Sir Robert Gordon Menzies

By Ruby Angelkoski

Full Name and Birth and Death Dates

Sir Robert Gordon MenziesRobert Menzies was Born on the 20th of

December 1894 in Jeparit in the country of Victoria, where his father, James, was a shopkeeper. His father James was on a Scottish Descent while his Mother, Kate, was descended from Cornish Miners. His ancestors had to come to Australia in the Gold Rush in the 1850s..

Sir Robert Gordon Menzies got married on the 27 of September and had 3 children Kenneth(1922), Ian(1923) and Heather(1928).

Family Details His father, James Menzies, was the son of

Scottish crofters who had migrated to Australia in the mid-1850s in the wake of the Victorian gold rush. Through his mother Kate, née Sampson, he inherited a link with Cornwall; his grandfather, John Sampson, was a miner from Penzance who came to Ballarat in Victoria to seek his fortune on the gold-fields. Menzies's father was born in Ballarat in August 1862. He went early to work to help support his widowed mother and hr family. He became a coach painter and, in the early days of the newly invented H. V. Mackay 'Sunshine' Harvester, is known to have painted the first of these machines made in Ballarat.

Study Of Becoming Prime Minister

Sir Robert Gordon Menzies was and in fact still holds the title of Australia’s longest serving Prime Minister, being for a period of 17 years. Born in the small country town of Jeparit in 1894. Just into his teens Menzies was taken to live with his Grandparents in Ballarat where he attained the top place in the State in his school exams. After High School Robert Menzies then attended Melbourne University where he attained class honours at Law.

. As a lawyer, Menzies was exceptionally highly regarded but he had long held political ambitions, which he desperately wanted to act upon. His initial stint in Parliament was in the Victorian State Parliament. After some years he then entered Federal politics as a member of the United Australia Party.

Political Achievements

Supported Britain in declaring war against Nazi Germany, 3 September 1939, and placed Australia on a war footing. Member of British War Cabinet, London, 1941.

Decisive role in formation of the Liberal Party of Australia, 1944.

Helped to defeat Chifley government’s attempts to nationalise private banks and to extend war-time control over rents and prices by referendum, 1947-48.

Royal Commission into the Petrov Affair, 1954.

Oversaw the Colombo Plan 1950, Australia-New Zealand-United States (ANZUS) treaty 1951, and South East Asia Treaty Organization 1954. Commitment of troops to Korea 1950, Malayan Emergency 1950 and Vietnam 1964-65. Rapid development of Canberra as the national capital. Population grew from 28 000 in 1954 to 93 000 in 1966. Established the Australian Universities Commission in 1959, increased funding to universities and created new universities. Oversaw a period of economic boom 1950-66, marked by increasing trade, full employment, expansion of social services, hospitals and schools, and immigration.

What Political Party

Interesting Facts Australia’s longest serving prime

minister his two periods in office totalled 18 years 5 months and 10 days.

won all 12 federal elections in his parliamentary term (1934–63).

completed plan of Canberra, with the construction of Lake Burley Griffin.

nicknamed ‘Pig-iron Bob’ in 1939 after he resisted the waterside workers’ ban on exporting scrap-iron to Japan.

in 1941 became the first Australian Prime Minister to fly overseas, when he left Australia for England in a QANTAS Empire flying boat. started the ‘Prime Minister’s 11’ cricket matches one of three former Prime Ministers awarded Japan’s Order of the Rising Sun, First Class (the others were Edmund Barton and John McEwen). The only Australian appointed to the Order of the Thistle, an honour in the gift of the reigning monarch Pattie Menzies was one of only three Australians to be awarded the Dame Grand Cross of the British Empire (the first was Florence Reid in 1917, the second was Mary Hughes in 1922)

BY RUBY ANGELKOSKI 6 BLUE