McQueen, Humphrey: Time and Bob Menzies’ essence: lifting the cover on Australia 1960

McQueen, Humphrey

‘Time and Bob Menzies’ essence: lifting the cover on Australia 1960′, Honest History, 30 August 2016

When Humphrey McQueen first wrote this article in 2000 he had this to say: ‘Forty years ago this week, Time presented a revealing picture of a buoyant Australia and a frank portrait of its domineering Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies.’ Sixteen years further on, some of the issues that McQueen flagged in 2000 – and indeed some of the issues that Stanley Karnow wrote about for Time in 1960 – are still around, for example, cultural cringe, foreign investment, immigration, minerals boom, private debt, settler-Indigenous relations, and trade union power. The ‘six o’clock swill’ did not last long after 1960.

As McQueen says, Time‘s take (but mostly William Dobell’s portrait which Time used on its cover) were big news at the time. See, for example, Australian Women’s Weekly, Canberra Times, political journalist Don Whitington in The Biz (Fairfield, NSW).

Read McQueen’s article …

This article originally appeared on Humphrey McQueen’s Surplus Value website. As with Humphrey’s previous contributions to Honest History (use our Search engine to find them) we thank him for his generosity.

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