The arguments about the undemocratic role of the Senate and the Governor-General in overthrowing the Labor government elected in 1974 need little further rehearsal, after a week of retrospective takes - most recently by Stephen Loosley in the Australian, and last night on the 7.30 Report - the key protagonists Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser.
It’s almost as if the only way pollies and op/edders can get some cheap attention this morning is to claim that we should all get over it - as Lindsay Tanner does in the Australian and Jim Schembri in The Age (using this hook for the unfunniest humour piece I’ve seen in the papers for quite some time).
But, far from forgetting the Dismissal, we need to place it in its historical and sociological context - to see what this one event (with all of its ramifications) can tell us about the health of our democracy. When you think about it for a bit, it isn’t a pretty story.
Many contemporary participants on the Labor side, notably Paul Keating ascribe the fundamental motive for the Liberals’ actions to the perceived lack of legitimacy accorded to a Labor government - and the consequent willingness of the Tories to tear up constitutional conventions hitherto considered sacrosanct. Whitlam himself pointed to the refusal of key institutional actors - permanent public service mandarins, High Court justices, ASIO, the Coalition States - to treat his government as anything other than a passing aberration. Although little substantive constitutional change resulted from the Dismissal’s aftermath, the desire of the Labor governments from 1983-1996 to bend these institutions to their will - particularly through the politicisation of the public service and the plethora of ministerial advisers - is a lasting legacy of November 11, 1975.
Ironically, John Howard’s government is a child of both legacies.
Acting as if it will be in government forever, the Howard regime is wilfully blind to the implications of a change of government for the massive centralisation of power at the expense of the States and public institutions it has wrought. Just as the Fraser era Liberals saw themselves as born to rule, Howard and his minions seem oblivious to the fact that democracy may yet throw up a federal Labor government - which will inherit the enormous powers Howard has erected against both the states and the Parliament - not to mention power over national security, workplaces, the Universities, corporations, public boards, and the ABC.
The refusal to contemplate the inevitability of eventual defeat in this context is a strange blindness which has clouded the political antennae of a party that can barely imagine not continuing in power.
A more activist and interventionist government is Whitlam’s legacy - oddly mutated by his nemesis - the permanent government mentality of Australia’s Tories.
Secondly, the trashing of the constitutional role of the House of Representatives has overtones today. The astonishing hubris displayed by the Howard government in delimiting, gagging and generally running ramshod over Parliament is reminiscent again of the willingness of the Fraser Liberals to trash Westminster conventions - ironically as a result of gaining a slim majority of the Senate due to a National Party senator from Queensland who sees himself in the Joh mode.
It was in the 1920s and 1930s - a time associated in Europe with a secular crisis of Liberalism and the rise both of mass parties representing labour and of anti-parliamentary fascist movements - that political theorists and commentators first began to decry the decline of the classical ideal of Parliament - as a forum for the representatives of the people to seek truth through debate and hold the executive to account. There’s no coincidence in the perception of Parliaments’ decline and the rise of political movements largely organised outside the parliamentary arena - even in the case of social democratic and labour parties who were essentially supportive of parliamentarism. It’s a sociological fact that Parliament’s classic role was only approached in reality when it was elected on a narrow franchise and populated by an essentially homogenous political class. The elections of the first Labor governments in Australia were greeted with horror by this class and by the press, and Ministerialists and Oppositionists, Free Traders and Protectionists, Liberals and Conservatives sunk their differences to oppose the alien intrusion of the representatives of the organised working class. The history of the last hundred years has demonstrated that the epigones of the Nineteenth Century parliamentary class have been prepared to tear up their own rulebooks and undermine the institutions they allegedly hold sacred in order to deny legitimacy to Labor.
At the same time, a more contemporary lament is the hollowing out of Labor itself. No longer a mass party, or securely attached to a class base, the whitebread politicians of contemporary Labor are in danger of becoming professional politicians who live off politics rather than for politics, to adapt a phrase of Weber’s. Nor are civic participation and an informed and lively press - the other preconditions of Parliamentary democracy - at all healthy.
Just as Labor moved to tighten its hold on the institutions and levers of power in the post-Whitlam era, a post-Howard Labor government may find it difficult to resist the temptation to maintain the centralised apparatus Howard has created, and to treat Parliament as something of an annoyance as he has.
Perhaps - recognising that Gough Whitlam was, maybe above all else, a great Parliamentarian, what we need to take from his legacy and its complex imbrication in the story of class, power and institutions is a new determination to revive Parliamentary democracy itself.
Get over it. Whitlam couldn’t govern. The people decided - as they should - and he got the boot. End of “we wuz robbed” story.
On more important matters, did you check out the ad underneath the cartoon on the Jim Schembri article? V. interesting juxtaposition.
Whitlam was the greatest Australian political leader since WWII. No one else accomplished so much in so little time. A big part of his governance problems related to the Coalitions constant political sabotage of Labor government policies and processes.
Still, he made plenty of mistakes. He deserved to get the flick. But it should have been done properly when his time was up.
The Dismissal helped the Coalition parties but hurt their cause. They achieved office but never really got to exercise much power, apart from the attack on Medibank.
The Dismissal also amplified the anarchistic elements in the Left which gave rise to the DIY movement. The Cultural Left perceived the formal apparatus of government as inherently conservative and in the hands of the powers that be. They refocused social activism away from the ruling state polity and towards reforming civil society. Thus the legacy of Whitlam’s martyrdom helped to inspire the Wets in their long march through the institutions.
Of course, once the ALP returned to power the Wets could then draw on the vast network of social capital that had been created after the (Fraserian) second period in the wilderness. During Keating’s period of office there was a happy convergence of cultural activism through the offices of state polity and forms of civil society.
So Whitlam’s ghost was only truly laid when Howard returned to office to re-wage the Cultural War. Interestingly Howard in office is very much a Whitlamite federal centraliser.
fyodor is right.
Whitlam was hopeless and one of the worst PMs we have had.
75 wouldn’t have happened if Whitlam and the ALP were competent!
Another legacy of the Dismissal is that, whilst it and the events leading up to it revealed serious weaknesses in Australia’s reliance (in the conservative constitutional tradition) on conventions to make up for the gaps in the written Constitution, it is highly unlikely that a bipartisan or multi-partisan consensus will emerge in the forseeable future about how to amend the written Constitution to fill those gaps (i.e. by codifying the powers of the Governor-General/President, clarifying or removing the Senate’s powers to refuse Suppply, clarifying what is meant by “disagreement” between the HoR and the Senate. Basically, any attempt to debate these issues on their constitutional and democratic merits is virtually doomed to be subsumed by the History War about the rightness or otherwise of the actions of key players in 1975. Amongst other things, this means that an Australian republic could be longer in coming than many of us might wish.
The Australian Republic was doomed when Prince William decided to don a uniform.
One of the things that surprised me at the time was how readily, in a formal sense, Whitlam accepted the dismissal. Adrian MacGregor on local radio this morning said that Whitlam’s acceptance (cf Keating’s notion that the GG should have been placed under house arrest) saved democracy.
This raises the question as to how democratic our constitution actually is. I’m not an expert, but I understand it formally gives more power to the GG than the Queen has in Britain. Barwick’s black letter interpretation was that the PM is not elected. Rather he is appointed by the GG and the GG has a head of power to run the show. The constitution in a very real sense was set up to save Australia from too much democracy.
Terry Lane did an interesting interview with Barwick and in 1983, repeated last week together with an interview with Kep Enderby. Well worth a look.
Also this afternoon you can hear a repaet Phillip Adams’ interviews last night with Gough and Malcolm. Also worth a listen. Barwick is formally correct, I suspect, but deeply undemocratic.
Also RN’s Breakfast this morning ran a bit of tape of the background conversations going on around Whitlam’s famous appearance on the steps of parliament. One of the characters present, of course, was Norman Gunston.
Mark,
As far as the “wit” of the Jim Schembri goes, you‚Äôre obviously not very familiar with its uniform tone (and its prolific quantities in The Age). Gay jokes are a particular specialty of his, like this hilarious side-splitter from a few days ago:
“Here are 30 things I have learnt from watching ‘Queer as Folk‚Äô:
- The most erotic thing on earth is the sight of two women kissing
- The most unerotic thing on earth is the sight of two men kissing . . . “*
Jim, a smug, secure-jobbed late boomer (born April 1962) also seems to be a late bloomer. For me, the most cringe-inducing aspect of his article in today‚Äôs Age was that a boy supposedly saw his very first lame, soft-core porn at 13 and a half y.o. And judging by his QAF “joke”, Jim‚Äôs emotional age has only progressed a grand total of two years or so in the intervening three decades.
Not sure how you see Lindsay Tanner‚Äôs Op Ed as a form of “cheap attention” either. I do think that the Western World is a very different place from 11 Nov 2000 — when the Dismissal anniversary was similarly (over-) done like a dinner — and in these circumstances, pulling out the Every Five Years Special Memories Party Box on a business as usual basis seems just crass and dumb.
In any case, Lindsay Tanner’s must be read in the context of its being a tie-in with
Thornton McCamish’s feature article on the same topic: http://www.theage.com.au/news/general/a-dimming-legacy/2005/11/10/1131578175025.html For once, the boomers are getting the side-bar, and the Xers are getting the main event.
* Preview of ‘Queer as Folk‚Äô 07/11/05; The Age “Green Guide” 3 November 2005
Whitlam was also of course a great believer in the federalisation of responsibility in various policy portfolios (e.g. education). The approach that Whitlam took in seeking to federalise responsibility for education was a stark contrast to the way that Howard has pursued the federalisation of industrial relations.
Fyodor, the people’s boot may not have come if Whitlam had governed until 1977 as entitled.
Bit OT, but the Aussie film “The Cars that Ate Paris” is a great take on some of the conservative paranoia rampant in small town Australia at the time.
Couple of November 11 re-posts at my place if anyone’s remotely interested.
It’s worth remembering that the IR legislation passed this week followed the lengthiest parliamentary debate in a decade. Paul Keating signed a freaking security treaty without reference to the People’s House - one half of which he regarded as swill. Nor are guillotines and gags anything new - old Fred Daly and other Labor tacticians have used the same strategies for generations.
Keating also didn’t show up for Question Time - the only example of an Australian Prime Minister absenting himself from democratic scrutiny in that august chamber’s history. Close to a dismiss-able offense in my view.
Should have read: “Paul Keating signed a freaking security treaty without reference to the Paliament - one half of which he regarded as swill.”
Good one, CL. It’s how about time we focused on the REAL issue here: PJK.
Oops, just realised that the Lindsay Tanner article was in a different newspaper (the Oz) from Thornton McCamish‚Äôs (in the Age). It’s more a case of serendipity, then — a boomer‚Äôs backtracking coincidentally outgunned by an Xer‚Äôs fighting words.
Paul Watson - Thankyou. Jim Schembri is one of the main annoyances of Melbourne life.
C.L. - do you fancy yourself in a top hat sacking PJK on behalf of the Queen?
Paul - doesn’t look like I’m missing anything by being unaware of Schembri’s work!
Paul Keating is mentioned as an authority on institutional respect, Fyodor. Always a good idea to actually read the post.
Hopeless, incompetent? So vote em out at an election. The unseemly rush to a Gubernatorial coup was the issue, (based on the outrageous convention-breaching senate blockade a senate itself stacked undemocratically by Bjelke - Petersen) - and a black mark on the history of Australian democracy. I dont know why anyone pretends it was defensible. I note this whole “get over it” vibe doesnt seem to extend to ever admitting the whole process stunk.
Whitlam often says this, but its true: people seem to forget he won in an election in ‘74 as well. As for hopeless and incompetent - jeez, a lot of stuff seems to hang around, either in institutional form (Medibank, Community radio licences, end of White Australia policy, tarriff cuts, native title), or as an deeply influential idea now deposed (Free education) or the right idea in retrospect (exit from Vietnam), the most influential three years government we’ll ever have.
Remember when Keating taunted Hewson in Parliament by running his four fingers over his lips and making that dibble-dibble-dibble sound? He was suggesting the doctor was slightly mad.
Mmm.
I’d have arrested Kerr: Keating.
funny thing is PJK was similar to CL in adopting grouper social values which in its way is no bad thing.
CL listen to the Boyer lectures old son , on the same day Australia beats Uruguay but at 5pm
Whitlam didn’t end the White Australia Policy and he didn’t institute the exit from Vietnam. He massively screwed up PNG and East Timor. Free education could never go on, which is why Labor abolished it. No-fault divorce was a human disaster that governments of all persuasions are now moving away from. There was also the probably criminal Loans Affair, an echo of which was Whitlam Labor’s later attempt to secure a loan from Saddam Hussein. He skedaddled overseas after Tracy, which was utterly contemptuous.
Doesn’t really leave all that much. I’d say Barry Unsworth achieved more.
As Ive explained before CL, the libs under Holt introduced a range of *exceptions* to the racially discriminatory policy (eg Indians getting an education under teh Colombo plan, other small categories related to marriage etc). They are to be applauded for these reforms - good on em, etc. No criticisms from me - it was never going to be abolished overnight.
But, like it or not CL, admit it or not, it was Whitlam who abolished the WAP wholesale.
Agree about East Timor. However, PNGs independence might be celebrated by others (eg, PNGers). And I note you wisely avoid the Medibank reforms, so influentual even a rampant Howard is too scaredy-cat to take it on directly, even now, preferring deceptive “strengthening” campaigns.
Howard hasnt done as much in 10 years.
Gough Whitlam was the greatest PM in Australian post-war history.
He turned the Public Service into a true meritocracy. He gave effect to a race-neutral immigration policy. He greatly improved equity for Australian women. He gave effect to Aboriginal rights. He established universal health service. He massively expanded educational opportunity for middle and lower classes. He embraced true economic rationalism in trade policy. He asserted some Australian independence in foreign policy.
He had a few flaws, mainly trusting too much in lesser men. And he let the budged deficit and inflation get out of control. He was not Robinson Crusoe in that respect.
But he was, and is, a magnificent man and a grand ambassador for our nation. All modern politicians look like pygmies in comparison to him.
And you, Jack, have his talents for concision of speech and compromise in argument.
What Whitlam really achieved was the gentrification of the Labor party. Who was the wag who said this was the time that the ALP went from being represented by the cream of the working class to being represented by the dregs of the middle class?
Most of Whitlam’s reforms were aimed at ensuring the already affluent middle-class got even more for nothing. Free tertiary education, free-ish health care, no-fault divorce. To assuage middle-class guilt, he inaugurated the ’self-determination’ policy for Aborigines that, 30 years on, we can no longer avoid recognising as a total disaster. In the cases of PNG and East Timor, he followed the then-standard left-wing line that the west should decolonise with all speed, and to hell with the consequences for the unfortunate ‘natives’
Above all, he exemplified the hopeless idealism of his time and class that the task of governments is to right wrongs and make the world a better place. Bitter experience has shown that the more massively the government intervenes in society, culture or the market, the more massive the disaster that ensues.
The Hawke government was much more successful than Whitlam’s and its achievements longer-lasting, precisely because it was more pragmatic and recognised that good governance is more about pulling levers (floating the dollar, for example) than five-year plans and grand designs. Generally, Hawke eschewed the romantic idealism of Whitlam, Connor, Cairns, et al. Where his goernment ventured down the Whitlam-esque road - e.g. the Dawkins reforms of the tertiary education sector - disaster ensued with the inevitability of night following day.
And it was his (latter-day) Whitlamism, I would argue, that ultimately undid poor Mark Latham.
Sorry to puncture your hero-worship, Jack.
That would be Kim Beazley Snr, Rob.
As to your points about Whitlam and the middle class, I disagree.
As we are now seeing with an effectively bifurcated health system, Medibank was a reform that benefitted the disadvantaged - and one that was implemented in the teeth of the AMA, and Private Health Funds with their ideology of “choice” (meaning - in practice - user pays with their right to say how much). How could no-fault divorce be described as designed for the “affluent middle class” - didn’t the working classes also have to suffer through a degrading and judgemental - and expensive - system? And university education was effectively for the middle classes because of the barriers erected prior to Whitlam’s ascension by state governments - you might like to look at the democratisation of TAFE, the much increased funding given to schools, and other measures - not to mention comparative equity statistics at sandstones before and after HECS - before you pontificate.
If I recall correctly from previous comments, Rob, you attended Uni in the 70s - presumably for free. If you feel that you should have payed, perhaps you could make a voluntary donation to DEST to help some struggling students (or to fund Kevin Donnelly’s consultancy fees or whatever they do with their dosh). As a guide, I still owe 13k on my HECS, with an undergrad, honours and postgrad diploma - the latter two in the pricier business disciplines.
It seems to me that in part your comment reflects some sort of Orwellian romanticisation of the proles - how could Labor have ever built a successful electoral coalition without moving beyond its working class base, pray tell? And it partly reflects the rather sad view you have that idealism is always hopeless.
You might also like to compare wealth and household income inequality now and in 1975 and see how your precious market measures up.
Rob, my first year has already cost 3.6k plus - if Mark is setting the barrier too high, I’ll happily denounce my role in supporting the crimes of Honecker and Ceaucescu from the crib in every post as part of the bargain.
My parents certainly could have coughed up the money for my education in the 70’s. They were no doubt grateful the state picked up the tab, but why should it have done? In the 80’s my post-grad stuff was ‘free’ by virtue of a grant, but by then I could have easily afforded it myself. Again, why should the state pay for it?
It’s true that Labor had to move beyond its traditional base. That’s one of the reasons Hawke was so pragmatic. John Button, one of his best ministers, countered accusations that Hawke had sold out the working class by pointing to the demographics. In the 50’s and 60’s, he said, the typical ‘worker’ was male, blue collar, semi-skilled, and the single bread winner. In the 80’s, the ‘worker’ was female, clerical, dual-income. relying on the old demographic was a recipe for electoral failure. Hawke played this new demographic very well.
But today’s Labor is finding that the disaffected middle-class elites - the Whitlam constituency, if you like - similarly do not constitute a sufficient demographic for electoral victory. That’s why it’s dropped the left agenda, and is trying to compete for the key demographic group, the middle-class aspirationals that now vote for Howard.
Just expanding a wee bit: I think the Whitlam years were something of an anomaly. There was at the time a sense of ennui, tiredness with the prevailing Coalition government - a tiredness accentuated by the fact it was led by possibly the worst PM since Federation, Billy MacMahon, and capitalised on by Labor’s brilliant electoral slogan, ‘It’s Time’. Even business organisations at the time were running campaigns against the incumbent.
All of which led the electorate to decide to take a chance, bet on the new kid on the block, who was attractive (to the middle class) in very many ways: tall, erudite, child of the sixties, a touch arrogant, but much more appealing to them than his proletarian predecessor, Arthur Calwell. He spoke their language. They identified with him.
Then after his manifest failure at the business of governance became apparent, the electorate ditched him. The radicalised elites mourned (and continue to mourn) but no-one else did, or do. They had been the springboard for Whitlam’s ascension; but it was the momentary agreement of the aspirations of the broad middle-class with the agenda of the radicalised generation of the 60’s that really counted and got Whitlam in.
Labor under Hawke was much wiser since then - or more strategic. Under Graham Richardson, it forged breath-takingly cynical deals with the Greens to defang the radical elite and garner its vote. But as the elite’s agenda and those of the aspirationals moved further apart, the ALP faced a dilemma. Retain the elites (strategically and electorally few in number), or reach out again to the middle class?
It’s gone for the latter. Good, sound, pragmatic political sense. Personally, I hope it works for Labor at the next election.
Rob - who were these radicalised political elites in the late 60s and early 70s precisely?
You’re committing a cardinal historical sin - viewing the past not in its own terms but through the prism of current debates - and polarised ones at that.
In places like Queensland, where schools barely had funding for libraries, and there was no sewerage or sealed roads in the outer metropolitan suburbs, the concerns that people had were hardly elitist. Whitlam’s programme cleverly combined many aspects of a traditional Labor agenda with nation building and community agendas which appealed to a growing middle class - largely a salaried class unlike Menzies’ small business people and independent professionals.
Hence big shifts among the votes of white collar workers which had an enduring effect - and still do to this day.
It would be nice if people who persist in counterposing “radicalised elites” and “aspirationals” would occasionally define these groups with some psephological and sociological precision.
Have a look at the electoral maps of 72 and see where Whitlam’s vote came from. And then compare them with Hawke’s in 83.
People like me, Mark. I was there.
What were you like, Rob? Nice to know people like you were so influential.
I’d still like you to define exactly what constituency you mean. If you mean university radicals, many were opposed to electoralist politics, and I honestly don’t think the historical record shows that they played a major role in electing Labor.
Don’t forget as well that Cairns tried to overthrow Whitlam - who was (correctly) perceived as a right winger with little sympathy for the anti-Vietnam cause (in contrast to the proletarian Calwell).
That was in 1967, if I recall correctly. A certain Brian Harradine was involved - on Whitlam’s side. And Whitlam could never have come to power had he not destroyed the monopoly that the trade union socialist left had on power in the Victorian branch.
Whitlam’s probably better defined as a child of the 50s - if I recall correctly again, he entered Parliament in 1953.
Again, don’t forget the presence of old Labor warriors like Fred and Rex in Whitlam’s Cabinet.
Whitlam’s lionisation by the Labor Left is in part an ex post facto consequence of the Dismissal itself.
It was the broad sweep of the thing, Mark. Maybe you had to be there. Whitlam was carried to power on the back of the sixties, and embodied all that was best - and worst - of that restless generation. Impatience, hositility to the status quo, change for its own sake. It was a time and a generation when all things seemed possible. Unfortunately, Whitlam’s government had no experience of and no patience with the actual business of government, which is essentially just good administration.
For Whitlam, unlike for Hawke (best ever PM), that was not enough. There had to be vision, there had to be the poet’s dreams and ideals. He did not understand the basis of the democratic compact: that it is the people who decide, not the government, what the shape and direction of social life ought to be - the people, in their slow, inefficient, infuriating and conflicting ways. The nearest comparison to Whitlam I can think of (in conceptual, not ideological, terms) is Margaret Thatcher.
Point taken, Rob, but I think its force is a little driven by hindshight.
Well, one learns, or so one hopes.
Indeed, but I still think your narrative is a bit too broadbrush, Rob. Perhaps the difference is that mostly I read about these events rather than lived them directly.
Yes, it’s an interesting point for historians. How ‘real’ can their accounts ever be, since they have not lived the times they describe? Even those that lived the 70’s can’t agree what they ‘mean’.
I accept the ‘too broadbrush’ criticism, but unhappily there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s the way my brain works.
I’ve just come in on the end of this and I’ll have a good look at it again later. Your interpretation of Whitlam, Rob, as experienced has the ring of truth. Certainly Whitlam was in a greater hurry than the people would stand for long, like a dam released.
But Dunstan famously used opinion polls to find out what the people were thinking so that he could change it if necessary. I have mixed feelings about this kind of leadership and it probably depends to some extent whether I agree with the leader or not.
Must go to bed now.
I’ve just read this right through, and I need to make clear, Rob, that I was talking about this comment.
I don’t see anything wrong with trying to make the world a better place and I tend to agree with Jack Strocchi’s estimation of Whitlam.
The point that you make about his reforms being targeted at the middle class is the one I most disagree with. His approach was to make universal access a reality. Everything he did in schooling was based on need with seeming complete disregard for where you lived or who you might vote for. There was special recognition of those who were disadvantaged in any way. There was magnificent co-operation with conservative governments such as Joh’s in Qld. I know because I was involved. And anyone who helped was paid for helping even if you were just being consulted. The consultative structures set up were about the fairest and most representative you could have.
The underlying value position was that each person, each inhabitant of this country, had equal intrinsic worth.
It was a case of having an ‘unconditional personal regard’ (from Carl Rogers) for each individual and their potential.
It’s a worthy ideal, I think, and was not at all paternalistic. Contrast PJK’s notion the we will always “reach back and bring the disadvantaged along with us” (his phrase, as I remember it.)
As to where the present mob are in this regard, I’ll leave you to make your own assesment, but I think we are in a different ball park now.
Labor doin’ it for the workers or for the middle class? Stoushes don’t get much more ancient than that one. I seem to recall brother Ilych having something to say about the Australian Labor Party’s thoroughly bourgeois class origins. In the end, why can’t it do its white-collar and blue-collar thing simultaneously?
There’s a wonderful story, probably apocryphal, about a young PJK speaking to an elderly Jack Lang about suits and clothing. Lang’s advice to the future Prime Minister was:
And the rest as they say is history.