Editing Archie Cameron (section)

===Leader of the Country Party===
[[File:Archie Cameron 1940.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Cameron as Country Party leader]]
Cameron was [[1939 Country Party of Australia leadership election|elected leader]] of the Country Party on 13 September 1939, following the resignation of Earle Page. He defeated [[John McEwen]] by seven votes to five, with two abstentions. According to McEwen, the result was skewed by the absence of four MPs who had refused to sit with the Country Party with Page as leader – a motion to re-admit them was defeated by seven votes to six. McEwen claimed in his memoirs that the dissident MPs were "all strong supporters of mine and, had they been allowed to vote, I would have won the election". They were all re-admitted to the party a few months later.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://www.page.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/John_McEwen_His_Story_-_John_McEwen.pdf|author=John McEwen|author-link=John McEwen|title=John McEwen: His Story|publisher=Page Research Centre|year=1982}}</ref>

In March 1940, Cameron took the Country Party back into the coalition government under Menzies, becoming the ''de facto'' [[Deputy Prime Minister of Australia|deputy prime minister]] as well as [[Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (Australia)|Minister for Commerce]] and [[Minister for Defence (Australia)|Minister for the Navy]]. The Country Party lost three seats to Labor [[1940 Australian federal election|1940 election]], costing the Coalition its majority. Country Party MPs tired of Cameron's domineering style, and removed him as leader.  [[Arthur Fadden]] was chosen as interim leader and after Page and McEwen deadlocked on three ballots. Cameron then immediately resigned from the ministry, and from the Country Party: he joined Menzies's party, the [[United Australia Party]]. He rejoined the Army and spent the rest of the war on active service in the Directorate of Military Intelligence at Army Headquarters, Melbourne, where he did useful work on the Japanese order of battle.<ref name=adb/>  While he was in the service, he faced what would be his only really close electoral contest.  At the [[1943 Australian federal election|1943 election]], trade unionist [[Harry Krantz]] slashed Cameron's majority from a comfortably safe 15.9 percent to an extremely marginal 1.7 percent.  Cameron was left as the only non-Labor MP from South Australia, and the only non-Labor member outside the eastern states (the member for [[Division of Northern Territory|Northern Territory]],  [[Adair Blain]], was an independent, but did not have full voting rights).

During World War II, Cameron was a strong supporter of mass internment of enemy aliens. In November 1940, shortly after his resignation from the ministry, the [[Australian War Cabinet]] decided to allow interned aliens the right to appeal their internment to a tribunal. While remaining a government backbencher, Cameron unsuccessfully moved for the disallowance of the relevant regulation by the House of Representatives and in April 1941 moved a [[no-confidence motion]] in the army minister [[Percy Spender]] for his handling of internment.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://italianprisonersofwar.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/behind-the-barbed-wire.pdf|title=Behind Barbed Wire: Internment in Australia During World War II|first=Margaret|last=Bevege|publisher=University of Queensland Press|year=1993|isbn=0702224928|page=110}}</ref> Cameron argued that enemy aliens "enjoy no rights whatever" during war-time and were a "danger to the nation" unless proven otherwise, with the appeals tribunals placing the government "in the hopelessly ridiculous position of appearing before a tribunal to defend its own actions".{{sfn|Bevege|1993|pp=110-111}} His motion was not put to a vote as no other MP was willing to second it, but in response Spender defended his actions and stated Cameron's intent was to "indulge his peculiar megalomania in order to get some notoriety out of his action".{{sfn|Bevege|1993|pp=111-112}}