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

As we have heard, Ken Wriedt died last week at the age of 83. He served as a senator for 12 years, between 1968 and 1980. They were turbulent times, but he was a man of quiet and steady demeanour and he brought maturity and a breadth of experience to his political life. Moderation in style did not mean an infirmness of purpose. He had clear views—honed in a strong Labor tradition—on equality and social justice, toleration and the dignity of work. These, in part, he inherited from his parents who, as they raised Ken and his brothers during the Depression, set an example of frugality and responsibility, hard work and service. His mother was a teacher. His father was a fitter and turner.

If the experience of the Depression had influenced the politics of Ken’s father towards the Left, Ken’s own life experience—wide-ranging travel in the merchant marine, taking him to Asia and the Middle East—gave him a great interest in foreign policy, a tolerance for different cultures and a willingness to consider other ways of looking at the world. He held strong views on the Vietnam War, which he opposed. It was, he said, a ‘futile and shameful war’. He had seen firsthand the conflict in Iran between Prime Minister Mossadegh and the international oil companies over the control of Iran’s resources, and he sympathised with Iran’s position.

He supported international aid, recognising especially the importance of the United States as the country most able to assist in addressing world poverty. He believed that poverty in underdeveloped countries was the greatest threat to international security. He took a strong stance on the invasion of East Timor. Like all of us, of course, he had his quirks. Although he was never remotely a communist sympathiser or supporter, I am told by some of Ken’s former colleagues that he was largely impervious to criticism of the Soviet Union. He balanced this, though, with a deep interest in the teachings of the Buddha and, as we have heard, a genuine love of classical music.

He related his values back to first principles, and they were essentially Labor principles. Ken Wriedt’s first speech, delivered on 11 September 1968, foreshadows his political beliefs and many of his future attitudes. He asserted the democratic principle that every man glimpses a truth; no man has a monopoly on the truth. This informed his approach to politics, his support for the role of caucus within the parliamentary Labor Party, and helps explain his anger when he was not consulted on vital issues. He was idealistic, believing that the parliament offered him the chance to give the highest possible service to Australia. He hoped he could make a positive contribution to the life of the nation, but he also recognised the limitations of government—that we cannot achieve perfection; we cannot change the course of history.

Once the Labor Party came to power, in 1972, Ken Wriedt became a minister: first, Minister for Primary Industry, in 1972; then, in 1974, Minister for Agriculture. When Rex Connor resigned, in October 1975, Ken Wriedt took over and served briefly, until the dismissal, as the Minister for Minerals and Energy. But it was as Minister for Primary Industry and then Minister for Agriculture that Ken Wriedt had his best opportunity to influence public life—and he did so with distinction. He had little prior experience of agriculture. The Labor historian Ross McMullin says of Wriedt that he applied himself to his portfolio with determination and became one of the government’s most unlikely ministerial successes. It was an area of policy that was made particularly difficult by the reform agenda of the Whitlam government.

The Whitlam government looked critically at the legacy of 23 years of coalition government and, particularly, Country Party influence. Acting on a report produced by Stuart Harris, Sir John Crawford and Professor Fred Gruen, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam moved to rationalise rural policy. Whitlam considered the concessions and subsidies to the dairy industry, petrol subsidies and the superphosphate bounty to be inequitable and unjustified. It was argued that they went disproportionately to wealthy producers who did not need them and, although farm incomes were rising rapidly, rural poverty remained a serious problem. Tariff cuts and increased expenditure on agriculture research would, the government believed at the time, offset the withdrawal of these concessions.

The rationality of the argument was lost on the rural electorate—regardless of Wriedt’s best endeavours to argue their case in cabinet, he had to explain the changes to the sector—and they felt only the pain and the loss of privileges. But, despite all this, Wriedt remained popular with farmers. He established the Australian Wool Corporation in 1973, which put in place a floor price for wool in order to try to stabilise prices. He ended decades of large-producer domination on many agricultural boards—the wool, dairy, and apple and pear marketing authorities. He worked to find new agricultural markets to replace those lost by the entry, in 1973, of Britain into the European Economic Community. He is credited with the restructuring of the wool and dairy industries to their long-term benefit. According to a statement made by Senator McLaren in the Senate in 1982, the green paper prepared for Senator Wriedt in 1974 was often referred to, by agricultural people, as their bible. In 1984, his old nemesis Michael Hodgman said of Wriedt that he was a man regarded as one of the finest ministers, if not the finest, in the Whitlam era. Perhaps those words do represent just a little more than Tasmanian solidarity!

But Ken Wriedt’s most dramatic time in politics came in 1975 when, as leader of government in the Senate, he was responsible for managing the progress of the appropriation bills which had been blocked by the coalition. I would like to read the words that were written by John Faulkner in the book True Believers, about the events of 11 November 1975, and Ken Wriedt’s involvement in those events:

At 1 pm at Yarralumla, Kerr ambushed Whitlam with a letter dismissing his government. Unbeknown to Whitlam, Kerr had been in collusion with Chief Justice Sir Garfield Barwick and opposition leader Malcolm Fraser to bring Labor down. Kerr had betrayed the elected Prime Minister and debauched the office of Governor-General. The Labor Party would never forgive his treachery.

Whitlam returned to the Lodge, where he planned tactics with senior staff and three of his senior colleagues, Frank Crean, Fred Daly, and Kep Enderby. He still had time to eat the lunch he had ordered on his way to Yarralumla—medium steak with German mustard and a horiatiki side salad. Whitlam’s inner circle focused exclusively on how events would unfold that afternoon in the House of Representatives. Incredibly, with the Senate due to consider the appropriation bill shortly after resuming at 2 pm, no-one thought to tell any of the Labor senators let alone Labor Senate leadership, and Senate leader, Ken Wriedt acknowledges this: ‘The fact is, I didn’t know what had happened. Gough didn’t tell me.’

Wriedt still didn’t know when, after lunch, he called on the appropriation bills at 2.20 pm for yet another vote. Labor had urged continuously for a vote on the bills since they were introduced in the Senate on 14 October. This time, to Wriedt’s surprise, the coalition instantly acceded. The last vital stage of the coup was completed in just four minutes. The bills were passed unanimously on the voices and the Senate adjourned at 2.24 pm. Labor had forfeited its only chance to frustrate Kerr’s decision.

A decade ago I had quite a number of conversations with Ken Wriedt about the events of 11 November 1975. Ken Wriedt did feel aggrieved, not only that he had been left in the dark on that fateful day but also that he had not been sufficiently consulted on the position of the Senate throughout the crisis. Thenceforward he distanced himself from Gough. He retained his leadership in the Senate in spite of Gough’s support for another candidate and he worked more assiduously within the party to ensure that in future leaders consulted with the caucus on all matters of significance.

Ken Wriedt’s career in the federal parliament ended when he sought to move from the Senate to the House of Representatives in the 1980 election. He contested but lost the seat of Denison. Any ambitions for leadership of the federal parliamentary Labor Party ended there. But he did go on to lead the Tasmanian state parliamentary Labor Party from 1982 until 1986. He remained a member of the Tasmanian House of Assembly until 1990. He retained, amid all the drama of those years, a sense of principle and an understanding of the importance of fair dealing. He played a straight bat. On the tactics for dealing with the supply crisis he commented later: ‘We were being manipulated in the cause of survival. I believed that you played the game straight or you didn’t play at all. Of course, Fraser was manipulating the system, but I couldn’t accept that we should get into the gutter with him.’

Ken Wriedt lived his political life faithful to his stated ambitions. He glimpsed a truth, collaborated with his fellows, remembered those who sent him to parliament and, while not achieving perfection, he made a positive contribution to the life of the nation. I join with other senators in offering my condolences to Ken Wriedt’s family, particularly to his two daughters Paula and Sonja and his grandchildren.