LAM RE-VISITED Policy Deuelopment, Policies and )utcomes

EDITED BY Hugh Emy, Owen Hu$es and Race Mathews &W Whitlam Re-visited: A Personal Memoir RACE MATHEWS

I frst met at a Fabian Society meeting in early l961,when I was the Society's secretary. He had just delivered what the president, David Bennett, described to me on the way out as 'the best Labor speech I have heard in a long time'. Any impression I made on him must have been minimal, since a year or so later he vetoed my pre-selection for the Latrobe electorate at the 1963 elections, on the reasonable grounds that - a Research Fellow at the Royal Children's Hospital - would be a candidate of higher quality, and more likelytogain one of the two additional seats which Laborneeded in orderto form a government. In the event, the conservatives retained office in 1963 with an increased majority, and Whitlam scored an upset victory over Eddie Ward to become Deputy Leader of the Opposition. Meanwhile, the Fabian Society had been acquiring a comprehensive picture of where research relevant to Labor Party objectives was going on in universities and other learned institutions around Australia. Following the elections, Whitlam's newly-acquired private secretary, John Menadue, recruited me for the network of policy advisors which Whitlam had asked him to establish. When Whitlam at last took over from futhurCalwell as lrader of the Opposition in1967, and Menadue moved on to the position of Executive Assistant to Rupert Murdoch, I was asked if I knew anybody who would be suitable to replace him - or would I take the job myself. What followed was the most tumultuous - and by far most rewarding - phase of my career. The policy advice network established by Menadue after 1963 had in part fallen into disrepair in the period prior to the 1966 elections, when Menadue unsuccessfully contested the Hume electorate in . Further toll had been taken by the leadership struggle following the elections, and the subsequent months while the party was settling itself down and resigning itself to a further period of opposition from which it saw itself as having little immediate hope of emerging. My assignment was to restore and extend the network as quickly as possible, and keep up the flow of information which was needed in order for Whitlam to refine the details of the policies whose broad nature in many instances was already clear in his mind. In some instances, the relevant work was already being undertaken within the Parliamenta-ry Labor Party. For example, the northern development policies which had helped the pafiy to win its crucial victory at the Dawson by-election were now in the capable hands of . Rex Connor had an explicit vision of the minerals and energy policies which should be undertaken in government, and the development of defence policies was being pursued by Whitlam's Deputy, Lance Barnard. The rest of the Shadow Cabinet was mostly still in post-election shock. Advice from outside sources was also readily enlisted. David Bennett maintained the process of education policy development which he and I had initiated atthe initigation of Menadue, along the lineswhich are described in my Deeble and Dick Fabian Society monograph , David, Bennett: A Memair. John programme Scotton resumed the d-evelopment of the alternative national health which gave rise to Medibink, and Marie Coleman, Colin Benjamin, Janet on Patterson and Kim Wyman advised on social welfare. There was advice and science policy from feith Crooke, on agricultural policy from Bob Whan from John Kerin, on cities from Pat Troy and John Patterson, on electoral affairs Mathews Colin Hughes, on commonwealth-state financial relations from Russell Clarke' and on transport policy from John Hodgetts, Norman Fisher and Nick land Frank Hardy calied in at the office with observations about aboriginal consti- rights, anO Sir Daryl Lindsay with advice on arts policy. Those named was tu-teO onty the tip of a much more extensive ice-berg. Where Whitlam known to interest himself - and where was hs not? - advice was always point was forthcoming, whether it was asked for or not. Well before 1969, the short reached where authoritative views in any area of policy could be tapped at government notice, to provide the substance for a major address, respond to a be' attack or shape a parliamentary question-without-notice as the case might Within Whitlam's office, Gritram Freudenberg wrote the major speeches Peter Cullen - and and advised on foreign policy and ourbroad political strategy- laterRichardHall- werl ourtrouble-shooters, maintaining the office'sparty and increasingly trade unionlinks anddealingwiththe throng of interestgroupswho policy' clamoured for Whitlam's aitention. My field was principally domestic 'my Graham was referred to by Whitlam in moments of gratitude or euphoria as Sorensen'. Even that urcolud. was less than Graham deserved. The comparison both should rather have been with Richard Goodwin, whose speeches for pained Kennedy and Johnson show that he was by far superior to Sorensen' It whitlam that his staff had mostly chosen to educate themselves in unconven- us in moments of exasperation tional Ways, and were therefore - as he reminded - 'educatironal dropouts'. Even so, our deficienCies were not without their uses' When the embittered Calwell attacked Whitlam for having 'an office full of long-haired academics', Whitlam was able to retort that none of his staff were graduates, and one of them was bald. whitlam's brand of wit - much of it gallows humour or self-parody - served him to what him well as an antidote to adversity. Kept waiting for a car to take its Federal was confidently expected would be his expulsion frol1h_e ALP by Executive in 1966, he exclaimed 'Is the tumbril ready?' .Invited by his Sen11e colleague - and then-President of the Queensland Rugby League - Ron McAuliffe to kicf-off the lg74 Rugby Grand Final at a low spot in his government's ground fortunes, he was greeted is tre anO McAuliffe walked to the centre of the the ceremony' by a torrent of abuse and beer cans which continued throughout 'McAuliffe', Whitlam remonstrated, on the way back to the pavilion, 'don't you ever again invite me to a place where you're so unpopular" The preparation of a major domestic policy statement was usually compri- cated by Whitlam's preference for putting off his responses to invitations until the lastpossible moment. The process of stalling or declining invitations was left to his staff - in particular his appointments secretary, Barbara Stuart - on the basis of a paradigmatic whitlam directive: 'You be the bastard'. The practice made good sense in terms of seeing that the best possible use was made of whitlam's time, but, having often been a lecture and conference organiser myself, I felt deeply for those who were on the receiving end of our procrastinations, and so often had to find substitute speakers at short notice. Those who suffered most were frequently our best friends. Barbara's duties also included the constant booking, cancelling, re-routing and re-booking of air travel reservations which attended our forays into every town and hamlet across the continent where an audience for the exposition of policies might conceivably be found. common- wealth drivers, airline clerks and motel receptionists throughout Australia adopted her name for us. we comprised collectively - whitlam included - the 'Whitlam Wanderers'. Once an invitation had been accepted, or a suitable platform identified and secured by other means, a fairly standard procedure was followed. The starting point was usually a note or oral briefing from whitlam, complete with refer- ences. In the first instance, a Whitlam line on many key topics was likely to have been laid down in earlier speeches, which had the status of revealed truth, and could only with extreme difficulty be changed. whitlam's policies mostly stemmed from central axioms, which he called his 'insights'. A pack of system cards was carried around in his jacket pocket, so that 'insights' could be jotted down as they occurred to him. For example, it was a whitlam health policy 'insight' that- in the words of his 1961 curtin Memorial Lecture - 'The bestway to achieve a proper National Health Service is to establish a National Hospital system'. The creation of a National Hospital System was an objective from which he never subsequently deviated. Medibank, by comparison, figured in his thinking largely as a medium-term, transitional arrangement. It was his strong view thatpeople wouldmore easily be able to embrace doctors based and backed by hospitals if they had first become accustomed to consultations without fees. As demand for the superior hospital system product increased, Medibank would be able to wither away. It therefore remained mandatory that every speech on health policy should include some reference to National Hospital System arangements, even when the central thrust had shifted to marketing Medibank in the run up to government. Secondly, Whitlam attached over-riding importance to research, and insisted thatpolicies should be justified in depth with facts. His chosen mechanism was the parliamentary question on notice, which he elevated to an art form. No parliamentarian anywhere has used questions on notice more extensively or to better effect. tn this way, he was able to place on record facts which otherwise would not otherwise have been available publicly, in a form which carried unchallengable ministerial authority. Copies of the daily edition of Parliamen- tary Debaies (Hansards) were indexed painstakingly in his handwriting with the page numbers and headings of ministers' answers, and accompanied him in a iarge suitcase wherever we went. Prior to 1969 when a good deal of our campaigning focused on seats in Northern Queensland,Whitlam was afamiliar figuie for innumerable motel proprietors, annotating his Hansard by the sides of Girswimming pools in the pauses between making speeches and issuing press releases. The unfolding shape of his interestin the deeply flawed Liberal system of voluntary health insurance can be traced in questions he placed on the Notice paper of the House of Representatives for successive Health Ministers annually from 1960 to 1972. For example, on 30 August, 1960, he asked the Minister: 1. How many claims were (a) accepted and (b) rejected by registered medical benefits funds during 1959? 2. What percentage of the cost of medical services for which claims were accepted was met bY (a) the funds, (b) the Commonwealth and (c) contributors? 3. What were the principle reasons for rejecting claims and what percentage of claims were rejected for each of these reasons?

By 2l September, 1967 , he was asking: 1. What payments were made to registered medical benefits organisations by (a) their members and (b) the Commonwealth in 1966-67'l 2. What payments of (a) organisation and (b) commonwealth benefits were made to, or in respect of, their members by the organisations in 1966-67? 3. How many members (a) made payments to the organisations and (b) received payments from them in 1966-67? 4. For how many individual professional services were claims (a) accepted and (b) rejected by the organisations in 1966-67? 5. What percentage of the cost of the services for which claims were accepted was met bY (a) the organisations,

10 (b) the Commonwealth and (c) the members? 6. What were the principle reasons for rejecting claims and in what percent- age of claims did each of these reasons apply? 7. What are the (a) reserves and b) operating expenses of the organisations, and what percentage of members' contributions did the operating expenses represent? 8. How many persons were employed by the organisations? Similar questions were put down each year about the activities of hospital benefitsorganisations.ItisunlikelythattheLiberalministerstowhomWhitlam's long and carefully-categorised questions on notice were addressed understood the deadlyuse to which theirresponses would be put, butthe strategy was always clear in his mind. Weaving in answers to questions was a key part of the speech- writing process. Staff members were acutely aware of the importance of questions generally and the suitcase in particular because frequently they were the occasion for the monumental rages which - along with the laughter - punctuated our activities. Minutes after I had installed myself in my new Parliament House office in for the first time in 1967 ,the door which connected it with Whitlam's office suddenly burst open. Whitlam emerged, shouting for me to produce from Hansard - a publication with which I then had no more than a nodding acquaintance - the answer to a question on notice about the DFRB - an acronym of which I had never heard, and which he did not explain. The shouting continued while I fumbled and failed to comply, and his face turned more and more purple, until a tacful intervention by another staff member defused the situation, and he vanished again behind the door. I was to learn that such episodes were a way of relieving his frustrations with the still largely inert majority of his parliamentary colleagues, and the shambles in which he had inherited the Labor Party from Calwell, particularly in Victoria. Sweetness and light would prevail again ten or so minutes later, but the heat was fierce while it lasted. On the occasion in question, he had probably just had a telephone call from somebody like the then Federal Secretary of the ALP, Cyril Wyndham, who was a friend, or the Federal President, Joe Chamberlain, who was an enemy. Irrespective of the source, the news in those days was usually bad, and he was only gradually moving towards the point where something could be done about it. It vexed Whitlam that the opponents of reform within the party frequently disguised their grubbier motives with protestations of ideological purity. As he reminded the 1967 Victorian Conference in a memorable denun- ciation of the so-called Trades Unionists' Defence Committee, 'Only the impotent are pure'. Three years later, the TUDC was crushed in the take-over

1t of the Victorian Branch by the Federal Executive which Whitlam engineered in conjunction with Ctyde Cameron and MickYoung. In the process, the ALP was democratised through the adoption of proportional representation for its internal elections, and the wayaheadforthe party'sreturntogovernmentwasatlong last cleared. The view in the office was that nothing personal was meant by Whitlam's tantrums, and no offence could be taken. Putting up with them helped him to cope with a situation which we felt had been made all but impossible for him, and was therefore part of our job. Outsiders did not necessarily see things in the same light. One notable outburst took place in the presence of Rex Connor - a man of formidable size and intellect, bestknown in the media of the day as 'The Strangler'. Connor went white with shock, and remonstrated with Whitlam that he shouldn't talk that way - and in such language - to whoever was on the receiving end. The effect of his intervention was instantaneous. Whitlam prompfly shifted targets, and abused him. That was precisely the sort of situation his staff dreaded. While the term 'minder' had not at that stage been coined, keeping Whitlam out of the troubles in which his temper would otherwise have landed him, and seeing that basic civilities were maintained between him and his Caucus colleagues, called for constant vigilance. You tried to foresee the possible sources of irritation or friction, and moved heaven and earth if necessary to get rid of them before a flash-point was reached. Failing that, acting as a lightning-rod yourself was usually better than having to pick up the pieces the next time there was an important vote in the Caucus, or something else was needed from a colleague who had needlessly been alienated. Better still, the eruption might direct itself to something inanimate, as on the occasion when he bodily tore off the sun visor of a Commonwealth car on a back road somewhere in Queensland, and flung it into the bush. Thirdly - to turn again to the speech preparation process - Whitlam instinc- tively and unceasingly sought expert advice. It may be that the habit stemmed from growing up in a public service family. Feature articles were torn in strips from The Age, the Australian Financial Review, the Canberra Times and the Sydney Morning Herald during motel breakfasts and early morning flights, so that their authors could be contacted and their minds picked. Official reports and parliamentary papers were devoured. As 'convertible literary material' was to a writer such as Evelyn Waugh, So 'convertible policy material' was to Whitlam. The most prolific source of recruits for our network was Professor Ronald Henderson's Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research at Melbourne University, which helped out on economic issues as well as on social welfare and health. The usefulness of the Institute - and the uses of experts more generally - can be illustrated by referring again to the development of Medibank. In 1965, the Institute had drawn John Deeble from his post as Deputy Manager of the Peter MacCullum Clinic in Melbourne, and a year later it had taken Dick Scotton from

T2 the Commercial Banking Company of Sydney, where he was employed as an economist. Pioneering studies were produced for the Institute by Deeble on 'The Commercial Structure of the Pharmaceutical Industry' and 'The Costs and Sources of Finance of Australian Health Services'; by Scotton on 'Voluntary Insurance and the Incidence of Hospital Costs' and 'Voluntary Health Insurance in Australia'; and by Deeble and Scotton jointly on 'Health Care under Voluntary fnsurance', 'Compulsory Health Insurance for Australia' and 'The Nimmo Report'. Whitlam had total confidence in Deeble and Scotton notleast because their proposals - like his own - were based solidly on facts. His most frequent instruction to his writers was 'more matter, less aft'. Early in1967, Deeble and Scotton were invited by Moss Cass to a meeting in his home with Whitlam and Menadue, where the basis for an alliance was established. As the meeting was breaking up, Whitlam asked the economists if they had developed - in addition to their critique of the voluntary insurance system - any ideas about the arrangements by which it should be replaced. He was told that they had ideas, but as yet no system. [n January,1969, a Joint Committee of the Victorian Council of Social Service and the Victorian Branch of the Australian Association of Social Workers brought down a report which argued strongly for making health insurance compulsory. By June, Deeble and Scottonhad developed proposalsforan obligatoryinsurance system, and in July these proposals provided the core of the definitive address on 'The Alternative National Health Program', which was delivered by Whitlam over lunch at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney, and subsequently published by invitation in the Medical Journal of Australia. Policies of the importance of Medibank ultimately required the endorsement of the Labor Party's Federal Conference. Where - as, for example, in the case of State Aid for non- government schools - they were also controversial, Whitlam was sometimes broughtinto conflictwith colleagues who held opposing views orwere captives to contrary-minded State Executives, notably in Victoria. When the 1969 Federal Conference finally voted to endorse State Aid, the then-Deputy Senate Leader, Sam Cohen, was one of the last delegates to decide on which side to come down. 'I see', Whitlam was heard to remark, 'that the Deputy Senate Leader is caught up in his customary conflict of disloyalties'. The Royal Prince Alfred Hospital lunch was also memorable in my own estimation for having given me one of the worst days of my life. Fogs at Canberra airport have tofinented politicians and public servants for years. I had stayed on the night before the speech was to be delivered, in order to add some finishing touches and supervise the printing. Fog duly closed the airport the following morning, and continued to do so until noon, while telephone calls from Whitlam in Sydney became increasingly terse. By the time I arrived at the hospital, Whitlam had been ad-libbing for half an hour, and I was anything but popular. Insult was added to injury when a doctor was overheard to comment afterwards on how much better the speech had been before the prepared version of it had

l3 finally been handed up to Whitlam at the lectern. One of the reasons why *otLing for Whitlam was exhilarating was the certain knowledge that there was nothingyoucould do forhim that- given time - hecouldnotdo betterforhimself. pourttr - and finally - Whitlam realised from the start that in order for policies to be accepted by the electorate they had first to be understood. Medibank, for example, was explained constanfly from 1967 to 1969, and again from 1969 to 1972: in parliament and wherever public platforms or media attention were obtainable. Fraser mistakenly supposed that Australians would accept his demolition of Medibank - in defiance of his 1975 election undertaking to retain it - because it had been in place for only two months prior to the notorious Remembrance Day Coup. The real strength of Medibank stemmed at that point from the fact that it had been explained to the electorate more thoroughly than any other Opposition policy proposal in our history. Whitlam required the speeches which were prepared for him to be in part repetitious, in order for their pioposals to become understood as nearuniversally as possible among those for whose benefit the proposals were designed. Once the basic theme and content of a speech had been settled, drafts were exchanged repeatedly between Whitlam and whoever was doing the writing, until Whitlam was satisfied that the best possible outcome had been obtained. Speeches such as the one on ,political and Constitutional Problems in National Transport Planning', which he delivered for the Department of Civil Engineering at Melbourne University in April, 1968, could take weeks to complete. His great 1972 electon policy it, as far back rp.rln was a distillation of all the speeches which had gone before as his entry into parliament in t952. Taking all four of these points together, Whitlam's provenance is plain' Whitlam has epitomised through out his career the Fabian approach to politics 'Among and policy devilopment. As he has said tongue-in-cheek of himself, eustratian Fabians, I am Maximus'. Each new piece of work he undertakes starts from the principles of social justice and egalitarianism which have given his career its whole motivation and direction. As has been seen, facts are then gathered painstakingly and meticulously analysed, so that policy options r*.tgr *d c- be tested. Once the final form of a policy has been settled, it is foughtforwith allthe formidable force ofhisintellectandeloquence. Whitlam's 'Some acti,ons and addresses invite us to recall the words of Robert F. Kennedy: say see things as they are and say 'Why'?. I dream of things that never were and .Why not'?'. Australians are accustomed to having their votes sought through theirpurses and pockets. Itis Whitlam alone in the memories of mostof us who has addressed himself uncompromisingly to our consciences and intellects. Whitlam himself would not necessarily regard so sweepingly affirmative an assessment as inappropriate. Barry Cohen - elected to the House of Representa- tives on Whitlam's coat-tails in 1969, and a Minister under Hawke - has a relevant story in his book, Afier the Parry.It reads:

l4 Ihadheardthatonthereleaseof themassive tomeTheWhitlamGovernrnent,l9T2'75 Gough was asked by an infepid young reporter whether this was the third major work on his period of govemment, the others &'ing The Truth of the Matterby himself' and L Certiin Grandeurby Graham Freudenberg. He was reported to have replied loftily' 'Yes, there was the Crucifixion, the Resurrection and now we have the Gospels"

Ihad triedto check theauthenticity of this wonderful story with thenranhimself but was unabletodo so ashe wasawayoverseas foraconsiderableperiod, fulfillinghisUNESCO obligations. I eventually caught up with him and repeated the s0ory. He paused for a moment before replying, 'I must say I can't recall it" although it has a certain ring to it. However, I can tett youtnat I do keep 'TIIE THREE BOOKS' togethef on my office shelf .

'The three books?' I enquired innocently. .Yes,, he replied, 'The Bible, The complete works of willian shakespeare and The

Whitlam Government' .

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