Anne Stanley (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that 11 November 2025 marks the 50th anniversary of the removal of the Government of Prime Minister Whitlam; and

(2) acknowledges:

(a) the work of Professor Jenny Hocking to ensure that the historical events that happened at that time are documented;

(b) that the reforms of Prime Minister Whitlam's Government modernised Australian society and its economy; and

(c) that the impact of Prime Minister Whitlam's policies continue to define Australia's political landscape.

The community I have the privilege of serving in this place is one that I have lived in all my life, which means I remember many of the members for Werriwa. The Honourable Edward Gough Whitlam was Prime Minister while I was in high school. I remember the exhilaration of my parents at the election of the Labor government after 23 years of conservative rule and the changes that they were so looking forward to. I remember him coming to my high school, who were celebrating their first multicultural day, and speaking to our students.

This day in 1975 in many ways demonstrated how much that had changed already in Australia. Every culture was celebrated, discussed and admired. No-one was made to feel less. We were one, altogether. The Whitlam government was elected with a mandate to implement change and they left a legacy that is amazing, accomplishing so much in three short years, changing Australia for the better and laying the groundwork for the opportunities and successes we've enjoyed in the years since.

The Whitlam era was significant for Australia. His government believed it could improve the conditions for everyday Australians. In the first few weeks, conscription ended, diplomatic relations with China began, and the remaining troops returned home from Vietnam. This government also introduced universal health care, known as Medibank—which was dismantled after the Dismissal by the Fraser government, until Hawke brought it back as the Medicare we now know; the Racial Discrimination Act; non-discriminatory immigration rules and the enthusiastic pursuit of multiculturalism; increased spending on social housing; and the abolition of tertiary education fees, allowing many people, and many in this House, to attend university when it was previously out of reach. The Whitlam government introduced payments for single parents, allowing people the space to leave relationships, particularly if they were dangerous. The government for the first time supported refugees and women leaving domestic violence. There was equal pay for women in the workforce. Fifty years later, it is amazing to think that women doing the same job didn't earn the same pay. That changed with Whitlam. There was the establishment of the Australian Legal Aid Office. There was the passing of the Family Law Act, which introduced no-fault divorce, making such a difficult time better for families. Many of the suburbs in Werriwa did not have access to basic sewerage when Whitlam was elected. His government ensured that this was addressed as a public-health measure.

But all those reforms came to an abrupt halt when, on 11 November 1975, the Governor-General sacked Prime Minister Whitlam. This was a difficult time for Australia and our community. I still remember the day vividly. I came home from school to find my mother in a flood of tears. When I asked who died, thinking that could have been the only explanation, she told me it was much worse than that—that Mr Whitlam had been sacked. She was fearful about what would happen next, as I'm sure many were at the time. In this time of uncertainty, it was, however, Mr Whitlam's composure and strength that ensured the election campaign remained a contest of ideas. He asked the Australian people, famously, to maintain their rage and enthusiasm.

Professor Jenny Hocking, one of Australia's eminent biographers, fought hard and at great personal risk to ensure the events that led to the dismissal were discovered and made available to the Australian people. Her tenacity ensured that it is now part of our history. She needed to take her case to the High Court so that she could get access to the Palace letters. Her goal was to see whether there had been external circumstances which led to the dismissal. And what she found demystified the events and allowed a fuller explanation of what led up to the events of 11 November 1975. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the dismissal, it's timely in this place that changes and shapes so much of our public life in Australia and a place that Gough dominated for decades that we acknowledge Whitlam's life and the efforts of people like Jenny Hocking, who have meticulously recorded it.

Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Renee Coffey (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Werriwa for bringing this motion on. It's very exciting for those of us who follow Australian history to talk about this, and it must be a great honour to represent an electorate that had such a significant person in Australian politics as one of its former members. I was seven months old when the dismissal happened. I'll give personal recollections at some point. The 1972 election was a significant moment, when the Whitlam government was elected. It had been 1951 since the coalition had previously governed. One of the notable things about when the Whitlam government came in was a sworn-in ministry of two people—a duumvirate—of Gough Whitlam and Lance Barnard passing a lot of the legislation they'd promised in those first few weeks.

There's no doubt the Whitlam government achieved some significant things in modernising Australia, recognising China and having a focus on the arts, and they need to be congratulated for that. Obviously, there was a debate between the two sides of politics leading to a 1974 double-dissolution election, which Whitlam won with a reduced majority but also some very close numbers in the Senate, which was to become such a sticking point as we entered 1975. This is where the Whitlam government started to get into trouble with ministers who, with the probably noble intentions of developing Australia's resource sector, had funny ideas about how to finance that, including Rex Connor and Jim Cairns going to try and get a loan from a Pakistani loan broker, Tirath Khemlani, who promised to finance some of these projects from some pretty strange parts of the word. Of course, that was against the convention of the Treasury at the time. The loans affair did eventually start to cause the Whitlam government a lot of problems.

It was said of Gough Whitlam, I think, that he was a totally honest and decent man who expected everyone else to be as honest and decent as he was, and that was to his own undoing. Anyway, he was forced to sack those two ministers—Jim Cairns and Rex Connor—and that led to the battle of wills between Fraser and Whitlam and the deferral of the money bills, or the appropriations bills, in the Senate. When that couldn't be resolved and Australia was threatened with having a government forced to govern without supply of appropriation money, obviously something had to happen.

What happened will be debated for many, many years by constitutional experts and people who have a different view of things. You can only imagine how dramatic it must have been for Whitlam to drive out to see Sir John Kerr at Yarralumla, to be handed a letter by Sir John Kerr dismissing him and withdrawing his commission as Prime Minister and then, in the next few moments, to see Malcolm Fraser come into the office and be handed a letter commissioning him to form a government. They were incredible times in Australian democratic history.

It's worth noting that people say—and I learned this when I was a kid—that Kerr sacked a democratically elected government, and that's true. However, I think it's worth noting the caveat that Fraser was commissioned to form a caretaker government as long as he promised to call an election, which he did, and that election was won in a significant landslide by the coalition. The Dismissal was a huge moment in Australian history and, as I said earlier, it's debated. I think the Whitlam government was an iconic government. It did some wonderful things and it governed in an irresponsible way throughout 1975. The Governor-General, whether he was right to act or not—somebody had to break the deadlock so those supply bills could be passed.

It's interesting that, when Whitlam was dismissed and went back, he then failed to inform his own team. They still thought they were in government and passed the supply bills to the Senate, not knowing the government had changed. Again, those were crazy times in Australian politics. He was an iconic person, and it was an iconic moment in Australian history. We need to talk about it and celebrate, and I thank you for bringing the motion.

Tania Lawrence (Hasluck, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Werriwa for bringing this motion before the parliament. On 11 November my mind's focus will be on Remembrance Day. I'll also, as many of us do on that date, be considering the events of 1975, now 50 years ago. Almost all of us were children at that time. I'm not going to be able to do justice to the matters of the constitutional crisis in a couple of minutes, so I, too, recommend that those interested read Professor Hocking's article in Pearls and Irritations. There has been so much written about the rights and the wrongs and the what-might-have-beens, so I will focus on the legacy of the Whitlam government and what it means for me and the people of Hasluck today in 2025.

Prior to his election, Whitlam said:

We are all diminished as citizens when any of us are poor. Poverty is a national waste as well as an individual waste. We are all diminished when any of us are denied proper education. The nation is the poorer—a poorer economy, a poorer civilisation, because of this human and national waste.

The Whitlam government abolished university fees and expanded access to tertiary education. They established the Australian Schools Commission to allocate funding on the basis of need. Whitlam changed the face of education in Australia. How many of us simply would not be here in this place now but for the changes then? Today, we have reduced student debt and have come to agreement with the states and territories for public schools to be funded to 100 per cent of the schooling resource standard. I know what a great difference this will make to the many primary and high schools in Hasluck.

In 1972, Whitlam said they would establish universal health insurance so that every Australian could have access to Medicare without fear of cost, and they did. The Whitlam government introduced the first universal health insurance scheme in Medibank. Unfortunately, that sank into the swamp under Fraser, but we built it again as Medicare under Hawke.

The Albanese government has since then invested more in Medicare, more than any other. We aim to see bulk billing restored so that the only card you need to see the doctor is your Medicare card. Already, the fully bulk-billed Medicare Urgent Care Clinics have had over two million presentations. In Hasluck, in addition to the centres we opened in Midland and in Morley, we will be adding a new one in Ellenbrook. This is something I've been advocating for strongly because I see the success of it.

Whitlam's government invested in regional development infrastructure and affordable housing. My own parents were beneficiaries of the rent-to-buy home policy. Our lives would be very difficult if that hadn't existed. In the last parliament, we created the HAFF and more recently provided for five per cent deposits for new homebuyers. There will be tens of thousands of families whose lives will be now changed for the better, as mine was, by Labor policy.

Whitlam established the Australian heritage commission, the environment department and federal environmental impact assessments. He said, 'A government which truly serves the people must also serve the land on which the people live.' I have no doubt if Gough Whitlam was in the parliament today he'd be scathing of those members obstructing the next generation of progress in protecting the environment.

Whitlam was the first to develop a recognition of Aboriginal land rights. He established a separate ministry of Aboriginal affairs, and passed legislation to outlaw discrimination on race and sex. In 1973 Whitlam said, 'The basic principle of our government is equality—equality of opportunity, equality before the law, equality in the community.' Protection of rights, everyone's rights, is a fundamental purpose of government in a democracy. Whitlam instituted the national employment and training scheme, and wanted jobs for all citizens.

We have provided fee-free TAFE and a renewed focus of upskilling a young and not-so-young people for the jobs of the future. Whitlam's government emphasised open government accountability and reform of institutions such as the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. One of the tasks we were set on coming to office three years ago was to establish a national anticorruption commission and to renew the administrative appeals process, which the coalition unfortunately had allowed to fall into disarray. In 1974, Whitlam commissioned the Hope royal commission on intelligence and security and established a new accountability framework, and we have legislation before the House right now for the consolidation of that oversight.

The Whitlam government was indeed short lived and was not by any means perfect. But Gough Whitlam's legacy and that of the 28th and 29th parliaments and caucus is one that continues to live on, and continues to provide lessons and inspiration as a touchstone for our own deliberations in this parliament today.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

'Well may we say God save the Queen because nothing will save the Governor-General.' That is one of the most famous sentences ever uttered. As Edward Gough Whitlam spoke those words, hovering around on the steps of Old Parliament House was one Norman Gunston. That was an only-in-Australia political moment. Could you imagine any other country where such an historic event was taking place—the dismissal of the country's leader—and you've got a comedian there doing almost stand-up comedy, talking with Kip Enderby, discussing the moment with Bob Hawke and others. Billy Sneddon was there. Of course, that statement has gone down in the annals of Australian political history.

There are many things we could say about EG Whitlam but I want to praise the great man—the great man—for that decentralisation program that he undertook. Certainly the Taxation Office going to Albury and, indeed, the establishment or promotion of Albury-Wodonga as united, as one, are hallmarks of what he did and what he achieved. Perhaps not many people know this but when he was 81 and contemplating his own mortality, in characteristic fashion he said, 'I first saw an aircraft in December 1919 when my father took me to Middle Head to watch Ross and Keith Smith when they flew to Mascot at the end of the first flight by Australians from England to Australia. I first boarded an aircraft at RAAF Cootamundra.' So the Riverina has an important piece of aviation history connected with the great man. Certainly he became a pilot of renown. He was obviously somebody who loved his country. All prime ministers love their country as all MPs, I would like to think, love their nation.

As I said, it's a shame that the decentralisation program he pursued vigorously at the start really hasn't been taken advantage of as a legacy of Gough Whitlam and we haven't got the big cities in inland Australia that we see in other countries, such as, for example, the United States of America. Eighty per cent of Australians—I think it's probably even higher—live on the eastern seaboard, They live on that coastal strip. We have such amazing opportunities for Australians and for migrants to avail themselves of in inland Australia. Gough had that vision. He tried to develop Albury-Wodonga as another big Canberra perhaps. But, whilst Albury-Wodonga is doing very nicely, it probably hasn't realised the vision that Gough had when he went there, when he stood on top of the hill and when he looked at the marvellous vista that there is. Today, only a small number of Commonwealth government agencies have established rural or regional offices in support of decentralisation. That is such a shame, because Gough did have that vision for this nation.

One of his other great legacies I would like to talk about is his late marvellous wife, Margaret. He was married to Margaret from 1942 until her death in 2012. Of course, EG Whitlam outlived her by a couple of years, dying on 21 October 2014 at the age of 98. But what a partnership they were. What a pair they were when they were either doing domestic duties or, indeed, on the world stage. There are many, many university graduates who owe their degree to Gough's vision for Australia. He wanted to make this country a smarter, fairer place. Yes, like for all prime ministers, there were ups and downs along the way. Certainly the end wouldn't have been the way that he would have liked it. But we record that moment in time. I'm pleased that the now Governor-General Sam Mostyn is also acknowledging this time and its importance with some activities and events because, as Australians, we should mark this very important milestone.

Debate adjourned.