A bitter partisan fight over history has erupted after an Albanese government cabinet minister labelled the country’s longest-serving prime minister, Robert Menzies, a “Nazi appeaser” in a bid to burnish Labor’s national security credentials.
The Coalition demanded Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy apologise for his off-the-cuff remarks at the National Press Club and unsuccessfully attempted to censure the key factional ally of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in parliament over what it called a “grubby smear”.
Conroy earlier used his press club appearance to put defence officials on notice they face the sack for poor performance, as the government overhauls the defence bureaucracy to encourage risk-taking, crack down on time-wasting and save taxpayer money.
Conroy argued that Labor should take more pride in its record on defence and national security under the banner of “progressive patriotism”, saying Labor prime ministers could take credit for establishing the Royal Australian Navy, leading Australia in two world wars and creating the modern Department of Defence.
“I’m very interested in disclosing what really happened before World War II and during World War II, where it’s a choice between [Labor prime minister] John Curtin and Nazi appeaser Robert Gordon Menzies,” Conroy said in response to a question by SBS reporter Naveen Razik.
“Like, this is really important stuff that the left needs to embrace more fully, but we should be proud of it.”
Conroy continued: “I just think it’s time to get a bit more aggressive in pushing back against people on the right of politics who are trying to own an area.
“Draping yourself in a flag doesn’t make you a patriot; delivering real change and improving this country, being proud of this country is a patriot.”
Opposition defence spokesman James Paterson called for Conroy to apologise for his “baseless and grubby smear” against Menzies.
“A minister in the defence portfolio should never engage in partisan historical revisionism, no matter how desperate they are to distract from their own failings,” Paterson said.
Paterson said Menzies did not hesitate to join the fight against the Nazis in 1939 as the same day as the United Kingdom, and loyally supported Curtin throughout the war against fascism.
Manager of opposition business Dan Tehan called for the House of Representatives to censure Conroy over comments, but Labor used its overwhelming majority in that chamber to block the attempt.
In response, Conroy tried to table a September 1939 letter by Menzies in which he said he doubted Hitler wanted a first-class war and said that “nobody really cares a damn about Poland as such”.
At the time, Poland was under invasion by Nazi forces, triggering the United Kingdom and France to declare war on Germany.
Conroy’s remarks echoed those in a fiery speech at Labor’s national conference in 2023 in which he suggested opponents of the AUKUS pact were “appeasers”.
“When Menzies was arguing for appeasement and tried to cut defence funding, John Curtin was the one who argued for a massive increase in investment in our Air Force and Navy to deter aggressors in our region,” he said at the time.
“So delegates, do you want to be on the side of John Curtin or do you want to be on the side of Pig Iron Bob Menzies? Appeasement is conflict.”
In July 1939, shortly before the outbreak of war, Menzies said that “history will label Hitler as one of the really great men of the century” and praised him for dragging Germany out of bankruptcy.
The National Archives of Australia states on its website that “Menzies strongly supported British appeasement policy on Nazi Germany – keep the door open for negotiation, but also prepare for war…”
Menzies biographer Gerard Henderson, a former chief-of-staff to John Howard, said that while Menzies may have made some unwise remarks, it was unfair to single him out as soft on Hitler.
“Menzies put on the khaki and went to war,” he said. “If he was a Nazi appeaser then so was Curtin.”
Earlier in his press club appearance, Conroy said the government was “turning a very big ship around” in defence, arguing speedy action was needed to fix a broken system for delivering major defence projects such as frigates, submarines and fighter jets.
“The way Defence was operating had become outdated and compromised for at least the last decade,” Conroy said.
“The fact is, these systems were designed for a very different world.”
Conroy stressed he was not blaming defence personnel, whom he described as “some of the hardest-working, smartest, and committed in the game, but the systems were broken”.
Under questioning from reporters about whether defence officials had to be held accountable, Conroy said that “accountability will be key”.
Declaring that the government wanted to set defence officials up to succeed, Conroy said accountability involved “taking responsibility for decisions, learning from those decisions and ultimately, if decisions are made poorly, changing personnel at some stage”.
Conroy said it was ridiculous that some defence decisions required 70 separate signatures to take effect, saying: “If you’ve got 70 people responsible for decision, that means no one responsible for that.”
Conroy said that “we need to be more disciplined and realistic when we make capability investments and not discard military off- the-shelf options, which present much lower risk, unless there is a very good reason”.
Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.
Matthew Knottis the foreign affairs and national security correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect viaX,Facebookoremail.
