SIR ARTHUR WILLIAM FADDEN

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‘Artie' Fadden was a forthright Australian of the old breed: a self-made man without pretensions, who enjoyed a drink and a smutty yarn with his mates. Deliberately or otherwise, he presented something of a roughneck image and always claimed that a politician would win more votes by telling a few good stories than by delivering a speech full of statistics. Strong-willed and independent, he tended to go his own way with little regard for the subtleties of politics.

His origins seem more like that of the archetypal Labor representative than of a Country Party man. The son of a poor Irish immigrant, he was born at Ingham, north Queensland, in 1895, as the eldest of a family of 10 - of whom three were to die in separate accidents.

But he never thought of himself as having had a deprived childhood. North Queensland is cane country and he grew up in a self-sufficient community revolving around sugar mills and the cane harvest. He breezed through his state school education at Walkerston, near Mackay, and revelled in the outdoor life of tropical Queensland. An extrovert teenager, he excelled at sports, school dances and amateur concert parties.

His first job, at 15, was as the ‘billy boy’ to a gang of canecutters, making their tea and doing other odd jobs as they toiled at their thirsty, sweaty labour. A cane inspector took a liking to him and found him a billet in the sugar mill office, where - according to his autobiography They Called Me Artie - he first showed leadership qualities. When his boss was out of the office he called himself 'acting secretary', generally throwing his chest out and ‘signing papers with a great air of authority'.

In 1913 he moved into local government as Assistant Town Clerk at Mackay. By the age of 21 he had qualified in accountancy and he was promoted to Town Clerk. He soon sought fresh fields and found that the sugar port of Townsville lacked a public accountant. He went into business for himself, creating an accountancy practice which, within a few years, served every large concern in the area and had become the largest in northern Queensland.

Fadden's first steps into politics were as a Townsville alderman, then as a Country Party member in the State Parliament. When he lost his seat in 1935, he vowed he was finished with politics. But in 1936, he stood for, and won, the federal seat of Darling Downs.

In those days, Canberra was not only an arena for Labor-Conservative contests but for gladiatorial clashes between Earle Page and Robert Menzies. These two powerful personalities had a tumultuous relationship, sometimes supporting each other and sometimes flaying one another in private or public. Fadden, as a Country Party member, supported Page and often referred to Menzies in the earthy language of the canefields. But when Page made his savage attack on Menzies as a potential Prime Minister, Fadden was one of those who turned against Page and forced his dismissal as party leader.

In March 1940, Fadden became a minister in the Menzies government. In this capacity he was booked to fly to Canberra, in August, with three other ministers. But he decided to travel by train instead and, on arrival in Canberra, learned that the aircraft in which he would have flown had crashed, killing everyone aboard.

Fadden then became Minister for Air and Civil Aviation and continued to serve under Menzies during the period when Labor was fast regaining strength, and the UAP-Country Party coalition was under constant attack from inside and outside. It had barely survived in the 1940 elections. Fadden, elected leader of the Country Party in March 1941, was Deputy Prime Minister when coalition in-fighting forced Menzies to throw in the sponge in August.

The 40 days of Artie Fadden as Prime Minister of Australia were simply a stopgap. In the midst of a disastrous war, he lacked the time and the power to make any impact on history and he could try only to hold the coalition together. Early in October, a hostile Labor amendment rejected his budget and he was obliged to resign. The Governor-General commissioned John Curtin as his successor.

The United Australia Party vanished into history but the Country Party, with Fadden as leader, survived. Eventually, he and Menzies patched up their differences to form the Liberal-Country Party coalition which lasted for 40 years. As Treasurer in the Menzies government between 1949-58, Fadden displayed great strength under pressure and great acumen in planning long-term financial policies.

He retired from politics in December 1958, in the hope of being appointed chairman of the Commonwealth Banking Corporation. But he was disappointed in this ambition and, although he still had much to offer, he did not return to politics before his death in 1973.

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