STANLEY BRUCE

Party

Bruce came to the party leadership with little political experience, as his rise had been incredibly swift and, at 39, he was the youngest member of Cabinet. This may have been part of the reason why he offered such generous terms to coalition partner, the Country Party, on becoming prime minister.

The Country Party was given five of the eleven Cabinet positions, including Treasury. After some initial concerns about this from Nationalist members, the Coalition operated smoothly for Bruce’s period in office. Bruce also made a strong case for keeping competent former Labor men such as George Pearce in his ministry. Bruce had little time for party factionalism and put his faith in business principles.

He regularly sought the advice of economic and scientific experts, bypassing Cabinet. In 1925 Bruce caused some resentment with his removal of Sir Littleton Groom as Attorney-General, who had served with Deakin, after the government failed to have two strike leaders deported. Bruce did not consult the party widely over his plans for the industrial arbitration system which became the dominant policy issue from 1926 onwards.  

Partnerships

Bruce wanted to attract British investment and trade to Australia and a key figure in this strategy was Frank McDougall. McDougall was a former soldier and Renmark fruit grower who, from 1922, found his calling visiting Great Britain to lobby for an increased share of the British dried fruit market.

In 1923 McDougall became closely associated with Bruce who used him as his ‘eyes and ears’ there. Bruce recalled McDougall to the Prime Minister’s Department in 1924, but soon arranged for him to become the part-time secretary of the Dried Fruits Control Board in London in 1925.

Bruce’s parting instruction was ‘in your more uplifted moments you can call yourself the confidential representative of the Australian Prime Minister, when less inflated a secret service agent.’  McDougall became a member of the Empire Marketing Board which allowed him to constantly provide Bruce with a flow of information on the stance of British political parties on Empire trade and commodities.

During Bruce’s period in office, McDougall wrote 260 letters to him totalling 896 pages. In later years Bruce and McDougall continued their close working relationship to promote the establishment of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.  

People

The Bruce government introduced an amusements tax as a budget measure in 1928. The tax was five per cent of the profits of movie theatres, with an additional duty to be paid on all films except those from Great Britain. The film industry, led by the Motion Picture Distributors’ Association, mobilised public opinion swiftly and organised a mass campaign against the tax.

The association president was Sir Victor Wilson who had been a former Bruce government minister. Petitions against the amusements tax were ‘signed in every theatre of the Commonwealth’ and protest film trailers produced and shown. It was reported a petition consisting of 35,000 foolscap pages and containing approximately one million signatures was to be presented to Bruce.

The imposition of the tax coincided with a public debate about the influence of American films on the morals of the community. Bruce declared ‘that one of the biggest things the nation was up against was the atmosphere of pleasure and the desire for entertainment which seemed to be an inseparable part of the life of Australians.’ The public backlash forced Bruce to make a concession, with smaller theatres taking in less than 100 pounds per week to be exempt from the tax. 

Publications

Norman Abjorensen, The Manner Of Their Going: Prime Ministerial Exits from Lyne to Abbott, Australian Scholarly Publishing, North Melbourne, 2015

Judith Brett, Stanley Melbourne Bruce, 9 February 1923 – 22 October 1929, in Michelle Grattan (ed.), Australian Prime Ministers, New Holland Publishers, Sydney, 2000 

Cecil Edwards, Bruce of Melbourne: Man of Two Worlds, Heinemann, London, 1965

David Lee, Stanley Melbourne Bruce: Australian Internationalist, Continuum International Publishers Group, London, 2010

Food and Agriculture Organization, Origins of the idea, FAO Corporate Document Repository

Heather Radi, Bruce, Stanley Melbourne (1883–1967), Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 1988

Alfred Stirling, McDougall, Frank Lidgett (1884–1958), Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 1988

Jack Waterford, Letters to Bruce, all 260 of them, The Canberra Times, 23 May, 1986

The Advertiser, Petition for Canberra, 4 September, 1929

The West Australian, Craze for Pleasure – Mr Bruce’s Condemnation, 27 June, 1929