John McEwen - Political Career

Political Career

McEwen was active in farmer organisations and in the Country Party. In 1934 he was elected to the House of Representatives for the electorate of Echuca, switching to Indi in 1937 and Murray in 1949. Between 1937 and 1941 he was successively Minister for the Interior, Minister for External Affairs and simultaneously Minister for Air and Minister for Civil Aviation. In 1940 when Archie Cameron resigned as Country Party leader he contested the leadership ballot against Sir Earle Page: the ballot was tied and Arthur Fadden was chosen as a compromise.

When the conservatives returned to office in 1949 under Robert Menzies after eight years in opposition, McEwen became Minister for Commerce and Agriculture, then Minister for Trade and Industry. He pursued what became known as "McEwenism" – a policy of high tariff protection for the manufacturing industry, so that industry would not challenge the continuing high tariffs on imported raw materials, which benefitted farmers but pushed up industry's costs. This policy was a part (some argue the foundation) of what became known as the "Australian Settlement' which promoted high wages, industrial development, government intervention in industry (both as an owner- Australian governments traditionally owned banks and insurance companies and the railways and through policies designed to assist particular industries) and decentralisation. In 1958 Fadden retired and McEwen succeeded him as Country Party leader.

When Menzies retired in 1966, McEwen became the longest-serving figure in the government, and he had an effective veto over government policy. When Menzies' successor, Harold Holt, was officially presumed dead on 19 December 1967, the Governor-General Lord Casey sent for McEwen and he was sworn in as Prime Minister, on the understanding that his commission would continue only so long as it took for the Liberals to elect a new leader. Approaching 68, McEwen was the oldest person ever to be appointed Prime Minister of Australia, although not the oldest to serve; Menzies left office two months after his 71st birthday.

It had long been presumed that the Treasurer and Liberal deputy leader, William McMahon, would succeed Holt as Liberal leader. However, McEwen sparked a leadership crisis when he announced that he and his Country Party colleagues would refuse to serve in a government led by McMahon. McEwen is reported to have despised McMahon personally, and it is very possible that he disliked McMahon because of his rumoured homosexuality, which has been the subject of persistent rumours in Australia. But more importantly, McEwen was bitterly opposed to McMahon on political grounds, because McMahon was allied with free trade advocates in the conservative parties and favoured sweeping tariff reforms: a position that was vehemently opposed by McEwen, his Country Party colleagues and their rural constituents.

Another key factor in McEwen's antipathy towards McMahon was hinted at soon after the crisis by the veteran political journalist Alan Reid. According to Reid, McEwen was aware that McMahon was habitually breaching Cabinet confidentiality and regularly leaking information to favoured journalists and lobbyists, including Maxwell Newton, who had been hired as a "consultant" by Japanese trade interests. This version of events was confirmed years later by the former Canberra lobbyist Richard Farmer, following the release of sealed Cabinet papers from the period.

McEwen's opposition forced McMahon to withdraw from the leadership ballot and opened the way for the successful campaign to promote the Minister for Education and Science, Senator John Gorton, to the Prime Ministership with the support of a group led by Defence Minister Malcolm Fraser. Gorton replaced McEwen as Prime Minister on 10 January 1968. It was the second time the Country Party had effectively vetoed its senior partner's choice for the leadership; in 1923 Earle Page had demanded that the Nationalist Party, one of the forerunners of the Liberals, remove Billy Hughes as leader before he would even consider coalition talks. Gorton created the formal title Deputy Prime Minister for McEwen, confirming his status as the second-ranking member of the government.

McEwen retired from politics in 1971. His successor, Doug Anthony, said that the Country Party's objections to McMahon no longer held, finally freeing the Liberals to replace Gorton with McMahon within two months. At the time of his resignation, McEwen had served 36 years and 5 months and was the last serving parliamentarian from the Great Depression era and the last parliamentary survivor of the Lyons government.

Sir John McEwen died in 1980, in Melbourne, aged 80, by which time Malcolm Fraser's government was abandoning McEwenite trade policies.