among Australian labour radicals. In 1922 Anstey became Assistant Leader of the ALP in the House, a post he held until 1926. Scullin Government Following Labor's win at the 1929 election, Anstey became Minister for Health and Minister for Repatriation in the government of Prime Minister James Scullin. But Scullin's government soon fell victim to the Great Depression. Anstey supported the Premier of New South Wales, Jack Lang, who advocated repudiating Australia's debts to British bondholders (see debt moratorium) and using the funds to create employment in order to increase production. This may be compared to Franklin D. Roosevelt's "New Deal." In March 1931 Anstey was dumped from the Ministry by the Labor Caucus for supporting the "Lang Plan". Despite this, Anstey did not follow Lang out of the Labor Party. Demoralized and cynical, he stayed on the backbench until his retirement at the 1934 election, when he and his wife moved to Sydney. After his wife's death he moved back to Melbourne, where he died of cancer. Ironically, he had devoted his last years to financial speculation and had become a wealthy man. Legacy Anstey "came to personify Labor's left populist tradition". He is principally remembered as the mentor of John Curtin, on whom he had a great influence in Curtin's early years. Like Curtin, he was a heavy drinker. He wrote extensive unpublished memoirs, but burned them shortly before his death. It is often rumoured that he burned them in a drunken rage, but this is unsubstantiated. Frank Hardy wrote in his book The Hard Way that Frank Anstey received a visit from John Wren (immortalised as "John West" in Hardy's other book Power Without Glory), who asked Anstey to eradicate any reference to him in Anstey's memoirs, to prevent them from becoming an exposé of Wren's gambling empire. Anstey railway station in Melbourne was named in Anstey's honour. References Further reading Australian Labor Party members of the Parliament of Australia Members of the Cabinet of Australia 1865 births 1940 deaths Australian conspiracy theorists Australian trade unionists Members of the Victorian Legislative Assembly Members of the Australian House of Representatives for Bourke Members of the Australian House of Representatives Australian Labor Party members of the Parliament of Victoria 20th-century Australian politicians Antisemitism in Australia Left-wing antisemitism Economic antisemitism English emigrants to Australia Australian pacifists Australian Ministers for Health