Gough Whitlam’s Legacy – What worked; What Didn’t

Issue 24 | Wednesday 11 December

The Whitlam Governments – from December 1972 to November 1975 – led a reform revolution in many areas, from education and health to the environment and foreign policy. But alongside the great achievements were great failures and, ultimately, great tragedy when the government was dismissed. On Wednesday 11 December, The Sydney Institute brought together four of the contributors to the recently released The Whitlam Legacy to discuss the impact of Gough Whitlam’s time in power. Troy Bramston, a columnist with The Australian and contributing editor of The Whitlam Legacy, joined former Labor minister Susan Ryan AO, The Sydney Institute’s Gerard Henderson and Deloitte Access Economics Director and John O’Mahony, former economics advisor to Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, in this review of the Whitlam years.

 

THE WHITLAM GOVERNMENT: A VIEW FROM THE OPPOSITION 

GERARD HENDERSON

 

The lesson of the Whitlam Legacy is that when Labor misunderstands the lesson of the Whitlam Legacy – Labor fails.

In January 1976 I commenced employment as private secretary to Kevin Newman – then the Launceston based Minister for Repatriation in Malcolm Fraser’s government. A decade ago he was best remembered as the husband of Jocelyn Newman, the Cabinet minister in the Howard government.  Now he is best remembered as the father of Queensland premier Campbell Newman. When Parliament commenced in 1976, it soon became evident to me that the Australian Labor Party had a Whitlam problem.  Gough Whitlam had led Labor to triumphant victory in December 1972 and to a dreadful defeat three years later. Labor was quick to remember the former but slow to acknowledge the reality of the latter.

There was a myth around of the “we were robbed” genre.  Many Labor supporters believed that Sir John Kerr’s dismissal of the Whitlam government on 11 November 1975 was illegitimate and that, in time, the electorate would come to recognise this essential truth.  It didn’t – and Gough Whitlam led Labor to another dreadful defeat in December 1977.  Labor essentially ran in 1976 and 1977 on the issues on which it had been defeated in 1975.  But then, following Bill Hayden’s election as Labor leader, the Opposition began to act like an Opposition.  I left Kevin Newman’s employment in January 1980 when he was Minister for Productivity.  The Fraser government lost seats at the October 1980 election and was in decline.  Bob Hawke led Labor to victory in March 1983 – but Bill Hayden might have done likewise if given the chance by the Caucus.

In the early 1980s, it became evident that the likes of Bill Hayden, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and Peter Walsh – among others – were much influenced by the Whitlam Legacy – albeit in a negative sense.  They were determined to prove that – unlike Whitlam Labor – the ALP could be trusted to run an efficient, responsible, competent and reformist government.  And so it came to pass under the prime ministerships of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating from March 1983 to March 1996.

Labor under Hawke and Keating was a political generation away from Labor under Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.  Unlike their prime ministerial predecessors, Rudd and Gillard had come to praise Whitlam – not to bury him. For example, both declared that without the Whitlam government’s decision to introduce free tertiary education for all they would not have been able to afford to attend university. This overlooks the fact that, as bright and successful secondary students, both would have won a Commonwealth Scholarship.   Under this scheme, which was introduced by Robert Menzies’ government in 1951, scholarship holders were entitled to free education plus a generous means-tested living allowance.  Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard also never acknowledged that Whitlam’s highly expensive free university places-for-all largesse was abandoned – not by the Fraser government but by the Hawke/Keating government.

I was pleased to receive Troy Bramston’s invitation to write the “Whitlam’s Opposition” chapter in The Whitlam Legacy. While I did not work for the Opposition during Gough Whitlam’s prime ministership, I was in contact with the Liberal Party MP for Chisholm Tony Staley at this time and I was interviewed – unsuccessfully – by Malcolm Fraser for a senior adviser position shortly after he became Liberal Party leader in March 1975.  Also, I had followed the fortunes of the Coalition closely in its final years of government under the prime ministerships of Harold Holt, John Gorton and William McMahon and into its time on the Opposition benches.

I have set out my analysis of those times in my essay in Troy Bramston’s collection.  Tonight, I thought it appropriate to focus on three instances where intellectual strength prevailed during what became a controversial and contentious time in Australian national politics.

 

Bert Kelly – a not so modest member

Billy Snedden became Opposition leader after the 1972 election narrowly defeating Nigel Bowen. The able Malcolm Fraser, the irresponsible John Gorton and the over-rated Jim Killen were defeated in the first ballot.  Snedden was a case study of the Liberal Party in decline – a lightweight who did not really believe in anything beyond an exaggerated estimate of his own abilities.

Snedden stumbled his way through 1973 and 1974 – he gave Whitlam the opportunity to call a double dissolution election in May 1974 for which the Liberal Party was not prepared.  Morale was restored when Fraser defeated Snedden for the Liberal Party leadership in March 1975 after an unsuccessful attempt to remove Snedden in November 1974.  It was shortly after that Bert Kelly the Liberal MP for Wakefield – frequently referred to as “The Modest Member” after his Australian Financial Review column of the same name – was given the chance by the Opposition leadership to ask what turned out to be one of the most devastating questions in the history of the House of Representatives.

Addressed to Jim Cairns, the leftist hero who had became Treasurer in 1974, Bert Kelly’s question read as follows:

My question is directed to the Treasurer. Last week the Treasurer told us about his policy of using deficit financing to lower the present level of unemployment.  How is his solution – of burying the unemployment problem under a mountain of money – actually working out?  If printing money is a good solution to the unemployment problem, why not print more of the stuff and get rid of the unemployment problem altogether?

 

The humourless Dr Cairns’ instant response was to declare: “We might do precisely that”.  He went on to embrace the wonders of “government expenditure” as capable of resolving all economic problems.

Following Question Time, Shadow Treasurer Phillip Lynch initiated a matter-of-pubic-importance debate. He declared that “the only factory in this country which has the lights going day and night is the Government Mint”. Cairns held to his position in the debate. But Bill Hayden, the Minister for Social Security, appeared to express his concern by attempting to clarify the Treasurer’s views on the economy.  Not long after a poor performance at the Caucus Economic Committee on 21 April 1975, Whitlam replaced Cairns as Treasurer with Hayden.  Paul Strangio, Cairns’ sympathetic biographer, concluded that his inability to handle the economic debate “best explains Cairns’ sacking as Treasurer”.

Bert Kelly had a varied career in politics – as documented by Hal G.P. Colebatch in The Modest Member: The Life and Times of Bert Kelly (Connor Court 2012). However, the intellectual consistency which he exhibited throughout the Whitlam government cut through with deadly impact just a fortnight after April Fools’ Day 1975. Dr Cairns was the most high profile minister to have his career destroyed at Question Time by a backbencher over an issue of policy.

 

Malcolm Fraser – not quite like he claims to have been

I was one of the few commentators in Australia to recognise – on 1 December 2009 – the threat which the newly elected Liberal Party leader Tony Abbott was to Labor and Kevin Rudd.  I understood that it was politically ruthless and unequivocal Liberal Party leaders who defeated incumbent Labor governments – whether or not they had high personal approval ratings.  Robert Menzies in 1949, Malcolm Fraser in 1975 and John Howard in 1996. And, as it turned out, Tony Abbott in September 2013 – after a near victory in August 2010. Liberal Party leaders like Billy Snedden simply do not have the cut-through to defeat Labor.

I have analysed the award-winning Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs – which is co-authored by Malcolm Fraser and academic Margaret Simons – including in Issue 37 of The Sydney Institute Quarterly (July 2010) and in the Sydney Morning Herald on 1 January 2013. Put simply, Fraser’s political biography is replete with errors of commission and omission – which the co-authors still refuse to acknowledge or address – along with recollections of events which never took place.

Yet Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoir does contain some special insights into the former Liberal Party prime minister.  In a note at the end of his book, Mr Fraser acknowledges that his memory is “notoriously fallible”.  And the co-authors boast that at “literary festivals” these days Mr Fraser is “applauded by the same kinds of people who had once reviled him for his role in the dismissal of Whitlam”. Enough said.

For the younger members of the audience tonight, who might well associate Malcolm Fraser with the sandal-wearing, bicycle-riding, inner-city luvvie-left set invariably found at taxpayer funded literary festivals, it is worth considering the Malcolm Fraser whom I knew around four decades ago.

As I document in my chapter in The Whitlam Legacy, Malcolm Fraser in the 1970s was a ruthless, negative Opposition leader who rolled his leader Billy Snedden in March 1975 and destroyed the Whitlam government eight months later.  It is true that in the first half of the 1970s, Malcolm Fraser was sympathetic to asylum seekers, supportive of immigration and concerned about the plight of indigenous Australians along with the environment.  But it is also true that, at the time, Mr Fraser was a strong supporter of the Australian-American Alliance who was deeply anti-communist, advocated Israel’s right to exist within secure borders and spoke out against terrorism. A Cold War warrior, in the parlance of the time, no less.  Not the kind world-view inclined to initiate standing ovations at the literary festival equivalents of the day.

And then there is China.  In April 1971 Fraser wrote to The Age suggesting that there were “secret arrangements between the Chinese government and Mr Whitlam”. In the same letter, he expressed strong support for the  ANZUS and NATO alliances.  In August 1971, Fraser described  Whitlam as “a disgrace to Australia” and “clearly the Chinese candidate” for the 1972 election. Malcolm Fraser’s continuing political ruthlessness was evident in 1975 when he prevailed in blocking supply and ensuring the dismissal of the Whitlam government well before the election due around May 1977.  Malcolm Fraser for a time in the 1970s was one of Australia’s most tough-minded political leaders.

 

Sir John Kerr – not the “coup” type

I got to know Sir John Kerr when I commenced writing a column for The Australian in 1987.  I felt that the former Governor-General had been vilified for making a decision in November 1975 to resolve a constitutional crisis – which had been initiated by Malcolm Fraser’s determination to block supply and by Gough Whitlam’s determination to govern without supply.  Especially since, as David Smith has comprehensively documented in his book Head of State, in 1967 and again in 1970 Labor – under Whitlam’s leadership – sought to block supply and force the Coalition to an election.  Fraser merely achieved in 1975 what Whitlam had failed to achieve in 1967 and 1970.

In The Weekend Australian on 7-8 November 1987 and 14-15 November 1987, following an interview with John Kerr, I revealed details of his thinking at the time of the Dismissal.  Later, as a columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald on 8 January 1984, I was the first to confirm the involvement of High Court Justice Sir Anthony Mason in the events leading up to the Dismissal.  A summary of my position at the time is contained in Menzies Child: The Liberal Party of Australia.

I am very much an admirer of Troy Bramston’s work and his good judgment.  After all, he chose to become a member of The Sydney Institute around two decades ago. Troy is one of the few commentators of his generation who has an obsessive focus on detail and historical accuracy.  Like me, he was disturbed by the historical inaccuracies in the recent ABC documentary Whitlam: The Power and the Passion. Phil Craig, who has the title of “ABC Head of Factual”, defended the documentary since it told what he termed the “lyrical” truth. Really.

There is no doubt as to the agreement itself – which is unexceptionable in so far as a caretaker government is concerned.  The only issue turns on the details of the Kerr/Fraser conversation.  Kerr always maintained that it occurred at Government House when Fraser was commissioned after Whitlam’s sacking.  Fraser claims that he was told of Kerr’s intention on the phone before Whitlam’s sacking.  The latter view, if correct, might be seen as giving some slight resemblance to the “coup” interpretation of the events of 11 November 1975.

Kerr’s position has particular credibility since there is a contemporaneous document which supports his contention.  Hand-written on Sunday 16 November 1975, part of it reads as follows:

I decided on Sunday [9 November 1975] that if the leaders came to no agreement on Tuesday I would terminate Mr Whitlam’s commission immediately provided that he assured me that his position was the same and that he intended to govern without Supply. He told me he did.  This happened just before the [11 November 1975] Remembrance Day ceremony.  He said he would carry on and have a half-Senate election.

I had expected this to happen because both sides had made their position clear publicly before the meeting. I rang Mr Fraser to find out whether it was true that they [Whitlam and Fraser] had got nowhere and whether it was the Opposition intention to refuse Supply. His answer to both questions was “yes”.

This was Kerr’s only record of the conversation which took place between him and Fraser in the morning of 11 November 1975. Needless to say, Kerr’s contemporaneous note is simply not referred to by Malcolm Fraser and Margaret Simons in Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs.  How convenient. To accept Fraser’s account, Kerr’s contemporaneous record has to be discounted.  Moreover, there are other problems with the former prime minister’s current story.

 

These are the facts:

 

. Malcolm Fraser’s note dated 11 November 1975, which is reproduced in his book, does not specifically refer to a phone conversation – unlike Kerr’s contemporaneous note.

. Fraser’s note contains two vastly different writing styles – the top half is hurried, the bottom part is considered.  Moreover, the notation “9.55 am 1975 JM Fraser” is dramatically darker and neater than the note about the caretaker government agreement.  I suspect that the top of the document is a contemporaneous note made by Fraser – and the date and time were added later.

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I believe that Fraser may have forgotten – due to his “notoriously infallible” memory – when he dated the document and that, in fact, the content of the note reflects Fraser’s hand-written record of his discussion at Government House following Whitlam’s dismissal.  It is quite possible that the note was written on a piece of paper which Fraser took with him when he drove to Yarralumla and filed in his office on his return from Government House. Pending scientific testing of the document, there is nothing else which can be said at this stage.  Moreover, Kerr’s contemporaneous record of the event – which is dated 16 November 1975 – is contrary to Fraser’s claim which was first made a full decade after the event and reported for the first time in 1987 by Philip Ayers in Malcolm Fraser: A Biography.

.To accept the account in Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs, you have to reject all that Mr Fraser said and wrote before this seemingly recovered memory.  It is a matter of record that, in the aftermath of the Dismissal, Fraser always insisted that he had no advance knowledge of Sir John Kerr’s actions – before he first revealed the conversation to his sympathetic biographer.

In his 1976 book The Whitlam Venture, journalist Alan Reid referred to a conversation he had with Fraser as the Opposition leader was on his way to see the Governor-General on 11 November 1975. Fraser told Reid that he did not know why Kerr wanted to see him but proffered the advice that the Governor-General intended to speak to Whitlam first and then to him. It is unlikely that Fraser would have revealed such information if he already knew that Kerr intended to dismiss Whitlam and that the Governor-General had already discussed the arrangements that would apply to the caretaker government.

After the Dismissal, Reid discussed with the new prime minister their conversation of 11 November 1975. As he wrote in The Whitlam Venture:

I later discussed that conversation with Fraser.  He assured me, quite flatly, that he had no knowledge of Kerr’s intentions when that conversation took place.  Politicians have misled me before and I have no doubt will again.  But if Fraser was misleading me that day his performance ranks with any Sir Laurence Olivier has turned in and merits an Oscar.

. In his book, Philip Ayers claimed that the Kerr/Fraser phone conversation “must have been made between 10.05 and 10.30” – not 9.55 am.  Sir David Smith, Kerr’s official secretary at the time, doubts Fraser’s revised version. And former Liberal MP Bob Ellicott, who was in the room when Fraser received Kerr’s call, told me that the conversation did not take long enough for the Governor-General to set out the detailed requirements for Fraser being appointed as caretaker prime minister.

. These days, Malcolm Fraser insists that Kerr had to obtain his agreement before dismissing Whitlam in order to ensure that the event proceeded smoothly.  This is an unrealistic assumption.  It is a matter of record that Fraser had been intent on securing an early election from at least 16 October 1975, when the Opposition stated its intention of blocking supply.

It is simply unconceivable that, following such a relentless campaign, Fraser could have declined the Governor-General’s offer to commission him as caretaker prime minister.  So Kerr had no reason whatsoever to advise Fraser of his intentions before dismissing Whitlam since he would not have envisaged that such contact was necessary.  If, in November 1975, Fraser had rejected Kerr’s decision to appoint him as caretaker prime minister pending an election, Fraser would have become a figure of ridicule and his political career would have been ruined.

. There is one additional point concerning the “coup” assertion – which has been ramped up somewhat following the latest revelations by Jenny Hocking in Gough Whitlam: His Time: Volume 2 as well as by Troy Bramston/Paul Kelly inThe Whitlam Legacy – concerning Kerr’s discussions with both Chief Justice Garfield Barwick and Justice  Anthony Mason in the lead-up to 11 November 1975. The suggestion has been made that such contact between a Governor-General and members of the judiciary was improper.

However, as Anne Twomey has documented in her article in a 2012 issue of the Public Law Review, prior to 1975 “advice to vice-regal officers from judges can hardly be described as unprecedented, unusual or unconventional”. In relation to the recent detailed revelations concerning Sir Anthony Mason, Professor Twomey wrote:

Looking at Mason’s informal advice to Kerr through post-1975 eyes is unfair. In the context of the time, his [Anthony Mason’s] actions were not inconsistent with those of his predecessors or his colleagues.

The sources quoted in Professor Twomey’s article include the article written by Chief Justice Robert French “The Chief Justice and the Governor-General” in the Melbourne University of Law Review (Volume 33, Number 3, 2009).  Those justices who advised governor-general or governors before 1975 include Sir Samuel Griffith, Sir John Latham, Sir Owen Dixon and Sir Garfield Barwick.

In the lead-up to Remembrance Day, it was widely believed within Labor circles that John Kerr did not have the courage to dismiss the Whitlam government.  As I know from first-hand experience, at the very same time some prominent Liberal Party members regarded Kerr as weak and indecisive.

In the event, Kerr’s intellectual conviction about the reserve powers of the Governor-General, which he had always held, prevailed.  To the time his death, Kerr sought constant re-assurance about the correctness of his actions.  But when it came to the moment when a decision had to be made, Kerr took the decision. As Sir John Kerr said to me long after the event, he believed he had out-martialled Gough Whitlam.

 

Conclusion

 

There has been relatively little controversy in Australian national politics.  Without question, the Whitlam Legacy is one of the big events in domestic politics.  It’s great that Troy Bramston has produced such a fundamental work while Gough Whitlam and some of his comrades and opponents are still with us.

* * * * * 

ONE KERR/FRASER CONVERSATION – TWO INTERPRETATIONS ABOUT TIMING

 

 

This is Malcolm Fraser’s note of the phone conversation which he claimed to have had with Sir John Kerr at 9.55 am on 11 November 1975. It was published for the first time in Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs in 2010. It is reproduced in Troy Bramston (ed) The Whitlam Legacy in 2013 – this copy was sourced from The Malcolm Fraser Collection at the University of Melbourne.

Note the different handwriting styles between the top and bottom of the note – and the much darker part of the note which records the time and date of the conversation.

The references are as follows. 1) Double Dissolution Bills. 2) Caretaker. 3) No policy changes. 4) No Royal Commission. 5) + Supply.  5) [sic] Dissolution Today.