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Robert Menzies resigned during his first term as prime minister in 1941 after disunity between his United Australia Party, the Country Party and Independents. As a backbencher, he began speaking directly to the people through his regular Friday night radio addresses. His Forgotten People address stressed the importance of the middle class in a free society. This group became his biggest supporter, which enabled him to become Australia’s longest-serving prime minister, from 1949 to 1966. As a staunch anti-communist, Menzies unsuccessfully attempted to outlaw the Communist Party in Australia.

When the Australian Labor Party tried to nationalise Australia’s banks in 1947, Menzies compared it to fascism and called it a ‘superb instrument for tyranny’. In a Town Hall speech about the proposed legislation, he said:

“If it goes through, it will represent an enormous step towards the creation of a state in which the government will tell you how to live and what you are to spend. In which, it will offer certain material advantages, or so-called advantages, in exchange for your true liberty of life.”

Read the complete text of Menzies’s powerful speech against the nationalization of Australia’s banks.