Paul Calvert (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with deep regret that I inform the Senate of the death, on 24 May 2006, of the Hon. John Murray Wheeldon, a senator for the state of Western Australian from 1965 to 1981.

Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to move a motion relating to the death of the Hon. John Murray Wheeldon.

Leave granted.

I move:

That the Senate records its deep regret at the death, on 24 May 2006, of the Hon. John Murray Wheeldon, former federal minister and senator for Western Australia, and places on record its appreciation of his long and meritorious public service and tenders its profound sympathy to his family in their bereavement.

John Wheeldon was born on 9 August 1929 in Subiaco, Western Australia. He was educated at Perth Modern School and then attended the University of Western Australia, graduating in arts and law before commencing work as a solicitor. Despite later serving as a minister in the Whitlam Labor government, we note with interest that John Wheeldon’s political life began when he took on the role of President of the Western Australian Young Liberals. Given his subsequent illustrious career and his rather dry views on a range of subjects, he was clearly a loss to the Liberal Party.

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

He had some views on Vietnam, as well.

Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I noticed that. John Wheeldon was elected as a senator for Western Australia in 1965, representing the Australian Labor Party. He served as a senator for 16 years, until his retirement on 30 June 1981. There are only a couple of senators still serving today who had the privilege of serving with Senator Wheeldon, including Senators Ray and Watson. Regrettably, neither Senator Evans nor I had that privilege.

John Wheeldon served at an interesting time in Australia’s history. He served during the time of the Vietnam War, and witnessed first hand the events leading to the dismissal of the Whitlam government in 1975. He had a deep and abiding interest in international affairs. He was, as Senator Evans has just noted, a fierce opponent of our involvement in the Vietnam War and made a visit to North Vietnam in the mid 1960s, at the invitation of the North Vietnam peace committee, when the war was at its height. In 1967 he also visited the United States, campaigning against that war. In parliament, he served as a member and chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee and the joint committees on foreign affairs and defence.

John Wheeldon’s esteemed political career also included time as Minister for Repatriation and Compensation from 1974 to 1975 and later in 1975 as the Minister for Social Security in the Whitlam government. His ministerial career would have been much longer had the Whitlam government survived more than one term. He served as a member of the opposition shadow ministry in 1976.

Senator Wheeldon was particularly proud of his involvement in a report on human rights in the then Soviet Union which gave timely exposure to a range of very significant humanitarian issues in that country. In common with a number of Senate colleagues, he also served as parliamentary adviser to the United Nations General Assembly in New York during his last year in parliament.

Following his retirement as a senator, John Wheeldon was approached by Rupert Murdoch and offered a position on the Australian. He was chief editorial writer for the Australian from 1981 to 1995—a position many of us might aspire to following our political careers. With his encyclopaedic knowledge of world politics, he specialised in editorials on foreign affairs and politics. During his time with theAustralian, editorials in that newspaper covered a number of key international events, including Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika reforms of the Soviet Union.

Editorials written while John Wheeldon was at the Australian stated among other things that, for example, ‘claiming a moral monopoly’ on environmental issues would not be of assistance to the ALP; and in support of free trade that ‘undoing the harm of protectionism will take time and pain, but less pain than preserving the industrial basket cases’. So he followed in a long tradition of free trade that is evident among Western Australians from both sides of politics.

John Wheeldon will be remembered for his vast knowledge of and passion for world politics, his dry and incisive wit and his intellect both during his time as a senator for Western Australia and in his career outside of politics as a lawyer and journalist. On behalf of the government, I offer condolences to his wife, Judith, daughter, Miriam, and sons, Andrew and James.

Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to 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.

John Watson (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This afternoon I rise to honour one of the Senate’s great orators, the Hon. John Murray Wheeldon, who passed away peacefully on 24 May 2006. I had the pleasure to hear Senator Wheeldon speak back when I was first elected, and I believe I am possibly the only person present here today to have done so. I can safely say that he was one of the best speakers I have ever had the pleasure to hear. In fact I believe he was only surpassed in the field of public oratory in the Senate by Sir John Carrick, on our side of politics.

It is a great shame that Senator Wheeldon served before television cameras were introduced into the Senate chamber because his skill with the spoken word together with his quick wit stick in my mind even now, more than 20 years later. The late Hon. John Wheeldon was not only a gifted speaker but a passionate parliamentarian who served his state of Western Australia admirably for over 15 years. I recall he was most active in the field of foreign affairs and his work on the various committees was invaluable. I note also that he is survived by his widow, Judith, and their three children. I extend my condolences to them and their family and hope they will take some comfort from knowing that their husband and father was one of the most remarkable men ever to sit in this chamber.

John Faulkner (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to 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.

Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like add the Australian Democrats’ voice to the expressions of condolence to the wife and children of former Senator Wheeldon. I think it is appropriate to acknowledge the contributions of somebody who has served 16 years in this place, including time in the ministry. As always when he is speaking about Labor people, Senator Faulkner has done so not only eruditely but also with insight and frankness—not that I am dismissing Senator Evans’s contribution, which was also good. We have also heard a fair bit from others about former Senator Wheeldon’s talents, his idiosyncrasies and his great ability with the spoken word.

There is one aspect of Senator Wheeldon’s career which I do not think was mentioned among all the other things that have been outlined. In his valedictory speech he mentioned that he had participated in all aspects of parliamentary life with the exception of the federal Parliamentary Christian Fellowship. However, I gather that even in that area he was not completely uninvolved. During his time in the Senate I gather that, along with some other members, he engaged in a serious attempt to establish a federal parliamentary fellowship of atheists, agnostics and members of other faiths, to cater for those who felt excluded from the Christian fellowship. I am not necessarily floating that suggestion again now, but it is interesting that that idea occurred back at that time as well.

That is another insight into Senator Wheeldon’s attitude about various things, and it is also a sign that he was not someone who would just follow predetermined positions. As Senator Faulkner indicated, he may have done so in a way that was sometimes less than constructive, but it also showed a person who would think for himself. It also demonstrates once again that you can put somebody in a box because they take a certain position on a matter, or you can label someone as being from the Left at a certain time and therefore think you can tell what they think about 99 other matters. If you look at Senator Wheeldon’s strong involvement in opposition to the Vietnam War—going as far as visiting Hanoi and doing a trip around the United States with Jim Cairns—clearly most people would think that that would put him in the package of the hard Left; and I can almost hear the kind of speech that someone like Senator Mason would immediately make about what that means about what those people would do about some things and how they would ignore certain other things.

Of course, one of the other big achievements of Senator Wheeldon was his strong involvement in putting more focus on human rights abuses in the Soviet Union. Most people would have criticised people who were perceived to be in the Left at that time for turning a blind eye to that issue. It does demonstrate that most people cannot be easily put into a single and simple box but that people can have a range of views on different positions, and it shows the benefits of considering each issue on its merits.

I join in acknowledging the extensive activities and achievements of former Senator Wheeldon’s career, both in and out of the Senate, and I join with other senators in expressing our sympathies and condolence to his family.

Question agreed to, honourable senators standing in their places.