Australian Politicians of the Mid-20th Century

A BOOK launched last week covers a period of Australian history when parents weren't concerned about their children eating junk food.

Instead, many worried, and desperately, that they might not eat at all.

Today Peter Garrett, Bob Brown and John Howard are seen as extremists by their more hysterical enemies.

During the period of this book there were real extremists: Marxists plotting revolution and fascists looking for a general to help do the same.

And forget about 1000 troops overseas. Back then there were 800 times more abroad in trouble spots much worse than Baghdad.

The book makes clear what a blessed, secure and opulent life we now lead, no matter how we fret over petrol prices, childhood reading skills, or even international terrorism.

It is called The Biographical Dictionary of the Australian Senate: Vol 2 1929-1962 (Melbourne University Publishing, edited by Ann Millar).

It has 104 characters: the people who retired from the Senate, were voted out or, in the cases of 21, died in office in that 33 year period.

Volume One revealed what a bunch of wonderful scoundrels and gifted prophets helped create our nation.

In this second instalment, the life stories of the 103 men and one woman who completed service in the Senate between 1929 and 1962 illustrate the effect global cataclysms had on Australians.

They served between the end of the Roaring '20s and the start of the Swinging '60s. More accurately, they served from the Great Depression, through World War II and into a prosperity blighted by a nuclear fuelled Cold War.

"In those three decades the country suffered a life-threatening illness followed by a near-death experience and a slow recuperation haunted by constant fear of a relapse," wrote Clerk of the Senate Harry Evans in an introduction.

Among the senators were one who fought in the Boer war, World War I and World War II. Another was a savage opponent of conscription whose three sons volunteered during World War I. Only one returned.

Labor's Senate Leader and, more important, its most gifted in-house historian, John Faulkner, has highlighted Agnes Robertson Robertson, a formidable woman who did much despite having to spend her adult life explaining that her married name was the same as her middle given name.

Widowed at 30 in 1912 with three small children, she taught school until 1943 and was busy with church and community matters.

Socially and politically conservative, she nevertheless fought actively for equal rights for women.

In 1949 she became the first Liberal woman elected to the Senate from Western Australia. She was 65.

Faulkner took up her story in an address at the book's launching:"In 1955 the Liberals dropped her from their ticket because they considered her too old.

"She promptly transferred her allegiance to the Country Party, who did not consider her too old to get first place on their ticket.

"After all, they had the precedent of South Australian Labor Senator Frederick Ward -- first elected in 1947 at the age of 75."

Unable to resist a contemporary dig, Faulkner ended this section by saying:"No one should tell Peter Costello about Agnes Robertson's parliamentary career."

He also pointed out that one senator served just 10 days before dying in office, while George Foster Pearce made it through 37 years....