Ben Chifley

Chifley's years as Australia's prime minister are worth reading through post-war reconstruction: housing agreements, industrial development and the creation of the Snowy Mountains Authority. His earlier work as treasurer helped prepare the ground, but his cabinet still had to turn plans into peacetime programmes. The former train driver's modest public manner can obscure those choices. His failed bank-nationalisation project and use of troops during the 1949 coal strike show how an administrative programme can also become coercive and politically brittle.