Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Two of the previous speakers referred to the fact that a lot of us are here today because of Whitlam, and I most certainly fall into that category. I had very little interest in politics—I asked to stand down from the local branch of the party—but when he got in I suddenly became very, very interested and involved. When a funny-looking old fellow with an unpronounceable name started to make him bleed, I actually decided to get very seriously involved. I can remember vividly the state leader in Queensland—the honourable member for Petrie would remember Ed Casey from Mackay. There were 1 speakers in the state house. Every single speech was spent entirely condemning Gough Whitlam. I was the last of those speakers. Ed Casey got up and he said, 'There is just simply no gratitude in this world.' It was true. The vast bulk of the members of parliament in that parliament were there only because of Gough Whitlam. I think to some degree it was a Queensland phenomenon. There has been a lot made today about what he did for education. But the world changed. Every single person here said that the world changed as a result of him.

I had very great honour of publishing a best-selling history book. I start the era of Gough Whitlam by quote from a Midwestern businessmen, probably a bit of a Labor sort of bloke, and he said, 'The trouble was that we are in the 25th year of the Whitlam era.' He said that in 1996 or whatever it was, 25 years after Gough had come in.

So there was one thing that every person in this House agrees on: the world was different. There were three great differences. One was education—free education. As a Queenslander I just did not see where the benefit was. We could go and work in the mines during the four-month break from university and make enough money to pay our way through university for the next year. Anyone could do that. So it wasn't a very wonderful thing for us.

The second was the free hospital system, which was great for the rest of Australia, but it brought nothing to Queensland. We already had a free hospital system. In fact, we went backwards a little tiny bit with the Hayden initiative. The third area was social welfare. I think if ever there was a great monument and legacy to Whitlam it was just the complete and utter change in the approach to old people. There was an increase from $1,500 million a year to $5,000 million. It was an attitude of, 'These people are not able to look after themselves and we have a responsibility to look after them.' I think if ever there was a legacy that was left behind it lay in that figure on social welfare.

In Indigenous affairs there was $29 million spent the year before he came in and there was $186 million spent in the year he left. So, again, in that area, there was an attitudinal change that there were people out there that needed to be looked after, and he was determined that he would look after them. In Queensland equal pay—I think it was a good decision—but it resulted in the First Australians losing their jobs. So Queensland did not have a perspective that this was a wonderful move forward for the First Australians. In fact, probably a counter attitude prevailed.

If you are saying, 'Was he a good man or not?' when I was writing the history book was quite amazed to find out that Gough Whitlam had not only put Rex Connor into the ministry but was a very, very fervent backer of Rex Connor. Rex Connor want to develop Australia. He was very much in the Queensland mould of development. It was the government's job to develop and create jobs. He wanted to raise the money so we could do it ourselves. The Murdoch press that had backed Gough Whitlam very, very strongly were involved in the North West Shelf gas and oil developments. It was held up by Rex Connor because Rex did not want to see a foreigner develop those resources; he wanted Australian money to come in and develop the resources. The irony of it all was that if the Treasurer, Mr Cairns, had been spending more time on Treasury than on other affairs, there were the two instruments are there that were put there by McEwan—and they were put there for exactly that purpose: to buy back the farm and to develop the farm. The Commonwealth development bank and the AIDC. The two mechanisms were there. The great tragedy and irony—for those that were not great supporters of Whitlam I suppose it was a good thing to happen—was that Rex Connor was left trying to get money from overseas in a most improper manner. Gough Whitlam was characterised by very great honesty. Having seen many, many governments where corporate influence has played a very large part in the government of Australia and the government of the states, it was a government that was very clean of that sort of influence. But, of course, Whitlam suffered as a result of that insofar as very powerful media barons turned up on him with very great aggression.

The sympathy of the Australian people to some degree would have been far greater behind him—particularly in states like Queensland—if Rex Connor had been backed up. Of course, he was not. The Treasurer had his mind on other things. The tragedy that occurred—if it was a tragedy—was that Connor and the great vision that he had that Gough Whitlam shared never came to fruition and the resources of Australia were developed by foreign corporations.

But it has got to be said that for people like myself, the 25 per cent across-the-board cut in tariffs was the introduction of a new era in Australian history. It was not an era that a person like me would regard as a great era for that introduction in Australian history.

As everyone has said today, it is the start of a new period in Australian history. There is no doubt that anyone in Australia that would contend or question that. Whether the things that happened were good for Australia, again history can judge in the longer term what were the reasons. But all I can say is that I came out of a state where the things I think that were very important to a person living in Sydney had absolutely no resonance in a state with massive development taking place—with dams being built everywhere, with the coal industry and the aluminium industry being opened up by government money and government activity. It just never resonated. When he came in the wool industry—the great industry that carried Australia for as long as it did—had collapsed and then the beef industry collapsed. There was no sympathy coming out of Sydney for those industries. There was a very great vigorous and angry reaction that there was no sympathy coming.

So there was a combination of those factors. But I think one of the very little known factors was that there was great support for Rex Connor and a place in history that Rex deserved. But, because he failed, he was punished and the history books read badly. Whereas the history books in the longer term will read very, very positively in an area that Gough Whitlam was never given any credit for and where he probably deserved most credit.

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