What happened to the Liberal party of Menzies? They became obsessed with virtue signalling | Frank Bongiorno

Robert Menzies knew the Australian people craved security and prosperity – not button-holing statements made by that one weird neighbour we all avoid

The image of Robert Menzies is brandished like a scimitar in and around the modern – and ailing – Liberal party. When Liberal leaders, activists or factions jostle, one or another can be relied on to appeal to Menzies’ authority. Strangely for a man who, in life, seemed not to change much while the world changed around him, Menzies has now become a screen on which any number of beliefs and aspirations might be projected.

Indeed, the Liberal party’s external critics can also join in the fun, berating Menzies’ heirs and successors for their betrayal of his legacy: home ownership and support for universities have figured prominently. What happened to the Liberal party of Menzies, they ask. I’ve done it occasionally myself.

Is it fair? Well, yes and no. The Liberal party today is a very different beast to the one Menzies left behind on his retirement in January 1966. In government, he pursued a cautious and conservative pragmatism that did not turn every policy issue or administrative decision into another opportunity for a performance piece displaying one’s ideological virtue. In the process, he gained the support of many working-class voters; yet, unlike the apparent inclination of too many Liberal politicians today, he did not need to imagine them as a collection of appetites and prejudices in order to do so.

To be fair to today’s Liberals, Menzies ruled in vastly different times – and, put bluntly, they were easier times. His postwar prime ministership of 16 years coincided with, and was nourished by, an extended period of economic growth and personal affluence. Leaders of that time knew that fortune had smiled on them. And they enjoyed their luck, assuring themselves that even if they had not themselves made the good times, they would sure as hell have been blamed in bad times.

It is instructive to read the letters Menzies received from ordinary folk on his retirement, as I did recently, because they tell us much about what people valued in the man and his party.

A Sydney woman, writing on behalf of her family, said: “All my voting life, you have been Prime Minister, and I have never known any real hardship. Our children are growing up in a secure feeling of a well-respected country in the world where so many countries are in turmoil. For this I thank your wise management over the years.”

“Security” was the word to which the letter-writers kept returning: “the security we have enjoyed as a family and members of community & nation”, as another woman put it. And when they were not talking about “security”, they turned to what they saw as its close sibling, prosperity: “the sane and sensible government which has been so greatly needed for the growth and prosperity of this country”: Menzies’ years of service had “lifted the Australian image to a remarkably high position in the outside world”.

People who could never have imagined that they would ever own a home or a car now found themselves with one of each. There might even be a second car in the driveway for Mum to drive to the new shopping centre at Roselands or Chadstone. It all seemed rather miraculous, and it made them happy and proud. Menzies embodied their patriotism, which was often still British as well as Australian, with “dignity” – another term that kept appearing in their letters.

The new Liberal leader, Sussan Ley, has said a Liberal party is needed that “respects modern Australia, that reflects modern Australia, and that represents modern Australia. And we have to meet the people where they are.” She might have added (and the Liberals are in the habit of doing so): “Just as Menzies did.”

Menzies understood only too well that people craved security and prosperity, alongside liberty and individuality. He was never so foolish as to imagine that people wanted from their prime minister and government repeated virtue signalling about “free enterprise” more than they wanted a home in the suburbs, a nice, shiny car and a better chance for their children than they had enjoyed. Some who voted for Menzies would have supported Labor governments at the state level that gave them benefits such as annual leave – reaching three weeks per year in New South Wales by 1958.

Some Liberals are frank in expressing their dislike of much they find in modern Australia. Its branches and organisation are less representative of middle Australia than they were in Menzies’ time. Some who claim to speak for the party seem like the weird neighbour most of us do our best to avoid at the end-of-year street party. The one who last year was button-holing anyone he could find about the “globalist conspiracy”. This year, he was recently heard mumbling something about “trans” in an alarming way while watering his dahlias.

“Although I have, because of my upbringing, never voted for the party you have controlled for so long, I want you to know that I am one of your greatest admirers,” a Melbourne man wrote in 1966. Menzies understood that he and his party needed to connect with such people. As a mature politician, he had learned not to sneer at or insult them. If Liberals, in their own interests, were to ban the use of the word “woke” from all party gatherings, they would be on the way to absorbing the wisdom their leading founder has still to offer them.

• Frank Bongiorno is a professor of history at the Australian National University