Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Labor opposition, I would like to support the condolence motion moved by Senator Minchin following the death of former senator John Murray Wheeldon. I extend the sincere sympathies of all Labor senators to his wife, Judith, to their son, James, and to Andrew and Miriam, his children from his first marriage. John Wheeldon was a very significant Western Australian Labor figure through his role as a senator, his brief period as a minister in the Whitlam government and his long involvement in the Western Australian Labor Party. After his retirement from politics, he remained engaged in public life through his work in journalism. He was a figure who commanded a great deal of respect across the political spectrum for his intellect and wit. That cross-party respect is clear from remarks made in the other place by my Labor colleagues and senior members of the government and in the obituaries that have been written about him.

Although I did not know him well, I was fortunate enough to meet him on a couple of occasions when he was a senator and I was a young, impressionable activist. He impressed then with his wide knowledge and his ability to put an argument succinctly. I actually met him at the home of the Konwills in Western Australia. They were a very influential couple in the development of Western Australian politics and were active on the Curtin electorate council, and he was certainly very much involved in that circle.

John Wheeldon was born in August 1929 and studied at Perth Modern School. Perth Modern was a selective government school, now well known for educating a number of public figures, including Bob Hawke, John Stone, my partner, and journalist Maxwell Newton. Despite its strong academic credentials, Wheeldon was not too enamoured of his school, describing it as an ‘exam factory’. For a man who was later known for his erudition and intellectual sophistication, it seems the school was somewhat limiting. He later said:

Passing exams was all that mattered to the headmaster—he even disapproved of our attending ABC Youth Concerts, because in his opinion they were a waste of time.

That seems remarkable, given that it is actually a music school as well.

Various of the tributes that have flowed since Wheeldon died have noted that in his early days he was, as Senator Minchin pointed out, a Liberal. I am glad to say he saw the error of his ways. Apparently, this allegiance was due in part to his difficult relationship with his headmaster. Wheeldon noted:

The headmaster was a Labor man. In my youth I was a dedicated Liberal, largely because of him.

I think it shows how one can be influenced by certain individuals. I owe a lot to Malcolm Fraser—the old Malcolm Fraser, not the new one.

It seems that at school Wheeldon shared with Bob Hawke a characteristic Australian independence and suspicion of authority. In her biography of Hawke, Blanche d’Alpuget writes that Bob:

... joined the school cadets but then found himself rejecting the commands of his senior officers and, after three years of training, was still a private. Only three boys, another being Wheeldon, managed to remain privates.

Like Hawke, Wheeldon studied at the University of Western Australia and took an honours degree in philosophy as well as a law degree. It was during this time that he was involved with the Young Liberals and held some leadership positions in that organisation. No doubt that required drinking a lot of champagne and eating a lot of chicken. Thankfully, this did not last long. In 1950, he quit the Liberals in protest at Menzies’ act to dissolve the Communist Party—something he saw as an attack on democratic freedom.

He joined the Labor Party the following year and was a member of the Claremont-Nedlands sub-branch—a branch that was well known as an intellectual powerhouse of the party. It ranked among its members refugees from Hitler’s Europe and old-school Austrian socialists. It was a very influential part of the Western Australian Labor Party, and a lot of people like Bob McMullan, me and others were exposed to that group over the years. Wheeldon himself was strongly influenced by Joe Chamberlain, the secretary of the party in WA. Wheeldon served as a member of the WA state executive of the ALP from 1952 until 1979. In his preparliamentary life he worked as a barrister and solicitor. As the Leader of the Opposition noted in his condolence remarks, Wheeldon worked for a time in the Fabian bookshop in London—a job which, on his departure, was taken by Jomo Kenyatta, later to become the first President of Kenya.

In 1965, Wheeldon took his place as a Labor senator for Western Australia. He remained in the parliament until 1981. His first speech was an eloquent discussion of the politics around the stevedoring industry bill—a bill which Wheeldon saw as a direct attack on the Waterside Workers Federation. I think it proves again that the more things change the more things stay the same. Victorian DLP senator Francis McManus, the speaker to follow Wheeldon, noted the ‘considerable fluency’ with which Wheeldon had delivered his first speech. Wheeldon’s capacity as a speaker was highly regarded and formidable and has been much commented on in the last few weeks. He was known not only for his eloquence but also for his wit, which could be biting at times.

The current foreign editor at the Australian, Greg Sheridan, who was recruited to that newspaper on Wheeldon’s recommendation, described him as perhaps the wittiest man he had ever met. A report from that newspaper gives an account of a discussion during estimates hearings in May 1973 on food in the parliamentary dining room:

Senator Wheeldon asked whether the appalling quality of the food was meant to encourage ‘Spartan living’ or ‘involuntary support for the Freedom from Hunger Campaign.’

I hope that the questioning in estimates is now slightly more focused on government accountability. I also noted a response he gave to Senator Melzer in question time when, as Minister representing the Minister for Health, he was asked about the practice of inducing births between 9 am and 4 pm. He responded:

I am afraid that I was not aware of the practice of inducing births in office hours. I suppose it would enliven an otherwise dull morning tea break. I do not know what effect it has on the mother and child. However it could have a rather startling effect on fellow clerks and stenographers. I shall refer the matter to the Minister for Health and obtain a detailed answer for Senator Melzer.

Jim McClelland described Wheeldon as ‘one of the verbal pyrotechnists of the Whitlam era’, and noted:

In full flight, speaking entirely without notes in flawless syntax on a subject such as the Vietnam War, he was a hard act to beat.

Wheeldon, who was fluent in French and German, was known for his knowledge and interest in the area of international affairs. As an opponent of imperialism in any form, he spoke out passionately against the Vietnam War from his early days in the Senate. In 1967 he and Jim Cairns travelled to the US to give a series of speeches regarding their opposition to the war and in 1973 he made a visit to North Vietnam—highly controversial visits at the time. On leaving the Senate in 1981 he said that international affairs should not be treated as a side issue by the parliament because he felt that successful foreign policy was a precondition for successful domestic policy. In his valedictory speech he said:

However excellent our policies may be on social welfare, finance, agriculture or anything else, if our country is under serious threat from some other source then it is all to no avail whatsoever.

The sentiment that led Wheeldon to oppose what he saw as American imperialism in Vietnam also made him a staunch critic of the Soviet Union. He was rightly proud of the report of the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence from its inquiry into human rights in the USSR, which he presented to the Senate in 1979. He was concerned about both the rights of the people of the Soviet Union and that country’s international policy and saw the committee’s inquiry as a vital contribution to Australia’s broader security. It was a report which was criticised by some contemporaries for its great length and, as the Leader of the Opposition pointed out in the House, Wheeldon wrote much of it himself.

When Labor was in government in the early 1970s he was instrumental in encouraging closer dialogue with China, a policy which has served this country well since that time. On the election of the Whitlam government in 1972, Wheeldon did not at first become a minister, though in 1973 he did become Chair of the Joint House Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence. He was elected to the ministry by caucus following the 1974 election and he filled the vacancy left after the election defeat of Al Grassby. He served as Minister for Repatriation and Compensation from June 1974 and Minister for Social Security from June 1975, holding both positions until the dismissal of the Whitlam Labor government. His career, like the careers of many others, was cut short in 1975.

In his first speech, discussing the stevedoring industry bill and the coalition’s attempt to crack down on industrial activity on the waterfront, Wheeldon had spoken out about the miserable and dangerous conditions for workers on the wharves. He said:

The figures show that despite the claims made by the Government and other people of the many hours lost through industrial disputes and stoppages on the wharves, in any year the total number of man hours lost through industrial accidents is greater than the number of man hours lost through industrial stoppages or disputes.

Given these comments made so early on, it was fitting that he was minister at the time that Labor was trying to establish a national rehabilitation and compensation scheme. Gough Whitlam described how the Senate Constitutional and Legal Affairs Committee inquiry into the bill was overloaded by those who opposed the scheme in order to stymie the legislation. After a great public debate—one which I got involved with on the periphery as a young man—the tactic seemed to work and the government was unable to deliver a single national regime to deal with what Whitlam described as ‘hardships imposed by one of the great factors for inequality in society—inequality of luck’.

In keeping with the broader program of the Labor government, Wheeldon was the minister who in 1975 tabled the Henderson report, Poverty in Australia, the result of the groundbreaking investigation into disadvantage in this country established in 1972. In WA during the Whitlam years, Wheeldon was a central figure in the 1974 and 1975 election campaigns, when his considerable oratory skills were used to great effect at mass rallies and public meetings. Wheeldon stayed on in opposition until 1981, by which time he was more than ready to move on from the Senate.

In June 1981 the Australian reported on a caucus dinner for departing senators, which is a bit of a tradition on the Labor side. Outgoing Senator Cavanagh began his remarks by saying he felt like Mark Antony who entered Cleopatra’s tent and said, ‘I am not here to make a speech.’ Wheeldon, who was next to speak, began his remarks with the words, ‘After 16 years in the Senate I feel like Cleopatra after Mark Antony left the tent.’ Those of us with long careers in the Senate understand the sentiment.

After parliament Wheeldon had a distinguished career in journalism and, for a time, was senior leader writer at the Australian where he specialised in editorials on politics and foreign affairs. He was a man of very considerable intellect and personal authority. He was someone who debated and believed passionately but was not afraid to reassess his intellectual positions. I must confess that some of his later contributions in the Australian were not highly popular with me or members of the Labor Party but they were always very strongly argued and intellectually sound.

He was by all accounts a man of brilliance with a very independent mind. He made a very significant contribution to the Labor Party, to the Senate and to the nation. It is a shame, from our perspective, that he was denied the opportunity of a significant ministerial career. He died at his home in Sydney on 24 May and a state funeral was held on 2 June.

Many people who have paid tribute to him over the last few weeks have also paid tribute to his wife, Judith. She is by all accounts a remarkable woman, a distinguished teacher, and was a devoted carer for her husband. On his passing I would like to reaffirm to her and to the family the deep and abiding sympathies of all Labor senators. We acknowledge the tremendous contribution he made and, certainly on behalf of the Western Australian senators, we acknowledge the contribution he made to our state and to the Labor cause. He will be fondly remembered.