The Australian Prime Ministers Centre supports research into the history, origins and traditions of Australian democracy, with a particular focus on Australian prime ministers. The Centre opened in June 2007 as the first stage in the Museum of Australian Democracy. It includes a library, an exhibition, facts about Australia’s prime ministers and a research program.
‘For this job a man really needs three things, or some of them anyhow; a hide like a rhinoceros, an overpowering ambition, and a mighty good conceit of himself.’
Stanley Melbourne Bruce, Prime Minister 1923-29
Aims and objectives
The Centre aims to raise awareness of Australia’s prime ministers and to provide a national focus for research and scholarship in the field of Australian prime ministerial history. It also works collaboratively with other institutions which hold original prime ministerial records to support and improve access to this material.
The main objectives of the Australian Prime Ministers Centre are to:
- provide an access point for prime ministers’ official and personal papers held in other collecting institutions
- encourage the deposit of personal papers in relevant collecting institutions
- support access to material held by other collecting institutions
- provide a focus for research and scholarship on Australian parliamentary history
- raise awareness of the lives and achievements of former prime ministers.
Image credit
Six prime ministers: When the Advisory War Council met in Canberra in November 1940, among those present were one current prime minister, one former prime minister and four men who would one day become prime minister. A distinguished gathering indeed!
Left to right: (Prime ministers are shown in bold): John Beasley; Norman Makin; Frank Forde (1945); John Curtin (1941–45); Robert Menzies (1939–41; 1949–66); William Morris Hughes (1915–23); Percy Spender; Arthur Fadden (1941); Harold Holt (1966–67).
Advisory War Council, 1940. Courtesy of the State Library of Victoria.