Author(s): Henderson, Anne

Politics

"Liberal Party founder and long-serving prime minister Robert (Bob) Menzies along with Labor foreign minister and attorney-general Bert (the Doc) Evatt were two of the biggest names in 20th century Australian politics. The former led his party to election victories, the latter to defeats. Menzies and Evatt were born in 1894. Both men, from relatively modest backgrounds, were brilliant students who starred at law before entering the Commonwealth Parliament. From the early 1940s to the early 1960s, they took different sides on such issues as bank nationalisation, the attempt to ban the Communist Party and the Petrov affair – ideological disagreements which co-existed with mutual distrust and personal rivalries."