Footnotes
*The author would like to thankLabour History’stwo anonymous referees as well as Bridget Griffen-Foley, Stuart Macintyre, and Ian Watson for their comments on an earlier draft; Nathalie Apouchtine, Josh Holloway, John Nethercote, Tom Roberts, and Kathleen Weekley for research assistance; and Gillian Dooley and Sue Hammond at the Flinders University Library. Both the writing and research were funded by the ARC under Discovery Grant DP0987839.
1.John Robertson, Australia at War 1939–1945(:William Heinemann Australia, 1981), 160.
2.James Jupp, Australian Party Politics, 2nd ed. (:Melbourne University Press, 1968), 131.
3.SeeColin A. Hughes andB. D. Graham, A Handbook of Australian Government and Politics 1890–1964(:Australian National University Press, 1968), 369.
4.See, for example,Fred Alexander, From Curtin to Menzies and After(:Nelson, 1973), 10;John Molony, The Penguin Bicentennial History of Australia(:Viking, 1987), 292;Geoffrey Bolton, The Oxford History of Australia, Volume 5: The Middle Way 1942–1995, 2nd ed. (:Oxford University Press, 1996), 28–29;Stuart Macintyre, A Concise History of Australia, 2nd ed. (:Cambridge University Press, 2004), 197.
5.“Australia,” Round Table 34, no. 133(1943):81.
6.Russel Ward, The History of Australia: The Twentieth Century(:Harper & Row, Publishers:), 259.
7.Michael McKernan, All In! Australia during the Second World War(:Nelson, 1983), 144.
8.Ian Hancock, “The Rise of the Liberal Party,”inThe Australian Century: Political Struggle in the Building of a Nation, ed.Robert Manne(:Text Publishing, 1999), 122;Ian Hancock, The Liberals: A History of the New South Wales Division of the Liberal Party of Australia 1945–2000(:The Federation Press, 2007), 42.
9.David Day, John Curtin: A Life(:HarperCollins Publishers, 1999), 513.
10.Geoffrey Sawer, Australian Federal Politics and Law 1929–1949(:Melbourne University Press, 1963), 157.
11.L. F. Fitzhardinge, The Little Digger, 1914–1952: William Morris Hughes: A Political Biography, Volume 2(:Angus & Robertson Publishers, 1979), 662–63. See also:Ross Gollan, “Australian Party Politics,”inAustralia, ed.C. Hartley Grattan(:University of California Press, 1947), 115, for whom the result “was, in essence, a vote of confidence in Curtin as war leader”; andDavid Day, “John Joseph Curtin,”inAustralian Prime Ministers, ed.Michelle Grattan, rev. ed. (:New Holland Publishers, 2008), 236, who attributes the “overwhelming election victory” to Curtin’s leadership.
12.Paul Hasluck, The Government and the People 1942–1945(:Australian War Memorial, 1970), 369.
13.Clem Lloyd andRichard Hall, ed., Backroom Briefings: John Curtin’s War(:National Library of Australia, 1997), 15. ContrastSir Perce Joske, Sir Robert Menzies, 1894–1978: A New, Informal Memoir(:Angus & Robertson Publishers, 1978), 131, who argues that given Labor’s war administration the election “was a forgone conclusion.”
14.Ken Buckley,Barbara Dale andWayne Reynolds, Doc Evatt(:Longman Cheshire, 1994), 186.
15.Cecil Edwards, The Editor Regrets(:Hill of Content, 1972), 108.
16.Don Whitington, Strive to be Fair: An Unfinished Autobiography(:Australian National University Press, 1978), 89;Cameron Hazlehurst, Menzies Observed(:George Allen & Unwin, 1979), 270. There is a slightly different account inMichael McKernan, The Strength of a Nation: Six Years of Australians Fighting for the Nation and Defending the Homefront in WWII(:Allen & Unwin, 2006), 353. For doubts about the veracity of the story, seeBridget Griffen-Foley, The House of Packer: The Making of a Media Empire(:Allen & Unwin, 1999), 123.
17.Ross McMullin, The Light on the Hill: The Australian Labor Party 1891–1991(:Oxford University Press Australia, 1991), 226.
18.Keith Murdoch to C. E. Wylde, 4 August 1943, Folder 43, April–August 1943, Lloyd Dumas Papers, MSS 4849, National Library of Australia (NLA). Contrast the recollections of the Labor Member for Fremantle, who remembered “the media” producing “a landslide for Labor”;Kim E. Beazley, Father of the House: The Memoirs of Kim E. Beazley(:Fremantle Press, 2009), 176.
19.Ross Fitzgerald andStephen Holt, Alan “the Red Fox” Reid: Pressman Par Excellence(:University of New South Wales Press, 2010), 49;Joan Rydon, A Biographical Register of the Commonwealth Parliament 1901–1972(:Australian National University Press, 1974), 123, for Kennelly.
20.Day, John Curtin, 507.
21.“Mr Curtin’s Personal Election Vote,”Herald, 30 August 1943, 6;“Australia Speaks,” Australian Gallup Polls, no. 141–52 (August–September1943).
22.McKernan, The Strength of a Nation, 356.
24.A. W. Martin, Robert Menzies: A Life, Volume 1: 1894–1943(:Melbourne University Press, 1993), 415–16. See also,David Day, Chifley(:HarperCollins Publishers, 2001), 396.
25.McKernan, The Strength of a Nation, 361, for this and the previous sentence.
26.Roy Morgan, “Gallup Poll Shows Trend of Opinion,” Herald, 20 August1943, 5. In effect, Morgan anticipated by 30 years what would become known, thanks to Malcolm Mackerras, as the “two-party preferred vote”;Malcolm Mackerras, Australian General Election(:Angus & Robertson, 1972).
27.“There’s No Swing Yet to Either Labor or U.A.P.,” Daily Telegraph, 28 May1943, 6.
28.Edgar Holt, Politics is People: The Men of the Menzies Era(:Angus & Robertson, 1969), 38. Hasluck, while not commenting on expectations for the House, notes that “few expected that Labour would carry the Senate”; seeHasluck, The Government and the People, 367.
29.Don Whitington, The House Will Divide: A Review of Australian Federal Politics, rev ed. (:Lansdowne Press, 1969), 119.
31.Roy Morgan, “Gallup Poll Shows Trend of Opinion,” Herald, 20 August1943, 5. For the results for each of the “anti-Labor” parties, see Hughes andGraham, A Handbook of Australian Government and Politics, 369.
32.“Australia Speaks,” Australian Gallup Polls, no. 141–52 (August–September1943). The combined UAP-CP vote was 23 per cent;Hughes andGraham, A Handbook of Australian Government and Politics, 369.Ian Hancock, National and Permanent? The Federal Organisation of the Liberal Party of Australia 1944–1965(:Melbourne University Press, 2000), 17, 69, lifts the “UAP” vote to 20 or 21 per cent by including the Liberal Country League, the main non-Labor Party in South Australia, and the Liberal Democrats in New South Wales. See alsoDon Aitkin andMichael Kahan, “Australia: Class Politics in the New World,”inElectoral Behaviour: A Comparative Handbook, ed.Richard Rose(:The Free Press, 1974), 444.
33.R. L. Curthoys, cited inMartin, Robert Menzies, 416.
34.Leslie Haylen, 20 Years Hard Labor(:Macmillan, 1969), 16.
35.Colin A. Hughes andB. D. Graham, Voting for the House of Representatives 1901–1964, reprinted with corrigenda (:Australian National University Press, 1975), 203, 226.
36.Michael Roe, review ofEvatt: A Life, byPeter Crockett, Labour History, no. 66 (May1994):180.
37.Buckley, et al., Doc Evatt, 193.
38.Crockett, Evatt, 90.
39.Paul Hasluck, Diplomatic Witness: Australian Foreign Affairs 1941–1947(:Melbourne University Press, 1980), 93. On the “benediction” of theSydney Morning Herald, seeGavin Souter, Company of Heralds: A Century and a Half of Australian Publishing(:Melbourne University Press, 1981), 235.
40.Neal Blewett andDean Jaensch Playford to Dunstan: Politics of Transition(:F. W. Cheshire Publishing, 1971), 65;Laurie Oakes andDavid Solomon, The Making of an Australian Prime Minister(:Cheshire Publishing, 1973), ch. 7. See alsoStephen Mills, The New Machine Men(:Penguin Books, 1986), 95, 110–11; andStephen Mills, The Professionals(:Black Inc., 2014), 131–32.Mick Young, “The Build-Up to 1972,”inThe Whitlam Phenomenon: Fabian Papers(:McPhee Gribble/Penguin, 1986), 99, refers to Dunstan being “almost a decade ahead of anyone in this area,” a longer lead than assumed by Mills. Curiously, the best known critique of Dunstan and Whitlam, and the rise of “technocratic labourists,” fails to link Labor’s new “social model” to its use of survey research;Robert Catley andBruce McFarlane, From Tweedledum to Tweedledee: The New Labor Government in Australia: A Critique of its Social Model(:Australia and New Zealand Book Company, 1974), 9–11.
45.Eric White, Public Relations Officer Liberal Party Federal Secretariat to F. R. Burton, Chief Executive Officer Liberal Party, 18 August 1947, Subject Files: Nationalization of Banks 1947, ML MSS 2385, Box Y4629, Item 14.
47.J. Stuart Lucy, “The Forties,”inSome Reflections on the First Fifty Years of Market Research in Australia 1928–1978, ed.W. A. McNair(:Market Research Society of Australia, NSW Division, 1978), 41. Here as elsewhere, the use of “Labour” rather than “Labor” reflects the usage of the time and the source of the quotation.
48.Sylvia Ashby, “The Twenties and Thirties,”inMcNair, Some Reflections on the First Fifty Years, 10;Murray Goot, “Ashby, Sylvia Rose (1908–1978),” Australian Dictionary of Biography,National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, accessed September2014,http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/ashby-sylvia-rose-9390/text16499.
49.“Women Will Talk to Women,” Sydney Morning Herald, 17 November1938, 22.
50.On Ashby’s early relationship with Packer, including his concern to conceal Ashby’s identity lest it jeopardise the appearance of her independence, seeGriffen-Foley, The House of Packer, 103–4.
51.For Ashby’s title, seeSylvia Ashby, “Women Shouldn’t Forget They Possess a Vote,” Daily Telegraph, 4 July1942, 4. For the attribution of the polling, see“Many People Hazy about Constitution Plan,” Sunday Telegraph, 29 November1942.
52.“There’s No Swing Yet to Either Labor or U.A.P.,” Daily Telegraph, 28 May1943, 6. Similarly the survey of Sydney “housewives” (n = 500), conducted on behalf of the Rationing Commission, was almost certainly an Ashby survey;Tim Rowse, “The People and their Experts: A War-Inspired Civics for H. C. Coombs,” Labour History, no. 74 (May1998):73. See also a 1944 Ashby survey of “housewives” (n = 500), which may have influenced the decision not to close butchers’ shops on Saturday mornings;Sydney Morning Herald, 8 November 1944, 4; andSylvia Ashby, “The Forties,”inMcNair, Some Reflections on the First Fifty Years, 32. Ashby’s national poll on bank nationalisation (n = 3,000), presumably included 500 interviews in each state;Sydney Morning Herald, 19 September1947, 7; andDaily Mirror, 17 September 1947. Leslie Haylen’s reference to a “Gallup poll taken among 500 people in the Ashfield, Enfield, Burwood and Summer Hill area” of his electorate (Parkes) on the Liberal Party’s “John Henry Austral” broadcasts, assumed by Mills to have been commissioned by Haylen, was most likely an Ashby survey; House of Representatives, Hansard(23 November1948):3324ff.Mills, The New Machine Men, 113–14n8.
53.Ashby, “The Forties,” 28.
54.J. Stuart Lucy, “The Twenties and Thirties,”inMcNair, Some Reflections on the First Fifty Years, 23. See also“These Women have Unusual Occupations,” Sydney Morning Herald, 13 April1937, 4. For an illustration, seeYou, Me and this War: A Critical Account of Australia’s Organisation for Defence(:Consolidated Press, 1941), 206–11.
55.Carl Bridge, “Impossible Missions: H. V. Evatt in Washington and London in 1942 and 1943,”inBrave New World: H. V. Evatt and Foreign Policy, 1941–1949, ed.David Day(:University of Queensland Press, 1996), 40–44.
56.Buckley, et al., Doc Evatt, 145. If true, this looks like a breach of the rules, doubtless quite common. Though there were no rules governing what parties could spend, in 1943 the limit on campaign expenditure by individual candidates standing for the House of Representatives was £100;F. A. Bland, Party Politics, Part 2: Australian Political Parties and the Government(: RAAF Rehabilitation Section Discussion Series, [1942]), 5. In 1946 the limit was raised to £250;Mills, The New Machine Men, 183. In her bid to win the UAP seat of Wentworth, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, Labor’s Jessie Street said she was prepared to “put in 1000 pounds to commence the campaign”; quoted inPeter Sekuless, Jessie Street: A Rewarding if Unrewarded Life(:University of Queensland Press, 1978), 88.
57.Ashby, “The Twenties and Thirties,” 12;Mills, The New Machine Men, 87–95;Murray Goot, “Rubensohn, Solomon (Sim) (1904–1979),”
Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, accessed September2014,http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/rubensohn-solomon-sim-11579/text20669.
58.For Evatt’s relationship with Theodore, seeBridget Griffen-Foley, “‘Four More Points than Moses’: Dr. H. V. Evatt, the Press and the 1944 Referendum,” Labour History, no. 68 (November1995):66. TheSunday Telegraphwas a client of Hansen Rubensohn; F. M. Hewitt to W. H. Spooner, 24 December 1947, ML MSS 2385 Box Y4629, Item 2.
59.The position of theTelegraphsis outlined inBridget Griffen-Foley, “‘A Civilised Amateur’: Edgar Holt and His Life in Letters and Politics,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 49, no. 1(2003):38. For the campaign, Packer also lent Evatt some “secretarial assistance”;Patrick Buckridge, The Scandalous Penton: A Biography of Brian Penton(:University of Queensland Press, 1994), 209–10, 213.
61.On Lane, seeRydon, A Biographical Register of the Commonwealth Parliament, 128.
62.Allan Dalziel, Evatt the Enigma(:Lansdowne Press, 1967), 52.
63.Hughes andGraham, A Handbook of Australian Government and Politics, 358, 364;Hughes andGraham, Voting for the House of Representatives, 184, 199.
64.Ward, The History of Australia, 259.
65.SeeHughes andGraham, Voting for the House of Representatives, 253(1946), 269(1949), 290 (1951), 308 (1954), 325 and 345 (1955). Dalziel called Barton a “swinging seat”;Dalziel, Evatt the Enigma, 37. Following the 1948 boundary changes, half of the Barton electorate consisted of voters who previously would have been enrolled in St George or Banks;Colin A. Hughes, “The 1948 Redistribution and the Defeat of the Chifley Government,” Labour History, no. 34 (May1978):75.
66.“Unusual Elements in New South Wales,” Herald, 18 August1943, 5.
67.Hughes andGraham, A Handbook of Australian Government and Politics, 453, Kogarah having been won on preferences;Dalziel, Evatt the Enigma, 35.
68.The phrase is from [George Gallup] The New Science of Public Opinion Management(:American Institute of Public Opinion Research, c1943).
69.“Australia Speaks,” Australian Gallup Polls, no. 103–8 (February1943).
70.Kylie Tennant, Evatt: Politics and Justice, rev. ed. (:Angus and Robertson, 1972), 155.
71.P. G. Edwards, Prime Ministers and Diplomats: The Making of Australian Foreign Policy 1901–1949(:Oxford University Press, 1983), 159.
72.Dalziel, Evatt the Enigma, 35.
73.Tennant, Evatt, 155.
74.Dalziel, Evatt the Enigma, 53.
75.Tennant, Evatt, 155. Turning his mind to the possibility of a political career, shortly before the war, Keith Murdoch was advised by one of his editors not to. “I don’t think you are well enough known to the average man in the street,” he said. “I think you are a little remote from ordinary people –you wouldn’t be very successful”; cited inDesmond Zwar, In Search of Keith Murdoch(:Macmillan, 1980), 97.
76.Don Whitington, Ring the Bells: A Dictionary of Australian Federal Politics(:Georgian House, 1956), 57. Similar sentiments would later show up in research on Whitlam;Young, “The Build-up to 1972,” 105.
77.Dalziel, Evatt the Enigma, 37.
78.Ibid., 17.
79.Ibid., 52.
80.Gollan, “Australian Party Politics,” 114.
81.Edwards, Prime Ministers and Diplomats, 143.
83.The Gallup Poll conducted a month earlier was in the field from Monday 1 February to Thursday 11 February 1943;“Australia Speaks,” Australian Gallup Polls, no. 103–8 (February1943).
84.See, for example,“The Public is Ready for a Vigorous Policy,” Daily Telegraph, 9 January1942, 4.
85. “Barton Electorate Survey.”
86.As Teer and Spence note, “Within the quota controls the interviewer is free to interview whom she likes,” including “people in the street”;F. Teer andJ. D. Spence, Political Opinion Polls(:Hutchinson, 1973), 35, 37. This happened in Britain – their book features one such interview on its cover – but not, it seems, in Australia.
87.The Gallup Poll, which claimed to operate on a similar basis, raises the same puzzle;Murray Goot, “‘The Obvious and Logical Way to Ascertain the Public’s Attitude toward a Problem’: Roy Morgan and the Australian Gallup Poll,”inThe Early Days of Survey Research and their Importance Today, ed.Hannes Haas,Hynek Jerabek andThomas Petersen(:Braumüller, 2012), 169–74.
88.“Women Will Talk to Women,” Sydney Morning Herald, 17 November1938, 22.
89.Ibid.The contrast with Morgan, whose interviewers were mostly men, is striking;Murray Goot, “‘A Worse Importation than Chewing Gum’: American Influences on the Australian Press and their Limits: The Australian Gallup Poll, 1941–1971,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 30, no. 3(2010):277.
90.SeeR. Simmat, Market Research(:Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1931), 42;R. Simmat, The Principles and Practices of Marketing(:Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1933), 13;Goot, “Ashby, Sylvia Rose (1908–1978).”Simmat presented Ashby with inscribed copies of both books.
91. “Barton Electorate Survey.”
92.J. Stuart Lucy, “The Forties,”inSome Reflections on the First Fifty Years of Market Research in Australia, 41. Goldberg’s had had the UAP account since 1938;Frank Goldberg, My Life in Advertising(privately published, c1958), 41.
93.Lane, an accountant and business manager, was not uneducated;Rydon, A Biographical Register of the Commonwealth Parliament, 128.
94.SeeHughes andGraham, A Handbook of Australian Government and Politics, 358, 364, for the state figures;Hughes andGraham, Voting for the House of Representatives, 184, 199, for Barton. State Labor (which contested only 19 seats compared to Labor’s 28) and Lang Labor (18 seats) did much better, on average, in the seats they contested than the state-wide figures might suggest.
95.Lucy, “The Forties,” 41.
96.The tendency of women to favour the Coalition is corroborated by an analysis of the 1943 election returns;Christian Leithner, “A Gender Gap in Australia? Commonwealth Elections, 1910–96,” Australian Journal of Political Science 32, no. 1(1997):35.
98. Ibid: Survey 44, 5 September1946, User’s Guide, SSDA, 1982, ANU; Survey 45, 21 September 1946, User’s Guide, SSDA, 1982, ANU.
99. Australian Public Opinion Polls, no. 327–34 (February–March1946).
100.Ibid., no. 337–44 (April–May1946); no. 345–54 (May–June1946); no. 355–64 (July1946).
101.Ibid., no. 365–76 (August1946).
102. Australian Gallup Poll Findings, no. 511–28 (May and June1948).Australian Public Opinion Polls, no. 569–78 (February–March1949); no. 855–64 (May–June1952); no. 1862–71 (September–December1965).
103.SeeHughes andGraham, A Handbook of Australian Government and Politics, 364, 370.
104.Hughes andGraham, Voting for the House of Representatives, 223.
105.Contrast Crisp’s account of the vote in Macquarie where Ben Chifley polled 65 per cent compared with nearly 45 per cent in 1940. For Chifley, he writes, “the national triumph of the Party was paralleled by a personal triumph”;L. F. Crisp, Ben Chifley: A Biography(:Longmans, Green, and Co., [1961]), 159n6. In attempting to evaluate John Dedman’s campaign in Corio, Spaull sets up a similar problem: “Corio would be both a test of Labor’s management of the war and war effort, and of the popularity of the ‘Minister for Austerity.’”D. A. Kemp, Society and Electoral Behaviour in Australia: A Study of Three Decades(:University of Queensland Press, 1978), 253, notes the “high level of the within-state variance.” However, Dedman’s vote, like Chifley’s, “was consistent with the statewide trend in voting”;Andrew Spaull, John Dedman: A Most Unexpected Labor Man(:Hyland House, 1998), 70, 75.
107.Recalculated fromHughes andGraham, Voting for the House of Representatives, 223–29.
108.“Australia Speaks,” Australian Gallup Polls, no. 132–40 (July1943). The May poll, which asked respondents which party they would “like to win,” not how they intended to vote (pacethe subsequent references), apparently led to Murdoch and Menzies discussing the results withMorgan.“Australia Speaks,” Australian Gallup Polls, no. 124–31 (May–June1943);Christine Wallace, “A Matter of Opinion,” Australian Financial Review Magazine, August1995, 14–23;Stephen Mills, “Polling, Politics and the Press 1941–1996,”inJournalism: Print, Politics and Popular Culture, ed.Ann Curthoys andJulianne Schultz(:University of Queensland Press, 1999), 207;Bridget Griffen-Foley, Party Games: Australian Politicians and the Media from War to Dismissal(:Text Publishing, 2003), 24–25.
109.Murray Goot, “Growth and Decay: Party Support between Elections, 1966–70,”inLabor to Power: Australia’s 1972 Election, ed.Henry Mayer(:Angus & Robertson, 1973)266;Murray Goot, “Studying the Australian Voter: Questions, Methods, Answers,” Australian Journal of Political Science, 48, no. 3(2013):370.
110.Brian McKinlay, A Century of Struggle: The A.L.P.: A Centenary History(:Collins Dove, 1988), 111. See alsoMcKernan, The Strength of a Nation, 361.
111.Day, John Curtin, 513;McKernan, The Strength of a Nation, 361;Goot, “A Worse Importation than Chewing Gum,” 288–89.
112.For a detailed examination in relation to the 1951 referendum, where the polls were largely ignored, seeMurray Goot
“The ‘Transition’ From Qualitative to Quantitative Measures of Public Opinion: The Australian Press and the 1951 Referendum on Communism,” Journalism Studies 15, no. 2(2013):204–17.
113.“Australia Speaks,” Australian Gallup Polls, no. 141–52 (August–September1943).
114.Martin, Robert Menzies, 414–15.
115.Whitington, The House Will Divide, 117. Curtin announced the election date only after being told that “unless he consented to a dissolution of parliament and an election the opposition would block supply”;Lloyd Ross, John Curtin: A Biography(:Macmillan, 1977), 318.
116.Graham Freudenberg, “Victory to Defeat: 1941–49,”inTrue Believers: The Story of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party, ed.John Faulkner andStuart Macintyre(:Allen & Unwin, 2001), 49. See alsoNeville Kirk, Labour and the Politics of Empire: Britain and Australia 1900 to the Present(:Manchester University Press, 2011), 172.
117.Day, Chifley, 396.
118.Elwyn Spratt, Eddie Ward: Firebrand of East Sydney(:Rigby, 1965), 131.
119.Quoted inCrisp, Ben Chifley, 227.
120.See alsoMurray Goot andSean Scalmer, “Party Leaders, the Media, and Political Persuasion: The Campaigns of Evatt and Menzies on the Referendum to Protect Australia from Communism,” Australian Historical Studies 44, no. 1(2013):87.
121.“Dr. Evatt Predicts Pacific Security Guarantee,” Canberra Times, 5 August1943, 2.
122. Argus, 5 August1943, 3.
123. Advertiser, 5 August1943, 5.
125.Ibid.
126.In the lead up to the 1972 election, Labor’s federal secretary found himself having to explain “this new fangled science called market research” to Labor Party members he clearly regarded as backward;Young, “The Build-up to 1972,” 98.
127.For Morgan, seeGoot, “A Worse Importation than Chewing Gum,” 276, 295n52–53.