Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am one of the younger members of the House but I am also living proof of Gough and his legacy of his time in parliament. I thought it was important to contribute to this condolence motion, not necessarily on my own reflections of the great man but of the reflections of many of the Labor branch members and stalwarts in my electorate.

There is no more fitting person's recollections to place on the record first than those of David Kennedy, a federal member for Bendigo from 1969 to 1972. David developed a strong, close, personal friendship with Mr Whitlam and recalls that he was an inspiration. In David's words, Mr Whitlam was a larrikin of parliament. He said that Mr Whitlam bowled us all over just because he kept cracking jokes, that Mr Whitlam was full of life and that he wanted others to enjoy life. David remembers warmly the nickname that Gough Whitlam had for him—Nap, short for Napoleon. People in Bendigo were not surprised by this nickname.

David also said that Gough inspired a generation of people in Victoria. He was a great champion of liberty, equality and fraternity. For a lot of Labor supporters, the passing of Gough was a really personal thing. David said, 'We admired him, we cherished him and we loved him. He stood for all we believed in.' Finally David said, 'To lose him is to lose a sense of self.' David's words and thoughts and warmth are echoed by many Labor Party life members from my electorate. They remind us how important Gough was to Labor in Central Victoria.

Labor party life member Elaine McNamara said that Whitlam symbolised everything that was good and caring in the Labor Party. Elaine said she joined the party as soon as she could at age 18 and got to meet Gough Whitlam whenever he visited Bendigo. 'He was a well respected person,' she said, 'when he came to Bendigo, and he did so quite a lot. In person he was very quietly spoken at times but he always had a strong presence about him.' Elaine said, 'Margaret and Gough were a very gentle couple. But then in his role as Prime Minister, he became dogmatic, and you really felt like you had a fighter, someone standing up and fighting for you in your corner.'

Elaine fondly remembers attending rallies and political meetings with her grandfather and how she used to be on the back of a truck at Trades Hall and would ring the bell to call the members to order. She remembers many of the speeches that Gough made at Trades Hall during his visits there. Elaine's fondest memory of Gough was when, as Labor leader, on his way to Bendigo, he stopped in at Castlemaine to buy some Castlemaine Rock for her young son. Elaine says that whenever she thinks of Gough, she now thinks of Castlemaine Rock. This is the warmth of the man that we have lost. Elaine said that it would be the first year in a long time that she would not be sending Gough Whitlam a Christmas card—another symbol of how close he was to so many in the Bendigo electorate.

Another life member of the Bendigo branch, Elaine Walsh, who joined the party in 1962, said it had been such a privilege to volunteer and be involved in the labour movement under such a leader as Gough Whitlam. Elaine said: 'I'm proud to have been there at the time that he was elected. Gough did in three years what other governments could not do in 10 years,' and that was probably because he knew he could and he had the guts to do it. Ms Walsh said the party had changed a lot since Whitlam's time in office, but she said that it was his actions in government that helped define the debate for Labor and the community for many generations to come.

Eric Dearricott's life membership of the Bendigo branch comes up next year. Eric said that he was inspired to join the Labor Party after Whitlam's dismissal from government in 1975. Mr Dearricott refers to that time as being exciting and engaging. As a young teacher, he and his wife, Margaret, thought it was their duty to get involved, to join a movement, to stand up not only for the rights of their generation but for the rights of many generations. Eric said that he was influenced by Whitlam's policies and foresight. He said, 'When I think about Gough Whitlam and Labor and the period of the late sixties through to the late seventies, I think about the principles that they stood for.'

There is an entire generation of people who joined the Labor Party and got actively involved in Labor and in the community because of Gough Whitlam. Other branch members joined the Labor Party and got actively involved because they were opposed to the war in Vietnam. Paul and Mary Reid often reflect that they joined the Labor Party and got actively involved because of Labor's stance against our involvement in the Vietnam War. Those are the principles that Eric, Mary and Paul refer to when they talk about why they joined the Labor Party. Decades on, that is still their motivation for continuing to be actively involved in the labour movement. It was Whitlam's vision for education, his recognition of China and his work for women and health care are just some of the many policies that Eric continues to admire and be empowered by today. Eric said, 'In my lifetime he is certainly the most inspiring leader that I have known.' These are the words of some of the many people actively involved in Labor then and today, and I wish to place on the Hansard record their thoughts and reflections on the passing of Gough Whitlam.

Gough Whitlam in government created change that would continue for generations. He created change in his lifetime, in our lifetime, and his reforms and leadership continue to create real and lasting change both in the community and in the Labor Party. Just reflect on the change that he made to the great Australian Labor Party. Gough was a giant of the Labor Party and a great leader of our nation. It is very fair to say that he loved the Labor Party. In 1964 Gough made a speech to the Labor Party at the Trades Hall in Melbourne. He said he could not deliver the speech because there were two Labor parties: the men, delegates and candidates; and the women making the tea and preparing the meals out the back, then and today known as the Labor ladies. Gough declared then that we could not deserve to be called the Labor Party until we were one Labor Party, and until we were one Labor Party we did not deserve to govern. So the women stopped making tea and no longer were consigned to the back room, and so began the modern making of Labor.

We are a modern Labor Party and well on our way to achieving Gough's goals. Within Gough's lifetime, we have achieved another milestone. Almost 50 years since Gough made these remarks at the Victorian Trades Hall in Melbourne, at the last federal election in the state of Victoria three Labor women, new women, were elected to enter this parliament, and three Labor men, new men, were elected to enter this parliament to join the Labor ranks: Jo Ryan, in Lalor, Tim Watts, in Gellibrand; Clare O'Neil, in Hotham; Andrew Giles, in Scullin; David Feeney, in Batman; and me, in Bendigo—another example of how, within Gough's lifetime, he changed the modern Labor Party.

Change that Gough created will continue on for generations, and some of the achievements that I would like to mention profoundly changed our community to make it a stronger and more inclusive community. We have mentioned the opposition to Australia's involvement in Vietnam, and many reasons why a generation of young people stood up and demanded to be heard.

His social welfare reforms included supporting the mother's benefit and welfare payments to homeless people. Before 1973, only widows were entitled to pension payments, so other women who were raising children on their own were faced with impossible choices. Recently, when I caught up with the Eaglehawk community committee of management, they were talking about Gough Whitlam, and one brave great-grandmother told me her story about how Gough supported her raising five children when she was a single mother. She was in a violent relationship and had to leave for the sake of her children's safety, and it was impossible, before Gough, to survive, but with his reforms he made it possible. Today she is grateful for the generosity, the vision and the compassion that this great man had.

Equal pay for women is another example of what legacy Gough has left us with. One of the first acts of the Gough Whitlam government was to reopen the national wage and equity pay case at the Commonwealth Arbitration Commission. In 1972, the equal pay case meant that Australian women doing similar work to that of men should be paid an equal wage, and two years later the commission extended the adult minimum wage to women workers for the first time. It is hard for my generation to believe that it was not until 1974—that women working as cleaners, women working in hotels, the many, many women on minimum wage, did not receive equal pay until that period.

These are some of the lasting legacies of a great man, a Labor man. These are some of the policy areas that continue to be fundamental to today's debate. He changed the debate in this country for many decades and continues to inspire not just generations of Labor people but generations and generations of a nation, challenging us to be bold, to live up to what we believe in, to be bold to take the debate out there. The Hon. Gough Whitlam is a Labor legend who in death, as in life, will continue to inspire a nation for many generations to come. May he rest in peace.

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