The Electoral Pendulum is the most effective visual means of explaining electoral results.
(The article below was submitted to “The Canberra Times” by Stephen Holt in October 2021 but was not published.)
Malcolm Mackerras made his first public appearance as an election commentator at a Liberal Party meeting in Sydney in the autumn of 1953.
His debut was occasioned by that year’s now long forgotten stand alone half-Senate election.
No Australian voter under the age of 72 has ever taken part in a separate (or stand alone) half-Senate election so the term needs to be explained.
A separate election for half the Senate happens when elections for the Senate and House of Representatives get out of whack. This can happen because of a double dissolution or if the House of Representatives is dissolved early.
Australia’s first ever stand alone half-Senate election was in 1953 following a double dissolution in 1951. Three other half-Senate elections followed in the wake of an early dissolution of the House of Representatives in 1963. They went ahead in 1964, 1967 and 1970.
Since then governments have been careful to avoid bringing on such half-Senate elections because they are intensely boring and unpopular. The fate of the government is not at stake but people still have to turn up and vote for or against Senators they have never heard of.
The inaugural stand alone half-Senate election of 1953 set the lowest of standards. Voters had no interest whatsoever in the proceedings.
There was one notable exception but even then he was not an exception because he was not yet a voter.
This was a young Malcolm Mackerras. He could not actually vote in 1953’s half-Senate election, being only 13 years of age at the time, but nonetheless he was immensely interested in what was going on.
His zeal was such that he was prepared to go head to head on a question of electoral esoterica with no less a person than Robert Menzies, the then mighty Prime Minister of Australia.
What exactly happened, as recorded at the time in newspapers across the land, is as follows.
Polling day in 1953’s half-Senate election was Saturday, 9 May. On the preceding Wednesday, 6 May Menzies had his last campaign rally in New South Wales. The venue chosen was Saint Thomas’ church hall in North Sydney. It was a rainy evening but some 800 people turned up to hear the Prime Minister.
The audience included Malcolm Mackerras. He was then a student at Sydney Grammar School. His family home was in Warrangi Street, Turramurra.
Politics was not taught at Sydney Grammar but young Malcolm was already a tragic. At home his older brother Neil, then a Liberal, had tutored him in how the political system operated.
Neil already planned to go to the North Sydney meeting. At his younger brother’s insistence Neil agreed to let Malcolm and his twin brother Colin come along with him.
Malcolm came to the meeting well prepared with recondite information. Unlike the vast majority of adults he knew that the term of the Senate about to be elected did not begin on election day. Only experts knew it, but the term of the old Senate did not officially cease until 30 June, some seven weeks later.
Malcolm sat on this information while his unknowing elders listened attentively to the Prime Minister’s final pitch to Sydney voters. It was only at the very end of a typically dull question and answer segment that he swung into action.
From an early teenage perspective someone aged 58 – as Menzies was in 1953 – is practically as old as Methuselah. What it means to be so old is beyond comprehension.
But Mackerras was not fazed.
He stood up once no more questions were forthcoming from the grown ups around him. With his fair head held erect and speaking in a clear confident manner, he put the following proposition to the nation’s leader: “Mr Prime Minister, sir, if your Senate majority is so precarious why don’t you call Parliament together before the end of June and pass all your legislation”.
To the unimaginative souls present the gap between the speaker’s age and the seriousness of what he was saying was just all too impressive. The audience was rocking with laughter by the time the question was completed.
Menzies joined in the merriment but he also knew that’s the schoolboy’s innocent question had put him on the spot. To maintain his aura of power he simply could not afford to admit that there was not a single piece of legislation that needed to be submitted before the 30 June deadline kicked in.
The Prime Minister was quick on his feet though. He began by complimenting young Malcolm for his “bright” suggestion. He went on to say that yes the current Senate in which he had a majority did legally continue until 30 June but there was no way he could stay in Canberra in June. This was because he had to be in London for the coronation of our young queen Elizabeth II. Such a “great occasion” could not be missed.
Menzies was extremely good natured. He sweetened his answer with praise for young Malcolm: “My boy,” he said, “you remind me of myself at the same age”.
There the matter might have ended but for the presence at the meeting of the journalist Frank Chamberlain. The pressman, like Menzies, was very impressed with the young questioner. At the end of the meeting he sought out the teenager before he disappeared forever into the night and asked him if he would like to be introduced to Mr Menzies.
Malcolm was astounded that the Prime Minister would want to see him but was not averse to the suggestion. “Could I really meet him?” was his response.
The invitation having been accepted, the introduction went ahead. Menzies greeted Malcolm as his “wise cross-examiner”. The two shook hands and engaged in a short amicable conversation.
Menzies was gracious – “Good luck to you – that was a very good question” and so was Malcolm in return. “Mr Prime Minister sir if you get a Senate majority I hope you will use it wisely”, he said.
Over the following few days Frank Chamberlain’s account of the meeting appeared in articles syndicated in the national press. He quoted what Menzies had said to him after the chat was over: “If our adult electors had anything like that lad’s interest in politics, we would have new life in the parliament”.
Young Malcolm’s intervention at the meeting was a rare source of joy for Menzies. It was the first time in an otherwise deadly dull half-Senate election campaign that he had met someone who actually knew or cared about what was going on. The teenager alone seemed to know that the Senate being elected on 9 May was of no account until 30 June. In theory important measures could be dealt with by the old Senate – in which Menzies had an assured majority – during the several weeks before the switchover occurred.
Adults – though not Malcolm – duly voted on 9 May. The result was an anti-climax. Menzies had a four seat majority in the outgoing Senate and he had a two seat majority in the incoming Senate. So, he had few numbers but still controlled the Senate. Six months earlier, in the wake of some earlier austerity budget measures and associated unpopularity, it had seemed that he might lose control of the upper house altogether.
The lead up to the final unexciting result of 9 May 1953 was dreary indeed. The nation was full of indifference and mild resentment. Unexpectedly encountering such a bright and engaged spark as the schoolboy from Sydney Grammar would have been a tonic for Menzies – a fleeting experience for him, but a tonic withal.
The experience was good for Mackerras as well.
Intellectual enthusiasm such as he displayed on the night in question can all too readily wither in the face of contempt or indifference from the dead souls that are all around us.
But back in 1953 what Malcolm Mackerras, then aged 13, experienced was something altogether different. A senior journalist and the Prime Minister of the nation had treated him with respect and consideration. They took him seriously.
It is tempting to suggest that this positive and encouraging experience must have played a small but real part in the formation of someone who later would go on to become the nation’s leading election commentator. From small things, as the saying should go, bigger things sometimes grow.
Stephen Holt (sjholt@fastmail.fm) is a Canberra writer.