BIG TALK: The Whitlam Dismissal PART ONE

Before we start today's episode, we would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we are recording today, the Gadigal People, and pay our respects to elders past and present.

Hi, I'm Hannah. And I'm Sarah. Welcome to Big Talk. Big Talk deep dives the big news stories that you've heard of, but you don't know all the serious and salacious details about. We revisit the most shocking headlines of the past that have shaped the world. Today we're looking at Goth Whitlam and the

This is an exciting exciting one for you. And also exciting one for everyone I think because I don't know about you, but obviously the fifty year anniversary was in the last week and every outlet was running story after story about this and I got But what was so funny is and this is seems bad to admit, but we actually didn't click that it was the genuinely picked it. We had this in the month for this month anyway and we were like, Well that is serendipitous. And w yeah, so

Let's talk about it that way. But it was so funny. Also, I didn't even ask. Someone in like an ABC news article tagged us and said Big talk and I just commented back with the like suspicious eye emoji. I tagged you two hoping that you'd be like fine, Hannah, but I got lots of likes, so people uh people are keen. It is This will be one of the best big talks I reckon. Staking my claim now. Okay. Should we do the pitch?

Okay, I will admit that this one surprised me how much I loved researching it and looking into it. And to be completely honest, I didn't know much about this before and I think when I thought of Golf Whitlam, I just thought of the iconic landwrights photo of holding the red soil and the phrase like back in Gough Whitlam days when people spoke about the

University was free. And that was pretty much it. And now I have never been so excited to choose someone's ear off. Uh, the story of Goth and the dismissal. I think it's one of those rare political moments that reads Sort of stranger than fiction. It was an elected PM sacked by the Governor General, accusations of the CIA interference, an extremely progressive take on politics faced with a global recession. And I think what is

Fascinating about this story is to this day people are divided. I think some remember Goff as a legend who shook up politics and was taken down for exactly that. Others see him as the most reckless and financially irresponsible prime minister we've ever had.

Not only that, but the dismissal itself remains a heated debate over who was right, who overstepped, and whether the crown had a hidden hand. And the release of the palace letters only deepened the fascination, proving that even fifty years on we could not

As this year marks the fiftieth anniversary, we wanted to take this chance to look again at the moment our democracy was stretched to its limit and understand why Australians remain captivated by the drama, the mystery, and the sheer audacity of the dismissal.

Okay, so let's go back and start with who Gough Whitlam actually is. He is the man at the center of it all, a man forever known for his sideburns, charisma, and insane reform agenda. And his name is actually Edward Gough. So Goth is only his middle name. Hilarious to prioritize goth there. We were talking about this before. I find it so funny how common it was, especially like a generation ago, for people to go by their middle names. Yeah, I'm I'm

Louise at a personal level. But it also seems to be such a guy thing to do. It is, it is. It's also like, and you know, we had we surveyed the crowd of one person here with us, Jock. And as he reminded us, often men were named after their father or grandfather. I guess I was kinda.

to be like I go by my middle name. Like I mean my middle name is Elizabeth after my mum. So maybe but like it makes sense is that's like a secret little hidden name. Actually my name is like a my full name is Sarah Jane Elizabeth. Oh and I love that dearly. I mean I'm sure you've talked about why you're you're There's so much law here it could be a big talk. Frankly.

Anyway, so Goff Whitlam was Australia's twenty first Prime Minister. He served from December nineteen seventy two until his very dramatic dismissal, November 1975. But to understand why he governed the way he did and why his government ended the way it did, we have to look back at his childhood, his education, his war years, his legal career, and how they all sort of feed into this bigger story of a man who was constantly But I guess then the question is what was his early life like? Was he all

I mean, yes. But in like a super nerdy Canberra kid way. Oh, our Question Kid. So he was born July 1916 in Melbourne, and he was the eldest of two children. And his dad, Frederick, was a Commonwealth public servant. So the family basically moved whenever the government needed them to. From Melbourne to Sydney, from Sydney,

I hear stories of kids that have to move a bunch. Military family kids. I'm like, are you guys okay? No, the answer is no. By age eleven, the Whitlams were properly settled in Canberra because Frederick had just become the Commonwealth Crown Solicitor.

Which if you did not know and I did not, so I've looked it up, the Commonwealth Crown solicitor is one of the most senior legal positions in the Australian federal government. You're a lawyer for the government, yeah. Yeah. It essentially means he was the government's top in hand. And I think that makes sense because you can see how public life then shaped Goff from such a young age and what a political household he must have grown up in and how he really got an early

Worked through his dad, really from the get-go. Goff went to a string of schools. He went to Mowbray House. And then went to Northern. Oh yeah. Grammar boy. Yeah, okay. I don't really know what that means. I know that means something to some people. Then then Tilopia Park High and Canberra Grandma. And from all accounts he was described as tall, bookish, obsessed with

And already had a very noticeable, booming theatrical voice. Oh, I would have been in love with him. Like that description goes goes Like come on, tal bookish that's that's my type. Then he went to the University of Sydney to study arts and law, which I know was a bit of an eye roll, but many with And for many it is. He edited student magazines, he dominated debating competitions, and spoke really with the confidence.

Which he did. So that's a relief, because otherwise you'd just be annoying. So So he was also a young adult during the war years though. How how did this shape him? What did he do during this war period? I think it shaped him.

Which was the day after Pearl Harbor. Again, another fun fact, but fun like wild to me. He was chronically airsick, like motion sick. Just spewing up. Yeah. Imagine like navigating a military aircraft. Like that's heroic to me. Well that's what I was gonna say, I think this stood out to me because I genuinely for like a year could not drive anywhere in the backseat without wearing motion sick glasses. Can you show everything?

I burnt all the evidence of it, but I'm sure I could find surely. They're really good. So like it's like wearing water goggles and I have to and the water will move. But I like it's actually really fun. It is good. But despite that, he rose the ranks to flight lieutenant and ended up. And the war years are really when politics began to sink its teeth into him. Whenever he was on leave in Sydney, he'd sneak into Labour Party meetings. Cool guy. He even campaigned for John Curtin's representation.

What was that referendum? So this is a bit of a sidestep, but I took it. The Curtin government, which was the Labour government, held a referendum in nineteen forty four because they wanted to It didn't actually get up, but I still think this is worth noting because it was kind of Goff's first

And also I suppose him pushing for constitutional reform and more federal powers does become pretty key for him later on. Anywho, by nineteen forty-five he joined the Australian Labour Party. He had finished his Lord.

And so by his early thirties he was a veteran, a lawyer, politically switched on. His sights were pretty well set by then that he wanted to be Prime Minister, that was pretty known. I uh my other question would be like what else do we Well, we know that after the war he and his wife Margaret And he seriously. Pretty much the meeting was happening, Goff was there. Then this is hilarious. Then there's this whole quiz thing. So Goff won the Australian national quiz.

Which was a big deal back then and televised in nineteen forty eight and then again in nineteen forty nine. And this is like a general knowledge quiz. Yeah. Super random. And um, but it was because he won these random national quizzes on TV that boosted his profile and hilariously helped him pay off his mortgage.

Like imagine being introduced to politics'cause you're like Travier Obsessed nerdy neighbor keeps winning national quiz shows. Go off. Uh he also then tried to get elected early. So the Sutherland Shire Council in nineteen forty eight and then the New South Wales In 1950, he actually lost both, but people noticed him. And he was really articulate, clever, and quite unusual.

Yeah, I guess when we look at mod Yeah, absolutely. But can I ask you, when did his So he won the federal seat of Werwa in a by election when he was just thirty six years old. And the second he walked into parliament, he stood out because he didn't look or sound like this little traditional. And this is actually like a very key part of his image and of his rise because at the time the Labour Party was.

We know these roots and we know the roots of the Labour Party and it still very much is where it's at least supposed to be for the workers by the workers. And a lot of ALP politicians were then pretty much all former union workers or leaders. But many at the time left school early to work. So there is should look like at that time. And they were super proud to represent bread and butter industrial issues and were generally suspicious of what they'd call tofts or anyone

Goff was the opposite of that. He didn't have a working class accent, he was a lawyer, he'd gone to a private school, he had gone to university, and would go on to quote Shakespeare and Latin in Parliament a number of times. So actually there were plenty in the Labour Party who thought he was too elitist. He was too little.

And from early on, he was pushing ideas that were wildly ahead of their time. He advocated for things like self-determination in Indochina and recognizing the People's Republic of China in the mid-1950s. And also explain what this means, because it does So in the mid-1950s, the world was changing fast, and a lot of that was because we were now in what some describe as a decolonization era, where dozens of countries across Asia and Africa were fighting for independence from European.

So people like Whitlam believed Indochina, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia should be part of this wave and that colonial power should step back and allow for self-determination. And this was Australian attitudes were not there yet.

And it's actually really accidentally fabulous the way we have ordered these big talks. Because if you really want to set the scene for this, go back and listen to the Petrov affair from last month and also listen to Harold Holt because that explains the Cold War influence of this. And why people were scared of Asia and communist influence. I love

the more that I'm like, oh yeah, and I remember this from these three, you know, that we set pressure. It really like maps it out. Putting a puzzle together. It's it's really helpful to revisit. And the Cold War especially because it went for so long. But it was such a huge thing. And we spin across. Yeah, it's really it's I I love how much easier it is to kind of move.

But what Goff actually politically recognised, as did other diplomats and academics, was that China is big and powerful and not going away, and you can't run Asian foreign policy.

Conservative reaction for that time to this, and a while still was that there's a little bit of a little bit of a little So if we go back then to Goff's political career, he served on the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Constitutional Review in the late 1950s, which absolutely radicalized him into seeing just how outdated Australia's constitutional review.

This is so interesting. Well, it's so central, right? And I actually want to dive into this for a second because it played a huge role in Goff's thinking, and I don't So this bipartisan committee was a special committee made up of members from both the House and To examine whether Australia's constitution was still fit for purpose in the mid 20th century. Whitlam served.

MP at the time, and he spent years, literally years, hearing evidence, studying federal-state power struggles, and comparing Australia's system with those. And what the committee concluded was that the Constitution was outdated, that it was overly rigid, and it was badly in need of reform, especially around Commonwealth powers, the referendum process. Even though most of its recommendations went nowhere, obviously the experience

When we say like radicalized, right? That sounds quite extreme. What we're really saying is that he listened to the evidence, looked we should implement those. And that was seen but I think as radical to one considering the time that we're in when we're talking. Totally. But it's also interesting because we're in this w we are still where best practice and evidence that we have is not used because

actually listening to the evidence and going, Oh well how do we fix this is seen as controversial. Goff then became the deputy leader of the Labour Party in nineteen sixty and then leader of the But I then wanna ask you, we know this now up to this point, what

So, thanks to listening to the Petrov, which largely caused this to be so. The country had now been. Just pretty insane to think about. Again, it's kind of like that's a one party system. Like we're looking that's relevant today. We're talk looking at the libs and the coal like the coalition right now, like abandoning net zero and how Labour's got all this power and like they could just like continue to

new form, right? Yeah. This is what it was like, like nine elections in a row. But also that speaks to how much influence the Menzies government especially had and As we said, the era began under Robert Menzies, who is still the longest serving prime minister in our history, and for a long time voted Stable, predictable, comfortable. But once Menzies retired in nineteen sixty-six, everything changed. The coalition basically went into a leadership tailspin, and in just six years.

He did go missing. But John Gordon. Sorry, I should have laughed. Halt went missing, lol, but that is a funny remark. William McMahon. It was messy, it was chaotic, and the public could feel the exhaustion and it kind of looked like the Meanwhile, as we know, Australia was changing really fast. There was this growing sense, especially among young voters and the urban middle class, that the

A interesting way of putting it because it was like a mindset shift. Like for the longest time, stability was how they described it, and then stability turned into we're stagnant. People wanted modernization. So how did Whitlam actually Because again, the party wasn't exactly known at the time for being modern or unified before his entry. Exactly. And I think that's why this is so crucial. So when we're

Well I guess if you couldn't win for nine elections, like you weren't getting your shit together basically. No. It was factional, it was inward thinking, there was still a lot of infighting over ideological battles. So as a leader He modernizes the party structure, reduces. and shifts the party towards middle class, educated suburban voters. I just want to for a second talk about what I mean by reducing the powers of the left faction, because I found this really interesting.

Influence over policy and the pre selections. And what they did is they prioritized ideological purity. Voters. And Whitlam challenged them and actually threatened to resign to force an intervention and push the water. This is really interesting because I think when we read things In fighting in left wing spaces. Like this is something that would probably resonate with a lot of people in on social media and in just like the political.

Too and really the question a lot of the time is like, is you know it bad to let perfect be the enemy of good and what's pragmatic versus what's like you know, what changed. And also, who are we trying to invite into the space and who are we trying to win over to vote for us? And how do we do that? And whether that's kind of like abandoning your values. And like at what point.

Yes. What's key about what he did is Well this is the thing, unions and industry are always fighting beyond their own sphere, but oftentimes those And inflection points of a campaign where it needed to broaden to things that were impacting them but also everyone else. Yeah, and I mean at this time that's And it it really worked. By the nineteen sixty nine election, Whitlam delivered Labour's biggest swing since nineteen forty nine. He picked up eighteen.

He doesn't win, but he does show the country and his own party that he could. Yeah. But what about the government he was up against? What was going on McMahon. So from what I've seen and read, he needed more Which Muman lacking in Riz, yeah. When I've spoken about doing golf wheatland, do you know how many people have been like, God he had charisma and like God we

Yeah. Gobby were just absolutely dry from like there was a drought of charisma. But also by the time he became Prime Minister in 1971, the coalition was already in deep internal People didn't see him as a leader, like McMahon we're talking about. Especially not when Whitlam was And so I think his government really stumbled from the start. And Australia was facing rising inflation and wage pressures. The economy was shaky, and the public was uneasy.

Then came the foreign policy embarrassment. So in 1971, Whitlam was the opposition leader at the time and he visited China. McMahon attacks him for this, right? Saying it's reckless and it's But months later, Richard Nixon announces his own opening to China. Richard Nixon being the US president at the time.

McMahon then looks outdated, petty, badly briefed, and suddenly Whitlam's a visionary. He's ahead of his time, he's a forward thinker. And every misstep reinforced the perception that the coalition government was out of touch with global and domestic change. Australia was modernising, our government wasn't. But it wasn't just politics, right? Like the whole country.

Oh, and this is the context that is everything here, right? The late nineteen sixties and early seventies were a period of massive social transformation across the Western world. And Australia was right in the middle of it. Also, we're going to have listeners who have experience in this, who actually know and remember this time period. 'Cause what what we're talking about is the Vietnam War protest.

anti conscription movements, the rise of women's liberation, the growth of multiculturalism, environmental activism, the civil rights movement, young people demanding a voice in the political space. And Conscription was deeply unpopular by this point. The idea that nineteen year olds could be drafted and sent to Vietnam was. bitterly dividing the country and rightfully so. Yeah, it's so funny even having conversations with people now about their grandparents for our people our age.

Grandparents, great grandparents about um Vietnam. Of d like did you go? Did you were you against conscription? Were you drafted? Like all of this it's such c like current. Absolutely. No, that's that's it's what I mean. Like there's gonna be lots of people that recall this time period. Like some of our parents would have been growing up in this era and like remember it. I mean my

Um my grandpa was already in the army, so he went early. But it was funny just like talking to people, they were like, Oh, my my dad was ready to go to jail because he didn't want to go, you know. My grandpa was in the army, my dad was in the navy. Like there's like a many of the people listening will have family members who were in the forces and like know what these conversations and felt like at the time.

And younger urban Australians, this was a generation listening to rock, watching colored TV arrive, reading about global protests. They wanted political leadership that reflected their generation, not the stagnant leadership of the fifties. And Whitlam just tapped into this perfectly. Which is when we get to the It's Time campaign. Oh my god. Which I think everyone still knows or has at least heard at some point. Yeah. Even fifty years on now.

And I mean, its time was pretty much the slogan that he ran his campaign on. But it wasn't just a slogan, it was it's like when we're talking about that mindset mindset shift, like The way he marketed I think could be studied forever. Um, but his labor campaign was the first modern

It used television, it used radio, it used cinema ads, print, professional marketing research. For the first time ever, a big advertising agency, which was McCann Ericsson, crafted a political campaign like they would craft a brand. And they understood the brief and the target message. After twenty-three years of conservative rule, the country was ready for change.

And then came the theme song, a full blown music video featuring Australian celebrities, singers, actors, TV personalities, all smiling at the camera and declaring it's time. R.I.P. Goff Whitlam, you would have loved big small talk. That pop culture and political Venn diagram you've done is incredible. I just think this was so clever. Celebrities that were in were in this campaign.

Not that I recognized really any of them, but little little Patty was a teen pop sensation. Cole Joy, a rock star, Helen Morse, actress, Graham Kennedy, described as the king of Aussie TV. Huge win to have him in this campaign. Burt Newton, also a TV star. Jack Thompson, an actor, described as like the heartthrob of the time.

You check this out just to check let's let's cross check this one. Let's look at the Actually ha wait, can I look at the primary source on this one for just I'm gonna look'em up. Hold on. Oh yeah. Confirmed. Not what I was expecting, but blonde men scare me a bit. Yes. It was catchy, it was optimistic, it made voting labor feel modern and safe and exciting. You're you're joining a club. And he campaigned on these policies. Ending inscription. Expanding education funding.

Establishing universal healthcare, which became Medicare later, promoting urban development, and even creating a Minister of Urban Affairs, which was something really unheard of. But can you talk us through election day? Well, on the second of December 1972, it was officially time. And Labour won 49.6 of the primary vote and took and took 67 of 125 seats in the House of Representatives.

Whitlam didn't win by a landslide. His majority was only four seats, but the symbolic weight of the victory was still massive, and after 23 years the coalition era was over.

Three days later on the fifth of December, Whitlam was sworn in as Prime Minister and it was time for reform like literally it's He hits the ground running so fast it's almost chaotic. Between nineteen seventy two and nineteen seventy five, Whitlam's government passed, I believe, five hundred and eight bills. It's one of the first things I learnt about him actually. That's a huge number. It was one of the most productive bursts of lawmaking in Australian history.

And this wasn't about tinkering around the edges with small amendments. He went for big ticket items. So what were the biggest reforms? And what changed for everyday Australians then? I guess it's a important to start by looking at social reform and equality. Whitlam ended conscription immediately. He also released everyone who'd been in jail for resisting the drug.

For young Australians, especially men turning twenty, this was life-changing. It ended our involvement in the Vietnam War and healed one of the most painful political divides of the era. he introduced equal pay for women, which sounds obvious now, but at the time transformed the industrial landscape. Well it feels so it almost feels distant, right? When we say like for them, it's like because it feels so distant. But it's not long ago. That's the thing, it's not.

And then came the Racial Discrimination Act nineteen seventy five, which basically said if we say we're a multicultural country, then the law has to act like that. And so with that, Whitlam banned racial discrimination in a way Australia had never done before. And again, it's we're thinking like obvious.

It feels like the bare minimum and it should be, but this was transformative for our social and cultural landscape. Also I think it's worth noting this didn't like I think a lot of the questions that come up was did he end white Austr Australia policy then? Not technically. So this was a whole bundle of immigration rules, the White Australia policy was from nineteen oh one. And its dismantling actually took twenty years and several governments.

But for sure this was one of the nails in the coffin and ensured the government couldn't discriminate racially in the workplace again. No, just no, but it is yeah, I think it's mostly workplace. If the White Australia policy still exists as a bit Well I'll just do it. He also lowered the voting age, which is significant, from twenty-one to eighteen to bring younger people into the democratic process for the first time.

Obviously this makes sense from someone who is aiming at the next generation with a series, a suite of policies that were particularly good for eighteen and nineteen year olds, especially ending conscription. But Another one of the biggest changes I wanted to talk about, social changes, was he introduced no fault divorce.

Yeah, I this blew my mind that this didn't exist yet. So the Family Law Act nineteen seventy five meant couples no longer had to prove adultery, cruelty, or abandonment to get a divorce. It removed public shame from what was you know before that just private heartbreak and it made divorce humane.

It allowed people to genuinely choose to leave relationships without needing to express a a level of um excuses or reasons that were like legally viable. And again, the fact we're in the mid-70s and you can't just get a divorce. Oh, it's for wild.

Just not wanting to be that person anymore. And what about education and health? Like people always talk about Whitlam making university free. Yeah. So in nineteen seventy four Whitlam abolished university tuition fees, declaring that higher education should depend on ability not

Must be nice. This was a big one because it opened the doors of universities to women, working class students, migrants, to entire groups who had been locked out. But again like We are talking the Labour government would have won on these people's votes and he is op and yes, this is the right thing to do in opening up equal opportunity for people, but this is also unlocking for his voter base. higher education to then continue advocating for these kinds of amazing policies.

He also pumped funding into schools and he created the schools commission to distribute money based on need. Then came Medibank, Australia's first universal health insurance scheme. Essentially this was the ancestor of Medicare. healthcare went from being something you hoped you could afford to something the government guaranteed. And also I think what's wild is how much of what Golf Whitlam did, which is now so natural, so irrefutable to Australia today,

So much of this is what we discuss when talking about the kind of standard we have here that sets us apart from countries, even like the US, recently, with a lot of these policies. Can you explain what Gough Whitlam did on the front of indigenous? Well his government was the first federal steps towards Aboriginal land, right?

And that moment is probably what people remember best, which was nineteen seventy five at Waddy Creek when Whitlam picked up the handful of red dust and poured it into the hands of the elder Vincent Lingari. and it symbolized the return of land to the people after a decade long And it's an incredible picture and it's so famous now. But it wasn't just symbolism. Like he created a Department of Aboriginal Affairs embedded indigenous policy at the federal level for the very

Time. Also, on a side note of something else he did, he was obsessed with cities and urban planning. That's so true. I have so many friends like this and it's like when death it's their hyperfixation, it is their life.

City and open planning is a very funny hyperfication. But it's it's actually cool when you look into it because in a nutshell he believed cities weren't just places to live, they were political. They are. They are. And like growing suburbs needed proper infrastructure, affordable housing, sewerage, transport.

And up until this point the Commonwealth had basically left it to the states to sort that out. So Whitlam declared the Department of Urban and Regional Development and it directly funded councils. It bypassed states and that out. Well that is that would upset the power structure that was clearly in place. It meant that communities got the money they needed for roads, for sewerage, for libraries, parks, etcetera. But it also expanded federal.

spending to local governments and pushed early environmental policies that recognized land and water as national issues. Also a note on foreign policy, obviously China. So unsurprisingly from what we spoke about earlier, one of Whitlam's first acts as Prime Minister was to recognize

Of China. And he did it within weeks of taking office. And I think what's also worth noting about this is that it was one of the first major moves Australia did on its own without waiting for the US or for Britain to give the green light.

And one thing Whitlam very much pushed for, and this will be very relevant later, but he very much pushed for Australia to have its own independence when decision making. Like he supported Papua New Guinea's independence in nineteen seventy five and reduced ties to British honors.

He actually introduced the Order of Australia. What the Order of Australia is, it's our national honors system and it's our own. So before this, Australians mostly received British honors like But Whitlam wanted a system that reflected our It was like, why are we doing everything Britain's doing? We sh we're our own people.

To keep this going as well, what did you do for arts and culture? So similarly, he believed arts to be politics and that a country needed to invest in its identity. A crazy notion, I guess. So he massively increased funding, established the National Gallery of Australia and created Department of

What about things I think things for him get kind of controversial when we start to talk about economics Yeah, this is um this is what you constantly hear when discussing Whitlam's legacy, which was like, oh, he was a visionary when it came to health and education and rights, but the economy. Which is always the accusation that Labour leaders face as well. Yeah, absolutely.

I think it's worth noting that Whitlam came into power at probably the worst economic moment for him. Both globally and domestically. So the reforms he pushed ran sort of headfirst into forces that he couldn't really control. So when Whitlam took office in nineteen seventy two, it was literally months before the world was hit by the Now the oil shock was when major oil producing countries in the Middle East dramatically cut oil production and quadrupled the price of oil almost over.

And a big part of it was OPEC, which was a group of major Middle Eastern oil exporters who restricted oil supply as a political response to Western support for Israel. during the Yom Kippur War. As such, oil prices increased four hundred It was like turning off half the world's energy over. And suddenly the entire global system was in chaos. The oil shock triggered inflation, rising employment, wage blowouts, higher costs to run businesses. It was the worst economic crisis.

The Great Depression. No country escaped it, and it was a global struggle. In saying that, Whitlam got blamed more harshly than most global leaders of the time because he was spending aggressive. Australia hadn't seen inflation like this in decades, and it was a super easy layup for the opposition to argue that he was reckless and out of control. And to be fair on them, Whitlam to create all this revolutionary reform was spending a great.

Inflation soared past seventeen percent by nineteen seventy five. Some of this was global, some of this was wage driven, some structural, some was Whitlam spending. And then he did the tariff thing. Mm. So in nineteen seventy three, Whitlam cut tariffs, which is a word I would not know if not for the last eighteen months specifically, by twenty five percent across the board.

And the aim was to force Australian industries to modernise, increase global competitiveness, and to fight inflation by lowering import costs. But obviously this is a very bold and brutal approach to this. Now, manufacturing jobs fell and regions depended on factories struggled.

Even though economists today say that the cuts were absolutely necessary to drag Australia into a modern economy, at the time the impact was politically painful and fed the narrative that Whitlam couldn't handle it, couldn't handle the economy. The unions also put pressure on wage increases given inflation, but it created a very tricky cycle. Wages go up, meaning that businesses then raise their prices, which leads workers to again demand higher wages, and the cycle repeats.

Whitlam didn't control the wages system. The Independent Arbitration Commission did. But of course, like any prime minister, he got the blank. Also it's fascinating to consider how much this seems obvious today and how wild that it already I guess it wasn't already implemented.

But Whitlam was also the one to overhaul things like hiring processes. He introduced merit-based hiring and equal opportunity rules. Again, long term necessary and good, but short term, it's expensive to haul overhaul policy and reform entire departments and legislative And to summarize this, I guess, if you are someone with the philosophy you have to spend money to make money, or that this isn't necessary spending to modernize, Whitlam would make sense to you.

If you are physically conservative and cautious, this guy obviously looks

Unsane. Okay, so to recap a little bit, Whitlam wins nineteen seventy two. He basically ch starts changing every part of the country. But then suddenly there's another election just seventeen months later. Why? Yeah. So this is when the plot starts to really

When Whitlam would come in with this ambitious reform program, the Senate would block it constantly, right? And not just one bill here or there, but the opposition controlled Senate is rejecting major pieces of legislation over and over again. By early nineteen seventy four, six of Whitlam's cornerstone reforms had been stopped dead in the Senate.

These weren't minor tweaks. These were the bills that were defining the agenda he ran. Medibank, trade practices reform, electoral reform, the petroleum and minerals authority, representation for the territories. All the things he argued the public had voted for in 1972. Whitlam argued that they couldn't govern like they had been elected to and the Senate was being unconstitutional.

But the opposition's response was that they claimed they weren't blocking, they were scrutinizing. Oh, and your economic management is terrible. Also we've seen things like this a lot in the past few years. So the whole parliament is at a standstill. And the government cannot move. Eventually, this triggered one of the most dramatic constitutional mechanisms we have: a double dissolution.

Also, I just want to at the top say this actually has happened not that long ago. Malcolm Turnbull held a double dissolution in 2016 as well. Well, do you want me to a little refresher? So, crash course. Normal and you correct me if I'm wrong with you. But normally in Australia, the House goes to election every three years and then the Senate goes every six.

Half of the time. Yeah, so you'll always vote on the Senate, but you're only voting on half the Senate. Yes. Yeah. And a double dissolution wipes both houses clean and everyone is up for re-election. So it only happens when the House passes a bill, the Senate blocks it.

The House waits three months to pass it again, the Senate blocks it again. Yep. Then the Prime Minister can go to the Governor General and request a double dissolution under Section 57 of the Constitution. It's like a reset button specifically designed to avoid a death. After a double dissolution, if the Senate still blocks the bill, you can then have a joint sitting parliament where both houses vote together.

But that's only ever happened once in Australian history, and it's coming in this story. Wow. Okay, so what exactly triggered the 1974 double?

So by early nineteen seventy four, the Senate had rejected six major Whitlam bills twice. meeting all the Section fifty seven requirements. Whitlam argued the Senate was sabotaging the democratic will of the people, and in a campaign speech said, The government you elected for three years has been interrupted mid-career. Our program has been brought to a halt in midstream.

The opposition, of course, claimed Whitlam was reckless, economically incompetent, and blocking the bills was responsible parliamentary oversight. With that, Whitlam requested a double dissolution from the Governor General, Sir Paul Haslock, who approved it on the eleventh of april nineteen seventy five. So Australia headed back to the polls, and the election campaign was really just a big fight over who was stopping who.

Whitlam made his campaign slogan, Give us a fair go, which very much tapped in To the very Australian instinct of everyone deserves a chance to do their job properly and the opposition, which was Sneddon. was like, the economy What are we gonna do? And because Australia loves making things overly complicated, so why not? Whitlam then held a referenda on the same day.

Trying to reform the constitution. That included ideas like synchronizing the House and Senate elections, ensuring equal representation, giving the Commonwealth more power. Both of those referendums failed, but Australia Does love voting no on referenda. But also referenda is awesome as a concept to hold like multiple on the same Crazy work, right? He was doing the most. But can you can you I sort of saw note

Like we were so confused by the like the nation was so confused by what was being asked at our most recent referendum, right? Can you imagine overhauling the constitution for these like significant multiple reforms? How difficult it would be to communicate that at the time.

But Whitlam won again. He did, but barely. So And he wasn't strong in the first place. No, no. So the scoreboard was the House of Reps was Labour sixty-six seats, coalition sixty-one, and the Senate was twenty-nine seats each. with two independents holding the power. So Whitlam becomes the first Labour PM since nineteen forty six to win consecutive federal elections, which is huge historically, but the numbers prove just how fragile things were. It wasn't a landslide.

It wasn't its time energy. It was more like, Okay, you can keep going, but we're really nervous. So did he then get the bill? is really the last one. He did. So Whitlam had met the double dissolution requirements and won the election and so now he was entitled to call a joint sitting of parliament, uh which we did tease earlier, which again is where both houses meet and vote as one. And this happened August 1974. So all the previously blocked bills got passed.

But I would say it was far from looking good for Whitlam. He now had a tied Senate, two independents holding power, a lower house majority crumbling, and an economy in a global crisis. And then what happens next, which is the loans affair, the senate refusal of supply, is where the story becomes even more unbelievable. But we are going to stop talking now. Perfect time. Yes. So come back next week for part two.