CEDA’s founder, Sir Douglas Copland, stands as one of Australia's most remarkable public figures of the past 100 years. He led the creation of the famous Premiers’ Plan - the document, admired by John Maynard Keynes among others, that set Australia's economic management during the Great Depression. He was one of the founders of economics as a university discipline in Australia, setting up two Australian university economics faculties. He served several Australian governments, the United Nations and the world's peak labour organisation, and maintained a constant interest in business issues. One leading businessman dubbed him the "Keynes of the Commonwealth".
It was Copland's ambition for Australia which led him to found CEDA. He had previously shown his faith in an independent Australia in the 1930s, urging the Australian pound be separated from the British sterling. In the 1950s, he famously voiced the fear that Australia was "a milk bar economy" - an economy set on consumption at the expense of capital goods and productive inputs. CEDA began as his attempt to set out a different economic future.
Both academic and practical man
Born in New Zealand in 1894, the young Douglas Copland earned a string of degrees in New Zealand and Melbourne. From 1917 to 1920 he lectured in history and economics at the University of Tasmania; he then became professor of economics there until 1934. It was during this period that he oversaw the creation of the Premiers' Plan.
The plan was an ambitious attempt to manage through the Depression. It centred on devaluation of the currency, liberal monetary policy, the pegging of wages and the cutting of public-sector wages, and a balanced federal budget.
Controversial from the start, the Premiers' Plan was criticised by some as overly deflationary. But University of Ballarat economist Dr Alex Millmow, in a detailed paper on Copland, notes that "Keynes reported that he had 'considerable sympathy with the line' Copland was taking." Its central aim was classically Keynsian: to restore business confidence.
The Scullin government adopted the Plan in 1931, and it made Copland a household name. That clearly suited him. As Dr Millmow notes:
"Douglas Copland stirred emotions in people; you either liked him or you didn't. The one thing for sure was that you could not ignore him."
In 1934, Copland became Sidney Myer professor of commerce and dean of the faculty of commerce at the University of Melbourne till 1944. From 1938 till 1945 he chaired the State Economic Committee for Victoria. At the same time he was appointed Commonwealth Prices Commissioner from 1939 to 1945. He held the chair of economics at Melbourne from 1944 to 1945, before becoming Australian Minister to China.
In 1948 he became the founding vice-chancellor of the Australian National University, establishing its academic and administrative structures, appointing its first academic and administrative staff, and planning the physical building of the University.
He was also editor-in-chief of Economic Record, the journal of the Economic Society of Australia and New Zealand, for 20 years. In 1961, he became the first Director-General of the International Institute for Labour Studies, a research body sponsored by the International Labour Organisation.
On his return to Australia in 1962, Sir Douglas Copland remained active in CEDA until ill-health forced his retirement in 1967. He died in 1971.
Alex Millmow's paper D.B. Copland and the Aftershocks of the Premiers' Plan 1931-1939 is available for download. CEDA thanks Dr Millmow for making the paper available.