Australia in the Atomic Age: Menzies’s legacy and nuclear’s potential

While this chapter by no means seeks to downplay the suffering of those affected, it takes the view that history can only be judged based on the context in which decisions were originally made. Contemporary narratives that put Menzies at the centre of ‘nuclear colonialism’ in Australia ignore the bipartisan desire to secure nuclear weapons as an ‘ideal deterrent’. With the threat of nuclear war more likely given the Soviet Union’s successful testing of atomic weapons in the same year that Menzies became prime minister, powder-coating Menzies’s legacy with historical revisionist dust ignores the naivety of Australia’s support for appeasement before the war. The failure of appeasement was a hard-won lesson not lost on Menzies. He was determined that Australia would, at the very least, play a part in the development of nuclear technology and develop local skills to ensure Australia was not left behind.