Labor’s Defence Industry Minister has labelled conservative war-time prime minister Robert Menzies a “nazi appeaser” while struggling to say whether he would fire underperforming officials in his department under a newly announced shake-up.
During a National Press Club address titled “Progressive Patriotism: A Labor approach to defence capability, defence industry and reform”, the senior minister argued his party had the superior track record on military decisions and investment since Federation.
“I’m very interested in disclosing what really happened before World War II and during World War II, where it was the choice between John Curtin and nazi appeaser Robert Gordon Menzies,” Pat Conroy said when asked about whether the left of politics had been reluctant to show national pride.
“Like this is really important stuff that the left needs to embrace more fully, but we should be proud of it, like John Curtin saved Australia. He was a progressive Labor prime minister, and we should own that.”
At Labor’s national conference in 2023, the left faction heavyweight also attacked critics opposed to AUKUS by linking them to the Mr Menzies and Neville Chamberlain appeasement of nazi Germany before World War II.
Minister Conroy’s latest criticism of Australia’s longest serving prime minister drew immediate condemnation from shadow defence minister James Paterson, who accused him of “historical revisionism” about the Liberal Party hero.
“Pat Conroy should apologise for his baseless and grubby smear against Robert Menzies,” Senator Paterson told The Nightly.
“As prime minister between 1939 and 1941, Menzies prepared Australia for war and did not hesitate to join the fight against the nazis on 3 September 1939, the same day the UK did so.”
“In opposition he loyally supported the Curtin government in Australia’s fight against fascism. A minister in the defence portfolio should never engage in partisan historical revisionism, no matter how desperate they are to distract from their own failings.”
Following Question Time on Thursday, the Opposition also tried unsuccessfully to censure the Defence Industry Minister for his latest nazi appeasement comments, an accusation the Labor MP has also made in Parliament several times.
“No one was more in favour of World War I than Robert Menzies, yet he refused to serve. Later on, in the 1930s, he stopped the wharfies refusing to sell pig iron to Japan. And no one was a greater appeaser of nazi Germany than Robert Menzies,” Conroy told Parliament in 2017 when he was an opposition MP.
In Parliament on Thursday Minister Conroy had hoped to table a 1939 letter from Robert Menzies in which the then wartime Prime Minster wrote: “no-one gives a damn about Poland”.
At his press club address Mr Conroy also declared that Labor prime ministers Fisher, Curtin, Whitlam, Hawke, Keating, Gillard and now Albanese had “always followed through with the big decisions and investment needed in this space”.
“The Albanese Government is delivering the largest increase in peacetime defence investment ever — delivering the most significant reforms to the department in 50 years — and delivering massive projects across the board from AUKUS, to continuous shipbuilding, to establishing new industries in drones and missiles,” he said.
Asked about criticism of AUKUS leading Labor figures such as former prime minister Paul Keating and former Midnight Oil frontman Peter Garrett, the Defence Industry Minister acknowledged they were unlikely to ever change their positions.
“I think we’re pretty firmly in agree to disagree territory, to be honest, and I think that’s reasonable,” Mr Conroy said.
“I’ve got great respect for Peter Garrett. I think his contribution to public life is incredibly laudable, but he’s a man who ran and almost got elected to the Senate in 1984 on an anti-nuclear position.”
While also detailing sweeping changes to the way complicated Australian military projects are managed to reign in massive cost blowouts, the Defence Industry Minister told the press club that “accountability will be king”.
Challenged on whether he would fire senior officials who fail to deliver projects properly, Mr Conroy initially responded that “they will be held accountable, just as I’m held accountable for decisions by this government.”
“Accountable is taking responsibility for decisions, learning from those decisions, and ultimately, if decisions are made poorly, changing personnel at some sort,” Mr Conroy said when pressed further.
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