Today in 1941 John Curtin leader of the Labour Party (ALP) was sworn in as Prime Minister of Australia (and Minister of Defence). He succeeded Arthur Fadden of the Country Party(part of the governing alliance of the Country party and the much larger United Australia Party) who lost the support of the two independents who held the balance of the hung parliament (Mr Arthur Coles & Mr Alexander Wilson) in a key vote on the governments budget. With Fadden unable to pass the budget The Governor General Lord Gowrie asked Mr Curtin to form a Government. The two independents pledged to the Governor General that they will support the new government and not try to undermine it until the next election with respect to the current international situation. Mr Curtin was the first PM to represent a constituency in the state of Western Australia. At this time in the war Curtin was broadly supportive of the continuing AIF(Australian Imperial Force) presence in the Middle East/North Africa and that RAAF airmen were sent to Britain after their training with the empire training scheme.
Events yet to arise in the show will lead him to butt heads with Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt over the deployment of Australian personnel and the finer points of the war in the far east.
As a man Curtin was not perfect, he had a drinking problem which his ALP colleagues made him repress as a condition of his leadership. He was known to drink to excess and at length in Sydney or Melbourne when confronted with difficult circumstances(before his premiership) according to historian Thomas Keneally(Australians Vol:3) who also believed he suffered from bipolar disorder. Curtin’s companions on his nights out were often members of opposing parties, men who in all rights should have been his enemies. This highlights one of his best qualities as a political figure and a person in his ability to be on good terms which people he politically had differences with. He later extended his hand of friendship to Douglas Macarthur who later took command of the AIF and CMF(Citizen Military forces) following the fall of the Philippines despite the general’s politically motived dismissive reports on the quality of Australia’s soldiers.