TRANSCRIPT:
(This transcript is derived from an automated process. The video recording is authoritative.)
Scott Prasser:
So I'm not saying this is not an advocacy for Mr. Whitlam. In 1972 when Mr. Whitlam was elected, I was 18 and I couldn't vote. And the Whitlam government did immense harm to the PSA family in Ipswich in lots and lots of ways. Okay, so I'm not a fan of Mr. Whitlam, but I have met him. But I just want to talk about what it was like and what he did. Okay? And he won two elections.
Mr. Albanese is the most successful Labor leader in its history, okay? There's a number of seats he's won, and proportion of those got, but I'm just going to talk about how Whitlam revived the Labour Party. Okay? I'll just put a context of this. So here's a bit of context. This is what Australia was like in the sixties, fifties, sixties, leading up to the Whitlam election '72, we had massive immigration.
Two and a half million people came into Australia after World War II. And what was interesting that a lot of people, not just from England, Scotland and Wales and Ireland, the people from Southern European countries, just remember after World War ii, there were 60 million refugees in Europe, 60 million. Why? Because Russia had taken half of Europe, half of Germany moved west, and Germany was flattened. Italy was flattened by the war, and people wanted to get out and move. So massive immigration, this was very new because these were people from different countries. We had, as the previous piece talked about industrialization. We had tariffs. This is when the Holden car started construction in Australia. We made a car. We made lots of cars actually at one stage, sometimes not very good ones, but we did trade unionism was very strong. 60% of the workforce were in trade unions.
Why? Because we had industries where unions could be easily organised. Okay? So 60% of the workforce was in a trade union and they're affiliated with the ALP. Sectarianism was rife Catholics versus Protestants, okay? So there were police unions were supposed to be Catholic, there were the Masons and so on. There are Catholic schools and we still have Catholic schools and so on. So sectarianism was quite rife in Australia. The big fight over should we fund non-government schools was over. Should we fund Catholic schools, which the ALP were against. Suburbia expansion. We got all these people coming in and the next thing population, boom, what comes after war? More babies. Okay, so suburbia grew and the socialists didn't like suburbia. They thought people should be in inner cities and high-rise. And thanks to Mr. Menzies who pursued a pro housing policy, just remember the academics wanted everyone to be in social housing.
Mr. Menzies thought people should buy their own house. And the policies of the Menzies government was pro housing. That's why in 1966 when Mr. Menzies retired Australia reach its highest level of individual home ownership, which has never been reached since it was not an accident. And he had the belief, if you own something, you will invest in your family, you'll commit to your family, you'll commit to your garden, you'll commit to working, you'll keep a job. That sort of view of the world. And we still had strong links to the UK and Majesty Queen Elizabeth II came out passing by, love till die, all that sort of stuff. We still had those sort of links to Britain, even though they had deserted us a bit in World War ii. So that's sort of the background going on. Australia's in a process of change if you like, and here's what the Labour party's problems were.
Mr. Whitlam, the Labour Party, be in opposition for 23 years. That is a long, long, long time to be in opposition Federally. They had gone through several leaders, Mr. Chiffly, he died as leader of the opposition. Mr. Revit, who was eventually was a high court judge at one stage, but eventually became certifiably almost mad. Mr. Calwell, his deputy was the leader for quite a while. And then we got finally Mr. Whitlam towards the end of the sixties. Now labours had lots of problems. They locked electoral losses. And 1957, the Labour Party split. That's where he got the Democratic Labour Party coming to being. He had factions everywhere. Trade unions ran the show. Mr. Whitlam had to stand out, wait outside while the executive of the alert Labour Party met inside, the 36 faceless men. No women, sorry, were involved. He was just taking his orders from the executive.
Socialism seemed to be terribly out of date. Australia economy was booming. This is the Golden Age. The state aid debate. The Labour Party is essentially was a Catholic party, but the Labour Party were opposed to giving funding to Catholic schools who gave funding to Catholic schools. Mr. Menzies, I'm sure he didn't do it for politics, but he's the one who started it. And we had this phenomenal economic prosperity. So why vote Labor when everything is booming? This is boom. Time unemployment was 1.5%, 1.5%. And we had the Cold War background, red under the beds and all that sort of stuff. Reds in the trade unions, Hungary uprising, okay, Eastern Europe, iron Curtain, all that sort of stuff. So it wasn't a good time for labour. Now it is some voting trends for you and you can just see what's going on. 1958, this is a two party preferred vote.
ALP got 46%. There was a swing to the Louis Pay 9 61, Mr. The a LP got a bigger majority of votes and Mr. Mendez won by one seat. Okay, one seat. Okay, so that one under Arthur Calwell, but then Menzies bounced back. He never lost his nerve. Next election, 63 a LP vote went down swing to the liberal party. Mr. Holt became the prime Minister, another big swing to the liberal party. Then we had John Gorton completely hopeless, swing away, 7% swing to the Labour Party. Now by this time, that's the first election. Whitlam led the Labour Party as the leader of the Labour Party. What did he get? He got a 7% swing to him and that laid the foundation for the next election under poor old Billy McMahon, another swing to the A LP. We election 74, Whitlam won slight swing, the liberal party and finding 75, we've got Malcolm Frazier and we had a 7% swing back to the liberal party.
And Malcolm won the biggest majority in federal history. So that's sort of a bit of a scenario what was going on. You can see it took a long time for the pay to get back into the game. That's the point I'm trying to make. And it was mainly because of Whitlam had got back into the game. Now, who was this guy? Whitlam. He was born in Melbourne. His father was deputy crown solicitor of the Commonwealth government. He wasn't a railway worker or a labourer. They moved to Sydney. Goff Whitland went to private schools. He didn't go to high schools like John Howard, okay? Or Billy Stead. He went to Canberra Grammar School, one of the most expensive schools in Australia. He went to Sydney University. He studied law and the classics. He joined the RAAF he spent during World War ii. He flew around for four years and became a flight lieutenant. He joined the A LP in 45. Now you think he should join the liberal page on the A LP. He was concerned about equity and all sort of stuff, and he finally won a seat 9 52, which he held till he died. And he finally became deputy leader in 1960. And for seven years he was deputy leader to Arthur Calwell.
And he was chaing at the bit to become the leader. And finally Caldwell moved out and he became Prime Minister and then he retired in 78. Now, what's really interesting about Whitlam, he doesn't fit the a LP stereotypical role of that time. He wasn't a Catholic, he was not religious. He didn't pretend to be, he went to private schools. His father was professional, commonwealth, public servant. He wasn't really part of the left faction. He wasn't part of any faction. He was really looking for anyone to support him. He wasn't trade unionists, he wasn't working class, but he was highly educated, highly professional. That's the thing. So this seems a very unusual fit for the Labour Party. Now, what did he do? What did he do to get the Labour Party in opposition for 23 years back into government? And let's just get back into government.
And I think what Jewel was mentioning is the legacy or the impact of the Whitlam government is quite phenomenal. Long-term impact. They lost office, but many of the things they did so-called reforms are with us today, rightly and wrongly. Okay? Some I do agree of abolishing the entertainment tax on the pill. I thought that was a good idea. Okay? He modernised the Labour party. He said We can't keep running the party by just like little cliques of trade unions and we're fighting the class war. That's really not working anymore. He appointed, they had a big review of the structure of the lay party to try and modernise it and get members and things like that. He started to talk, written was a great speaker, and he started to tell a story about what the lay party was about. So which we didn't do at the last election.
We did not do, the liberal party did not tell a story of the last election. This had some ad hoc policies. He started talking about unemployment is important to solve that life is more than just jobs. It is how you live in suburbia. Do you have good transport in suburbia? Do your kids have schools to go to in suburbia? Are the roads working properly in suburbia? Do you have an inside toilet in suburbia? Large parts of Queensland and Australia did not have sewage systems. Okay? And Whitlam was the one who started talk about those sort of things.
He says, no use having a job if your life is terrible, if conditions are terrible. So he talked about, and that had an appeal for a country that was increasing in wealth between nine 50 and nine 70. Our G-D-P-G-D-P increased four times in real terms. That is our wealth increase four times. Okay? So you got more money, but you want where you're going to spend that money on. What are the facilities being provided by government? This is where the role of government is important. He talked about national health system. We didn't have a proper national health system. We had private insurance and I'm in favour of national health system. You're going to go to America. 60 million people in America don't have access to a health system.
He talked about education and good things and bad things were going on there. He talked about equality, don't have a degree of equality, but he talked about those things. These things that sounded good to people. He talked about multiculturalism because we're having this greater mix of people from different countries. Alright? Okay, so not everyone is from England, okay? He talked about in Australia we talk about the fair go. So he was trying to connect that Fargo image with actual real policy. That's the point I'm trying to make. He was connecting to those things and he talked about a more independent Australia though for Whitlam it meant signing up to more United Nations things. I always thought that was odd. But anyway, that's what he did. But it sounded good. But see what I'm getting at? It sounded good. Australia should be independent from England and so on and the Queen and so on and so forth.
So he talked about those things and he seemed to be talking about modern modernising Australia. Australia, very good after World War ii, big industrial growth, big population growth, but we still were sort of stuck in a lot of other ways. And the fact that we had a govern in power for 23 years made it look like that. That's all I'm trying to get at. So what did he do? Big party reorganisation. As I said before, lots of policy work, lots of work about different policies. And he developed for the 72 election, I think called the programme, which was 120 pages long, about how he's going to fix Australia. Now, maybe too much, of course too much. But that's what it sounded very appealing to a lot of people, that he was a person who had some vision for Australia. He managed take the party with him, even though he almost lost the leadership.
He finally got the labour pay to agree to state aid for non-government schools to start funding Catholic schools and independent schools. He almost lost his job over that thing. That's bipartisan policy. Now he networked, he put his job on the line, he networked. And here I got here. This is an advertisement lineup, advertisement from 1974 newspaper and it's before the 1974 election. The second election, Whitlam faced as Prime Minister. These are all the academics. What do they say? 700, 404. Australian academics want labour to have a chance because they give all these different reasons. Now, I don't agree with academics doing that. Some of them taught me at the time I was at university in 9 72. But the point I'm trying to make is he was getting networking to a range of different groups, talking to people and getting them on board. That's the thing. And some of those people exercise influence on others.
The liberal party wouldn't know how to network with itself, let alone with people outside the confine of the liberal party. Okay? I can assure you very much. That's the case. So Whitlam Labour Party are very good at networking. They've got the teacher's union and the nurses union and those sort of unions and what are they dealing with people and so on. And they have a training ground for training people to be in organisations and to get into government. You look at the current ministry of the Albanese government and look at their backgrounds, have a check out what their backgrounds is.
He reached out and he went out and made really good appearances and presentations and he developed this very modern narrative about what the party was about. Now, I don't think we can show that. What's going on show you is if you want to go on the web, you'll see his famous 9 72 policy speech at Blacktown Men and Women of Australia, right? That speech and the speech which went on for 30 minutes, you really felt that he was talking to everyone in the Australia and about bring them on. And it sounded like this person meant what he said and felt that he had was going, you didn't see that at the last federal election. You didn't have anything. What do we stand for? What are we going to do? It was a mixed bag. So that's what I find pretty interesting. Now, he made lots of mistakes.
Mr. Whittler made lots of mistakes. As I said, he did great harm to the P of family. Big inflation went through the roof, 18%. The inflation we've got now is peanuts. Compare what we had in Whitlam. Unemployment went through the roof. He got into a big spending role, some things that we needed to spend money on, but it came at the wrong time because we just got into the oil crisis. We had an oil crisis in over 74. We're going to have one soon again, I suspect. He tried to do too many things at once. And government got overloaded. It got overloaded, and the public service couldn't cope and things came undone, if you like. And a lot of the people, one of the things that I think is pretty important, if you want to do reform, you've got to bring people with you. You've got to.
People don't like change. Now, Campbell Newman is the classic case of how not to run a government. Rushed, did everything unnecessarily rushed, and people don't like that amount of change. You've got to move step by step and where you want to go to Whitlam tried to do everything in three years. Had he tried to do everything in six years, it might've worked, but the system broke down and he had a ministry of people who had never been in government before, didn't know what they were doing. We had crocodile farms and subsidies and things like that. Lots of policy blunders went on of the mistakes. And he suffered from whitlam was what shall we say, not a person who lacked self-confidence. Okay? Right? Okay. He didn't lack self-confidence, and so he overthought what his abilities were. So it all came undone. However, in a book I've edited, many of the things he brought in are with us, rightly or wrongly, and he changed the agenda of discussion, but he did it through a whole range of things.
So what are some lessons? Firstly, you've got to get your party structure right. Now, one the problem, the liberal party, it hasn't got a party structure. Not many people are members of it, okay? Right? So it's run by a click. You've got to have a purpose. You've got to indicate that your party stands for something, not just what the pollsters say or the media people tell you to say. You've got to have an overarching philosophy. I wouldn't know what the liberal party philosophy is these days. I think Justine Price summed it up pretty well. But that's one person. You've got to have research for your policies. So that they did. The one area of policy I admire about the Whitlam government is the issue on urban affairs. Whitlam was the one who understood where do most Australians live? They live in urban. We are the most urbanised country in the world.
He was the one who said, we've got to put more money and funding into suburbia and provide the services where people live. I always think that was where the liberal party could have made a big mark. He appealed to an emerging Australia, the changing population demographic mix. That was what he understood it. He understood that. I think he had a coherent narrative. You may not agree with the narrative, but it sounded coherent. It sounded like it fitted together. It wasn't just a cobbled together of a patchwork of policies to try and which way the wind is blowing. Which way do we get votes? He really brought in a level of professional campaigning that has been lacking on the non-labor soil politics for yonks professional campaigning.
There's never been, there is a niche time song, by the way, if you want to watch it and see all our TV stars singing it and so on, and he network with the best and the brightest. Now, yes, we know academia is left of centre, but there's many people in academia who are not left to centre. 40% of academia votes non-lab, 40% of teachers vote. We know that. No one liberal pay never talks to them. If you want to get some ideas, you've got to go out and talk to lot to people and build those networks up. So I'm not saying the Whitten government is for one, we should follow. I'm just saying here is a party in the doldrums for 23 years. No one thought it had a chance ever of getting into office. There were books written like Labour in Vain, labour is finished and so on.
They underwent a split and so on and under Whitlam and his determination, they got back to office and they left a questionable heritage for us all. But it can be done. But the point I had to make in a book, which Anthony's got over there, the liberal party whinges about the A, B, C all the time, the ABC's bias, they aren't the programmes. The liberal party has been in office for nine years, from 2013 to 2022. In that nine years, they did nothing about the A, B, C. If you want to do something about something, you've got to, where do you want to be? What sort of, I'm in favour of a public broadcaster, what sort of broadcaster you want? And you've got to have a strategy to get there. You don't just make your policies up month by month, week by week. Okay? So that's the point I'm trying to make about things. So whit's got some interesting things people should say. Now, academics tell me, my academic colleagues, friends, former friends tell me they don't read the Australian. Ah, why don't you read the Australian? Oh, I don't like Murdoch Press. Yeah, but shouldn't you be reading, you're a political scientist. Shouldn't you be reading what the Australian says Now? I read everything. I read the Australian, I read the financial review, I even read the ER mail. Doesn't take me long to read.
I even read the Saturday paper, read the Saturday paper, and I read all sorts of academic publications. You've got to know what the other side is thinking. You can't block yourself away and say, I only read what makes me feel comfortable. You can't attack the other side unless you know what they're thinking and how they think. So you've got to watch and painfully we do turn off the seven 30 report. I think in our household. My wife likes to watch it all the time. She's an A, b, C addict. But we've got to watch and see what's going on on the other viewpoint about things. Otherwise you can't beat them. So my academic colleagues who won't read the Australian, which often has some good articles in it, whether you agree with 'em or not, you should understand, read those things. So that's what we've got to do and I understand what the other side is doing and thinking if we're going to take them on. Okay, so no one has a monopoly of knowledge. It's always good to find out what other people are thinking. So anyway, there's some lessons from Mr. Whitlam and I hope you got something from that. Okay? Thanks very much.
