Sir Alec’s chapter on Sir Robert Menzies is among the best in the book. I agree entirely with his finding that Menzies was not only a fair man but a man who bent over backwards to be fair. If some minister made a muck-up of some occurrence, he naturally wanted to know why, and his cross-examinations, so I am told, were pretty horrific. But if some minister was dealing with some problem which attracted national significance, and which attracted Press problems, and that Minister was coping successfully with it, Menzies would not interfere.

I recall one instance when HMAS Melbourne and Voyager had a tragic collision. That collision occurred after I was minister for the navy. The Cabinet decided to hold an inquiry into the Navy’s readiness to cope with such incidents. I saw no reason why such an inquiry should not be held, though I was confident it would result in complete exculpation of the Navy, and I said so and that I would, of course, resign because the readiness of the Navy reflected on the readiness of the then minister. Sir Robert Menzies at once changed his mind, although I had had no intention, and had said that I had no intention, of doing anything which could add in any way to the detriment of the government.

Both Sir Alec and myself were happy and privileged to serve him. I do not, however agree with Sir Alec’s complete summation of Sir Robert Menzies as a prime minister. It is true that he had sixteen years of untrammelled government, but it is also true that in 1961 he came within one seat of losing government, a result which Sir John McEwen told me Menzies attributed to ‘the bloody Treasury’, which was very strong language indeed for a man who never swore. It is also true that Sir Robert had relatively no problems to deal with as prime minister and that the Opposition was riven with dissent and disputation which led to the formation of the Democratic Labor Party, which probably kept him in power. There was no inflation, there was no unemployment, the unions were by and large content with looking after the wages and conditions of their members and not trying to act as a government.

All of these things Menzies had going for him, together with the fact that he led a government the backbenchers who were largely discharged soldiers and who were to a man fully loyal to him. Sir Robert did much during his sixteen years. The growth of Canberra was due to him. The universities were partially financed. The expansion of education to the secondary section, and to private as well as to government schools, went ahead, but there was not very much else done. And the fact was that there was not anything else that clamoured for attention and needed to be done. Menzies was a man of warmth, a man of obvious ability, a man who might not say thank you but would note that thanks were due. A most amusing man to sit and listen to while he reported stories of his legal life and his political life. A man who deserves the esteem in which he is, I believe, held.

There was a complete change when Harold Holt succeeded him in 1966. Menzies had been there for sixteen years, during which time things had for the most part pursued the even tenor of their way. Now there was a difference. For one thing there was the Vietnam War, which we were in with conscripts. It had not been going long – it was still a popular war – and the need to continue it led in a large part to Holt’s overwhelming election victory in 1966. It was only after 1966 that it began to go sour. But Holt took us into Asia. He travelled extensively in Asia, and made Australia’s presence felt and the care Australia had for the countries to our near north. This had never been done by any Australian prime minister hitherto. Holt established a firm foundation of friendship with the United States – better even than that which already existed. He had only a little over two years to do it, but those two years set Australia on a new course. Moreover, although a genial man and one who didn’t like to fight with colleagues, he was adamant in certain fields. I remember him when the question of the devaluation of the Australian dollar came up in Cabinet. Against the strong arguments of the Country Party – John McEwen being overseas – he said we would not devalue. To the inherent threats which the Country Party raised, he said we would not devalue no matter what – and left it to them to decide their own course of action. In the event they carried on as a part of the government, but there was a time when this was by no means assured and when Holt stood firm on principle. I was very proud of him on this occasion. It was a tragedy when he drowned in December 1967, with Australia’s interests in a state of flux. Downer does not deal with Holt’s achievements because Downer by then was accredited to England, but they can be expounded by saying that they were a very good, and very promising beginning.

With regard to my own achievements, he has naturally confined himself to what he saw as our high commissioner in London. He is, I think, rather too kind to me about the various conferences which I attended. Certainly I got on well with Harold Wilson and Edward Heath, and was happy to support them, but this was not because they were British prime ministers: it was because they were in the position of being snidely attacked by various nations which they had brought into being and because I thought that Britain should be protected from this kind of attack, particularly, since her proposals were similar to the principles which she had adopted in creating the new nations.

I should have liked Downer to have devoted some time on my program at home, but he was away. I have never known a period of three years when so much was done, and attempted, from the petrol agreement, which stood for ten years, to the new arrangements for assistance if we thought it right to the Five Power nations, to beginning a new shipping line, to setting up the AIDC to protect Australian industries, to putting some restraints on overseas investment in Australia, to new social services, to setting Papua New Guinea on the way to independence, to attempts to cut down the so called rights of the states which had never been acknowledged as their rights – and which the High Court said were not sovereign rights in the case of the seas round Australia. I would have liked a chronicle of these things. And I would have liked Downer not to say that I took any assistance from the Labor Party for my last campaign – I didn’t.

And the account regarding the incident which led to Malcolm Fraser’s resignation is also quite wrong. I was approached one day by a journalist with a copy of something he had written which reflected on Fraser and the Chief of the Army Staff. I told the journalist that the article, I believed, was false. I then rang up the Chief of the Army Staff to tell him he was being named in the paper and I wanted him to know that we did not agree with the criticism. I then rang Fraser and was connected to Mrs Tammie Fraser, who said that Fraser was at the Melbourne Club. I rang the Club to be told he was speaking, or was unavailable somehow, so I didn’t tell him until he had already seen the article. On his assurance that the article was untrue, he and I worked out a defence for the attack which we anticipated in the House. We were still doing this when his letter of resignation was delivered to me. But these things were told to Sir Alexander Downer by someone else, and I only set the record straight without any rancour.

Of Wilson and Heath I do not know in the way that Alec Downer does. Nor, in fact, do they or their successors greatly impinge on Australia’s way of life. They may be subjects for biographies. And if they are, one source for such biographies will be Downer’s book. It is good that it is written, particularly by one who saw them all in their day-to-day lives and who never had any expectations of any favours from anyone. It will be a long time before we have any representative overseas who can report so cogently, so sympathetically, what is going on. I recommend the book not for its statements of what made up the men in it, but for a chronicle of events which have done much to shape our lives.