Daniel Rule

Daniel Rule (PhD in History, 2024), The Political Life of John Latham

This thesis is a biographical study of the political life of Sir John Latham, the Australian politician and judge, covering his pre-Parliamentary life, as well as his political and judicial careers. It focuses especially on the origins, nature and impact of his free-trader liberalism and cultural puritanism, and shows how such views affected Australian politics through the first half of the twentieth century. In doing so it attempts to trace the contours, continuities and transformation of non-Labor politics during those decades.

Latham inherited his worldview both from his father and the broader Victorian milieu, and these influenced his approach to politics and the law for the rest of his working life. His cultural puritan ideas on statesmanship led to him helping to topple Billy Hughes as Prime Minister in 1923, while his free-trader liberalism drove his actions as both Attorney-General and Leader of the Opposition in the late 1920s and early 1930s. This establishes the ongoing importance of free-trader liberalism during these years.

Challenging earlier accounts, this thesis shows that Latham was not responsible for some of the major policies taken in the industrial relations sphere for which he has traditionally been blamed. Rather, it was Prime Minister Stanley Bruce who unilaterally made those decisions. It also shows that Latham was a more successful Leader of the Opposition that has been recognised, and that he was forced to step aside due to his perceived unpopularity. His early ideological development and his time in politics also had an impact on his tenure as Chief Justice of the High Court. His experience as a powerful Deputy Prime Minister partly helps explain his irregular actions in providing advice to politicians from the bench. Furthermore, his devotion to cultural puritanism also shaped his legalistic approach to judgment-making, which led him to support, at times, judicial outcomes which diverged significantly from his political principles.

Supervisors: Prof. Sean Scalmer, Assoc. Prof. Tanya Josev (Melbourne Law School), the late Emeritus Professor Stuart Macintyre