Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to pay tribute to the life and work of the Honourable Edward Gough Whitlam AC QC, our 21st Prime Minister, and to extend my condolences on behalf of the people of Newcastle to his family: Catherine, Nicholas, Tony, Stephen, their partners and their families.

Australia has known few visionaries as great as Gough Whitlam, and fewer still who left such a remarkable legacy for generations to come. I concur wholeheartedly with the comments made in this House by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition and Member for Sydney, when she noted just how fitting it was that Gough Whitlam was Australia's 21st Prime Minister, because it was with Gough as Prime Minister that Australia finally came of age. It was Gough who averted Australia's gaze upwards and outwards. He encouraged us all to think big, to step out from the dark shadows of colonialism, and to forge a modern, independent, optimistic and ambitious nation instead.

His three years as Prime Minister were three of the most transformative years in our nation's history. He was a revolutionary without violence. Politics and persuasion were his weapons; social justice and equity his guiding principles. He introduced a national universal public health system; opened the doors of higher education to all; abolished the death penalty; established legal aid; increased pensions; protected the Great Barrier Reef; created a national art gallery; and redressed Australia's dismal history of race relations, while also getting rid of the old imperial honours system and giving our nation a new national anthem, Advance Australia Fair. He also lowered the voting age to 18 and gave Australia its first ever youth radio network, Double J. And, as the member for Grayndler noted, Gough is the only Prime Minister to have a rock band named after him.

A staunch critic of entrenched privilege, Gough made Australia a more equal, tolerant and free society. He was a true social reformist and, after 23 years of conservative rule, he knew there was no time to waste. Gough Whitlam had had decades in opposition to prepare for government, so when he was elected in 1972 he hit the ground running, appointing himself and deputy Lance Barnard to all cabinet positions for the first two weeks in his government. Whitlam ended conscription, recognised communist China, applied sanctions against South Africa and embarked on an ambitious program of support for the arts.

As his cabinet expanded, so too did the reform agenda. It was, for example, the Whitlam government that established the Commonwealth's first commission of inquiry into poverty. With Professor Robert Henderson at the helm, this inquiry fundamentally changed the way in which Australia was to think about the poor. For the first time ever, poverty in Australia was not seen as a personal attribute or failing, but rather as a direct consequence of the structure of our society. Perhaps even more importantly, this inquiry gave voice to those who were traditionally marginalised in the national debate.

It was the Whitlam government that first understood the importance of our national estate museums and collections for the national consciousness. It was Whitlam who established the National Gallery of Australia and made the bold decision to purchase Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles at the cost of $1.3 million in 1973—then a world record for contemporary American painting. Although the work was reviled at the time as the work of 'barefoot drunks', Gough's decision has stood the test of time. In retrospect, it was, of course, one of the nation's most savvy art purchases. Worth some $300 million, Blue Poles is now the pride of the NGA's collection.

As a young anthropologist working in Aboriginal Australia both before and after the High Court's Wik and Mabo decisions, I knew firsthand of the ongoing significance of Gough's determination to abolish the White Australia policy and introduce the Racial Discrimination Act, which established the right of all Australians to equal treatment under the law regardless of race or ethnicity.

It was this act that was to have the most profound effect on our common law for decades to come—because it paved the way for the Mabo and Wik decisions—and the lived experience of Indigenous people throughout Australia. Likewise, his establishment of a department of Aboriginal affairs and the Aboriginal Land Rights Commission were amongst some of his most remarkable and lasting reforms.

But it is Gough Whitlam's unswerving commitment to gender equality and the difference this has made for generations of Australian women that I would like to focus on now. The Whitlam government came to office at a time of immense social change. There was the large increase in the participation of women in the workforce. Whitlam's government instituted reforms to ensure that social legislation and institutions kept pace with social change and community values.

One of Gough's first acts as Prime Minister was to reopen the national wage and equal pay cases at the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission. This led to the decision that Australian women undertaking work similar to that undertaken by men should be paid an equal wage. Half a million female workers became eligible for full pay for the first time and women's wages rose by one-third. The commission also extended the adult minimum wage to include women workers for the first time after Whitlam passed legislation to amend the Conciliation and Arbitration Act.

Maternity leave was also introduced for Commonwealth government employees. The legislation provided for 52 weeks of leave for mothers, 12 of which were on full pay, and it outlawed discrimination against Commonwealth employees because of their pregnancy and legislated instead to provide rights relating to the preservation of employment and status.

In 1973, Gough appointed Australia's first women's adviser, Elizabeth Reid. She established the basis for significant feminist programs and secured Commonwealth underwriting of the delivery of a range of new women's services, including women's refuges, rape crisis centres, equal opportunity policies in education, training and employment, and housing programs. Ms Reid has said of the time:

We talked in factories, in housing centres, on farms, in schools, at women's meetings, in dairies, in gaols, in universities—in short wherever women were. I was deluged with letters invariably beginning 'thank god, at last there is someone to whom I can talk to, someone who might listen and understand'.

Through this leadership, the first women's refuges opened their doors to those in need, including the Working Women's Centre, now the Hunter Women's Centre, in my electorate of Newcastle.

Gough's actions also helped enable women to be in charge of their bodies as well as their lives. Within 10 days of taking office, he removed the 27½ per cent luxury tax on all contraceptives and put the pill on the national health scheme list. These two measures reduced the price of the contraceptive pill to $1 a month—giving Australian women access to safe, reliable and affordable contraception. He established the single mothers benefit, which drastically reduced the risk of women living in poverty, he passed a number of laws banning sexual discrimination and his leadership saw the end to adversarial divorce.

Many have argued that the passage of the no-fault divorce laws are Gough's greatest contribution to the reduction of social misery. Prior to these reforms, a marriage could only be dissolved if one party could prove that the other was at fault in the breakdown of the marriage. 'Matrimonial offences' such as adultery, cruelty or 'desertion' had to be proved before divorce could be allowed. The indignity of this process was compounded by its very public nature. Divorce proceedings were prime fodder for gossip columns in newspapers and the financial cost of this fault based process was prohibitive to many. According to Gough: 'The only test of a marriage is whether both parties agree to maintain it.'

It is perhaps hard for many Australians to imagine what life under the previous archaic divorce laws was like, but the stories of our mothers and grandmothers are stark reminders of the need for these law reforms. Today, we take many of these reforms for granted and severely underestimate the level of opposition they faced at the time. To his great credit, however, Gough never blinked when it came to controversy. He never shied from prosecuting the case for change. Guided by the principles of social equity and justice, he was determined to drive these reforms, changing the lives of Australian people for the better. And for that we remain forever grateful.

Vale, Gough Whitlam. Your legacy for the men and women of Australia lives on.

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