John Faulkner (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

John Wheeldon seems difficult to pin down: ex Liberal, lapsed Labor, self-styled ‘19th-century Liberal with social democratic tendencies’. He went from being president of Western Australia’s Young Liberals, aged 20, to being a critic of the Menzies government’s attempts to ban the Communist Party, then from being a member of the Australian Labor Party from 1951 to being a protege of the Labor Left Western Australian patriarch of the 1960s, Joe Chamberlain. Wheeldon was to say in the 1960s:

I am a thorough-going Socialist; I am on the far Left of the Labor Party.

By 1965 he was a Labor senator, the youngest in the parliament. By June 1974 he was the second youngest minister in the Whitlam government, first as Minister for Repatriation and Compensation. He was to say about war service,

I was too young for World War II, too old for Vietnam and too scared for Korea.

He was given additional responsibilities in June 1975 as Minister for Social Security. He was of course sacked, along with the other members of the Whitlam government, on 11 November 1975. After that, for just two months, he was a member of the opposition shadow ministry in early 1976 until his resignation in protest over the Iraqi campaign donation issue. John Wheeldon was twice an unsuccessful candidate for Senate leadership positions. He remained a backbench Labor senator until 1981. After he left parliament, his Labor Party membership lapsed. As you have heard, he became chief editorial writer for the Australian newspaper from the time of his retirement as a senator until 1995. It was a long journey and there were many twists and turns on the road.

John Wheeldon was bright—very bright. He was articulate, erudite, a wit, an intellectual, a libertarian. He had a wide general knowledge and he used it. As his political career lengthened, he would be considered more a dilettante, undisciplined, less than engaged in the political process and more carping than constructive in his criticism of colleagues and party. One of his closest friends was to say about his parliamentary career in the latter years that he travelled many thousands of kilometres a week to avoid work.

Through all this, he was exhilarating company. He was interesting and he was different. He held strong views and beliefs and he had the courage to express those views. He was his own man. John Wheeldon had a sharp tongue and he had a pointed sense of humour. I want to quote from former Labor Senate leader John Button’s autobiography, As It Happened. He mentions John Wheeldon in this book. He mentions just two instances of the sorts of interactions he had with Wheeldon. On one occasion John Button took John Wheeldon aside in King’s Hall in Old Parliament House and he decided to ask John Wheeldon what he thought of a particular issue—what we should do about a political issue. This was Wheeldon’s reply:

Speak for yourself. Don’t say ‘we’. I’m a swinging voter.

On another occasion, Wheeldon explained to Button that he had been to a Labor Party meeting in Perth. I quote Wheeldon:

I went out of curiosity. They kept complaining that people didn’t know what the Labor Party really stood for any more. I told them they were very lucky. If people knew what the Labor Party really stood for we’d have no members of Parliament at all.

So he certainly did have a sense of humour. I think it is fair to say that his attitude changed and his politics changed somewhat over a very lengthy political career. In fact, he was quoted at the end of his career as saying that being a senator was ‘a bloody awful job’. As his friend former senator James McClelland wrote of Wheeldon:

While he reads a book a day, he’s allergic to real toil. The thing he likes least about Canberra is parliament.

I think it is fair to say that John Wheeldon always showed real passion for the causes he believed in: his opposition to the Vietnam War, his support for the independence of East Timor, his abhorrence of apartheid and his deep concern about Soviet imperialism. There was not a better advocate in parliament on those issues or any issue to which he turned his mind.

But John Wheeldon did not apply his extraordinary talents with discipline and dedication. I believe that John Wheeldon did not fulfil his political promise. Without doubt, he was an achiever. Without doubt, he could have achieved much, much more. I join with my leader and other colleagues in the Senate in expressing my sincere condolences to his wife, Judith, and family, on their bereavement.