Page 3534 - Week 11 - Thursday, 23 October 2014
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
ministers from Edmund Barton to Tony Abbott. He had a very strong connection to Canberra, as we have heard, attending Telopea Park high and then Canberra grammar. He joined the Labor Party in 1945. His mantra, I guess, the thing that struck true through his entire career, is summed up in this one simple quote:
When you are faced with an impasse you have got to crash through or you’ve got to crash.
In that speech, that most famous of all election policy speeches, in 1972, he was very clear in what he put forward to the Australian people: He said:
Men and Women of Australia!
The decision we will make for our country on 2 December is a choice between the past and the future, between the habits and fears of the past, and the demands and opportunities of the future. There are moments in history where the whole fate and future of nations can be decided by a single decision. For Australia, this is such a time.
And so it was. Australian politics, Australian history, is really divided now between a period prior to 1972 and the post-Whitlam era. His record of achievement is simply extraordinary. I suppose the simplest way to think of this is to imagine what this country would be like had he not been elected in 1972. In health and social security, we would not have seen the creation of Medibank. We would not have had the funding in construction, the hospitals and community health centres, the increased social security funding and the range of benefits and new services that were introduced in his government, the funding of grassroots social welfare organisations, the significant investment in the construction of new social housing and, in education, the establishment of the Australian Schools Commission, increased school funding and, of course, the abolition of university tuition fees and the passing of the student assistance acts to provide means-tested financial assistance for tertiary students. That decision was perhaps one of the most widely celebrated and, as the Chief Minister indicated, life-changing decisions.
I reflect upon my own experience as the son of teenage parents in country New South Wales, born in 1973. I am not sure my parents would have been able to go to university had that change not been instituted. They would never have had the opportunity to graduate, to get jobs, to come to Canberra, to be the people they were and to give me the opportunities that I have; and it all stems back to that decision in 1972.
The Whitlam government established commonwealth funding responsibility for universities. Controversially at the time it supported the provision of state aid to non-government schools. He returned land to the Gurindji people. He created the Aboriginal Land Fund and the Aboriginal Loans Commission. He established the National Aboriginal Consultative Committee and drafted the land rights act. He outlawed discrimination against Indigenous people and he funded legal services for Indigenous Australians. In foreign affairs, as we have heard, he granted independence to Papua New Guinea. He established diplomatic relations with China. He withdrew Australia’s remaining troops from Vietnam. He completely re-orientated Australia’s
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video