Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support this motion of condolence and to pay tribute to the Honourable Edward Gough Whitlam AC, QC. The passing of Gough Whitlam is a time of sadness and loss. But it is also a time to remember, to reflect, to honour this most extraordinary life: a life devoted to the service of the public and to the service of the nation; a life as a husband, a father, a grandfather and a great-grandfather; as an airman stationed in Gove, Leyte and Manila, defending our nation in World War II; as a gifted young barrister in Sydney and even as a national radio quiz champion after the war; and then as a member of parliament and opposition leader, a Prime Minister, an opposition leader again and an Ambassador to UNESCO. One man's life, which touched the lives of multitudes. One man's life, which touched, transformed and lifted up the lives of millions and millions of Australians—indeed, of successive generations of Australians. For Gough Whitlam, and the Labor government he led, made Australia what it is today.

Only a handful of people in history can change a whole nation, and they are the true giants—whether in politics, science, business, the arts or the community. Gough Whitlam was one of those people, because he forged a new Australia. He opened up university education for all. He provide universal healthcare for all, creating Medibank—now Medicare. He increased funding for government schools and introduced state aid for non-government schools, ending one of the most virulent sectarian debates in Australia's political history. He lifted Australia's social safety net, increasing aged and invalid pensions, widows pensions, unemployment benefits and sickness benefits. He cut tariffs across the board, improving living standards for low- and middle-income families by bringing down the prices of everything from children's school shoes to pyjamas. He passed the Trade Practices Act, protecting consumers and promoting competition in the Australian economy by prohibiting price-fixing, collusion and anti-competitive monopolies. He cemented Australia's place in the world as an independent nation, ending our involvement in the Vietnam War, beginning our engagement with the People's Republic of China, granting independence to Papua New Guinea and taking a stand against apartheid in South Africa.

Speaking on his return from his historic first visit to China as Prime Minister—the first visit, as has been said, of any Australian prime minister—he said:

I believe we are now entering a more enlightened and productive era in our relations with China. I believe the great foundations of friendship and cooperation we have laid on this visit will stand for years to come.

Those remarks have stood the test of time.

Gough Whitlam ended a nine-year strike by the Gurindji people by buying their land from the Vestey pastoral company and giving it back. He then drafted legislation extending land rights to Indigenous Australians throughout the Northern Territory. He fought for equal pay for women, instituted no-fault divorce, introduced the single mothers benefit and gave paid maternity leave to Commonwealth employees. He empowered Australia's immigrant communities and legislated against racial discrimination. He stopped oil drilling on the Great Barrier Reef and ratified the World Heritage Convention, giving the Commonwealth the power to protect outstanding environmental and cultural heritage sites.

The Whitlam government made fundamental changes to the social, cultural and economic fabric of our nation. But it also made changes to improve the everyday lives of ordinary people in our cities and communities, extending sewerage to the outer suburbs, funding improvements in urban public transport and funding the construction of hospitals, community health centres and public housing. This is a list of reforms one would imagine would take decades to legislate and to implement, yet they were adopted in just three years, from 1972 to 1975. It is little wonder it was a time of excitement, controversy, and political turbulence. It is also a list of reforms which confirms the simple but extraordinary fact which I repeat: Gough Whitlam made Australia what it is today.

Whitlam was one of the greatest leaders of our party. He was present at the New South Wales Labor Party conference in 1949 where the then Labor Prime Minister Ben Chifley delivered the famous 'Light on the hill' speech. Gough Whitlam remains our party's longest serving federal parliamentary leader, serving in that position for 10 years and 10 months and leading the party to five elections. He was the first Labor leader to win office from opposition since Scullin in 1929 and the first to win successive elections. Labor is a better political party for having leaders like Whitlam—leaders of vision, of passion, of values and of courage. Australia is a better society for having a progressive political party that is also a party of government.

Gough Whitlam famously declared to the Victorian ALP state conference in 1967:

I do not seek and do not want the leadership of Australia's largest pressure group.

Rather, he wanted to be the leader of a progressive party of government so the reforms he believed in could be implemented as real-world policies and programs, not as slogans or postures from the sidelines. He understood that the Labor Party has one of the most challenging tasks in Australian politics: to be a progressive party but also a party of government; a party not of vested interests, single issues or perpetual opposition but a party of the national interest.

Gough made real for a whole generation what it meant to be Labor; what it meant to be committed to fairness, justice and progress; what it meant to advance the cause of the many, not the few; and what it meant to want to build a better nation and to make the world a better place. He tapped into the social transformation of the 1960s, generating a mood for change by offering a compelling, imaginative, powerful vision of a post-Menzies future. In opposition, he developed new policies in areas neglected by the Liberals like urban development, housing, health, education and foreign affairs.

In the federal election of 1969, he secured a swing of seven per cent to Labor and won over 220,000 more votes than the Liberal and Country parties but still fell short of the seats needed to win government. But, of course, in the famous federal election of 1972 he was back with the compelling election slogan 'It's time' and with a campaign and a policy platform for embracing change, for remaking Australia and for grasping the future.

Gough Whitlam addressed people as equals. He opened the ALP policy speech for the 1972 federal election with the famous invocation:

'Men and women of Australia!'

This was how Labor's wartime Prime Minister John Curtin addressed his fellow Australians—directly and frankly, seeking their support at another turning point in our nation's history. Gough went on to enunciate the three great aims of his policy program: to promote equality; to involve the people of Australia in the decision-making processes of the land; and to liberate the talents and to uplift the horizons of the Australian people. It was a famous program comprising more than a hundred different detailed policies. Key policy themes were education, health, cities and welfare. Gough concluded that speech in the Blacktown Civic Centre by saying:

I need your help. I need the help of the Australian people; and given that, I do not for a moment believe that we should set limits on what we can achieve together, for our country, our people, our future.

Nineteen days later the people responded to his request.

The federal election on 2 December 1972 was a fulcrum in the life of this nation—a dramatic turning point—because on that day Australians opened a new door and strode through it with confidence and excitement, electing a new government and a new prime minister, embarking on a new drive for equality, creating fresh opportunities, embracing a new vision and stepping into a new Australia. Many of those who have spoken on this motion here and in the other place have shared their memories of the Whitlam government, perhaps none more movingly than his friend Senator John Faulkner.

I was not in Australia during this period. My family arrived here from Malaysia in 1976. Yet we too benefited from his reforms, from the access to education and from the support from a multicultural and tolerant Australia. So I asked some of my mother's family who were here at the time what Gough Whitlam meant to them. It might surprise those opposite to know that my mother came from a farming family, a family of five girls. One of my many aunts and her husband spoke about the effect on their lives. They both got jobs at their local teachers college because of the expansion that resulted from the opening up of higher education. They said:

During our years of teaching, we had the opportunity to work with many disadvantaged and mature aged students who never would have had the opportunity for tertiary education without Whitlam's foresight. Academically, they were some of the best and most rewarding students that we were privileged to work with.

My uncle said:

I would hate to think what the cost without Medicare would have been for my surgery, chemo and other treatments following my cancer diagnosis.

Another one of my aunts recalled the heady excitement of the It's Time campaign and the elation she felt at an election night party in Tasmania and the large number of women she knew who were able to go to university and start a new career, thanks to Gough and his policies.

Another one of my aunts spoke about the amazing hope she felt during the It's Time election. She said:

Having been born in 1949 I had lived all my life till 1972 under conservative governments and Gough gave hope for fairness and equality.

The It's Time party at her house, apparently, involved plastering of the walls with many posters. But the final word on what my family who lived through this time thought comes from my mother, who says of Gough Whitlam:

He was a complete man, a man of great intellect, compassion, vision, humour, creativity and these characteristics coupled with his awareness of what comprises a civic society made him a unique leader.

Gough Whitlam was a Labor reformer. He rebuilt, revitalised and refocused the Australian Labor Party, reminding us that our values, our principles, our mission are all for nought if we are not ready, willing and able to win government. Gough Whitlam was a national leader. He captured the mood of the nation, galvanising people, winning their support, commitment and admiration. He articulated, communicated and implemented an extraordinarily comprehensive policy program. And he fought against the vested interests and the ideological opponents who did not want Australia to change. Gough was a parliamentarian, a man deeply committed to the place of this parliament in our democracy and in our system of government.

He was the dominant parliamentary figure of his era, deploying by turn eloquence and passion; wit, humour and sarcasm; aggression, anger and drama; even classical learning and the colloquial vernacular—wielding and bringing together all the tools of the parliamentarian's trade to devastating effect.

Parliament was where Gough Whitlam's prime ministership was made but of course the Senate is where it was unmade.

The Labor Party won a majority of seats in the House of Representatives at the federal elections of 1972 and 1974. But it was in this chamber that the Whitlam prime ministership was unmade by the most undemocratic act we have seen since Federation. As Gough Whitlam himself put it in a speech in the other place on 28 October 1975:

Governments are made and unmade in the House of Representatives—in the people's House … The Senate cannot, does not and must never determine who the Government shall be.

He went on:

It is because this Government has attempted to make this Parliament the instrument for reform, for long overdue change, for progress, for the redistribution of wealth, for the uplifting of the underprivileged, for the reduction of the privileges of great wealth and deeply entrenched vested interests, an instrument towards equality of opportunity for all Australians, that our opponents and those vested interests have from the very beginning … embarked on a course to destroy this Government at the earliest opportunity. But what the Opposition is really seeking to do is destroy the financial paramountcy of this House and in so doing the very basis of parliamentary democracy—responsible government—in our country.

The Senate rejected more bills in the three years that his government was in office than it had rejected in its previous 72 years of existence. Reckless obstructionism at the expense of good public policy, civility and the national interest is not unknown to Australian politics. But, in 1975, the Liberal Party went even further, abusing the powers of the Senate to block supply, creating a constitutional crisis and destroying the popularly elected government of the day. That was a fundamental breach of principle, a deeply antidemocratic act, which has permanently affected the reputations of those involved and it must never happen again.

Although Labor lost the subsequent election in 1975 the irony is that, with the passage of time, victory has been Gough Whitlam's. And it has been a comprehensive victory, for his reforms have lasted, his achievements have been recognised across the political divide and the parliamentary tactics of 1975 have been repudiated and discredited.

Gough was not only a courageous Labor reformer, an inspiring political leader and a committed parliamentarian; he was of course also a dedicated family man. The marriage between Gough and Margaret Whitlam was a love story, a partnership of soul mates and equals that spanned 69 years. Margaret was one of the most important sources of strength and sustainment in Gough's life, as he was in hers. Margaret Whitlam was an inspiration for Australians, especially Australian women.

In a television interview at The Lodge, in 1973, Gerald Stone put it to her that many people had a preconceived idea of what a Prime Minister's wife was supposed to be. 'You mean she's supposed to be nothing?' Margaret shot back. 'She's supposed to be the woman behind the man,' Stone responded, 'to go along with whatever her husband says.' Margaret's reply was forthright:

I'm prepared to voice my own opinion, my own personal opinion on things, even if they're political.

Margaret and Gough had four children: Antony, Nicholas, Stephen and Catherine. They have all followed their parents in making significant contributions to public life in Australia: in politics, the law, banking and business, and as public servants.

On behalf of the opposition in this place, I acknowledge their service to the nation and I express heartfelt sympathy to them and to their extended family for their loss. Gough's family and close friends will feel this loss most deeply, most personally and most grievously. But it is a loss felt by millions of people because all of us are his beneficiaries—beneficiaries of his reforms, inheritors of his vision and carriers of his torch. The Whitlam torch lit the way for a modern Australia, a fair and just society, a forward-looking nation—optimistic, engaged with the world, confident about its place and always striving for a better future.

For those of us in the Labor Party, Gough Whitlam is an enormous figure. He will always be present, reminding us that our mission is to fight for reform, to cleave to our values, to be courageous and to be principled; reminding us all that politics can be a source of inspiration and of transformation; reminding us that it is the Australian Labor Party, representing the working people of this nation, which has made the equalising social reforms and the modernising economic reforms, and which has secured the nation at times of existential threat, and which has built this nation and offered hope for the future; reminding us that it is Labor governments which have put the stakes of reform in the ground, and that our opponents may try their best to tear those stakes out, to burn them to the ground, but, over time, Labor's reforms have prevailed, they have delivered, and they have become embedded in the nation's psyche—part of what it means to be Australian.

Graham Freudenberg's phrase 'a certain grandeur' captures something of Gough Whitlam's presence, his intellect, and his character. Yet it was a certain grandeur grounded in the real world—in the real lives, challenges and struggles of the people of Australia.

A thank-you note from a Qantas pilot several years ago said: 'Mr Whitlam, when you were PM you changed conscription. Thanks to you I missed Vietnam by only weeks. Out of my five mates who went, only two are alive today.'

A moving hand-written letter to Gough from an 88-year-old woman, nearly blind and suffering from disabilities, declared: 'What you did for pensioners was almost too good to be true.' Her letter concluded by saying simply: 'I want to thank you for being you.'

But the last word should go to the great man himself. He said:

… a more equal, open, tolerant and independent Australia. These values are at the heart of the Whitlam legacy.

They are, and they always will be.