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Australian historians admire Robert Menzies. Pardon? Aren’t historians, like the rest of the Australian academy, left-wing propagandists? Don’t they all loathe the prime minister’s political role model? Regardless of how historians view Menzies’ attitudes to the monarchy, appeasement, the middle class and the Communist Party, they have reached a consensus on one point: Menzies played a significant role in the consolidation and expansion of Australia’s university sector. When Ben Chifley laid the foundation stone of the Australian National University during the election year of 1949, Menzies refused to politicise the initiative; as prime minister in 1956, he appointed a committee to inquire into the plight of Australian universities and insisted on the provision of life-giving funds by the Commonwealth government under conditions which preserved university autonomy. As his biographer, A.W. Martin, notes, ‘Menzies’ support of universities, and the university life, was never at any time in doubt’.
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