Happy Birthday, Mr Whitlam

This week Gough Whitlam turns 96, and aside from the sadness of the birthday without his late wife Margaret, Mr Whitlam will look back across the past half-century and wonder what the hell happened to the once great Australian Labor Party. He is not alone

This year also marks 40 years since Gough’s audacious strategy to woo middle class voters secured him the Prime Ministership in 1972. In the late 1960s, Whitlam recognised that in order to win government, he would need to attract middle class voters who had favoured the Liberal Party since the late 1940s, while at the same time, retaining the loyalty of traditional Labor voters from the factories and mines and shopfloors. 

Regrettably, E.G. Whitlam will always be remembered first for The Dismissal, that ferocious time in our political history which could have seen the death of the Labor Party. Labor endured, much to my grandfather's disappointment, and governed again under Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, yet right now, Labor’s future looks about as desolate as it did back in November 1975 when Sir John Kerr terminated Whitlam’s political career.

Gough Whitlam is probably in the best position of anyone to explain the desperate situation of the ALP in 2012, and possibly, to structure another miracle comeback. After all, he’s the one that started the slow-dance with the middle classes...

The music stopped about 20 years ago yet the ALP kept on pirouetting to the right, from Government under Paul Keating into Opposition under a progression of lacklustre leaders: Beazley, Crean. Latham. The more successful Coalition Prime Minister John Howard was, the harder the ALP tried to emulate them.  As Whitlam had done prior to the 1972 election, Labor seemed to think that if they were more like the Coalition, if the offered positions more appealling to the middle classes, they could win. 

Again, Labor went after the middle class voters. The strategy probably would’ve succeeded in 2001 too, but September 11. We were, quite appropriately, scared by the world. Conventional wisdom suggests that the left's strengths are in education and welfare, while the right is about border protection, defence and the economy. Labor lost another one.

Take a look back over the past twenty years:  Labor’s one big success was Kevin-07. It was also the one time when the ALP differentiated itself from the policies of the right: Your Rights At Work successfully tore the heart out of Tony Abbott’s WorkChoices and once again aligned Labor with its working class origins and union-based sponsors. On the environment, Labor was talking about moral challenges and an ETS while the Libs were trying to decide if Climate Change was a global conspiracy. 

Surprisingly, Rudd is socially conservative, but that mattered less to many voters, and gave Labor a vital point of differentiation against the Greens, who now occupy a position on the continuum very similar to that occupied by Gough Whitlam in 1972.

The landscape is very different 40 years on. Tony Abbott leads the most popular political party in the land, while simultaneously surviving spectacular personal disapproval figures. He has company, though; Julia Gillard's personal approval numbers are as bad as Mr Abbott's. Both primary voting intention and two party preferred figures have Labor all but gone. 

The future of the Liberal Party looks even healthier when viewed through the one-dimensional lens of polling results. The two parties are trying to kill each other by fighting over the same slice of electoral real-estate; the slice traditionally belonging to the conservative right. The Coalition has the home-court advantage.

I wonder what Gough Whitlam, Elder Statesman of the ALP,  would say about this situation. He certainly wouldn't be advising his team to fight Tony Abbott for the middle class aspirational voters, and the Mining Executive Class. I think it might be a lot simpler...and a lot more complex.

When the primary vote would have to climb to reach one in three, admit you've lost your way. It's not about leadership or carbon tax or asylum seekers. It's about the people Labor left behind when they forgot to stop moving right. Labor can't be the government we need if they're in Opposition.

The least we can do would be to ask Mr Whitlam for his advice, and listen to the wisdom of his 96 years.

Happy Birthday, Mr Whitlam. 

What Campbell Newman Must Learn from Gough Whitlam

On the surface, you’d think CanDo and Gough would have little in common. In fact, CanDo might find that he and Gough Whitlam have a bit and he should learn from Gough’s explosive two-term reign in the early seventies.



When Whitlam came to power in 1972, it broke a 23 year streak of Liberal – Country Party rule. Campbell Newman’s victory this weekend in Queensland broke stretch of ALP domination in Queensland that had lasted for 22 years (with the obvious exception of Rob Borbridge’s short Liberal rule.)


Both Whitlam and Newman based their campaign themes around it being time for change. Whitlam’s used the famous “It’s Time” jingle, but Campbell Newman adhered more closely to Bob Menzies’ 1949 campaign “It’s Time for a Change” slogan. It works.

Usually a government is officially sworn in a week or two after the election is held, to allow time for all votes to be counted, and for the leader to choose his ministry. Whitlam was in a hurry, and asked the Governor General to swear him and his deputy as soon as the result was definite. Between the two of them, they controlled all of the portfolios until the full cabinet was sworn in.


Campbell Newman has chosen the same approach. Less than 48 hours after the polls closed, Newman has already been sworn in, along with his deputy, Jeff Seeney, and his Treasurer Tim Nicholls. They have formed an interim government. A full cabinet will be announced and in due course. It’s not known why Mr Newman was so determined to assume the role of Premier so quickly, but it could be so that he can make changes at the highest levels of the Public Service.


When Whitlam came to power in 1972, he actioned everything he could get away with: foreign relations with China, Taiwan and South Africa, blanket exemptions from conscription, equal pay issues, major funding for the Arts, brought the last troops home from Vietnam and removed the sales tax from the conceptive pill, among other things.


The public reaction was overwhelming; things were getting done, without the burdensome processes of parliament. Many years later, Whitlam’s speechwriter commented that “We did too much too soon.”


Whitlam was also determined to hold power individually. Aside from the the caucus-selected Cabinet, Whitlam maintained full control of the cabinet agenda, and formed cabinet committees.


Campbell Newman, if you learn nothing else from Whitlam, remember not to run too fast, and remember to share your power. With no oversight from an Upper House and no Opposition, you and your team will be solely responsible for Queensland for the next three years. Take your time, and listen to smart people (particularly those who disagree with you).


We probably don’t need any more Jackson Pollack art for a while, either.