Bob Santamaria is a key figure in the Menzies era. Despite being little known until the mid 1950s, Santamaria’s role as the driving force behind ‘the Movement’ helped to thwart communist influence in the Australian trade unions and precipitate the great Labor split. Though he became a highly visible public commentator in his later years, the man himself remains something of a mystery, having provided contradictory autobiographies and propounding eccentric political ideas. While Santamaria proudly boasted that he never voted Liberal, in Menzies’s retirement, the two Bob’s would often share a drink and a warm chat in Menzies’s Malvern home.

In this week’s episode of the Afternoon Light podcast, Robert Menzies Institute CEO Georgina Downer talks to Gerard Henderson, author of two books on B.A. Santamaria, a central figure behind the 1950s Labor split.