Curtin had refused Menzies' initial offer to form a wartime "
national government", partly because he feared that it would split the Labor Party, although he did agree to join the
Advisory War Council. In October 1941,
Arthur Coles and
Alexander Wilson, the two independent MPs who had been keeping the Coalition in office since 1940 (first under Menzies, then under Fadden), joined forces with Labor in defeating Fadden's budget and bringing the government down.
Governor-General Lord Gowrie was reluctant to call an election for a Parliament barely a year old, especially given the international situation. He summoned Coles and Wilson and made them promise that if he named Curtin prime minister, they would support him for the remainder of the Parliament to end the instability in government. The independents agreed, and Curtin was sworn in as prime minister on 7 October, aged 56. He became the first and only prime minister to come from Western Australia.
War in the Pacific On 8 December 1941, the
Pacific War broke out when Japan
bombed Pearl Harbor. Curtin addressed the nation on the radio, saying, "Men and women of Australia...we are at war with Japan. This is the gravest hour of our history. We Australians have imperishable traditions. We shall maintain them. We shall vindicate them. We shall hold this country and keep it as a citadel for the British-speaking race and as a place where civilisation will persist." On 10 December, and were both sunk by Japanese bombers off the Malayan coast. Curtin cabled the
President of the United States,
Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Churchill on 23 December, saying, "The fall of Singapore would mean the isolation of the Philippines, the fall of the Netherlands East Indies and attempts to smother all other bases. It is in your power to meet the situation... we would gladly accept United States commanders in the Pacific area. Please consider this as a matter of urgency." Curtin made crucial decisions linking Australia to the United States. On 28 December, the Sydney
Daily Telegraph published a public statement of his government's new attitude: , 1947 This speech was one of the most important in Australia's history, marking a turning point in Australia's relationship with its founding country, the United Kingdom. Many felt that Prime Minister Curtin was abandoning Australia's traditional ties to the British Isles without any solid partnership in place with the United States. This speech also received criticism at high levels of government in Australia, Britain and the US; it angered Churchill, and Roosevelt said that it "smacked of panic". The speech nevertheless achieved the effect of drawing attention to the possibility that
Australia would be invaded by Japan. Before this speech, the Australian response to the war effort had been troubled by attitudes swinging from "she'll be right" to gossip-driven panic. By 1943, when the threat of Japanese invasion had passed, Curtin increasingly returned to a commitment to the British Empire. Downplaying nationalism, he said that Australia comprised "seven million Britishers". He saw the United States as a predatory economic and military power that would threaten Australia's own ambitions in the Pacific. Australia moved closer to New Zealand, and suggested a lesser role for the United States after the war. Washington was annoyed. Concurrently, the Curtin government enacted the
Statute of Westminster Adoption Act 1942, under which Australia accepted the
dominion status which Britain had conferred in 1930, but which the Australian federal government had not accepted until then. The Adoption Act took effect retroactively as of 3 September 1939, the outbreak of World War II. Although politically a product of the government's policy of re-orientation towards the United States, constitutionally, this marked the moment that Australia became
an independent nation with a separate Crown, no longer subject to the supremacy of British law and the British Crown.
Military policies The Earl Gowrie signs the declaration of war against Japan, with Curtin looking on. The Curtin government agreed that the Australian Army's
I Corps – centred on the
6th and
7th Divisions – would be transferred from North Africa to the
American-British-Dutch-Australian Command in the
Netherlands East Indies for the defence of
Java and
Sumatra. Before they could arrive,
Singapore fell on 15 February 1942. Most of the
8th Division was taken into captivity, although a small number, including its commander, Major General
Gordon Bennett, managed to escape. "The fall of Singapore", Curtin announced in a radio address to the nation on 16 February, "can only be described as Australia's Dunkirk. It will be recalled that the
fall of Dunkirk initiated the Battle for Britain. The fall of Singapore opens the Battle for Australia. On its issue depends not merely the fate of this Commonwealth but the frontier of the United States of America and, indeed, all the Americas and, therefore, in a large measure the fate of the British-speaking world." The Japanese threat was further underlined on 19 February, when Japan
bombed Darwin, the first of many
air raids on northern Australia. Churchill attempted to divert I Corps to reinforce British troops in Burma, without Australian approval. Curtin insisted that it return to Australia. Roosevelt supported Churchill, offering to send an American division to Australia instead, while the
Chief of the Australian General Staff,
Lieutenant General Vernon Sturdee, threatened to resign if his advice was ignored and the troops were diverted to Burma. Curtin prevailed, although he agreed that the main body of the 6th Division could garrison
Ceylon. In the
1943 Australian federal election campaign the following year, Curtin was forced to publicly defend his decision. "Had we held
Rangoon, or had we even held the district, of
Akyab", media magnate
Keith Murdoch wrote in an editorial on 13 August 1943, "we would have held the door to the vast manpower of China and the jumping-off fields for the devastation of Japanese cities. Multitudes of the finest lives of Australia, Britain, and America would have been saved; the long years of toil, death, and separation, which assuredly stretch ahead, would have been shortened." Curtin formed a close working relationship with the Allied Supreme Commander in the
South West Pacific Area,
General Douglas MacArthur. Curtin realised that Australia would be ignored unless it had a strong voice in Washington, D.C., and he wanted that voice to be MacArthur's. He gave over control of Australian forces to MacArthur, directing Australian commanders to treat MacArthur's orders as if they came from the Australian Government. Biographer John Edwards wrote: By mid-1942, the results of the battles of
the Coral Sea and
Midway had averted the perceived threat of invasion. Despite the "beat Germany first" policy, 346,000 Americans were fighting in the Pacific in 1942. Curtin had previously opposed conscription for overseas service during World War I, and again in 1940 when it was introduced by Menzies, although he had supported softening it to allow conscripts to serve in Australian territories. Curtin recognised that the restriction of the Australian conscripts to Australia and its territories was morally indefensible and politically unviable. To remove what was now a major obstacle to the government's re-election prospects, he moved to remove the restriction. While there was support from the
Communist Party of Australia and its sympathisers, there was trenchant opposition from the Catholic Church, represented by
B. A. Santamaria and
Arthur Calwell. Ultimately, the
Defence Act was amended so that conscripts could be deployed outside of Australia to "such other territories in the South-West Pacific Area as the Governor-General proclaims as being territories associated with the defence of Australia". The stress of the war and especially this bitter internal battle within Labor took a great toll on Curtin's health, which had never been robust even at the best of times. He had suffered all of his life from stress-related illnesses, and depression; he was also a heavy smoker.
Homefront policies Curtin made very heavy use of newspapers and broadcast media, especially through press conferences, speeches, and newsreels. Australians gained a sense it was a people's war in which they were full participants. , the
Prime Minister of Canada, hosting Prime Minister John Curtin of Australia and his wife Elsie at the
Peace Tower in
Ottawa. In terms of social policy, the Curtin government enacted a wide range of progressive social reforms during its time in office. Pensions were introduced for deserted wives and widows, while the establishment of the Women's Employment Board led to increased wages for some women during the war.
Aboriginal Australians were provided with significantly increased entitlement to welfare benefits, while maternity allowances were extended. In addition, pensions for the elderly and infirm were increased. In 1942, temporary public employees became eligible to apply to join the Commonwealth superannuation scheme if they had been employed for no less than five years and were certified as having indefinite future employment, while the Commonwealth Employees' Furlough Act of 1943 provided long service leave for all temporary Commonwealth employees. In 1943, the Universities Commission was established to exempt students from war service to undertake or continue university studies and to assist those students by exempting them from fees and, subject to a means test, by providing them with living allowances. "Asiatics" who were subjects of Australia became eligible for a pension in 1941, and eligibility was extended the following year to Pacific Islanders known as "Kanakas", and from that July that year "Aboriginal natives" of Australia became eligible for pensions if they were not subject to a state law "relating to the control of Aboriginal natives" or if they lived in a state where they could not be exempt from such laws but were of eligible for pension on the grounds of "character, standard of intelligence and development". That same year, pension became exempt from income tax. In 1943, funeral benefits were introduced, together with a Wife's Allowance for wives of incapacitated age pensioners "where she lived with him, was his legal wife and did not receive a pension in her own right". ,
First Lady of the United States, with Curtin at a state luncheon in her honour at
Old Parliament House, Canberra, in September 1943 From June 1942, Widows' Pension Class B was paid to widows without dependent children who were aged 50 and over. The term "widow" included de facto widows who had lived with the deceased spouse for at least three years prior to his death and had been maintained by him. Eligibility was also extended to deserted de jure wives who had been deserted for at least six months, divorced women who had not remarried and women whose husbands were in hospitals for those considered to be insane. From July that year, Widows' Pension Class B was exempted from income tax. In 1942, eligibility for maternity allowances was extended to Aboriginal women who were exempted from State laws relating to the control of Aboriginal natives and who were considered suitable to receive the benefits. From 1943, the income test for maternity allowances was abolished and the rate of the allowance was increased to 15 pounds where there were no other children under the age of 14 years, 16 pounds where there were one or two other children, and 17 pounds 10 shillings in cases of three or more children. These amounts included an additional allowance of 25 shillings per week in respect of the period four weeks before and four weeks after the birth, to be paid after the birth of the child. That same year, eligibility for Child Endowment was extended to children in Government institutions, to Aboriginal children who lived for six months per year on a mission station, and to children who were maintained from a deceased estate. The Child's Allowance was introduced in 1943, payable at the rate of five shillings per week for a first for an unendowed child under 16 years dependent on an invalid or permanently incapacitated old-age pensioner. From July 1945 onwards, Additional Benefit for Children of five shillings per week became payable in respect of the first child to any person qualified to receive unemployment or sickness benefit having the custody, care and control of one or more children under the age of 16. In 1945, Curtin ordered the preparation of the
White Paper on Full Employment in Australia. The White Paper was the defining document of the official economic policy in Australia until the 1970s. For the first time, the Australian government accepted an obligation to guarantee full employment and to intervene as necessary to implement that guarantee.
1943 re-election in Parliament House, July 1945 Curtin went into the
1943 election in a very strong position. Even allowing for the advantages that an incumbent government has in wartime, Fadden and Hughes had been unable to get the better of Curtin, and the Coalition had become almost moribund. In the election, Curtin led Labor to its greatest-ever victory, winning two-thirds of the seats in the
House of Representatives on a two-party preferred vote of 58.2% and a 17-seat swing. The Coalition was reduced to only 19 seats nationwide, including only one west of
Broken Hill. Fadden's Country Party took a particularly severe beating, winning only seven seats. Labor also won the primary vote in all states in the Senate, and thus all 19 seats, to hold a majority of 22 out of 36 seats. Buoyed by this success, Curtin called a referendum which would give the government control of the economy and resources for five years after the war was over. The
1944 Australian Referendum contained one referendum question: "Do you approve of the proposed law for the alteration of the Constitution entitled 'Constitution Alteration (Post-War Reconstruction and Democratic Rights) 1944'?" Constitution Alteration (Post-War Reconstruction and Democratic Rights) 1944 was known as the 14 powers, or 14 points referendum. It sought to give the government power, over a period of five years, to legislate on monopolies, corporations,
trusts, national health, family allowances,
freedom of speech, religion, ex-servicemen rehabilitation, the ability to legislate for
Indigenous Australians, and safeguards against the abuse of legislative power. The referendum was defeated, receiving a majority only in Western Australia and South Australia. Nationally overall, 54 percent voted against the question in the referendum. ==Death==