Page 3539 - Week 11 - Thursday, 23 October 2014
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achievements, thinking how one man could possibly have driven so many reforms in such a short time. However, there are many others who would say the country had waited long enough and we were impatient for him to just get on with it.
Whitlam’s agenda was as diverse as it was broad and, as we have heard this morning, ranged from health to education, to infrastructure, to Indigenous land rights, to social equity, to a more just and equitable social security system, to Australia’s place in Asia. Before the introduction of Medibank, now Medicare, many on low incomes dreaded the prospect of becoming ill. Even those who fought against its introduction, including many in the medical profession at the time, have now come to accept that universal healthcare is a right and not a privilege.
Similarly, when Whitlam came to power, only three in every 10 students who attended state or Catholic schools completed their secondary education, compared to 80 per cent of those who attended other independent private schools. Similarly, the income of your parents and their station in life was a greater determinant of whether or not you attended university than was your intelligence. A trebling of expenditure on education by the Whitlam government did much to address this appalling imbalance of opportunity and provide a pathway to gain qualifications necessary to assist a young person to aim high in choosing their direction in life.
But Whitlam was also committed to improving infrastructure, as we have heard, and would make life in the suburbs healthier and improve livability. Having lived in Sydney’s far western suburb of Cabramatta for many years as the long-serving member for Werriwa, he was only too well aware of the weekly visits of the lavvy man. I recall living in such conditions during my adolescence in Wollongong. He determined that the fast-growing suburbs of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane were in dire need of sewerage and so set about providing grants to councils to fund this infrastructure.
There is probably no better example of Whitlam’s crash through or crash mentality than his decision in 1971, as the then opposition leader, to go to China. The then Prime Minister, Mr William McMahon, accused him of kowtowing to the communists. Little did McMahon know that in the weeks following Whitlam’s visit, Henry Kissinger was to secretly visit China to arrange Richard Nixon’s historic visit.
Who could ever forget the iconic photo of Gough Whitlam symbolically pouring the red sand from his hands into that of Vincent Lingiari. His legacy of the first land rights act will long be remembered as one that resonates so much with me, as I had lived and worked in Yirrkala on the Gove Peninsula, one of many communities that benefited from his reforms.
Like many, I have some personal stories. In November 1995, I joined many true believers in the members dining room of the provisional Parliament House where Gough was, of course, the guest of honour. Just before he was about to speak I went out to the toilets, where Margaret was telling all and sundry that, if they did not want to listen to two hours of Gough, they should not go back to the dining room. After Gough’s speech, predictably long, Margaret was back in the ladies loo, again telling us all that she had kept on telling him, “Gough, they do not need you to speak for two hours anymore.”
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