Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Science) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to join with Labor colleagues and other senators in mourning the passing of a great Prime Minister and in extending our sympathies to Gough Whitlam's children, Tony, Nick, Stephen, Catherine and their families. This is recognition of a person of great importance to this country. As a consequence, I think it is appropriate to make a more substantive contribution on these matters. I do not often contribute to these condolence debates because it is so often difficult to argue much that is different from what has been said, but this occasion requires a more significant intervention.

Gough Whitlam was first and foremost a Labor man. He was a great Australian social democrat. As Manning Clark, a contemporary of Whitlam, observed, too often in this country we have seen society divide those who are engaged in public life as either enlargers or straighteners. There is no doubt in my mind that Whitlam was one of the great enlargers of life for the people of this country. He demonstrated just how important it is to understand that politics is a long game. Obviously, it is important to reassert exactly what he was about and why he was about those causes.

It sometimes happens that, when a great national leader dies, many rush to claim his or her legacy, unfortunately including some who have done so for opportunistic and deceptive reasons. I do not refer to those on the other side of the chamber on this occasion, despite their different assessments of the Whitlam era. It is acknowledged by members of the government that Whitlam and his government transformed Australia for the better. The contributions to this condolence motion have highlighted—and it is similar in the House of Representatives—the proposition and, in fact, refuted the accusation that politics is always marked by partisan rancour and that in this country it lacks generosity of spirit. A condolence motion of this type has demonstrated that there is a much bigger question here for us to consider. It seems to me that the issue here about the role of the great man in politics is one of those questions. Can the role of the individual be entirely separated from the mores, from the habits of thought and from the events of their time?

It may well be one of the great defining qualities of great political leadership to unchain a society from its past. That in its essence epitomises Whitlam's greatness. I am of the school of history that says that 'men make their own history'—that quote is from the 19th century and referred to women—'but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.' The reference there is to the 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. The question of leadership has played a pivotal role in Australian politics because it helps us define a party. For many people, the leader is seen as the person who interprets the party to the public at large and is seen as a representative, or as an interpreter, of what that political party's movement stands for. That is why I say that it is important to appreciate what it was that Whitlam stood for and why.

What does it mean to say that he was a social democrat? It means, to begin with, that Whitlam understood what the great sociologist Harold Lasswell meant when he wrote during the Great Depression that 'politics is a fight over who gets what, when and how.' Whitlam understood that the winners in that fight were all too often those who could wield disproportionate power and influence because of the wealth they possessed, whether inherited or acquired, and the privileges that their wealth bestowed. Senator Faulkner made the point that Whitlam could have gone on and had a different life, but he understood that principle and stood against championing the cause of inherited wealth and privilege.

He understood that the only enduring way to overcome the imbalance of power was to create a society that was more equal and that that could only be done through democratic political action. The aim of political action—and the reason for it was to take up the necessary political leadership—was, as he saw it, to build a majority for change. I think reform is a much abused word in this country. He was genuinely a reformist social democrat who sought to win a majority of people for this country to build a better society. That is the mission he set for himself and the Labor Party. That is clearly what he sought to achieve, not just while he was in parliament but beyond his work in parliament. He saw politics as noble, although he saw parliament as the primary arena of struggle to create that new society. In so doing, he inspired a generation of activists that clearly opposed the stultification of that Menzies' 'white picket fence' stupor. He inspired a generation of activists who were genuinely shocked by the belligerence of those who opposed him while he was in government and who defended entrenched class privilege. Whitlam aggressively advanced the proposition that only the impotent were pure and he rejected the idea that protest politics in the name of principle was sufficient to achieve social change.

He of course in that process drew quite an ambivalent attitude from the Victorian left. Senator Faulkner made reference to the ideological position of many in the left in Victoria in the 1960s. In fact, there was incredible hostility to him; it is one of these points that gets overridden these days when there is a conversation about the Whitlam legacy. The ambivalence towards Whitlam was I think expressed in the relationship through Jim Cairns, who was, as I said, champion of the Victorian left, and the relationship was not always a steady one.

But it is interesting that Whitlam's intervention in 1970 in Victoria helped transform the Labor Party but also helped transform the Socialist Left. It is an irony that Victoria went from being the jewel in the Liberal crown to being one of Labor's strongest states. In 1974 there were actually seats won in Victoria, whereas there were seats lost for the Labor Party in New South Wales. It is an equal irony that just before the intervention the group around George Crawford who were removed were replaced in and won the presidency in the Labor Party election within two years. That is an irony in itself. But I think the discussion about the role of Labor in that period allowed Labor to reach a view about the importance of a progressive legislation so that Labor could be both principled and electable. And those who worked closely within—and I think Graham Freudenberg is one of those—demonstrated this political understanding:

He took certain propositions as self-evident … that the role of government was constructive, positive and benevolent; that action by governments, through parliament and the public service, was the normal and natural approach for the solution of Australian problems …

The concept of a government being constructive, positive and benevolent has been strongly disputed. In some quarters it has become quite fashionable to sneer at the positive role of government and reject the notion that democratically elected, reforming governments can unshackle the country and can actually be a great liberator of society. That argument seeks to question the value of social democracy and suggests that somehow those who argue this position are interested only in the distribution of wealth and ignore the creation of wealth.

I do not believe that is the position Whitlam would have argued. He suggested that inequality itself retards economic growth. He argued that it was probably the most important factor in limiting the potential of this country. He argued that the greatest spur to growth is the breaking down of barriers to opportunity, such as lack of access to quality education and to adequate health care, neglect of crucial social infrastructure, and insufficient income support for those blighted by poverty, unemployment, family breakdown and disability. He would argue that    the exclusion of people from full participation in the life of the nation, because of their gender or because of their status or because they were members of minorities, was in itself one of the great causes of our restrictions as a nation. So he argued that social democracy had to set about dismantling these barriers to opportunity. Equality of opportunity was of course the refrain that so often demonstrated his argument. He achieved this by first reforming the way in which the Labor Party itself would have to function. They had to rebuild Labor's relationship with the Australian people, because Labor throughout that period—up until his leadership, for so many years in opposition—had learnt to turn on itself and adopt a position that essentially was to defend a cul-de-sac of politics. He wanted to see a majority created for change through the party and a modern era of social rights that he suggested went beyond the idea of liberty, equality and fraternity of the enlightenment. He argued that social rights such as universal quality health care and education and economic justice were absolutely fundamental to Labor's mission. Whitlam was able to forge that renewed relationship not because he and his colleagues devised the policies necessary to implement change but because they had a clear vision of what Australia could be if it was able to pursue those policies.

So, Whitlam led by articulating that vision and by inviting others to share it with him. This was a view that rejected the doctrine of individualism that is now seen as so closely identified with neoliberalism but at the time was championed by those known as the 'new right'.    Whitlam argued that economic individualism encouraged selfishness and social conflict. He argued against the conservative view that individualism should on the other hand be supressed by the requirements of social order. He took quite strong libertarian views on moral issues, arguing that the state should stay out of the bedroom.    This was an argument that suggested that collective responsibilities required society to meet the challenges of injustice as a means of securing prosperity and cultural enlightenment.

This was a vision that was set out in many great and now famous speeches. It is extraordinary, the number of his speeches that have become popular and understood more widely than among the immediate audience. He delivered these speeches with great verve and wit and with an erudition that he always wore so lightly. Many of those speeches have been cited in the past week, and I think it is worth going back to a couple that should be better known. On 3 December 1973 he gave a speech in Ballarat on the occasion of the unveiling of the newly restored Eureka flag. Whitlam said:

The kind of nationalism that every country needs ... is a benign and constructive nationalism [that] has to do with self-confidence, with maturity, with originality, with independence of mind.

If Australia is to remain in the forefront of nations ... if it is determined to be a true source of power and ideas in the world, a generous and tolerant nation respected for its tolerance and generosity, then I believe that something like 'the new nationalism' must play a part in our government and in the lives of us all.

Forty years later, those words could still serve as a measure of what we do here in this parliament—both as a challenge to do it better and perhaps as a reproach for the ways in which we have failed to do it as well as we should. We should ask ourselves: in the past four decades, has Australia become a more generous and tolerant nation, respected for its tolerance and generosity? As a nation, do you think we are in fact marked by our attitudes of self-tolerance, of maturity, of originality and of independence of mind?

Whitlam wanted Australia to be the best that it could be. He was not afraid to dream large for this country. Because he spoke about politics in that way, he sparked a ferment of ideas and debate. Whitlam put the social democratic agenda at the centre of national aspirations and, thus, he was able to present himself as a modern Labor leader. But he was also a very traditional one. The vision he held out evoked and resonated with Ben Chifley's 'light on the hill' and an even older image cherished by labour movements around the world—that is, the concept of 'building the new Jerusalem'.

Those of us who reached maturity during Whitlam's tenure have never forgotten the ferment of that time. We have not forgotten, either, the way in which that government was torn down. In 1975, and at the age of 20, I watched with horror as the Whitlam government was dismembered by the ferocious conservative assault, cheered on and orchestrated by an extraordinarily hostile media, particularly the Murdoch press. And that was in itself an irony given the role that Murdoch himself had played in Whitlam's election. As a result of those events, the period after the '74 election was a turning point for me in terms of my commitment—what is a life-long commitment—to the Labor Party.

It was clear that the establishment in this country in the 1970s would never accept the legitimacy of a Labor government. It was the Senate leader of the Liberal Party—a man that had the self-styled title of the 'toe-cutter'—Senator Reg Withers, who argued that the election of the Labor government was in fact an aberration. In that view it demonstrated, in his mind, the justification for the shredding of democratic and parliamentary conventions. For me that experience was a catalyst for our subsequent involvement in the Labor movement.

Much of Gough Whitlam's achievements as Prime Minister has not been torn down, and they remain part of the national framework of this country. Young Australians become full citizens at the age of 18 and are no longer conscripted for military service. Those, I think, are things that we would all suggest that Whitlam personally could be very proud of. Indigenous Australians still suffer great disadvantage, but we no longer avert our eyes from it by doing nothing. This is because of Gough Whitlam. Family law is no longer a means of publicly making and contesting bitter accusations of fault. This is because of Whitlam. It is inconceivable that gender could ever again be used to justify discrimination in employment or other areas of life. This, too, is because of Whitlam.

As the Prime Minister noted in his speech on condolence in the other place, some of Whitlam's greatest legislative achievements are as contested now as they were in 1975. Mr Abbott did not specify what he meant, but I do not think he really had to. The parliament has before it legislation that would see an end to universal free access to primary health care and would exclude many areas of access to universal university education, because of people's ability to pay. The fight still is about who gets what, when and how. Those of us who seek to be the bearers of Whitlam's legacy—the sharers of his vision of a social democratic Australia—will not abandon that fight. We will not allow the restoration of the barriers to inequality of opportunity to be removed. As Whitlam declared in 1972:

We believe that a student's merit, rather than a parent's wealth, should decide who should benefit from the community's vast financial commitment to tertiary education.

In launching Labor's campaign, he placed that belief in a wider context. I think it is worth repeating the remarks from that great speech—and which Senator Faulkner made here, also—where he said:

Our program has three great aims. They are: to promote equality; to involve the people of Australia in the decision-making processes of our land; and to liberate the talents and uplift the horizons of the Australian people. We want to give a new life and a new meaning in this new nation to the touchstone of modern democracy—to liberty, equality, fraternity.

Gough Whitlam knew there was a direct connection between liberating people's talents and uplifting horizons. He knew that you could not raise the horizons of a nation while the talents of individuals were locked up—while they were denied opportunities to participate fully in the life of the nation because of income or other barriers to equality. The agenda for the nation that Gough Whitlam set down at the Blacktown Civic Centre in 1972 still lives, even though the man who proclaimed it does not. He has passed the torch, which burns brightly and will not be extinguished.