Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am honoured to join my many parliamentary colleagues to pay tribute to the Hon. Edward Gough Whitlam QC, AC. Gough's passing has led us all to reflect on his leadership and the outcomes of his time as Prime Minister of this country. It has taken many of us on a nostalgic journey back to our collective past. For me, that nostalgia is for my childhood; the dismissal of the Whitlam government is my first political memory. I rang a close friend on the morning of his passing. She felt his passing marked the last shreds of her childhood, now gone.

Under Gough Whitlam, politics entered popular culture. The 'It's time' slogan and television advertisement broke new ground. The song rang out from televisions across the nation and it still echoes down the years. I cannot see a man in a skivvy and not hum it. I cannot hear it and not visualise a man in a skivvy. That advertisement marked a change of course for this country.

As so many have said, Australia became a kinder, prouder, more outward looking nation, a nation that embraced its own stories and shared them with the world. We became more inclusive, as attested to by many in this chamber. Gough embraced our migrant community and our Indigenous community in a national hug that changed the way we relate to one another.

His passing sent the nation on a nostalgic journey, but it has done more than that: it has awoken us. Through the recounting of his great contribution in progressing his nation, we recognise that some battles that we thought were already won—for fairness, for inclusion, for a generous, aspirational society—are recurrent battles that must be fought and won over and over again. His passing is therefore a timely reminder of what was hard fought and that what we have taken for granted can so easily be swept away. In a very special way, in his passing, Gough served his country and his party: he reminded us of who we are and what we strive to become.

Like many at the memorial service and at home, I was moved by the tributes to Gough and struck by the list of his achievements in government in just three short years. Like others, I laughed at Noel Pearson's allegory, using that classic Monty Python line to sum up the enormity of Gough's legacy: 'What did the Romans ever do for us anyway?'

To me, one of the most important things he did was to reunite of after the sectarian schism rent by World War I. Under Gough, we reverted to an egalitarian, creative Australia, aspiring to do what was right, what was fair, rather than what we could get for ourselves. I watched keenly an interview with Barry Jones on the day Gough passed. Barry summed it up with 'I feel orphaned'. He added: 'He shaped my thinking.' He cited the opening to Gough's speeches, 'men and women of Australia', as critical to the inclusive agenda. This small measure, repeated in many speeches, signalled a shift in what was a patriarchal society.

To me, his educational reforms were his greatest achievements, and I will spend what speaking time I have left on these. One of his first acts was to commission from the Interim Committee for the Australian Schools Commission a report prescribing a framework for equitable education. That was in May 1973. I look back now and see Gough's Gonski reforms. Under his government, spending on state government schools increased by 677 per cent and spending on non-government schools in the states increased to 117 per cent. The Whitlam government introduced direct Commonwealth funding, or state aid, for non-government schools. This put an end to a long-running political debate which was one product of the virulent sectarianism that had divided Australian society for decades—Gough's first steps towards building a sector-blind school funding model. And, as many have spoken about, from 1 January 1974, the Whitlam government abolished tuition fees for students at universities and technical colleges. Like many in this chamber, I was a recipient of that vision. It was genius policy. It broke a nexus. It wrote a new social contract.

Vale Gough Whitlam, the mountain ash of Australian politics, a great prime minister—great in stature both literally and figuratively, great in intellect, a great orator, a great reformer. Like thousands of others, I am lucky to have lived under the canopy of his government and his vision.

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