Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Correct. Very good work, member for Gippsland. I will remember to invite you to my next trivia night. If there was ever a horse that was so aptly named for the Whitlam era, it was Think Big—the name of the horse that won in 1974 and 1975.

Many people have celebrated his big range of achievements and they were secured in a compressed time frame. But Gough Whitlam thought big because he had big dreams for the nation. He had a big task of transforming and shaking up Australia and that demanded a big call-up of people. It was here that he did something special and why he is warmly remembered. He not only had self-belief; importantly, he believed in those who in a harder and tougher time did not benefit from the belief of wider society. If you think about it, he made a place for them all—for our nation's first people, for women, for migrants, for the families starting their lives way out in the suburbs and for the communities of our regions. He brought them within the view of public consciousness. That was the power of the Whitlam legacy. It was his faith in the capabilities of his fellow Australians.

Mr Whitlam was brought to life via the stories of my father, the man who tried so hard to peer through the windows of the Blacktown civic centre to see the man destined to become Prime Minister, when he made the call to the men and women of Australia. My dad had only just made it to Australia a few years earlier and mum followed soon after. I might have known Gough through those stories, but I actually knew him better because his belief touched our lives. He believed that working class families deserved access to quality health care or that kids of working class parents should be pushed to pursue higher education, prepared for it via good secondary schooling, or in Western Sydney that our homes should be properly sewered. Thanks to Gough, we never had to dance that dance of fear with redbacks in the outhouse!

I am here in part because of that belief that Gough Whitlam had in multicultural Australia. I am so grateful and honoured to be standing on this floor because Gough Whitlam had faith in multicultural Australia and he called up into national endeavour people of all backgrounds, and I am eternally grateful for that. On his passing, I thought of my dad's generation or the generation of Labor Party members out my way who had their belief ignited in the legitimacy of our party sitting on that other side of the House. It is from there that we can achieve so much for the people who deserve richer and better lives.

Much will be read into Mr Whitlam's style, approach and philosophy but, for me, he will always be remembered as a progressive for progress, not as a progressive championing the status quo. He recognised that the static imprisons the people we care for. It restrains Australians from capturing the opportunity emerging around them. He reformed and prepared his party—our party—as a vehicle for change in our country. As much as Mr Whitlam ushered in big change, huge change, he ensured the support was there for the people affected by it.

He had a grander plan for Australia. He called up people from the breadth of Australian society to help him bring that vision to life. He made sure his government looked after them on the way through, shielding them from the tougher short-term consequences of that change while awaiting the longer-term improvements that these changes would bring. That is a lesson for the ages. Thank you for your service and your belief. Vale Edward Gough Whitlam.

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