Alan Missen
| Alan Missen | |
|---|---|
| Senator for Victoria | |
|
In office 18 May 1974 – 30 March 1986 |
|
| Succeeded by | Richard Alston |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
22 July 1925 Melbourne, Victoria |
| Died | 30 March 1986 (aged 60) Melbourne |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Political party | Liberal Party of Australia |
| Spouse(s) | Mollie Missen (nee Anchen) |
| Alma mater | University of Melbourne |
| Occupation | Lawyer |
Alan Joseph Missen (22 July 1925 – 30 March 1986) was an Australian politician.
Missen's parents were Clifford Missen, labourer, and Violet (née Bartley). Clifford hailed from Lismore in western Victoria and Violet from Chiltern in northern Victoria. They met in Melbourne where they married in 1920 and settled in the inner eastern Melbourne suburb of Kew. Alan Missen was educated at Kew Primary School, Box Hill High and matriculated from the selective Melbourne High School. He commenced a law degree at the University of Melbourne in 1943 and immediately became active in student politics.
When the Liberal Party of Australia was formed by Robert Menzies in 1944, Missen, who lived in Menzies' electorate of Kooyong, became a founding member of the Liberal Party and the Melbourne University Liberal Club. He commented in later years: "What was formed was not a radical party on the model of the British Liberal Party. The members of Parliament constituting its first MPs were the same men who were United Australia Party members immediately before, and they brought with them their conservative ways of thought." In 1947 he commenced a legal career that was to last for 27 years until his election to Federal Parliament. He established a successful partnership with Roy Schilling and Bill Impey.
Robert Menzies was elected as the first Liberal Prime Minister of Australia in 1949 on a platform that included outlawing the Communist Party of Australia. In 1951 the Menzies Government called a referendum to provide the Commonwealth with the constitutional power to implement its policy. Alan Missen and a small group of other Liberal Party members opposed the referendum proposal. Missen’s opinion piece in The Argus newspaper caused a furore in the Liberal Party. In a scathing critique of the referendum proposal, he poses the following rhetorical question: "Have we so little faith in our ability to defeat Communism in a free encounter that we must employ totalitarian methods against them?" The Liberal Party’s Victorian Division voted to suspend Missen as vice-president of the Young Liberal and Country Movement. The referendum proposal was narrowly defeated, a major setback for the Menzies Government. Missen’s defiant position on the Communist referendum caused him to be overlooked for Liberal preselection for the next two decades. For a more detailed analysis of the Communist Party dissolution debate, see University of Melbourne historical paper.
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