AUSTRALIANA Politics
- xvi, 382 p. : ports. ; 22 cm. Revised Edition #111024
- Santamaria, B. A. (Bartholomew Augustine), 1915-1998
- Politicians — Australia — Biography
- Santamaria was Australia’s most effective and influential conservative commentator for more than two decades. A brilliant but divisive polemicist, journalist, television and radio commentator, he was reviled by his political opponents and idolised by his supporters. In 1936 he drove the creation of the Catholic Worker newspaper. In 1941 he established the Catholic Social Studies Movement which in 1957 became the National Civic Council. He was a major factor behind the great ALP split which kept Labor out of federal office for 23 years. His articulate and intense polemics on his Point of View TV program enraged or reassured viewers across Australia.