orientation towards the United States, constitutionally, this marked the moment that Australia became an independent nation with a separate Crown, no longer subject to the supremacy of British law and the British Crown.
The Japanese threat was further underlined on 19 February, when Japan bombed Darwin, the first of many air raids on northern Australia. Churchill attempted to divert I Corps to reinforce British troops in Burma, without Australian approval. Curtin insisted that it return to Australia. Roosevelt supported Churchill, offering to send an American division to Australia instead, while the Chief of the Australian General Staff, Lieutenant General Vernon Sturdee, threatened to resign if his advice was ignored and the troops were diverted to Burma. Curtin prevailed, although he agreed that the main body of the 6th Division could garrison Ceylon.
In the 1943 Australian federal election campaign the following year, Curtin was forced to publicly defend his decision. "Had we held Rangoon, or had we even held the district, of Akyab", media magnate Keith Murdoch wrote in an editorial on 13 August 1943, "we would have held the door to the vast manpower of China and the jumping-off fields for the devastation of Japanese cities. Multitudes of the finest lives of Australia, Britain, and America would have been saved; the long years of toil, death, and separation, which assuredly stretch ahead, would have been shortened."
Curtin formed a close working relationship with the Allied Supreme Commander in the South West Pacific Area, General Douglas MacArthur. Curtin realised that Australia would be ignored unless it had a strong voice in Washington, D.C., and he wanted that voice to be MacArthur's. He gave over control of Australian forces to MacArthur, directing Australian commanders to treat MacArthur's orders as if they came from the Australian Government. Biographer John Edwards wrote:
By mid-1942, the results of the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway had averted the perceived threat of invasion. Despite the "beat Germany first" policy, 346,000 Americans were fighting in the Pacific in 1942. Curtin had previously opposed conscription for overseas service during World War I, and again in 1940 when it was introduced by Menzies, although he had supported softening it to allow conscripts to serve in Australian territories.
Curtin recognised that the restriction of the Australian conscripts to Australia and its territories was morally indefensible and politically unviable. To remove what was now a major obstacle to the government's re-election prospects, he moved to remove the restriction. While there was support from the Communist Party of Australia and its sympathisers, there was trenchant opposition from the Catholic Church, represented by B. A. Santamaria and Arthur Calwell. Ultimately, the Defence Act was amended so that conscripts could be deployed outside of Australia to "such other territories in the South-West Pacific Area as the Governor-General proclaims as being territories associated with the defence of Australia".
The stress of the war and especially this bitter internal battle within Labor took a great toll on Curtin's health, which had never been robust even at the best of times. He had suffered all of his life from stress-related illnesses, and depression; he was also a heavy smoker.
In terms of social policy, the Curtin government enacted a wide range of progressive social reforms during its time in office. Pensions were introduced for deserted wives and widows, while the establishment of the Women's Employment Board led to increased wages for some women during the war. Aboriginal Australians were provided with significantly increased entitlement to welfare benefits, while maternity allowances were extended. In addition, pensions for the elderly and infirm were increased.
In 1942, temporary public employees became eligible to apply to join the Commonwealth superannuation scheme if they had been employed for no less than five years and were certified as having indefinite future employment, while the Commonwealth Employees' Furlough Act of 1943 provided long service leave for all temporary Commonwealth employees. In 1943, the Universities Commission was established to exempt students from war service to undertake or continue university studies and to assist those students by exempting them from fees and, subject to a means test, by providing them with living allowances.
"Asiatics" who were subjects of Australia became eligible for a pension in 1941, and eligibility was extended the following year to Pacific Islanders known as "Kanakas", and from that July that year "Aboriginal natives" of Australia became eligible for pensions if they were not subject to a state law "relating to the control of Aboriginal natives" or if they lived in a state where they could not be exempt from such laws but were of eligible for pension on the grounds of "character, standard of intelligence and development". That same year, pension became exempt from income tax. In 1943, funeral benefits were introduced, together with a Wife's Allowance for wives of incapacitated age pensioners "where she lived with him, was his legal wife and did not receive a pension in her own right".
From June 1942, Widows' Pension Class B was paid to widows without dependent children who were aged 50 and over. The term "widow" included de facto widows who had lived with the deceased spouse for at least three years prior to his death and had been maintained by him. Eligibility was also extended to deserted de jure wives who had been deserted for at least six months, divorced women who had not remarried and women whose husbands were in hospitals for those considered to be insane. From July that year, Widows' Pension Class B was exempted from income tax.
In 1942, eligibility for maternity allowances was extended to Aboriginal women who were exempted from State laws relating to the control of Aboriginal natives and who were considered suitable to receive the benefits. From 1943, the income test for maternity allowances was abolished and the rate of the allowance was increased to 15 pounds where there were no other children under the age of 14 years, 16 pounds where there were one or two other children, and 17 pounds 10 shillings in cases of three or more children. These amounts included an additional allowance of 25 shillings per week in respect of the period four weeks before and four weeks after the birth, to be paid after the birth of the child. That same year, eligibility for Child Endowment was extended to children in Government institutions, to Aboriginal children who lived for six months per year on a mission station, and to children who were maintained from a deceased estate.
The Child's Allowance was introduced in 1943, payable at the rate of five shillings per week for a first for an unendowed child under 16 years dependent on an invalid or permanently incapacitated old-age pensioner. From July 1945 onwards, Additional Benefit for Children of five shillings per week became payable in respect of the first child to any person qualified to receive unemployment or sickness benefit having the custody, care and control of one or more children under the age of 16.
In 1945, Curtin ordered the preparation of the White Paper on Full Employment in Australia. The White Paper was the defining document of the official economic policy in Australia until the 1970s. For the first time, the Australian government accepted an obligation to guarantee full employment and to intervene as necessary to implement that guarantee.
Buoyed by this success, Curtin called a referendum which would give the government control of the economy and resources for five years after the war was over. The 1944 Australian Referendum contained one referendum question: "Do you approve of the proposed law for the alteration of the Constitution entitled 'Constitution Alteration (Post-War Reconstruction and Democratic Rights) 1944'?" Constitution Alteration (Post-War Reconstruction and Democratic Rights) 1944 was known as the 14 powers, or 14 points referendum. It sought to give the government power, over a period of five years, to legislate on monopolies, corporations, Trust law, national health, family allowances, freedom of speech, religion, ex-servicemen rehabilitation, the ability to legislate for Indigenous Australians, and safeguards against the abuse of legislative power. The referendum was defeated, receiving a majority only in Western Australia and South Australia. Nationally overall, 54 percent voted against the question in the referendum.
At 4:00am on 5 July 1945, as Australia's 7th Division began its last operation against Japanese forces in the Battle of Balikpapan, John Curtin died at The Lodge at the age of 60. He was the second Australian prime minister to die in office within six years, a fact even contemporary commentators ascribed to the extreme stressors such an office demanded. Upon his death he was described by beacons of the local press to be a self-sacrificial casualty of war, a sentiment echoed by Presbyterian minister Hector Harrison. The next day, Curtin's body was laid in state at the King's Hall in Parliament House, where a memorial service was held, conducted by Harrison, who had been one of Curtin's friends. Ben Chifley and Enid Lyons were seen to weep openly. Harrison seemed to include Curtin among the Australian servicemen who had made the ultimate sacrifice:
"His Calvary was the anguish of a man of peace who loathed war with all his heart and soul. A one who spent his life in an attempt to promote human understanding, and journeyed oft in that attempt. And yet who, by a strange irony of fate, was chosen by destiny to lead the nation in her hour of direst peril... when the hosts of the North came down like a mighty flood, confident in strength and exalted in victory, he did not shrink from the hazards of the conflict but threw himself into his work with an utter devotion which at length laid him low and at last called for the supreme sacrifice. We pay him today the homage of a grateful people as one whose name will live forever more in the land he loved and among the free peoples of the world.Bearing his coffin from the King's Hall were Opposition Leader Robert Menzies, and former prime ministers Billy Hughes, Earle Page and James Scullin. His body was returned to Perth on a RAAF Dakota escorted by a flight of nine fighter aircraft. After lying in state, he was buried at Karrakatta Cemetery in Perth; the service was attended by over 30,000 at the cemetery, with many more lining the streets. Curtin was initially succeeded as prime minister by his deputy, Frank Forde; seven days later, a party ballot installed Ben Chifley as Labor Leader and therefore prime minister. Many of Curtin's post-war reconstruction plans were implemented by his successor Chifley, who in 1946 led the ALP to consecutive victories for the first time. Curtin's 9 years and 277 days as leader of the federal ALP would remain a record until it was surpassed by Gough Whitlam in 1975.
Curtin had an ambivalent relationship with religion and has been described as agnostic. A Catholic priest called at The Lodge as Curtin lay dying, but he was turned away. Curtin had refused to so much as set foot inside a Catholic church throughout his adult life, not even to attend the weddings of friends. However, he was known to ask his press secretary, Fred McLaughlin, to join him in prayer while prime minister. On the day that Singapore fell, Curtin made time to speak at the re-consecration of a church, because, "The fatherhood of God was closely related to the brotherhood of man." Near the end of his life, he asked his friend Hector Harrison, the Minister of the Presbyterian Church by Parliament, to conduct a Christian memorial service on his death. (2026). 9780647518557, The Bible Society. ISBN 9780647518557 Kim Beazley Sr., who succeeded Curtin as the Member for Fremantle, did not believe Curtin was agnostic at all, saying, "though Curtin never lost his distrust of religious institutions, faith grew within him."
Jack Beadly said of Curtin that "he was one of the greatest of wartime statesmen, and the preservation of Australia from invasion will be his immemorial monument". Curtin is credited with leading the Labor Party to its best federal election success in history, with a record 55.1 percent of the primary half-senate vote, winning all seats, and a two-party-preferred lower house estimate of 58.2 percent at the 1943 election, winning two-thirds of seats.
One legacy of Curtin was the significant expansion of social services under his leadership. In 1942, uniform taxation was imposed on the various states, which enabled the Curtin government to set up a far-reaching, federally administered range of social services. These included a widows' pension (1942), maternity benefits for Indigenous Australians (1942), funeral benefits (1943), a second form of maternity benefit (1943), a wife's allowance (1943), additional allowances for the children of pensioners (1943), unemployment, sickness and Special Benefits (1945), and pharmaceutical benefits (1945). Substantial improvements to pensions were made, with invalidity and old-age pensions increased, the qualifying period of residence for age pensions halved, and the means test liberalised. Other social security benefits were significantly increased, while child endowment was liberalised, a scheme of vocational training for invalid pensioners was set up, and pensions extended to cover Aborigines. The expansion of social security under John Curtin was of such significance that, as summed up by one historian: "Australia entered World War II with only a fragmentary welfare provision: by the end of the war it had constructed a 'welfare state'."
Curtin defended the White Australia policy in a speech in which he stated: "This country shall remain forever the home of the descendants of those people who came here in peace in order to establish in the South Seas an outpost of the British race." The Curtin government's October 1942 enactment of the Statute of Westminster Adoption Act 1942, reversing the stance of four previous governments, marked Australian legal independence. This law, along with the Constitution of Australia and the Australia Act 1986, is one of the key components of Australia's modern constitutional framework.
His early death and the sentiments it aroused have given Curtin a unique place in Australian political history. Successive Labor leaders, particularly Bob Hawke and Kim Beazley, have sought to build on the Curtin tradition of "patriotic Laborism". Even some political conservatives pay at least formal homage to the Curtin legend. Immediately after his death, the parliament agreed to pay John Curtin's wife Elsie a £1,000 per annum pension until legislation was passed and enacted to pay a pension to a past prime minister or their widow after their death.
In 1975 Curtin was honoured on a postage stamp bearing his portrait issued by Australia Post.
On 14 August 2005, the 60th anniversary of V-P Day, a bronze statue of Curtin in front of Fremantle Town Hall was unveiled by Premier of Western Australia Geoff Gallop.
The John Curtin Hotel in Carlton, Victoria, is named after Curtin.
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