In Australia's restricted and provincial interwar society there was considerable anxiety about threats from eccentric political activists and foreign immigrants. Party politics played out between a small number of parties: Free Trade or Protection before 1910 and Labor, conservative or Country Party since 1920. Individuals and groups with unconventional views took up extreme theories in what was essentially a democratic parliamentary system. Many took positions based on ideologies from overseas, such as communism and fascism. Others subscribed to religious views outside the conventional Protestant or Catholic churches. Some looked to foreign alternatives such as Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy. Some who did may even have received moral or monetary support from these sources. If so they became of interest to the rather limited security services maintained by state police special branches or the Commonwealth Investigation Branch. In peacetime conditions no such rebel minorities were declared illegal, even if they were openly committed to the overthrow of existing institutions. Among them were ‘secret armies’ intriguing with conservative leaders (Cathcart 1988; A. Moore 1989) and the more open Australia First movement (Muirden 1968). The best-known reactionary group was the New Guard in the 1930s (Amos 1976).

The New Guard followed on the Old Guard, which was essentially an anti-communist and anti-Labor grouping of businessmen and former military officers from the more fashionable Sydney suburbs. It was opposed to the Labor State government of Jack Lang and worried about a potential communist rising. How this would eventuate, with the leading forces of conservative society mobilized against the tiny Communist Party, was never clear. It assumed trade union support for such a rebellion, which was opposed by the dominant Australian Workers Union. This element of fear and fantasy continued through conservative extremists well into the twenty-first century, when the threat was from Islam and their old opponents were irrelevant.

On the Left both the Old Guard and the New were regarded as fascist, which was not surprising, given the rise of real fascist movements all over Europe and even in England. However, it was all nonsense, leaving a small residue of extremism in some Sydney branches of the conservative party.

The established institutions did not collapse. Despite conservative sympathies neither the police nor the armed forces quit their constitutional duties.