A book launch of Father of the House, the memoirs of the late Kim Edward Beazley, took place on 11 February in the Australian Federal Parliament. As Minister for Education 1972-75, Beazley was responsible for some of the most enduring reforms of the Whitlam Labor Government. The occasion was held in the Labor Caucus Room which was packed with many government members and senators, ministers, the Speaker of the House, the President of the Senate, and family, including son Kim Christian Beazley, the recent Labor leader (before Kevin Rudd).

Giving the main address, Senator John Faulkner spoke of the ‘central role’ that Moral Re-Armament (as IofC was then known) played in Beazley’s life and the ‘enormous impact it had on his political views and in the way he conducted himself’.

Beazley entered parliament in 1945 at the tender age of 27, when he was selected by Labor to represent the seat of Fremantle after the death of Prime Minister John Curtin. The youngest member of parliament, he was dubbed ‘the student prince’. By the time he retired in 1977 he was the longest serving member of the house of representatives, the ‘father of the house’.

‘As Minister for Education,’ said Faulkner, ‘Kim Beazley oversaw the ending of the funding divide that separated private and public schools, and the introduction of free tertiary education. And then two very tough years after the defeat of the Whitlam Government – not helped by his growing disillusionment with Gough Whitlam’s leadership.

‘The story this book tells is a remarkable one. But more remarkable is the way that it reveals, in his own words, Beazley’s convictions, his conscience and his courage in the – sometimes unpopular – defence of both.

Faulker went on: ‘He says in this book that although in his thirty-two years in Parliament he sometimes, in the interests of Caucus unity, voted against his judgement, he never voted against his conscience.’ (Read the whole speech here)

Two days earlier the book was launched in Beazley’s home state of Western Australia in the library of Christchurch Grammar School, Perth. Present were five Labor MPs including former State Premier Alan Carpenter, academics, family and friends. Dr Geoff Gallop, another former Premier of Western Australia, had planned to launch the book, but was unable to as his wife was seriously ill. In his stead Dr Peter Tannock Vice Chancellor of Notre Dame University and very old friend of Kim Beazley Sr, was asked to launch the book.

Dr Tannock said that Beazley had two great passions during long periods in opposition:

One was the need for recognition and support of the Aboriginal people. Beazley was a life-long advocate of Aboriginal advancement- seeking their dignity as human beings.

The other was education which, in the 1950s was crippled by sectarian division between Protestant and Catholic schools. As Minister for Education, Beazley was able to end this division and gave state aid to Catholic schools.

Kim Beazley Jr added that in ending the sectarian crisis his father had said ‘It’s about children stupid, not anything else’. His father was a ‘concerned social democrat’ he said, who wrote the preamble to the constitution of the Australian Labour Party. The book was ‘a revelation to us as a family,’ Kim went on. ‘He was most circumspect about his colleagues. I miss him all over again as I read the book.’

Several major reviews of the book have appeared.

Writing in the Australian Book Review, former West Australian Premier Geoffrey Gallop recalls the first time he had heard Kim Beazley Snr speak:

‘It was at Kingswood College at the University of Western Australia, a year or two before the election of the Whitlam government. He spoke on the question of Aboriginal land rights, culture and spirituality. It was a spellbinding address which put the sword to the prevailing doctrine of assimilation. It wasn’t just the content of the speech which captured the interest of the student audience but the passion with which it was delivered. Like many there, my thinking on the subject changed forever.’

‘In many ways, Father of the House is a personal account of the relationship between politics and religion as seen through the eyes of a believer,’ Gallop observes. ‘Beazley dwells on the powerful influences of ‘conscience’ and ‘reconciliation’ as driving forces in politics. He reveals his dept to Christian activists such as William Wilberforce and Lord Shaftesbury. He concludes that “civilisation only advances when individual consciences become more sensitive to the needs of others”. He is fully aware of the tensions that can emerge in a less than perfect society between "being political" and "taking a stand for justice", and notes his own failings in this regard, particularly in relation to attitudes towards Japan in the immediate postwar period.

‘This takes me to his commitment to Moral Re-Armament and its belief in the power of reconciliation. Beazley speaks openly of his conversion experience at MRA’s headquarters in Caux, Switzerland, in 1953. He explains that it lifted both his Christianity (the goal of absolute purity) and his politics (the goal of honesty) to new heights. “For me,” he writes, “honesty meant a decision that I would not play the political game of making cases, suppressing everything inconvenient to my own position and playing up everything convenient.” What matters is not who is right but what is right. He worried too much about the personal and social consequences of power ever to be one of its great exponents.’

An earlier review by Mike Steketee in The Australian January 1 2009 entitled ‘Principle not Power’ mentions the suspicion with which Beazley’s Labor colleagues viewed his commitment to Moral Re-Armament. ‘The Australian tradition is to keep religion and politics apart but for Beazley they were inseparable. “If you do not accept the importance of conscience, you accept only the importance of power,” he once said.’ Steketee concludes that ‘his story overall is one that restores faith in politics.’ 

Another major review in The Australian Literary Review by Ross Fitzgerald entitled 'Proof the principle and politics can mix' expands on Beazley’s faith and commitment.

‘What I found riveting in this immensely readable book is the crucial role that Moral Re-Armament played in Beazley’s personal, professional and political life...

‘Beazley reveals that before the distractions of the day he was taught to ask God “to speak my thoughts, then write my thoughts down and test them by God’s standards of absolute honesty, purity, unselfishness and love”, then to carry out actions that met those standards.

‘Elsewhere in his memoir, Beazley repeats that, after joining the movement, he made a decision to concern himself daily with the challenge of living out God’s will. As he put it: “to turn the searchlight of absolute honesty on my motives. To try to see the world with the clarity of absolute purity. To take absolute love as radar through the fog of international affairs.”

‘Above all, he had to learn to apply these ideas in practice. What is absorbing is how, armed with these precepts, Beazley attempted to negotiate a high-level career in federal politics.

‘Beazley believed his attitude as a committed member of Moral Re-Armament improved his relations with his parliamentary colleagues, Labor and non-Labor. He recounts how he found that in these “conversations” there was “often a depth and reality unknown to me in the past” and how in parliament and elsewhere “people observed that the ‘snarl’ went out of my manner of speaking”...

Father of the House can be ordered from Initiatives of Change Australia.