Arthur Fadden

Biography

Arthur William Fadden was born on 13 April 1894 at Ingham, Queensland, and grew up at Walkerston near Mackay, the son of a police officer. He left school at about 15 and worked as a cane cutter and as an office boy before becoming assistant town clerk and then town clerk of Mackay. He qualified as an accountant and established a practice, later based in Townsville and Brisbane, and served as an alderman on the Townsville City Council.

Fadden represented Kennedy in the Queensland Legislative Assembly from 1932 to 1935 before entering federal Parliament for the Country Party as the member for Darling Downs in 1936; he later moved to the new seat of McPherson in 1949. In 1940 he was chosen as acting leader of the Country Party as a compromise during a period of internal division, and was confirmed as leader in 1941. As Treasurer in the Menzies Government from 1940, he was closely involved in wartime finance.

When Robert Menzies resigned in August 1941, the coalition parties chose Fadden as their leader, and he was sworn in as Prime Minister on 29 August 1941. His government depended on the support of two independent members, who voted with Labor to defeat his budget in early October. Fadden resigned and John Curtin became Prime Minister on 7 October 1941, ending a term Fadden himself described as forty days and forty nights. He then led the Opposition until the Coalition's heavy defeat at the 1943 election, after which Menzies resumed the role.

Fadden became Treasurer and deputy prime minister in the Menzies Government in 1949 and held these posts until he retired from Parliament in 1958. His 1951 budget, framed to curb inflation driven by the Korean War wool boom, was widely criticised as a 'horror budget'. He was knighted in 1951. Sir Arthur Fadden died in Brisbane on 21 April 1973.