• The newly formed Liberal Party improves on the position of its predecessor but loses the election. Menzies comes close to retiring from politics but resolves to contest the next election.

"Few knew that parliamentary aplomb and public pursuit of a favourite sport [cricket] at this time masked great personal uncertainty. Defeat in the election, after all his hard work and optimism, had bitten deeply into Menzies' being, provoking a mood of self-questioning, even of doubt about the worthwhileness of the political life to which he had so long dedicated himself."
A W Martin, Robert Menzies: A Life. Vol 1 1844-1978, 1999 p 61.

• Mrs Kate Menzies, Robert's mother, dies at the age of 80, one year after her husband.

• Post-war resettlement and immigration program begins.
• Australian meat, cheese, butter and wheat are sent to Britain to relieve food shortages.
• Metal trades strike for increase margins began as a lockout by a few Melbourne employers after local industrial action. A wage increase was granted and a further review of the award undertaken. AEU policy rejected the arbitration system. The strike lasted until May 8 1947.
  The Macquarie Book of Events, 1983 p 265.
• Australian billiards master, Walter Lindrum, holds 57 world records during his career, including a break of 4137.
• Government sets up Trans Australia Airlines (TAA).
• The Hills Hoist rotary clothes line is invented by Lancelot Leonard Hill, encouraged by his wife Cynthia who complained that her washing kept snagging on a lemon tree.
• The ABC broadcasts Federal Parliament for the first time.
• Rationing of clothing, tea, sugar, butter and meat continues.

• First session of the new United Nations General Assembly is held.
• Nazi war criminals are sentenced to execution or imprisonment following the Nuremberg war trials and judgements.
• Civil War in Indochina led by Ho Chi Minh against the French, lasts to 1954. Communist Viet Minh attack French forces in Vietnam.
• Italy becomes a republic and later grants women the vote.