Gough Whitlam, the Prime Minister of Australia from 1972 to 1975 and leader of the Labor Party from 1967 to 1977, has died in a Sydney nursing home at the age of 98. He was Australia’s longest-lived former Prime Minister.
Whitlam’s dismissal was the most dramatic moment in Australia’s political and constitutional history. After the Governor-General, John Kerr, handed Whitlam a letter notifying him his commission as Prime Minister had been terminated, Kerr said, “We shall all have to live with this.”
“You certainly will,” was Whitlam’s terse reply.
Whitlam addresses reporters outside the Parliament in Canberra after his dismissal in 1975.
Of course, John Kerr was right. Whitlam did have to live with his dismissal and the shadow will extend into his legacy.
But he will be remembered for far more than just that tumultuous period of Australian political history and those immortalised words spoken from the steps of Parliament House: “Well may we say ‘God save the Queen’, because nothing will save the Governor-General.”
Political legacy
A Labor giant, conviction politician, reformist, policy wonk and trailblazer, Whitlam was a self-described “crash through or crash politician” who fought for change and policies that formed modern Australia.
“He seems not just the light on the hill, but the hill itself to which our eyes are ever turned,” Bill Shorten said in the 2013 launch of a collection of essays called The Whitlam Legacy.
Writing in the book’s foreword Whitlam said, “May I make one valedictory point: never forget the primacy of parliament as the great forum for developing, presenting and explaining policy.”
“This seems to me the best response we can make to the unprecedented demands now made on our leaders and representatives by the relentless news cycle, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
“If we develop, define and defend our policies thoroughly before their implementation, we will be much less likely to be blown off course by the accidents and aberrations inseparable from modern political life. And parliament is by far the best place to achieve it.”
Elected in 1972, Whitlam carried the Labor Party out of the political wilderness, where it languished in opposition for 23 years, and into the modern era.
He swept into office like a tornado, arranging for himself and his deputy, Lance Barnard, to be sworn in and commence governing just three days after their victory. The ministry had not yet been determined and until they were two weeks later, Whitlam and Barnard, between the two of them, administered every ministerial portfolio.
In a government that introduced numerous reformist – even revolutionary – policies, Whitlam had a huge personal impact.
“In many ways, he was the government,” writes Troy Bramston, the editor of The Whitlam Legacy.
Whitlam’s policies made him an eternal darling of progressive causes, from those landmark initiatives of fee-free tertiary education and universal healthcare throughthe creation of Medibank, to the fostering of the arts, the introduction of a new national anthem and Australian honours system (which Prime Minister Tony Abbott rolled back in March 2014), legal reforms such as the abolition of the death penalty and creation of legal aid, to the complete withdrawal of forces from Vietnam, abolition of conscription and the freeing of conscientious objectors.
Women’s causes gained stature and momentum under Whitlam with the introduction of no-fault divorce and a ministerial portfolio for Women’s Affairs.
“Without Whitlam, it is doubtful whether Labor would have survived as a viable political force or that Australia would have been so profoundly remade,” Bramston writes.
Today the Whitlam Institute, located at the University of Western Sydney, houses his papers and calls itself a public policy institute that commemorates and is inspired by Whitlam’s life and work.
Personal life
Gough Whitlam was born “Edward” on 11 July, 1916, in Melbourne.
His father, Fred, was a Solicitor for the Commonwealth and a pioneer of international human rights law in Australia – a powerful tonic in the development of young Gough’s social conscience.
Gough completed most of his schooling at private schools in Sydney and Canberra, his privileged background later making the Labor faithful sceptical of his loyalties and working-class credentials. He studied Arts and then Law at the University of Sydney, and volunteered in the Royal Australian Air Force during World War II.
In 1942, Whitlam was at a party hosted by a former editor of The Australian Women’s Weekly, Alice Jackson, when he met Margaret Dovey.
Margaret was an athletic and towering young woman (188 centimetres tall) from Sydney’s eastern suburbs. She described Whitlam (who was 194 centimetres tall himself) as “quite the most delicious thing [she’d] ever seen.”
The pair were soon wed in what would become one of the most extraordinary and enduring marriages of public Australian life, lasting nearly 70 years until Margaret’s death in 2012.
Margaret, a social worker and journalist, was intelligent and considered a political asset by ALP operatives.
“She was a remarkable person and the love of my life,’” Whitlam said after Margaret’s death.
Whitlam met his wife, Margaret, in 1945 at party hosted by former editor of The Weekly, Alice Jackson.
The couple had four children, Antony, Nicholas, Stephen and Catherine, who survive today, with five grandchildren.
Whitlam’s health deteriorated steadily through his twilight years, although he continued to go into his office in Sydney a few days each week until he was 97. He resided in a nursing home in Sydney’s eastern suburbs until his death.
