Herbert Vere Evatt

Labor legislated for proportional representation in the Senate in 1948, and they required voters to number every box.

Indeed, a Liberal MP, Archie Cameron, proposed that voters should only need to number as many boxes as there are seats to fill, and this was rejected out of hand by the Attorney-General, H.V. Evatt, who expressed concern about votes exhausting when they could influence the result.

There was an uptick in informal voting for the Senate at the 1949 federal election under the new system.

There was no change in the demands on the voter.

But the informal rate climbed from 8% to 10.8%.

Voters in South Australia needed to number up to 24 boxes, and 11.6% of voters cast an informal vote in that state.

Despite Evatt's opposition prior to the election, Labor leader Ben Chifley proposed in 1950 that voters should only need to fill in some boxes, not all of them, for a formal vote to be counted.

Australian politics in the early 1950s found itself back in a similar position to the 1910s.

Yeah, Herbert.

Farnworth.

The Doc, as they called him.

So...

And so again, he's being told that he has no right to practice here either, again, on this basis of arbitrary status.

In a letter that Korten writes to Doc Evatt in December of 1942 to try and appeal to the then attorney general, he presents his situation as very desperate.

"My financial resources are being depleted during the time of clerkship.

The longer I shall be a clerk, the smaller my prospects ever to be able to practice at all.

Dear Dr. Corton, I acknowledge your letter of 3rd December 1942 in relation to your application for admission to the Bar of New South Wales.

I regret that I have no power to deal with such matters.

When Doc Evatt is a judge on the High Court, the job of a judge is to interpret the law and there are multiple different interpretations of the law that are always available.

When he decides in the way that he does, it's because he's bringing an interpretation to the law, one for which he becomes quite well known actually.

[somber music]

Dear Dr. Evatt, I'm venturing to write to you about a friend of mine, Dr. Edward Kortun.

He's applying to be admitted to the bar, notwithstanding that the Barrister's Admission Board up to the present has not considered him eligible for admission for reason only of his being technically an enemy alien.

Kortun presumably would've known that he had to undertake further study once he arrives in Sydney, so he is able to do that, and he manages to pass the New South Wales Barrister's exam within a impressively short period of time.

[somber music]

Sydney, 3rd December, 1942.

To the Honorable Dr. H.V. Evatt, Commonwealth Attorney General.

Sir, I, the respectfully undersigned, a former barrister and solicitor of Vienna of 20 years' standing, arrived in Australia as a refugee from Nazi oppression in January 1939.

Thank you for making the time to join us today.

So maybe we could start with you describing Doc Evatt.

What sort of man, what sort of politician was he?

Yes, well, in some respects, Evatt was atypical of Labour politicians of that era, unlike, say, Curtin or Chifley.

I think given we're a history institute and we would love talking about this period of history, that's the 40s and 50s, it's really useful to think about how central Australia was to the formation of the United Nations.

I mean, incredible to think that our Minister for External Affairs, Doc Evatt, who goes on to become the leader of the Labor Party, the opposition leader for three elections against Robert Menzies, that he was so critical in this period.

Do you want to give just a small reprise of how Australia was such a key player in forming the international rules-based order, as we call it repetitively?

Yes.

so.

I mean,

there was Doc Evatt, and I mean, what an extraordinary person anyway.

Yeah.