Sir Percy Claude Spender (5 October 18973 May 1985) was an Australian politician, diplomat, and judge. He served in the
House of Representatives
House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entitles. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often c ...
from 1937 to 1951, including as a cabinet minister under
Robert Menzies
The name Robert is an ancient Germanic given name, from Proto-Germanic "fame" and "bright" (''Hrōþiberhtaz''). Compare Old Dutch ''Robrecht'' and Old High German ''Hrodebert'' (a compound of '' Hruod'' ( non, Hróðr) "fame, glory, honou ...
and
Arthur Fadden
Sir Arthur William Fadden, (13 April 189421 April 1973) was an Australian politician who served as the 13th prime minister of Australia from 29 August to 7 October 1941. He was the leader of the Country Party from 1940 to 1958 and also served ...
. He was later
Ambassador to the United States
The following table lists ambassador
An ambassador is an official envoy, especially a high-ranking diplomat who represents a state and is usually accredited to another sovereign state or to an international organization as the resident repre ...
(1951–1958) and a member of the
International Court of Justice
The International Court of Justice (ICJ; french: Cour internationale de justice, links=no; ), sometimes known as the World Court, is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations (UN). It settles disputes between states in accordanc ...
(1958–1967), including as president of the court from 1964 to 1967.
Early life
Spender was born on 5 October 1897 in
Darlinghurst, Sydney, New South Wales. He was the fifth of six children born to Mary () and Frank Henry Spender; his father was a locksmith originally from
South Australia
South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories ...
. Spender's mother died in 1902 and his father remarried, giving him a stepsister and later two half-siblings. He began his education at Darlinghurst Public School, and later attended
Fort Street High School
, motto_translation = Each person is the maker of their own fortune
, sister_school = Suginami Sogo High School, Tokyo, Japan
, location = Parramatta Road, Petersham, Inner West Sydney, New South Wales
, ...
. After failing his
matriculation
Matriculation is the formal process of entering a university, or of becoming eligible to enter by fulfilling certain academic requirements such as a matriculation examination.
Australia
In Australia, the term "matriculation" is seldom used now ...
exam, he found work as a clerk with the
Sydney City Council. Spender eventually passed the entrance exam to the
University of Sydney
The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public university, public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one o ...
, where he graduated
Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...
in 1918. He enlisted in the
Australian Imperial Force in September 1918, but did not see active service before the war ended a few months later. Spender subsequently completed a
Bachelor of Laws
Bachelor of Laws ( la, Legum Baccalaureus; LL.B.) is an undergraduate law degree in the United Kingdom and most common law jurisdictions. Bachelor of Laws is also the name of the law degree awarded by universities in the People's Republic of ...
, graduating in 1922 with first-class honours and the
University Medal
A University Medal is one of several types of award conferred by universities upon outstanding students or members of staff. The usage and status of university medals differ between countries and between universities.
As award on graduation
Many ...
in law. He was admitted to the bar in 1923 and made a
King's Counsel
In the United Kingdom and in some Commonwealth countries, a King's Counsel (post-nominal initials KC) during the reign of a king, or Queen's Counsel (post-nominal initials QC) during the reign of a queen, is a lawyer (usually a barrister or ...
in 1935.
Entry into politics
Spender entered politics at the
1937 election
The following elections occurred in the year 1937.
Asia
* 1937 Philippine local elections
* 1937 Iranian legislative election
* 1937 Soviet Union legislative election
India
* 1937 Indian provincial elections
* 1937 Madras Presidency legislative ...
when he was elected to the
House of Representatives
House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entitles. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often c ...
as member for
Warringah. He ran as an "independent
UAP" candidate, unexpectedly defeating the sitting member,
Sir Archdale Parkhill. On 20 October 1938, Spender announced that he would join the UAP, but that he would "continue to stand for independent expression of thought and action and against the principle of
preselection
Preselection is the process by which a candidate is selected, usually by a political party, to contest an election for political office. It is also referred to as candidate selection. It is a fundamental function of political parties. The presel ...
of candidates".
World War II
Treasurer
Robert Menzies
The name Robert is an ancient Germanic given name, from Proto-Germanic "fame" and "bright" (''Hrōþiberhtaz''). Compare Old Dutch ''Robrecht'' and Old High German ''Hrodebert'' (a compound of '' Hruod'' ( non, Hróðr) "fame, glory, honou ...
became prime minister in April 1939 and appointed himself as
Treasurer
A treasurer is the person responsible for running the treasury of an organization. The significant core functions of a corporate treasurer include cash and liquidity management, risk management, and corporate finance.
Government
The treasury o ...
, as was common at the time. Spender was promoted to
cabinet
Cabinet or The Cabinet may refer to:
Furniture
* Cabinetry, a box-shaped piece of furniture with doors and/or drawers
* Display cabinet, a piece of furniture with one or more transparent glass sheets or transparent polycarbonate sheets
* Filing ...
as a
minister without portfolio
A minister without portfolio is either a government minister with no specific responsibilities or a minister who does not head a particular ministry. The sinecure is particularly common in countries ruled by coalition governments and a cabinet ...
, but effectively ran the
Department of the Treasury in Menzies' stead. He was initially given the title "Minister without portfolio assisting the Treasurer", and then in November 1939 was named Acting Treasurer.
He was a member of two subcommittees within cabinet – the Economic Cabinet and
War Cabinet
A war cabinet is a committee formed by a government in a time of war to efficiently and effectively conduct that war. It is usually a subset of the full executive cabinet of ministers, although it is quite common for a war cabinet to have senio ...
– and in January 1940 was additionally made
Vice-President of the Executive Council.
[ Spender was officially appointed Treasurer a few months later, in March 1940. He would later recall in his memoirs that he had been "in full charge of Treasury throughout".][
Spender's primary objective as Treasurer was to accelerate the country's transition to a war economy. Australian troops were already fighting in Europe and the Middle East, and although the Pacific War would not begin until December 1941 it was believed by many that the appeasement of Japan had failed and fighting closer to home was inevitable. Spender was concerned that permanent officials at Treasury, including departmental secretary Stuart McFarlane, were not taking the situation seriously enough.][ He began to rely more on the advice of temporary staff and independent economists like ]Lyndhurst Giblin
Lyndhurst Falkiner Giblin, (29 November 1872 – 1 March 1951) was an Australian statistician and economist. He was an unsuccessful gold prospector, played rugby union for England, and fought in the First World War.
Biography
Giblin was th ...
.[Hawkins (2011), p. 152.] According to political historian John Hawkins, Spender was "the most academically qualified economist among pre-WWII treasurers". He promoted interventionist Keynesian
Keynesian economics ( ; sometimes Keynesianism, named after British economist John Maynard Keynes) are the various macroeconomic theories and models of how aggregate demand (total spending in the economy) strongly influences economic output ...
policies, such as borrowing money and raising taxes to spend on defence-related projects and thereby reduce unemployment.[ He also wished to control private investing so that capital would be available to the government for defence purposes, introducing requirements for private banks to place a set proportion of deposits with the ]Commonwealth Bank
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), or CommBank, is an Australian multinational bank with businesses across New Zealand, Asia, the United States and the United Kingdom. It provides a variety of financial services including retail, b ...
(which at the time was Australia's central bank
A central bank, reserve bank, or monetary authority is an institution that manages the currency and monetary policy of a country or monetary union,
and oversees their commercial banking system. In contrast to a commercial bank, a centra ...
).[Hawkins (2011), p. 153.]
Later activities
After the 1940 federal election, Arthur Fadden
Sir Arthur William Fadden, (13 April 189421 April 1973) was an Australian politician who served as the 13th prime minister of Australia from 29 August to 7 October 1941. He was the leader of the Country Party from 1940 to 1958 and also served ...
was elected leader of the Country Party, the UAP's coalition partner, and demanded the position of Treasurer. Spender was instead made Minister for the Army, which he would hold until the government's defeat on a confidence motion in October 1941.[ Anticipating Japan's entry into the war, he pressed for Australian troops to be moved from the Middle Eastern theatre closer to home. He "invited Australian generals to communicate directly with him and challenged British reassurances about the defences of Singapore".][
Menzies resigned as UAP leader in October 1941, and Spender was an unsuccessful candidate for the leadership. He was eliminated on the first ballot, with ]Billy Hughes
William Morris Hughes (25 September 1862 – 28 October 1952) was an Australian politician who served as the seventh prime minister of Australia, in office from 1915 to 1923. He is best known for leading the country Military history of Austra ...
subsequently defeating Allan McDonald by a narrow margin. Spender was also a candidate for the UAP leadership in 1943, when Hughes resigned. He was again eliminated on the first ballot, polling only a handful of votes.[ In February 1944, the UAP voted to withdraw its members from the Advisory War Council. Spender refused to resign from the council, and was expelled from the UAP as a result on 23 February 1944. The party reportedly voted 21 to 5 in favour of an expulsion motion moved by Robert Menzies – who had been largely responsible for the creation of the council as a nonpartisan body. John Curtin subsequently sent Spender a letter thanking him for staying on. Billy Hughes was expelled in similar circumstances two months later.
Spender sat as an independent after being expelled from the UAP. He was approached to join the Liberal Democratic Party, a small UAP breakaway, but declined. In May 1945, Spender became a financial member of the ]Mosman
Mosman is a suburb on the Lower North Shore region of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Mosman is located 8 kilometres north-east of the Sydney central business district and is the administrative centre for the local gov ...
branch of the Liberal Party of Australia
The Liberal Party of Australia is a centre-right political party in Australia, one of the two major parties in Australian politics, along with the centre-left Australian Labor Party. It was founded in 1944 as the successor to the United Aus ...
. However, he was not admitted to the parliamentary Liberal Party until 13 September 1945, when the Advisory War Council was abolished. Hughes was also re-admitted at that point.
Post-war politics
Upon Menzies' return to power in 1949, Spender was made Minister for External Affairs In many countries, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is the government department responsible for the state's diplomacy, bilateral, and multilateral relations affairs as well as for providing support for a country's citizens who are abroad. The entit ...
(19 December 194926 April 1951) and Minister for External Territories. Spender's greatest influence on Australian politics occurred during this period. He led Australian delegations to the British Commonwealth
The Commonwealth of Nations, simply referred to as the Commonwealth, is a political association of 56 member states, the vast majority of which are former territories of the British Empire. The chief institutions of the organisation are the C ...
Conference in Colombo
Colombo ( ; si, කොළඹ, translit=Koḷam̆ba, ; ta, கொழும்பு, translit=Koḻumpu, ) is the executive and judicial capital and largest city of Sri Lanka by population. According to the Brookings Institution, Colombo me ...
, Ceylon
Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...
and to the Fifth Session of the United Nations General Assembly
The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA or GA; french: link=no, Assemblée générale, AG) is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations (UN), serving as the main deliberative, policymaking, and representative organ of the UN. Cur ...
(of which he was the vice-president).
At the conference in Colombo, Spender was instrumental in the development of the Colombo Plan
The Colombo Plan is a regional intergovernmental organization that began operations on 1 July 1951. The organization was conceived at an international conference, The Commonwealth Conference on Foreign Affairs held in Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri L ...
(which had originally been known as the Spender Plan). He also played a large part in the signing of the ANZUS Pact
The Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty (ANZUS or ANZUS Treaty) is a 1951 non-binding collective security agreement between Australia and New Zealand and, separately, Australia and the United States, to co-operate on military ...
and the Treaty of San Francisco
The , also called the , re-established peaceful relations between Japan and the Allied Powers on behalf of the United Nations by ending the legal state of war and providing for redress for hostile actions up to and including World War II. It w ...
(Japanese Peace Treaty; 1951).
Spender expressed more desire to secure alliances with 'great powers' than contribute to collective security, stating that international organisations like the UN may "contain those who are at work to disrupt the order we believe in". In this sense Spender was more akin to the realist tradition of Australian foreign politics linked to former Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies.[Gyngell, A. and Wesley, M. 2007, Making Australian Foreign Policy (Second Edition), Cambridge University press, Melbourne, p. 11]
Diplomatic and judicial posts
On leaving politics, Spender was appointed Australia's Ambassador to the United States
The following table lists ambassador
An ambassador is an official envoy, especially a high-ranking diplomat who represents a state and is usually accredited to another sovereign state or to an international organization as the resident repre ...
(1951–58). He was the first Australian appointed to the International Court of Justice
The International Court of Justice (ICJ; french: Cour internationale de justice, links=no; ), sometimes known as the World Court, is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations (UN). It settles disputes between states in accordanc ...
in The Hague
The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a list of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's ad ...
(1958–1964) and was the Court's President 1964–67. Spender died in May 1985, aged 87.
Marriages and family
Spender married Jean Maud Henderson on 6 April 1925 at St Mary Magdalene Church of England, Coraki, New South Wales
Coraki is a small town that sits on the confluence of the Richmond and Wilson Rivers in northern New South Wales, Australia in Richmond Valley Shire. At the 2016 census, Coraki had a population of 1,277 people. Material was copied from this ...
. She became a crime-fiction writer and they had two sons. One son, John Spender, was also a politician and diplomat who married Australian fashion designed Carla Zampatti
Carla Maria Zampatti , (19 May 1942 – 3 April 2021) was an Italian-born Australian fashion designer and businesswoman, and executive chair of the fashion label Carla Zampatti Limited.
Background
Born in Lovero, Italy in 1942, Zampatti se ...
. Jean Spender died in 1970 and on 4 October 1975 at St Mark's Church of England, Darling Point, he married Averil Watkins Trenerry, née McLeod. The marriage was short-lived and they divorced soon after. He married Eileen Esdaile, née Congreve, in Honolulu, Hawaii
Honolulu (; ) is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, which is in the Pacific Ocean. It is an unincorporated county seat of the consolidated City and County of Honolulu, situated along the southeast coast of the islan ...
in 1983.
His granddaughter, Allegra Spender
Allegra Spender is an Australian politician and businesswoman who is the member of parliament for Wentworth since 2022. She is the third generation of her family to sit in federal parliament, after her grandfather Percy and father John. One ...
is also a member of parliament for Wentworth.
Honours
Spender was knighted in 1952 as a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations,
and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...
. In 1957, he was further created a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order. He was conferred the Grande Ufficiale Order of Merit by the Republic of Italy in 1976. He also received ten honorary doctorates. However, a personal rift between himself and Menzies prevented him from receiving the honour which he most desired, appointment to the Privy Council.
References
Further reading
*
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Spender, Percy
1897 births
1985 deaths
Australian Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire
Australian Knights Commander of the Royal Victorian Order
Australian politicians awarded knighthoods
Australian ministers for Foreign Affairs
Knights of the Order of St John
Australian King's Counsel
20th-century King's Counsel
Members of the Australian House of Representatives for Warringah
Members of the Australian House of Representatives
Members of the Cabinet of Australia
Treasurers of Australia
Ambassadors of Australia to the United States
Independent members of the Parliament of Australia
Liberal Party of Australia members of the Parliament of Australia
United Australia Party members of the Parliament of Australia
People educated at Fort Street High School
Presidents of the International Court of Justice
Articles containing video clips
20th-century Australian politicians
Australian judges of United Nations courts and tribunals