Political ideas in the Liberal Party

Abstract

The Liberal Party of Australia was founded in 1944, came to power in 1949 and governed, in coalition with the Country party, to the end of 1972. At the time of its formation, spokesmen within the new party emphasised the importance of its basic ideas, drawing in this realm some of the sharpest distinctions made between it and its immediate predecessor, the United Australia party. Once the Liberal party was in office, and especially after the mid-fifties, spokesmen referred less often to the party’s basic philosophy; but it was nonetheless discernible as an underlying set of assumptions in most of the arguments about current policy within the party and between the Liberal and Labour parties. In the forties, the Liberals had revived a scheme of non-Labour thought which had been of considerable significance in Australian politics. Their creed was fairly comprehensive and it may be conveniently summarised at this point as a prelude to a survey of the conventional view of the Liberal party and its ideas in the secondary literature and to a detailed discussion of its themes in the main body of the thesis.