December 11, 2004

Ranking 'em

I threw down the gauntlet at CurrencyLad's place, and dared him to rank Australia's PMs.

Well, he did it, so now I better do it myself.

A few things first: For now, I've omitted the caretakers (Page, Fadden, Forde, and McEwen) because I don't think you can rank someone who was there for such a short amount of time. (9 days in Forde's case).

Also, to lessen my own ideology skewing the results, I've split them up, and rather than one list, I've got two: Labor PMs and Conservative PMs. Billy Hughes, who was both, has been included in the "conservative" list, as he spent more time as a PM from the anti-Labor forces than he did as a Labor one.

Anyway...

ALP Prime Ministers
  1. John Curtin
  2. Robert Hawke
  3. John Christian Watson
  4. Andrew Fisher
  5. Paul Keating
  6. James Scullin
  7. Ben Chifley
  8. Gough Whitlam
 Conservative Prime Ministers
  1. Robert Menzies
  2. Alfred Deakin
  3. John Howard
  4. Joseph Lyons
  5. William Hughes
  6. John Gorton
  7. Harold Holt
  8. Edmund Barton
  9. Malcolm Fraser
  10. Joseph Cook
  11. Stanley Bruce
  12. George Reid
  13. William McMahon

Some of the bottom ones were a bit hard to rank. (For example, I think I'm being a bit unfair to McMahon who was serving at the tail end of 23 year goverment and thus really couldn't have been given a worse situation to start his "nightmare" run. George Reid, too, is underappreciated today even though his philosophy [Free Trade] eventually won against the Protectionist and Socialist alternatives.

On the Labor side, I went for sheer incompetence (Whitlam) over overt Socalism (Chifley).

By the way, for the conspiracy minded, ten Australian Prime Ministers (Barton, Reid, Cook, Bruce, Page, Menzies, Fadden, McEwen, Gorton and McMahon) have been Freemasons.

Wooh, spooky!

EDIT: Whoops forgot Harold "Really a chinese spy" Holt

Posted by Quentin George at December 11, 2004 05:39 PM
Comments

The freemasons, were they all Conservatives? All the names I recognise are.

Posted by: TimT at December 11, 2004 08:10 PM

Pretty bloody good compilation Quentin. Better organised than mine and splitting the party leaders was a good idea.

Ten PMs have been goat-riders, eh? Pity the poor beastie that had to carry Reid.


Posted by: C.L. at December 11, 2004 08:28 PM

The freemasons, were they all Conservatives? All the names I recognise are.

Yep. Menzies, Gorton, McMahon - Liberal Party

Fadden, Page, McEwen - Country/National Party

Cook, Bruce - Liberal/Nationalist Party

Reid - Free Trade Party

Barton - Protectionist

No ALPs

Posted by: Aidan at December 12, 2004 06:15 AM