The repression of free speech, the right of assembly and the right to strike by Labor and Liberal governments over recent years is no aberration in Australian history.

During the 1940s and 1950s, their predecessors jailed their critics and imposed penalties on striking workers. The Menzies Liberal government attempted to ban the Communist Party.

This talk explores the political and economic logic behind these Cold War measures in Australia. The struggles against them were more successful than the resistance to the contemporary, parallel policies of McCarthyism in the United States of America.