Menzies called a conference of conservative parties and other groups opposed to the ruling Australian Labor Party, which met in Canberra on 13 October 1944 and again in Albury, New South Wales in December 1944. From 1942 onward Menzies had maintained his public profile with his series of "The Forgotten People" radio talks–similar to Franklin D. Roosevelt's "fireside chats" of the 1930s–in which he spoke of the middle class as the "backbone of Australia" but as nevertheless having been "taken for granted" by political parties.