PPIPME MNISTER S SPEEQ-1 AT TE= J-7UJNCHTNG OF DITIS MURPHY' S IXK } WYM
BRLSBAZE, 3 OZI'-OBER 1975
1Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, ladies and gentlemen.
It's a very great pleasure indeed to be launching another
book written by one of Australia's finest historians, a
distinguished member of thle staff of the University of
Queensland; a book printed, published by the University
of Queensland ? ress; and to launch this book, to support
the author in the house occupied by three Premiers of
Queensland. The last of those Preiers to occupy it"
being the subject of the book T. J. Ryan himself.
The Labor Party has not always had a good press but it's
always had good historians. And whatever may be said about
writers at any particular time, about the Labor Party they
always look at Australian history,-not just Australian
politics in retrospect, but Australian history in terms
of what has been achieved by the Labor party the leaders
and the members of the Labor party. And so it is with
T. J. Ryan. The fact that this book has appeared 55 years
after his death illustrates one important thing, I think,
about our history, about our biographies, and that is
that it takes a very long time in Australia to enable,
or encourage historians to write about great Australians.
Certainly T. J. Ryan deserved a biography, but there are so
many people who've been prominent in Australian politics,
in Australian histor-y, about whom no significant biographical
material has yet appeared. There is no definitive work
on Parkes, or on Griffith-a very great Queenslander-or
on Barton, or on Fisher, or on Lyons or above all on Curtin.
And there must still be much to be published about Hughes
and Bruce and Chifley. And as far as I know, noone has yet
undertaken the formidable task of assessing the Menzies
era. The journalists have been much more prompt. Alan Reid
did John Gorton in every sense. And there is another
journalist, distinguished journalist, a very perceptive
journalist, Laurie Oakes, who did a book on me and it's
now available as a remainder at 35 cents a copy.
Now at least we have a book on Ryan, a book which
has been all the better because one has been able to mull
over the history, to ponder on it, with maturity. One
inevitably wonders how far Ryan would have gone, how great
would have been his impact in the whole of Australia if he
had been spared longer. There's no question the impact he
had on Queensland in his time, and for succeeding decades.
He was only 45 when he died. He was at the height of his
power. There was every prospect that he would. have become
Prime Minister. He was superbly equipped by tarerarPnt. and
training for the role he played in. Queensland, and for the
wider, and greater role to which he aspired. The statue
in the Executive Gardens in Brisbane represents him as a
King's Councellor. He was in fact the only lawyer to head
a Queensland Government this century. That's a double
first, because he was also not only the only lawyer to-head
a Queensland Government this century, he was only one of the
two people who've been through a university and headed a
Queensland Government Jack Pizzey being the other, another
man who was taken far too early from the scene.
2.
Now, Ryan's legal training was obviously of
very great importance to him in the two great constitutional
and legal battles of his career. Queensland Premiers have
sometimes been legal but they'Ive not always been
constitutional. He had two great constitutional fights
one was against the Upper House I'm amazed the interest
Queensland parliamentarians take in Upper Houses now they
no longer have one themselves they don't really have a
very good sense of who should be imembers of Upper Houses
even then. The other great fight he had, cons titutionally,
was against Hughes. Now the heart of Dr Denis M'urphy's
biography of Ryan is the fight between Ryan and Hughes
over conscription. there's tragedy, comedy, real drama
and mere melodrama in that story which Dr Murphy has
interpreted and perpetuated. Fortunately in these days of
reason and light it is possible for a Prime Minister of
Australia and a Premier of Queensland to conduct any
arguments they have in a very tolerant way cooperation
and imutual respect as we know. But not in the days of
Hughes and Ryan. Ryan transferred to the Federal arena
for the specifLic purpose of getting rid of Hughes.
He needn't have worried because at that time Hughes
had joined the conservative forces and they always get
rid of their leaders themselves. Ryan was barely in the
Federal Parliament and the conservatives, the Tories of
that day, dumped Hughes. And of course, before ten years
was up they dumped Latham, and another ten years they
diumed Menzies. Then it took a bit longer before they
dumped Gorton, and then it accelerated again and they
dumped Snedden now that's a very sad procession why
Tories can't be loyal to their leaders.
Now there's one aspect of Ryan's conduct in the
fight against conscription which merits mention. The
defection of Hughes and of every State leader of the Labor
Party throughout Australia in the conscription era, except
Ryan himself, meant that the Labor party for a lon-g time
was suspicious of parliamentarians and suspicious of
parliamentary leaders. Ryan was the only parliamentary
leader of the Labor party in Australia who stood staunch
during the conscription time. And as Dr Denis Murphy's
book has pointed out, Ryan insisted on a proper role being
accorded by the party to those candidates whom the party
chose and whom the public elected to parliament. No
party enjoys public support unless the party respects its
parliamentarians. Now Ryan preserved the position of the
parliamentary party in Queensland in that generation, and
he kept alive'the very necessary popular support which
parliamentarians must have. In some other States the step
was taken to see that the people outside the party elected
the parliamentary leader that was the case with Jack
Lang. Jack Lang had support of the party machine long after
he ceased to have the support of the parliamentary party.
Now it was not until Curtin's day that the parliamentary
party and the parliamentary leadership was seen to have the
support of the party all over. ./ 3
Now one of the things which I enjoyed-in
reading Denis Murphy's book was the consistency of the
uinchanging character of the criticisms which are made of
Vhe Labor Party. Looking through some of the things I
thought t. Hfis is an amazing conte-mporary work because
Ryan's c-overnent was described as showing tyranny,
treachery, treason, mob-rule; it was communist, it was
bolshevik, it was disloyal to the Crown, it-was a
contemptible conspiracy, it was reprehensible and
represented a threat to the Australian way of life.
Now all those things were said about Ryan when he was
Premier of Queensland, when he was leader of the
Australian Labor Party in Queensland. And one particular
thing that the Ryan Government established was a
Government Ir-surance office, a State Government insurance
office and this was described as a violent, revolutionary,
socialist attempt to destroy freedom of enterprise and
the right to free choice. It's all so depressingly
familiar. That is when it's done, first, it is completely
reprehensible, it's intolerable, it. has to be condemned
and resisted and if possible rejected. But once it comes
about we see how beneficial it was. Looking back at
T. J. Ryan's life, we can see how much he did achieve in
the face of' all this irrational criticism.
Now before Ryan's leadership~ the Australian
Labor Party ' s strength in Queensland was based in the
outback and in the provincial cities. lie realised that
the core of success in Queensland politics was . to
link the interests orE the capital and the provincial cities.
And after Ryanfor decades > the LaborParty -in Queensland
held office-wi-* th only a single gap of-three years-because
it retained the support of the provincial cities and the
capital. And to restore that alliance is still the key
to political success for the Australian Labor Party in
Queensland. T. J. Ryan showed it, his associates and his
successors preserved it for, a decade. If wie're to be true
to the things he established-the ideas, the institutionswe
must again bring about that alliance.
I congratulate Dr Murphy, whom I've known for
very many years, as a candidate, as an historian, as an
academic. I congratulate him on his painstaking work, his
patient research, his very readable recreation of a
turbulent, but very fruitful period in the political life
of Queensland and Australia. He records a period in
Australian history where Queensland led Australia. The
ideas that those first Labor Governments in Queensland
put on the statute books, the administrative acts they
achieved led Australia. In this record of a great career,
untimely cut short, Denis Murphy has made a major
contribution to our history and our politics; our understanding
of that history and of those politics. I'm certain that
not only will academics, not only will historians, but the
people of Queenslaznd' and the people of Australia understand
so very much better what made this great man and what in
his time, under his leadership, gave Queensland the pioneering,
the leading role in this country.