The Parallel Ambitions of Menzies and Evatt: Part I

Professor Geoffrey Blainey has unsurprisingly favoured readers of Quadrant (October 2023) with a very informed review, “The Great Bitter Rivalry”, of a very informative book, Anne Henderson’s Menzies versus Evatt: The Great Rivalry of Australian Politics (Connor Court, 2023). I propose to cast a few shafts of light on their contributions.

Both authors traced the origins of Robert Gordon Menzies and Herbert Vere Evatt from modest provincial backgrounds in Victoria and New South Wales respectively through scholarships to outstanding degrees in Law and, in Evatt’s case, in Arts as well. I begin with the Engineers’ Case—their first encounter as barristers, I believe.

On May 24, 1920, Menzies, aged twenty-five, appeared before the High Court in Melbourne arguing that a trade union client be brought within the Constitution’s conciliation and arbitration power. Forty-six years later, Menzies recalled Starke J and Knox CJ asserting that his argument was nonsense, whereupon he…