The Money Men by Chris Bowen (i wanna iguana read aloud .TXT) 📗

not as fine-tuned as those available to treasurers today. Fadden also came up against the perennial problem of the promises and expectations that were stoked in opposition proving difficult to deliver under changing economic circumstances in government. Menzies and Fadden were elected in 1949 on a policy of development and growth, and the removal of restrictions on the economy. Delivering this in the face of the biggest and most unsustainable economic boom of the century was to prove politically very difficult.

Fadden was another wartime treasurer, one of the four politicians who were responsible for our national finances during World War II, and he necessarily turned his mind to how to finance the war effort. Japan had yet to enter the war, and the task for Fadden’s successor Chifley would be larger and more urgent. Nevertheless, the Country Party treasurer also followed the advice of Keynes on war financing. He adopted an innovative plan of ‘compulsory loans’ whereby taxpayers would be forced to lend the government money, which would be repaid to them when the war was over. It was a controversial scheme, and Fadden’s sole Budget in this, his first stint as treasurer, was the last to fail to receive the support of the House of Representatives, leading to the fall of the government.

Another important element in the history of Australian treasurers, particularly for the first sixty years of the role, is the story of the gradual evolution of an independent reserve bank. Fadden’s role here was similarly decisive, if imperfect.

Fadden was an earthy, attractive character, much influenced by his Queensland rural roots. He had warm relations with people across the political spectrum. In the confined atmosphere of the old Parliament House, his well-developed penchant for story and joke telling was popular on both sides of the House. But he was also fiercely partisan and rabidly anti-communist—his insistence that the Communist Party be banned was a factor in Menzies eventually attempting this, an action that would ultimately be found to be unconstitutional. And he was always suspicious of increased government control, regarding it as the beginning of the slippery slope to socialism.

Fadden’s autobiography is not replete with rigorous intellectual analysis of his time, but it is full of anecdotes and funny stories arising from his career. One of these, set in a time of unparalleled crisis, provides a telling insight into both the nature of the relationship between Fadden and the leader of the opposition, John Curtin, and also Fadden’s sense of humour when under extreme pressure.

Fadden, who had been prime minister for forty days, was reliant on the ongoing support of two independent members, this support being tenuous at best. The government was in crisis as Labor had moved an amendment to the Budget that would, if carried, be regarded as a loss of confidence in Fadden’s administration, bringing it down and installing Curtin as prime minister. In the midst of this, Curtin called around to Fadden’s office for a chat. The conversation went like this:

Curtin: Well boy, have you got the numbers? I hope you have but I don’t think you have.

Fadden: No John, I haven’t got them.

Curtin: Well, there it is. Politics is a funny game.

Fadden: Yes, but there is no need for them to make it any funnier.1

Fadden had a very different personality from that of his prime minister, Menzies. Menzies had a patrician manner and was an academic, neither of which applied to Fadden. Menzies was respected but not loved by his own colleagues, whereas Fadden was genuinely liked on both sides of the House. Menzies was an urbane sophisticate, while Fadden was a larrikin, a quintessential country boy. But while their relationship was a curious and at times tempestuous one, Menzies took Fadden’s counsel on economic matters, and the men developed an effective working relationship.

It is difficult to assign Fadden the lion’s share of the credit for Australia’s economic growth record in the 1950s and 1960s. His use of Keynesian tools certainly helped the economy, but there were very significant international factors at play that benefited Australia, in particular the release of pent-up demand that had been subsumed by twenty years of depression and war. Australia’s major exports—wool, wheat and minerals—were in great demand as a result. It is more reasonable to say that Fadden did not harm Australia’s economic development during this time, and that his policies assisted in smoothing out the hard edges of boom and bust.

Beginnings

Arthur Fadden’s parents were Irish immigrants who met in Queensland. Richard Fadden and Annie Moorhead settled in the Mackay region, where Richard was commissioned as an officer in the Queensland Police Force. Young Arthur was the eldest of ten children. In those days of large families and pre-antibiotic medicine, young deaths were common, but it is still hard to imagine the sadness that must have accompanied the loss of one of Fadden’s sisters through drowning, as well as the deaths of two young brothers.

Arthur was educated at the local public school and then worked as a ‘billy boy’, making tea for sugar cane–cutting gangs, before getting a job as an office boy at a sugar mill. His big break came when he beat fifty other applicants to be employed as a clerk at Mackay Shire Council. He had been at the council for a few years when he identified a series of mistakes in the accounts kept by the town clerk, mistakes that had not been identified by the council’s independent auditors. The council dismissed the town clerk and appointed Fadden in his place.

Perhaps heartened by the career advancement that his informal bookkeeping skills had gained him, Fadden studied accounting at night while working as the town clerk. His involvement in local government might also have been encouraged by his marriage in 1916 to Ilma Thornber, whose father, grandfather and brother-in-law had all served as the mayor of Mackay. One of his most significant responsibilities came in 1918, when he managed the emergency response to the significant cyclone that