AUSTRALIA HAS ALWAYS prided itself on its political stability, but after World War II the country quickly settled into an equilibrium that sometimes seemed dangerously close to rigidity.

The Labor states of New South Wales and Tasmania stuck with Labor and the Liberal states of Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia entrenched their conservative governments. Only in Queensland was there change and even that was a single upheaval; what had appeared to be a rock-solid Labor administration was replaced by an equally immovable dynasty in control of the then Country Party. And, of course, in Canberra, from 1949 on, the coalition under the paternal tyranny of Robert Menzies established itself as the natural – indeed, the only possible – government of Australia.