This is the chapter, “Our Very Own Political Party,” from Ron Manners,  Heroic Misadventures: Four Decades – Full Circle (West Perth, Australia: Mannwest Group, 2009), pp. 121-149. (Ron Manners is still brilliantly active as founder of Mannkal Foundation for Economic Education, based in Perth. The best archive of his work is at www.mannwest.com, curated by Ron himself. More info on the Workers Party at WorkersParty.info.)

Contents
Introduction
Why The Workers Party?
How did we go as a political party?
The Role of The Doctors
Did we get any members elected to parliament?
Memories of Maxwell Newton
The View from 2009
What penetration did we get on university campuses?
What brought the Workers Party to an end?
Announcing A Brand-New Australian Libertarian Party
The Educational Method vs The Political Method

Introduction

Picture the Australian political scene back in early 1974.

Australia was limping along under what could best be described as the worst Federal Government in its history.

The Whitlam Labor Party Government, in its persecution of entrepreneurial spirit, had successfully driven many productive individuals offshore.

Australia had emerged from a relatively stable political environment under Menzies’ Liberals, where interest rates had averaged around five per cent, except for the brief 1961 Credit Squeeze (see page 14).

Menzies’ successors then turned on the “printing press” and had interest rates up to six per cent. Then Gough Whitlam took over in 1972 and we quickly saw interest rates rise to 25 per cent by 1974.

The Liberal / Country Party Coalition provided no valid alternative philosophies, so throughout Australia there appeared groups of young people drawn together by an internationally emerging limited-government philosophy based on classical liberalism. Their focus was on individual rights, individual responsibility and limited government involvement in most aspects of our lives.

Most of these young people were introduced to this philosophy through reading the books of Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged, etc.) and some groups were simply called “Ayn Rand Discussion Groups”.

Having been introduced to “limited government concepts” in the 1950s by Leonard Read’s Foundation for Economic Education Inc. (see page 8), I was naturally connected to a similar Western Australian group.

Though we were well aware of what was happening globally, we knew little of any other Australian groups.

Then, in 1974, I read an impressive Letter to the Editor in the Bulletin magazine signed by a John Whiting of Adelaide, describing himself as the President of the “Movement for Limited Government”.

I met him in Adelaide on August 23, 1974.

Dr John Whiting saw a book protruding from my briefcase, written by Austrian Economist, Ludwig Mises. “Have you read that book?”, Whiting said to me. When I said yes, Whiting responded, “Well that saves us about five hours, so let’s get right down to it.”

He suggested that I meet a bright group in Sydney who were moving toward forming a new Australian political party — Dr Duncan Yuille, Bob Howard and Mark Tier.

I joined this group’s two-day meeting aimed at developing a political platform and found an inspirational collection of engineers, artists, lawyers, architects, pharmacists and the like, not only disenchanted with Australia’s political and economic direction, but, more importantly, prepared to do something about it (see top photo page 120).

There was a larger audience at a subsequent meeting. Viv Forbes was given the job of organising Queensland, where he lived; Greg Lindsay was given the job of running a Sydney suburban branch; others were “sent” to Tasmania and Victoria to do similar jobs and I was assigned to putting together a Western Australian branch. I conveniently knew Lang Hancock, who was a strong advocate of smaller government and often saw bureaucratic obstacles in his project planning.

The Sydney working group was producing a magazine aptly named Free Enterprise, with the first edition produced in October 1973.

The three initial editors were Merilyn Giesekam (artist), Patrick Brookes (architect) and Tony Bryan (economist), with Maureen Nathan (pharmacist) as co-ordinator and George Carver in charge of distribution.

This excellent, modest magazine clearly stated the editors’ positions on the benefits that would flow to all Australians from a dramatic reduction in government interference. However, apart from recruiting an ever-increasing range of thoughtful people such as Bob Howard (later editor of Free Enterprise) and Mark Tier, they were frustrated about not reaching a wider public audience.

They noticed that advertising executive, John Singleton, had made several public statements that matched their own thoughts and on June 3, 1974 Maureen Nathan wrote to him, following up her phone discussion, and advised that she had “taken the liberty of giving your name and address to Bob Howard so that he can deliver the Free Enterprise magazines to you personally.”

Bob then met John and explained that their group had ideas of starting a bookshop as a way of influencing people and broadening the scope of their magazine.

John’s response was, “A bookshop, be buggered, let’s start a political party.

Things were starting to move quickly and on August 8, 1974, Maureen Nathan held a dinner party at her home to which she invited John Singleton, Bob Howard, John Slade and Patrick Brookes. On that evening the founding of the new party was taken one step further with discussions about the need for consistency in ideology and the dangers of being politically expedient by resorting to compromise.

John Singleton asked if they could produce a written political platform within the next three weeks so that planning and publicity could start.

The challenge was accepted and that’s about the time this new limited-government movement became a national organization.

The first step in assembling a platform was taken by Maureen Nathan who spoke to Prof. Murray Rothbard in New York. Rothbard was the economics and philosophic guru of the Libertarian Party of America.

Though aroused from sleep, through a miscalculation in time zones, Murray Rothbard proved cordial and offered to assist as he explained that this Australian initiative would be the world’s second Libertarian Party.

Why The Workers Party?

At that stage, the preliminary name for the new party was “The Independents Party” and over the next few weeks several other names were proposed and discussed.

Maureen Nathan recollected for me, on September 11, 2007, the background to one of the early suggestions:

What is a Worker?

At dinner in my parents home in 1972, the discussion was heavily into political philosophy. One of the dinner guests, Thea, had come to Australia from Germany after WWII. Her husband was a furrier. They had adopted my family when we arrived in 1960 and our families had done some real estate investing together.

We discussed at length the various “-isms”. Thea was adamant that Capitalism was not moral. In an effort to explain to her that she was a Capitalist, I posed several questions:

Q: Thea, you came to Australia with nothing?

A: Yes.

Q: You and your husband work for other people?

A: Yes.

Q: You have saved over the years?

A: Yes.

Q: You own your own home?

A: Yes.

Q: You own rental investment properties?

A: Yes.

Q: You have other investments that give you capital gain and/or return?

A: Yes.

Then I said triumphantly, “Well if you work, own and invest, then you are a Capitalist!”

“No, no,” she replied very forcefully, “I am a Worker!”

In 1974 we only had a working name for the fledgling party.

We had earlier talked about the political philosophy which recognizes the worth of people whether they work with their head, their hands, or the money they have come by previously.

I had related the story of “I am a Worker” to the team, including John Singleton. For me the obvious name, appropriately marketed, was “The Workers’ Party.”

To my surprise and delight, it was chosen instead of titles including Libertarian, Freedom, etc. To my total upset, the marketing was in the form of full page, fine print tabloid advertising. I had believed the campaign on consecutive weeks should have been:

Week 1: Do You Work?

Week 2: Do you work with your Head?

Week 3: Do you work with your Head or your Hands?

Week 4: Do you work with your Head or your Hands, or the money you have come by honestly?

Week 5: If you work with your Head or your Hands, or the money you have come by honestly, the Workers Party is for you.

My involvement continued in the West, having made contact with Lang Hancock who showed mild interest in some fresh thinking about the political problems.

Dr Duncan Yuille and John Singleton met Lang with his friend Dr Neil Scrimgeour, who was interested in the “new party”. Lang flew them to the Pilbara, collecting me from Kalgoorlie on the way. A four–day visit from December 15, 1974.

We five discussed the platform and principles of the new party and, as Lang rather liked the name “The Workers Party”, we officially named it that during a spell in Lang’s pool following a hectic tour of iron ore operations and exploration areas in Western Australia’s Pilbara.

During that Pilbara visit, details were finalized for the official launch of the Workers Party at the Sydney Opera House on January 25, 1975 to coincide with the Australia Day holiday.

Lang, although quite happy to be our keynote speaker at the event, declined membership or any official title as he modestly described himself as being “lead in the saddle” and a disadvantage for our new Party.

Though he encouraged us and gave periodic advice, he didn’t contribute financially, later explaining why. He told me one of the books we gave him, as early briefing, was Murray Rothbard’s For A New Liberty (The Libertarian Manifesto) and in the corner of the front dustcover was a small black Anarchist flag. This worried Lang, as without any government at all, who would grant the mining titles? Lang had a valid point and I pointed out that Rothbard wasn’t an Anarchist, but a realist in the sense that to achieve minimal government, one needed to aim for no, or almost no, government, with a view to landing close to your chosen level of government involvement.

Land titles, law courts and the justice system were, of course, all included on our list of “legitimate Government activities”.

I’ll always remember this example of how easy it is to lose supporters by pushing the envelope too far.

[A response to these points by the editor of Economics.org.au is available here.]

The official launching of the Party, at the Sydney Opera House, went well, with considerable media coverage by this time.

An extensive range of candidates was recruited in all Australian States, including regional areas.

Among the very high profile and influential spokespersons and candidates were Maxwell Newton and Sinclair Hill, ensuring media coverage of our message.

How did we go as a political party?

Only fools seek power, and the greatest fools seek it through force
— Lao Tsu

No, we didn’t get any of our “own” elected as Prime Minister or gain “control”, but many benefits did flow from a positive point of view.

We, as members, all gained from the overall experience of learning the finer points of what we believed in, to the point of defending what, in many ways, has become known as “Western Civilisation”.

This is a fair description as, apart from some fragmentary thoughts attributed to the Chinese philosopher, Lao Tsu, almost all the ideas of liberty are Western: individual rights, secure private property, freedom of speech, freedom of the media, freedom of association, freedom of religion, freedom of trade, separation of powers, equality before the law, and so on.

As so capably explained by Bob Howard, “As far as we were concerned, as long as you left other people alone you could do what you liked. This meant that we opposed such actions as theft, murder, rape, fraud, assault and trespass. It also meant that we considered taxation theft, and therefore all things financed by taxation immoral.

Our preference was for governments to charge a “fee for service” for the few things left for them to do.

In short, we favoured a voluntary society rather than one of compulsion and command.

We were more of an idealistic or ideological party than a popularity contest, as we were pushing some very radical policies at that time — for example, privatisation of government bodies such as Telecom (Telstra), the Post Office (Australia Post) and rail and bus services.

Subsequently, many of our research files on “Privatisation” were borrowed by the Australian Labor Party, along with our “Victimless Crimes” files (where crimes having victims are to be given police priority to solve, ahead of civil disobedience matters where there is usually no sign of any victims).

Many of our policies have since been adopted by subsequent governments, even though the ideas took years to germinate — for example, floating the dollar.

The Role of the Doctors

As mentioned earlier, my introduction to the Australian Libertarian Movement was via Dr John Whiting and there was a significant group of medical doctors behind this movement for limited government. It continues to the present time with the magazine The Australian Private Doctor which remains one of Australia’s finest libertarian publications under the capable editorship of Brian Bedkober.

They continue to strive for direct relationships between doctors and their patients, rather than dealing via government intermediaries.

The August, 2007 edition of The Australian Private Doctor featured articles covering the early involvement of Dr John Whiting in the Workers Party to mark his recent death at age 86.

These words from that magazine explain the leadership role taken up by the doctors at that time:

John realized that “the problems of doctors were, in essence, the problems of butchers, bakers, carpenters, farmers, manufacturers, architects and all other such productive workers.” John was a co-founder and Chairman of “The Movement for Limited Government” which was one of the precursors of the free-market “Workers Party” of which he was also one of the founders and its President. He gave the inaugural address for the party at the Opera House on January 25, 1975. In 1975 he also stood (unsuccessfully) for the Senate — not because he wanted to be a politician but because he believed that Australia was in deep trouble under the Whitlam socialist government and that the opposition Liberal Party under Malcolm Fraser was only marginally better.

John was one of those “small but committed nucleus of men and women worldwide who manage to keep the philosophic concept of individual liberty alive.”

John Whiting also leaves for posterity his three books:

Be In It, Mate!

Wake Up, Mate!

and his internet accessible Are They Crooks or Fools?

From the ranks of Australia’s medical doctors came many of the candidates and branch organizers for the Workers Party, and many still play a continuing role in Australia’s freedom movement.

Looking back, it was interesting to note that we were without a great range of “literature for liberty” and had to develop our own, largely guided by the books of Murray Rothbard and, in particular, Dr John Hospers’ excellent Libertarianism (A Political Philosophy For Tomorrow).

One of the significant books produced from the Workers Party era was the most readable John Singleton and Bob Howard book, titled Rip Van Australia, which has become something of a collector’s item.

In the past 30 years, there have been complete libraries published, full of libertarian literature, so that future Libertarian Parties would have a policy headstart — although whether that gives them additional votes is another matter.

Did we get any members elected to parliament?

The simple answer is “No.” However, in 1978, one candidate, dentist Geoffrey McNeil (Greenough, Western Australia), scored 14 per cent of the votes, coming within 50 votes of the Australian Labor Party candidate.

One sitting Liberal, Dr Peter Richardson (Federal Member for Tangney, Western Australia) defected to the Progress Party (successor to the Workers Party), so we did have a very capable and articulate representative in parliament.

In Dr Richardson’s media release of October 14, 1977, one paragraph read:

The choice then was to become an Independent or to join the Progress Party. A group of Independents offers little hope as an effective alternative party. I have adopted the Progress Party as reflecting most nearly the ideals for which I originally stood. It has often been regarded as a controversial party, but I believe very many people are in favour of its principles.

There were many other sitting members of all parties who often espoused policies either identical or similar to the Workers Party/Progress Party. Such an example was the Queensland National Party Senator, Dr Glenister Sheil, who also joined Viv Forbes and an Australia-wide group in forming the Foundation for Economic Education (Australia), with the approval of the original Foundation for Economic Education Inc.

We were always receiving interesting electoral feedback, an example being during the campaign for Farrer in the Riverina. There, Wal Fife, the incumbent, said to Workers Party candidate Maureen Nathan, “Thank you, you yell out loud what we can only whisper.”

Reflecting back on that period, I recall that members of the major political parties often expressed envy at the quality of the writing in the various libertarian publications.

We had some “quality writers” and policy people such as Gary Sturgess and Tony Rutherford, sometimes writing under his pseudonym Hamish Kirkcaldy.

Author’s mental ‘flashback’ from 2009:

I first met Maxwell Newton, one of the giants of journalism, when I was enjoying a very minor role as Kalgoorlie correspondent for The Australian Miner.

The hierarchy of writers linking me to Max (the big boss) included Ian Huntley, David Haselhurst, Ross Louthean, Peter Samuel and Jules Zanetti.

Our next encounter was when Max was appointed Director and Economic Spokesman for the Workers Party in 1976 where he introduced a vital new dimension.

Our third encounter(s) … throughout the 1980s was during his period as Rupert Murdoch’s “man in New York”.

One aspect of his tumultuous life to touch me in a permanent way was his infinite capacity to unravel the intricacies of economics, human action and politics and to explain all this in words that the rest of us “foot soldiers” could understand.

I often wonder if I would have spent so much of my life “figuring things out” if it had not been for Maxwell Newton’s ability to expose so many “clothe-less emperors”.

Max, always the master of the colorful phrase, as his daughter Sarah Newton quoted in her biography, Maxwell Newton (Fremantle Art Centre Press, 1993), “But as Maxwell would have said, ‘Enough talk! Come on you buggers — time to get going and write! You gotta pound those keys, son, pound those keys. Spin it out — like a spider spinning it out of its arse.’”

The View from 2009 Comment by author …

It was an interesting exercise, tracking down so many of the early instigators of this Political Party.

Thirty years later, many had not lost their zest for living.

One example being orthopaedic surgeon, Barry Bracken, now 83 years old but still involved in medico-legal work as well as running his Hunter Valley winery.

Apart from trading some fine Hunter Valley red wines for some quality Western Australian red, Barry commented as follows:

It was good to hear from you and it really made me think a little about the old Workers Party and Progress Party and what they might
have achieved. I think we can take quite a bit of credit for making both the Liberal and Labor people think about what we were proposing at the time. The attitudes we were trying to push were reinforced by dear old Margaret Thatcher when she hit the ground running with copies of Hayek’s books under her wing. Most of the economic changes were adopted and although we failed to reduce the size of government and failed on the flat tax front we sure won the battle of privatisation which has gone from strength to strength. I think there is still some hope in respect of flat tax as it has been adopted in Russia and other areas of Europe.

What penetration did we get on university campuses?

Not as much as we expected. We expected there to be considerable interest in the link between absolute economic freedom, absolute social freedom and absolute civil liberties. Perhaps we were just seen as yet another conservative party in disguise, or perhaps our intolerance of government grants and the conditions that come with government funding made our message a “hard sell”.

However, interestingly enough, there was a resurgence of interest on campuses for our libertarian ideas some 12 years later.

This resurgence was presented in a scholarly fashion in a 60–page Honours Dissertation for the Department of Politics at the University of Western Australia, October, 1987, by William J. Stacey (studying under Professor Patrick O’Brien).

The title of this study is Libertarianism in Australia’s New Enlightenment, and in his introduction he comments:

Libertarianism is a contemporary version of political philosophy which has been given considerable attention, at least since the publication of Nozick’s, Anarchy, State and Utopia in 1974. Coincidentally, it is at about this time that groups of people emerged in Australia, who at first tentatively, engaged in political activity to promote a libertarian free-market economy and a minimal state, which was to abstain from virtually all interference in people’s lives. Most of these people had never before taken an active interest in politics. They were motivated by a belief in the ideals which they held, and the confidence that in politics and all realms of human action “ideas count”. A decade and a half later many of these ideas are firmly entrenched at the centre of political debate.

This paper looks at libertarian ideas and the means by which people, who were at least initially novices in political activity, have over a long period of time promoted their vision of the good society, with at least some degree of success.

Then, a further decade later, in 1997, another published paper appeared, this time from Ernesto Zanatta, titled Grail Quest: the Libertarian Enlightenment and the Australian University. He commented in his two opening paragraphs:

Once upon a time, during the mid to late 1980s and the early 1990s, while classical liberal ideas were sweeping through the broader intellectual agenda like a strong gale driving out stale air, a libertarian enlightenment spread out across the university campuses of Australia. In this enlightenment, the most intriguing and radical ideas offered by libertarian thought came to be entertained, discussed and debated as a matter of routine, as something to be taken for granted.

That this would happen is not surprising. Undergraduates tend to be encountering ideas and philosophies for the very first time, no matter how old those ideas might be. Consequently, these ideas always appear new and innovative. For undergraduates, learning about political philosophy, those with curious and enquiring minds are going to be drawn to philosophical belief systems such as libertarianism, ideas which are both more interesting and more morally uncompromising than the pragmatism of the liberal-democracy and democratic socialism which are usually taught in modern political theory courses.

What brought the Workers Party to an end?

In most Australian States, having to constantly explain the reason for choosing the name “Workers Party” became fatiguing, resulting in much internal debate about a name change.

In some States the name was changed to “Progress Party”, in others a new party was formed as the Progress Party, issuing a simplified Policy Document.

Further candidates were run, with limited success, but I think that what really brought the curtain down was Malcolm Fraser’s Liberal Coalition victory, with a record majority, in December, 1975.

As Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser expressed some interest in the philosophies of Ayn Rand.

His election speeches were indeed refreshing and gave many of us the feeling we could “pull up our political tent and go back to work” as the country would be in safe hands.

A visit to Prime Minister Fraser’s office at Parliament House on August 26, 1976, when I introduced him to Eugene Guccione (Editor of the US-based Mining Engineering magazine), showed us that he was simply “just another politician”, as Guccione commented.

Several years later, when it became apparent that Malcolm Fraser had neither written nor understood his election speeches, we made some effort to find out who actually wrote them. Dr David Kemp was the author and a member of Fraser’s staff at the time.

On reflection, the three terms of the Fraser Liberal government produced very little other than the fine work of a group of backbenchers known as the “Dries” — Bert Kelly, John Hyde, Peter Shack and others.

Their outstanding work on policy formation for deregulation and freeing up the economy was totally overlooked by the Fraser Cabinet, but enthusiastically activated by the subsequent Hawke Labor Government.

The opportunities missed by the Fraser Liberal Government caused many of the original Workers Party/Progress Party team to continue their political activities, focusing mainly on bringing free-enterprise concepts to an ever-widening audience. Outstanding performers in this field were various Adam Smith Clubs in several States; Elaine Palmer, Nadia Weiner, Graeme McKinnon and John Clemitson with their widely circulating magazines On Liberty, Optimism and The Optimist, and their Centre 2000 bookshop in Sydney; Michael Darby and his regular magazine Free Market; and Dr Hal Soper with his regular Progress Party Newsletter.

In Melbourne the main torch bearers continue to be Prodos Marinakis and The Institute of Public Affairs although not bred from libertarian roots, has always been a strong supporter of free markets and limited government. A great team of activists continues in Western Australia.

Announcing A Brand-New Australian Libertarian Party

In September 2007 a new libertarian party was federally registered in Australia, run by a new breed of libertarian activists. The Liberty and Democracy Party (LDP) was started by John Humphreys in 2001 and has run twice in the ACT as the Liberal Democratic Party, receiving one per cent (2001) and 1.3 per cent (2004) of the vote. The name was changed in 2007 when the bureaucracy decided that the Liberals have a monopoly on the word “liberal”.

Like the Workers Party, the new group of libertarian aspiring politicians come from a range of backgrounds including lawyers, economists, insurance brokers, software engineers and farmers. The party is currently lead by businessman David McAlary and the federal executive includes David Leyonhjelm, Terje Peterson, Justin Jefferson, Mark Hill, Peter Whelan and John Humphreys. The party has membership throughout Australia, but is concentrated in Queensland, NSW and the ACT.

The LDP is currently preparing for future federal elections and is currently seeking candidates to help give libertarian ideas the maximum possible exposure. Their policies include low flat tax, the abolition of the minimum wage, decriminalizing both marijuana and euthanasia, relaxation of shooting regulations, privatisation of the ABC and other government assets, school vouchers, free trade and expanded immigration, voluntary voting, restoring real private property rights, rejecting the Kyoto protocol and the excessive anti-terrorism legislation, opposition to an ID card and generally promoting free markets and individual liberty. If their efforts produce another bumper crop of advocates for economic and personal liberty, it could be a timely exercise, and I wish them well.

The Educational Method vs The Political Method

Several of us subsequently directed our activity entirely toward the educational method of spreading ideas rather than the political method of direct political engagement.

The notable success in the educational field has been Greg Lindsay. His Centre for Independent Studies celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2006 and Greg Lindsay was featured in the Bulletin magazine (September 28, 2004) as “perhaps the most influential man in Australia.”

An early recruit and supporter of the Workers Party was Sydney businessman Neville Kennard who stood on their Senate ticket in the 1975 election. Neville, at that time, was the first financial supporter of the Centre for Independent Studies and the first CIS Chairman.

Neville Kennard recently recalled that era. “They were heady days in 1975, with the Labor Party rushing towards socialism and destroying the economy, the blocking of supply, the sacking of the Prime Minister, the [false] promises of Malcolm Fraser, the naive optimism of the Workers Party …”

Other success stories are Viv Forbes, whose Common Sense articles continue to be published, and Ronald Kitching, a prolific author who wrote Understanding Personal and Economic Liberty.

Perhaps the most outstanding archive of Australian Libertarian material has been compiled by John Zube. John would say that mine may be heavier by weight and volume, but his archives are being meticulously digitised.

There have been many interesting people I’ve met during this Libertarian adventure, all with their own individualistic way of “sticking up for themselves”, one example being Mr Adam Dollar (see page 155).

My own non-political efforts with the Mannkal Economic Education Foundation continue and are dealt with elsewhere.

That brings us up to 2009. So to conclude this chapter let me quote the final two paragraphs from Ernesto Zanatta (see page 141).

In such a time, people are more likely to take their rights for granted, and less inclined to think about what those rights are based on, or to be interested in libertarianism.

However, I cannot help but think that these things do come and go in cycles, and that the pendulum may swing back some time in the future to another genuine libertarian enlightenment in the universities. For now, I feel that it was a privilege to have been a participant in it, and I find the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald in Echoes of the Jazz Age to be a fitting conclusion:

… and it seemed only a question of a few years before the older people would step aside and let the world be run by those who saw things as they were — and it all seems rosy and romantic to us who were young then, because we will never feel quite so intensely about our surroundings any more.