62 Facts About Ben Chifley

Joseph Benedict Chifley was an Australian politician who served as the 16th prime minister of Australia, from 1945 to 1949, holding office as the leader of the Australian Labor Party.

Ben Chifley was prominent in the trade union movement before entering politics, and was a director of The National Advocate.

Ben Chifley served in cabinet for less than a year before losing his seat at the 1931 federal election, which saw the government suffer an electoral wipeout.

Ben Chifley served on a royal commission into the banking system in 1935, and in 1940 became a senior public servant in the Department of Munitions.

Ben Chifley was re-elected to parliament later that year, on his third attempt since 1931.

Ben Chifley was appointed Treasurer in the new Curtin government in 1941, as one of the few Labor MPs with previous ministerial experience.

Ben Chifley became prime minister following Curtin's death in office in 1945, defeating caretaker prime minister Frank Forde in a leadership ballot.

Ben Chifley's government was defeated at the 1949 Australian federal election, which brought Robert Menzies' Liberal Party to power for the first time.

Ben Chifley stayed on as Leader of the Opposition until his death, which came a few months after the 1951 Australian federal election; Labor did not return to government until 1972.

Ben Chifley is held in particularly high regard by the Labor Party, with his "light on the hill" speech seen as seminal in both the history of the party and the broader Australian labour movement.

Ben Chifley was born at 29 Havannah Street, Bathurst, New South Wales, on 22 September 1885.

Ben Chifley was the first of three sons born to Roman Catholic parents: Mary Anne and Patrick Chifley II.

Ben Chifley's father, a blacksmith, was born in Bathurst to Irish immigrants from County Tipperary, while his mother was born in County Fermanagh, in present-day Northern Ireland.

Ben Chifley began his education at the local state school, which was known as a "half-time school" due to it being too small to offer daily classes; it shared a single teacher with a neighbouring community.

Ben Chifley moved back to his parents' home at the age of 13, following his grandfather's death in January 1899, and attended a Patrician Brothers school for about two years.

Ben Chifley was a voracious reader from a young age, and would later supplement his limited formal education by attending classes at night schools or mechanics' institutes.

Ben Chifley later worked at a tannery for a period, and then in September 1903 joined the New South Wales Government Railways as a "shop boy" at the Bathurst locomotive shed.

Ben Chifley developed an intimate technical understanding of his locomotives, and became a lecturer and instructor at the Bathurst Railway Institute.

Ben Chifley was based in Bathurst and worked on the Main Western railway, except for a few months in 1914 when he drove on the Main Southern railway and worked out of Harden, New South Wales.

Ben Chifley became involved with the labour movement as a member of the Locomotive Enginemen's Association.

Ben Chifley never held executive office, preferring to work as an organiser, but did serve as a divisional delegate to state and federal conferences.

Ben Chifley developed a reputation for compromise, maintaining good relations with both the railway management and the more militant sections of the union.

However, Ben Chifley was one of the local leaders of the 1917 Australian general strike, and as a result was dismissed from the railway.

Ben Chifley appeared as an expert witness before the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration in 1924, which subsequently implemented a new federal industrial award for the enginemen.

Ben Chifley joined the Australian Labor Party at a young age, and was involved in state and federal election campaigns as an organiser.

In 1922 and 1924, Ben Chifley unsuccessfully contested Labor preselection for the NSW Electoral district of Bathurst.

Ben Chifley was eventually chosen as the Labor candidate for the Division of Macquarie at the 1925 Australian federal election.

Ben Chifley accused the government of endangering the White Australia policy by allowing Southern European migrant workers into the country, claiming it had "allowed so many dagoes and aliens in Australia that today they are all over the country taking work which rightly belongs to all Australians".

The Labor Party recorded a 6.2-point swing in Macquarie, with Ben Chifley becoming one of three candidates in New South Wales to win seats from the government.

At the 1929 election, Ben Chifley was re-elected on a 10.7-point swing as Labor won a landslide victory.

Ben Chifley's loyalty paid off in March 1931, when the Labor caucus chose him to fill one of the vacancies in cabinet caused by the resignations of Lyons and James Fenton.

Ben Chifley opened up unused military camps to the homeless, and distributed surplus military clothing.

Ben Chifley was somewhat reluctant in his support of the Premiers' Plan, but believed there was no better alternative and felt bound by the principle of cabinet solidarity.

At the 1931 election, Ben Chifley suffered a negative swing of 16.2 points in Macquarie, losing his seat to John Lawson, the UAP candidate, by just 456 votes on the final count.

Ben Chifley was a delegate to the party's annual conference in Sydney in April 1939.

Ben Chifley submitted a minority report advocating that the private banks be nationalised.

Ben Chifley was appointed Treasurer of Australia when the Labor leader, John Curtin, formed a mid-term Labor government in 1941 following the collapse of the first Menzies government.

Once the war ended in September, normal political life resumed, and Ben Chifley faced Robert Menzies and his new Liberal Party in the 1946 election, which Ben Chifley won with 54 percent of the two-party-preferred vote.

Ben Chifley did this partly to help Britain in its postwar economic difficulties.

Ben Chifley's Government oversaw the creation of the Commonwealth Employment Service, the introduction of federal funds to the States for public housing construction and the Acoustic Laboratories Act 1948, which established the Commonwealth Acoustic Laboratories to undertake scientific investigations into hearing loss.

In 1947, Ben Chifley announced the government would initiate a nationalisation of the banks.

However, Ben Chifley's government did succeed in passing the Banking Act 1945 and the Commonwealth Bank Act 1945 which gave the government control over monetary policy and established the Commonwealth Bank as Australia's national bank.

Ben Chifley saw the strike as a move by the Communist Party to challenge Labor's place as the party of the working class, and he sent in 13,000 army troops to break the strike.

In 1949 in the House of Representatives, Ben Chifley stated that the Labor Party was a "bulwark against communism", and that the most effective way of weakening the strength of the Communist Party was "improving the conditions of the people".

Ben Chifley was now aged 64 and in poor health, but he refused to retire from politics.

Ben Chifley expected Chifley to reject it and give him an excuse to call a double dissolution election.

However, Ben Chifley let the bill pass after a redraft.

However, when Ben Chifley rejected Menzies' Commonwealth Banking Bill a few months later, Menzies called a double dissolution election for April 1951.

Ben Chifley died in an ambulance on the way to the Canberra Community Hospital.

Ben Chifley was buried at the Bathurst cemetery on 18 June 1951.

Ben Chifley married Elizabeth McKenzie on 6 June 1914.

Ben Chifley was the daughter of a more senior railways employee, George McKenzie.

The McKenzies were relatively wealthy, and Ben Chifley was seen as "marrying into money, or as much money as he could hope to marry into in the context of the relatively class-bound society of Bathurst".

Ben Chifley rarely travelled outside Bathurst and never lived in Canberra, even while her husband was prime minister.

Ben Chifley usually visited the city for only special occasions.

Ben Chifley's health prevented her from campaigning for her husband, and she was known to have little interest in politics.

Ben Chifley survived her husband by 11 years, dying in 1962.

Day believed that their relationship began shortly after Ben Chifley was elected in parliament in 1928, and continued more or less uninterrupted until his death in 1951; she was present in his room at the Hotel Kurrajong when he suffered his final heart attack.

Ben Chifley stayed at the same hotel, and they were known to spend their free time with each other while in Canberra.

Ben Chifley assisted her financially in the 1930s, including buying her a house in Bathurst.

One of the locomotives driven by Ben Chifley, 5112, is preserved on a plinth at the eastern end of Bathurst railway station.

Ben Chifley was portrayed by Bill Hunter in the 1984 TV miniseries The Last Bastion, by Ed Devereaux in the 1988 miniseries True Believers, and Geoff Morrell in the 2007 film Curtin.