on the Liberal–Country Party’s political elite, just
at a time when Labor had at last found a resource-
ful new leader with national appeal and charisma
in Gough Whitlam.
In December 1972 a majority of Australians
voted Labor to power and Gough Whitlam
became Australia’s first Labor prime minister
since 1949. That vote for Labor was a signal for
a fresh start, for new faces, but not for socialism.
Australia would remain an economy of free enter-
prise where the few could amass large fortunes.
Whitlam had not risen from the ranks of the
working man. University educated, a lawyer by
training, a politician by profession, he relished
power and did not go out of his way to avoid
confrontations and antagonism. He regarded
Labor’s victory as a mandate for social change and
promised to bring it about with an immediate
burst of activity, as Franklin D. Roosevelt had
done in the early weeks of the New Deal. God
had taken seven days to create the world; Whitlam
reshaped Australian politics in fourteen. The list
of decisions taken and promises given was star-
tling: Aborigines were promised better treatment,
Papua New Guinea was given independence,
national service was ended, Vietnam draft default-
ers were pardoned, a stand was taken against
racism in the Commonwealth, communist China
was recognised, and plans were drawn up for
closer supervision of manufacturing industry.
During the first two years the Labor govern-
ment’s main goal was to reduce the inequalities of
opportunity suffered by the less well-off Australian
- migrant, worker or professional; white, brown or
black. The great leveller was education, and better
schools for the disadvantaged and universities open
to students on merit were among Labor’s achieve-
ments. Another was the legislation creating a uni-
versal insurance-based health service. Labor’s
concern for the poor was also reflected in the
expansion of the social services. It all cost money,
and inflation could not forever delay the day of
reckoning. Labor’s fortunes declined in 1974. The
economy had been hit by the world economic cri-
sis that followed the ending of the Vietnam War
and the oil-price rise. Inflation and unemployment
were rising. The measures taken to curb inflation
were bound to be unpopular. Financial ineptitude
and scandals, and unemployment reaching 5 per
cent, cast Labor’s management of the economy in
a bad light. The anti-Labor press made the most of
these difficulties.
The Labor government came to a dramatic
end in November 1975. The leader of the oppo-
sition, Malcolm Fraser, assembled enough votes
to deny passage of the Budget, justifying this by
accusing the government of financial mismanage-
ment. At the height of the constitutional crisis,
the governor-general Sir John Kerr, who as
representative of the queen held a ceremonial
appointment with theoretical powers, chose actu-
ally to use them and, acting insensitively and
high-handedly, dismissed Whitlam from the pre-
miership. Whitlam accepted his dismissal and gave
Fraser the task of forming a caretaker government
until new elections to be held in December
should decide the issue. When Australia voted
there was less concern for the constitutionality of
the dismissal than for the country’s economic
prospects, which were grim. It seemed safer to a
majority of Australians to return to power the
Liberal–National (formerly Country) Party. Labor
had been unlucky to hold power during what had
been difficult years throughout the Western
world. Whichever party had been in office would
probably have been voted out. But, for all its mis-
takes, the Labor government’s aims of greater
social justice and racial harmony foreshadowed a
return to these aspirations when Labor regained
power in 1983 and this time stayed in govern-
ment for more than a decade.
The Liberal–National coalition headed by
Malcolm Fraser took up the reins of the admin-
istration again after the short and eventful Labor
intermission. There was nothing startling about
the next seven years of moderate conservative
government. Where Whitlam had stood some-
what left of centre, Fraser was not too far to the
right of centre. The trade unions were conve-
niently blamed for economic ills. When the world
recession eased, Australian exports, which were so
dependent on international economic health,
recovered. Fraser was more conciliatory than his
predecessor had been towards state rights and
their relations with the federal government in
Canberra.