Soon after Page’s arrival in Canberra, a loose collection of eleven rural independents agreed to coalesce into a formal party, taking the name the ‘Country Party’. Page was elected its secretary and whip. William McWilliams of Tasmania was appointed interim party leader, to allow the new colleagues to get to know each other before choosing a long-term head. In April 1921, the party felt ready to do this, spurred by frustration at McWilliams’ poor leadership. In a novel approach, the party room decided not to have a nomination process; rather, each Country Party MP was to be considered a candidate. Page received every MP’s vote except his own and was thus elected as the first fully fledged leader of the Country Party.
The Road to Coalition
When Page became the leader of his party, prime minister William Morris Hughes was the dominant Australian political personality, despite tight numbers in the House of Representatives. The Nationalist government had thirty-seven members of parliament, compared with twenty-six in the Labor opposition, and eleven in the Country Party, who sat on the crossbenches along with a sole independent. Hughes’ personality was such that he did not take kindly to the arrival of this new conservative party, which made it harder for him to steer his agenda through the parliament. In fact, Hughes and Page took a particular dislike to each other in these early years of Page’s career. (The bitterness still shone through years later when Hughes was asked why he had joined the Labor Party and several conservative parties, including the Nationalists, United Australia and Liberal parties, but never the Country Party. ‘You have to draw the line somewhere’ was his caustic reply.)
Far from attempting to win Page’s favour, Hughes launched a series of attacks on the Country Party leader, presumably in an attempt to damage the new party’s credibility with rural voters and return country seats to the Nationalist fold. As Page noted of Hughes many years later: ‘He seemed to sense that I could cause him trouble.’5 However, Page was untroubled by Hughes’ approach, also noting that ‘within six months his attitude had made me one of the best known members of the House and recognised throughout Australia’.6
The tension between the two leaders neared a tipping point on several occasions. In June 1921, Hughes was due to represent Australia at the Imperial Conference in London, which was a gathering of the Empire’s prime ministers. Given the numbers in the House, he demanded that the Country Party guarantee they would vote with the government on all matters during his absence, to ensure the government’s survival. Page didn’t take this well, recalling later: ‘I refused to be stampeded by these tactics and stated plainly that the Country Party’s function was not to act as the Government’s wet nurse.’7 On behalf of the Country Party, Page offered only to not take undue advantage of Hughes’ absence.
Feelings were further inflamed when Page used a speech to describe the role of the Country Party in the parliament as being to stop a ‘government of burglars’. Hughes took such offence at being described as such that he moved in the Nationalist party room to pursue the expulsion of Page from the parliament. Page eventually clarified that he meant no offence to Hughes, but by then it couldn’t be clearer that a working relationship between them in government would be very difficult indeed.
The 1922 federal election brought all this strain into sharp relief. Page campaigned on a ‘Hughes Must Go’ platform, accusing the Nationalist leader of ‘fig leaf socialism’ and a lack of empathy with rural people. This made coalition talks very difficult when the Nationalist Party lost ten seats to hold only twenty-eight, compared with Labor’s thirty seats and the Country Party’s fourteen. Hughes nevertheless attempted to strike an agreement with Page via a panel of negotiators appointed by each party. Despite the fact that the Country Party had exactly half the seats held by the Nationalist Party, Page was prepared to insist on three demands: Hughes’ resignation as prime minister, the appointment of a Country Party prime minister and the allocation of half the ministerial portfolios to the Country Party. Page’s forthright approach was successful and Hughes’ resignation was secured.
The Country Party dropped its insistence on selecting a prime minister from its own ranks when the Nationalists elected the amenable Stanley Melbourne Bruce as their leader. Bruce had been federal treasurer for about a year and Page had been impressed with his frugal 1922 Budget. Page was always much more likely to strike a deal with Bruce, whom he liked and admired. As he would later note: ‘The personality of the now Member for Flinders facilitated co-operation between the Nationalist and Country parties, and this in turn gave Australia the longest term of stable and continuous government since Federation.’8
Bruce and Page did not need negotiators to horsetrade on their behalf: they handled the discussions directly and personally. There was some negotiation over the number of ministers to be appointed from each party: Page rejected an offer of four ministries out of twelve for the Country Party, but accepted Bruce’s next offer of five out of eleven. Importantly, the pair agreed that a split vote on party lines in Cabinet would amount to a rejection of any policy proposal, giving the Country Party an effective policy veto despite the majority of Nationalists in
