"Now is the Psychological Moment" - Earle Page and the Imagining of Australia

Abstract

Earle Christmas Grafton Page (1880-1961) – Country Party leader, Treasurer and Prime Minister – was the most extraordinary visionary to hold high public office in the Australian Parliament during the first several decades of the twentieth century. His incessant activism in regionalism, new states, hydroelectricity, economic planning, co-operative federalism and rural universities had a distinctively personal dimension. But he also contributed to and led several larger, and in some respects, perennial themes in Australian history related to issues summarised in this thesis as developmentalism. This study assesses the relationship between Page and this wider current of debate. Page’s career as one of Australia’s longest serving senior politicians is characterised by his remarkably consistent but pragmatically opportunistic efforts to shape the still formative government and society of the Australian nation according to his personal vision of its economic and social future. His efforts influenced more conventional government policy, both directly through his membership of governments and indirectly through his long-term impact on what policy ideas were prominent in public debate. Page’s successes and also his failures elucidate the wider issue of the place of concepts of national development in modern Australian history. This thesis is a biographically-based study of the significance of applied policy ideas. The emphasis is on describing and analysing the most distinctive of Page’s policy initiatives, seeking to illuminate his significance in the wider world of ideas and politics. Page has been cast by some historians as merely reflective of a Country Party intent on securing resources for rural interests: this is greatly to underestimate his originality and significance. Although he drew on specific ideas held by other public figures and civic movements, Page uniquely moulded these into a coherent national vision that drew heavily on concepts of the desirable spatial disposition of population and the appropriate scale of public institutions. Over decades, Page made telling references to what he called the psychological moment. This marked whenever he judged that he at last had the public and political support needed to achieve one of his treasured policy goals. It encapsulates his awareness that his vision of the nation normally sat far outside the political mainstream and of the consequent difficulties he faced in trying to implement it. It also suggested, however, a sense that his ideas had potential to appeal to an Australian public who were open to fresh ways of viewing the national project. Page broadened existing developmentalist thought through his rare synthesis of ideas that both delineated and stretched the Australian political imagination. His rich career confirms that Australia has long inspired popular ideals of national development, but also that their practical implementation was increasingly challenged during the twentieth-century. Page’s influence and experience supports arguments that Australian public life has been rich in applied thinkers. His work shows how assessment of the contribution of an engaged individual, their ideas and advocacy, can illuminate a past that is both relevant to still unresolved issues in Australian politics and which is also suggestive of alternative paths. Show more