John Curtin

John Joseph Ambrose Curtin was born in Creswick, Victoria, in 1885 to Irish immigrant parents. A socialist activist and union organiser, he campaigned against conscription in the First World War and later edited the Westralian Worker in Perth. He entered federal parliament for Fremantle in 1928 and became Labor leader in 1935. He became prime minister in October 1941, shortly before Japan entered the war. He died in office in July 1945, weeks before the war ended.

Curtin is often ranked among Australia's most respected prime ministers, and admirers credit him with steering the country through its gravest military threat and with shifting its alliance focus to the United States. His government's uniform tax and social benefits underpinned the postwar welfare state. Critics on the left faulted his 1943 extension of conscription for the militia to serve in the South-West Pacific, a reversal of his earlier stance, and conservatives at the time accused Labor of using the war to advance socialism. His support for the White Australia policy is now widely criticised. He is commemorated by Curtin University in Perth, which maintains his papers and a prime ministerial library.