THE USE OF POWER: Treasurer Page Pursues His National Vision

Page took his place in the Bruce–Page Government in February 1923 with characteristic self-assuredness. The press quickly sensed a very singular Commonwealth minister of state. Journalists were bemused by his continuing to practise as a surgeon: just three months after being sworn in as treasurer, Page was reported to have operated on his brother James, then headmaster of a public school near Maitland.¹ Shortly before the 1928 election, he drew nationwide headlines for performing an emergency appendectomy on the Labor Member for Hume (‘Doctor Fights for Life of Political Foe: Canberra Drama’).² Ethel Page also began to make a