Wayne Swan
ALP National President
In a few weeks time we will remember the 53rd Anniversary of the election of Gough Whitlam’s Government in 1972.
This event, along with the double dissolution election of 1974 and The Dismissal, 50 years ago today, cemented very clear dividing lines in Australian politics - and the lessons of that period are as relevant today as they were 50 plus years ago.
From their very first day in office, despite a clear mandate, the Whitlam Government was opposed at every turn by the conservative establishment who set out to do anything they could to remove Labor from power.
This battle following Gough’s election inspired a whole generation of people to join the Labor Party.
I joined in 1974 because of the forthcoming double dissolution over Medibank and representation in the Senate for the ACT and the Northern Territory, along with other crucial electoral reforms to ensure “one vote one value.”
I wonder how many voters today would believe that Labor had to fight so hard against such obstructionism for universal health care and the right of all Australians to be properly represented in Parliament.
Gough’s whole framework was timeless based on the principle of equality of opportunity and people having the capacity to get ahead irrespective of their race, gender or postcode.
I won’t go through the stunning list of initiatives that emerged from little more than 1000 days. Whitlam’s feats are the stuff of Labor legend.
Too many of Gough’s achievements in office are overshadowed by the dismissal and the underhanded skull-duggery of the conservative establishment and the Liberal Party within.
There was something deeply disturbing about the dismissal that was far bigger than Kerr.
It represents a born to rule view by conservatives in politics and in business – that a Labor Government is an aberration. Bob Hawke did something to ameliorate that.
But I know from my experiences, not just as a State Secretary, as a backbench member of the Keating Government and as a Senior Minister in the Rudd and Gillard Governments and as National President of our great Party, when you scratch conservatives they have a view that a Labor Government is not natural.
I know that to this day that attitude is still encountered by Labor Ministers, not just from those opposite them in the Parliament, but from powerful conservative forces that still dominate our business and media sectors.
Gough launched my first campaign for Lilley in 1993 and by then we in the modern Labor Party knew we owed him a debt of gratitude as he began a wave of reform, both economic and social, that remain at the core of Labor’s agenda to this very day.
The Whitlam, Hawke, Rudd and Gillard experiences demonstrate that it always falls to Labor to champion the big building blocks of economic and social reform that have driven our country forward.
Labor always stands the best chance of defeating the conservative establishment when it keeps a laser-like focus on lifting living standards for working men and women, on delivering real wage increases, strengthening Medicare, as well as critical measures to strengthen our democracy though electoral reform.
All these initiatives are testament to the values imprinted on us by the Whitlam years.
The combined impact of post-war Labor Governments is the reason why Australia has done much better in matching strong growth with social equity than almost any other developed country in the last 50 years. Particularly in the aftermath of the GFC, now almost two decades on.
While our robust and independent electoral system is key to the avoidance of the kind of political polarisation we see today in the US and much of Europe, the relative strength of our democracy also owes much to the intervention of Labor Governments during times of political and economic upheaval.
Because Labor Governments don’t leave people behind.
We didn’t during the economic reforms of the 80s, when we opened our economy to the world while providing strong social measures such as Medicare and universal super.
We didn’t in our response to the GFC, when Labor support for households and businesses ensured we avoided the crippling recession that hit the rest of the world.
We didn’t because the Labor way is to grasp the opportunities of growth and development while never losing sight of our great responsibility to bring working people with us, spreading opportunity and prosperity for all.
We have seen this most recently as the Albanese Government resisted calls of the wealthy to cut support for families doing it tough in the recent global inflation crisis. Only a Labor Government could have brought inflation back under control.
Given our recent electoral success we must refrain from the temptation of thinking that the events of 1975 are not relevant in 2025.
In 1975 Whitlam wasn’t just taken down by John Kerr.
I would suggest that the vested interests who tore down Whitlam in 1975 and trashed his character for 40 years are just as active now as they were then.
Their parliamentary representatives may appear enfeebled and weak, but the vested interests who continue to sustain the far right are now richer and much more politically active than they have been at any time post-war.
We saw during the sustained campaign against Labor between 2007 and 2013, in their attempts to demonise our actions during the GFC, their ill-informed carping about deficit and debt and in their blind conviction to laissez faire economic policy.
There remains a growing group of oligarch-like figures in Australia today who are determined to use their power to set the clock back to the last century and create a new establishment based around their interests.
Whitlam was taken down by a conservative establishment and senior Liberal politicians and judicial figures with the full support of the top end of town.
We see their activity everywhere but most particularly in their determined efforts to deny climate change and destroy the underpinnings of less carbon intensive growth.
We witness it in their opposition to a more progressive tax system, and in the flexing of the muscles of big tech and mining companies, and in their relentless campaign against industry super which is based in their terror at the thought of working people having any control over capital.
We live in an era where the threat of extremism is very very real.
If some of our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents were to reappear tomorrow morning and read the newspapers they might think little has changed from when they were young – when authoritarians were in power and the world was sliding into division and conflict.
My own dad would probably have had that reaction having spent some of his youth fighting for his country.
So the concern at the threat of extremism is real.
Here in Australia we are holding our democracy and our national consensus together. I don’t think Australia has ever stood higher on the world stage than now.
Our economy, society and political system stand strong, largely because as a nation we have rejected austerity and widening inequality.
In Australia economic growth has been spread far more equally than in any other developed country, largely through policies of inclusive growth underpinned by strong social safety nets.
Here, unlike the United States, working people have not been left behind.
Medicare, the predecessor of which was subject of Gough’s 1974 double dissolution, has been central to the Labor vision. Medicare doesn’t just save lives it strengthens democracy.
It gives people the space to live full lives, to worry less, to engage more constructively with their community, instead of falling prey to opportunist populists who feed on anxiety.
The same can be said of national superannuation. It delivers retirement with dignity knowing that you might afford that caravan, tinny or holiday with the grand-kids.
These institutions are democracy’s best friends.
When Whitlam delivered free university education and Medibank this was decried by the right as “Whitlamite spending”. It became a derogative term over the next 20 or 30 years.
The far right and their well-heeled backers will always campaign against so-called big government and the taxation required to deliver it.
These institutions delivered by Labor Governments over the last 50 years are not big government – they are Labor values which underpin a healthy and prosperous society.
To conclude, we should never let our memories dim of what the conservative establishment did to us in 1975.
And we should never forget the lengths they went to attack the democratic underpinnings of our Westminster system of Government.
In 1975 Whitlam’s response to the wrecking of Westminster conventions was dignified and democratic. He didn’t spit the dummy, he didn’t encourage the storming of Parliament House. He let the people decide.
After Whitlam the Labor Party dusted itself off, took the best of the visionary Whitlam program and enshrined this in policy implemented by Hawke, Keating, Rudd Gillard and now Albanese.
This year at the Federal level we achieved something remarkable at the Parliamentary level: 94 seats!
It’s a sad day for the Labor Party to admit this, but even now our largest membership demographic remains those, like myself, who joined in the Whitlam era.
The task before us, 50 years from the dismissal is to convince young Australians that Labor is the party of opportunity, of fairness and security. That it is Labor that has always delivered progress for all Austalians, and that it is Labor again today that can install the fair go for the next generation of working people.
We now have a golden opportunity to build a stronger and more active Party in Whitlam’s honour as one of the great creative politicians in Australian history.
