The Divisive North

Abstract

Soon after Menzies was elected prime minister in 1949, a story began to circulate that his government had strangled the NADC. This was part of a larger narrative that gathered force over the postwar decades, extolling Labor as the consistent champion of northern development while damming the Liberal-Country Party coalition as negligent. Taking an extraordinarily rosy view of the achievements of the NADC, J.H. Kelly claimed that its era of “dynamic organisational co-operation” came to an end when Chifley lost office to Menzies.¹ In fact, the NADC was defunct before the 1949 elections were held. Labor Deputy Leader Gough Whitlam advanced an equally inflated assessment of the NADC and its achievements under Prime Minister Chifley.² According to Whitlam, “Chifley regularly conferred with the Premiers of Queensland and Western Australia on northern development.”³ He neglected to mention that when Chifley conferred with the premiers on northern development, it was usually to quash the ambitious plans of the latter.