The Forgotten People
Menzies’ time was the period of the postwar baby boom. Returning soldiers and others confident of their economic future began to put down roots and raise their children. The fertility rate peaked in Australia in 1961, and then began a long and steady decline that lasted right up to the end of the century. Helped by a strong immigration program, Australia’s population grew by more than a fifth during the 1960s.
Those returning soldiers, nesting families and postwar immigrants all needed somewhere to live. Mostly that meant building a new house on the suburban fringe of the capital cities. The great Australian dream was “a home of your own on a quarter-acre block.”
Menzies understood this aspiration perfectly. His most important broadcast in the lead-up to the formation of the Liberal Party was in 1942 on “the forgotten people.” The real life of the nation,” he claimed, was not to be found “in the petty gossip of the so-called fashionable suburbs or in the officialdom of organized masses.” It was in the homes of those raising children. “The home is the foundation of sanity and sobriety; it is the indispensable condition of continuity; its health determines the health of society as a whole.”
The family home is still the most important asset for the majority of Australians. It is the place to nurture a family and eventually the means to pass on a financial legacy to children. These are the values of conservative Australia: home, family, self-reliance, self-improvement.
In his “Forgotten People” broadcast he declared: “If human homes are to fulfill their destiny, then we must have frugality and saving for education and progress.” His political movement would go on to prove the most successful in Australian politics. His values — self-reliance, reward for effort and social conservatism — remain deeply ingrained in the Australian character. “
By: Peter Costello, Australia’s Treasurer from 1996 to 2007, Time Magazine, 2/11/09.