Word: evatt
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...mysterious bunyip, the legendary beastie that lives at the bottom of the placid Australian billabong, is less strange to Australians than Herbert Vere Evatt. A shaggy intellectual who leaped zestfully from the High Court bench into the labor political swamp in 1940, Evatt was Minister of External Affairs in three successive Labor governments, was once (1948) president of the U.N. General Assembly, and was long a man expected by many to become Prime Minister. But Herbert Evatt's public popularity and political power have been shaking apart since Australia's Petrov spy case broke early last year, just...
Behind the issue was the widespread Australian fear, stated by Labor Leader Herbert Evatt, that "the southward expansion policy of Japan is gradually, being resumed." This month the Tokyo Giants baseball team called off its Australian tour, complaining that it was "virtually boycotted." Prime Minister Robert Gordon Menzies, trying to negotiate trade agreements with the Japanese Government, has frequently complained that "the greatest stumbling block is the perpetuation of enmity." Said Menzies wearily: "You only have to mention the word Japanese for it to be worth three headlines...
...anti-Evatt motion was placed before a caucus of Labor M.P.s, and at week's end a preliminary roll call showed that more than half of them thought Evatt would have to go. But as chairman of the meeting, Evatt ruled the motion out of order, since no prior notice of the maneuver had been given. At this, a veteran M.P. from the gold fields called from the floor: "Doc, why don't you give the party a chance and resign?" Snapped Evatt: "I'll be damned...
...Evatt's own response was a political bombshell: he demanded last week that Labor's federal executive purge the party of its "subversive and disloyal groups," meaning not the quasi-Communists but the Catholic Actionists (who make up 20% of the executive itself). Since one-third of Australia's voters are Catholics, Labor politicians realized that the Evatt move was an open invitation to political suicide. But Evatt and his supporters pressed on. The crisis engulfed all Australia as Evatt named names, and Catholics hit back with a resolution calling for his ouster as parliamentary leader...
...adroit maneuvering, Evatt managed to postpone the showdown until this week. But whether the vote went for or against Dr. Evatt, the chief loser would be the Labor Party as a whole. Said a well-pleased Cabinet minister of the Liberal government: "We've never been so well in the saddle in 30 years...