ACHIEVEMENT and SHORTFALL in the NARCISSISTIC LEADER Gough Whitlam and Australian Politics

CHAPTER 12 ACHIEVEMENT AND SHORTFALL IN THE NARCISSISTIC LEADER Gough Whitlam and Australian Politics JAMES A. WALTER Conservative parties have dominated Australian federal politics since the Second World War. Coming to power in 1949 under Mr. (later Sir) Robert Menzies, the Liberal-Country party (L-CP) coalition held office continuously until 1972, when it was displaced by the reformist Aus tralian Labor party (ALP) government of Mr. Gough Whitlam. Yet the Whitlam ALP government served for only three years before losing office in unusual and controversial circumstances in 1975, since which time the conservative coalition has again held sway. It is my purpose here to examine the leadership of Gough Whitlam and the effects he had upon the fortunes of the ALP government. But first, it is essential to sketch briefly the political history of the years before Whitlam carne to power and the material conditions which the ALP administration en countered, for rarely can the success or failure of an administration be attributed solely to the qualities of an individual. In this case, the con tingencies of situation and history were surely as relevant as the charac teristics of leadership. In Australia, the period from the late 1940s until the late 1960s was, in relative terms, a time of plenty. Prices for Australian exports (agri cultural and later mineral products) were high, foreign investment in the economy flourished, and Robert Menzies' conservative government capitalized by astutely presenting itself as the beneficent author of these conditions. In reality, the government played little part, and develop- 231 C. B. Strozier et al. (eds.), The Leader © Springer Science+Business Media New York 1985 232 CHAPTER 12 ment occurred in a piecemeal and unregulated fashion, while politicians concentrated upon parliamentary politics. Menzies, though indolent and uninterested in economics and administration, was a consummate politician, and maintained a ruthless, sometimes brutal, domination of his party and of the parliamentary forum. His preeminence was assured by the schism which opened up in the ALP opposition in the 1950s-a split which Menzies did all he could to foster and which was the apoth eosis of the cold war mentality in domestic politics. Faction fighting at that time between the left and right wings of the Australian Labor party had its origins in intense and bitter struggles between Catholics and Communists for control of the party-affiliated trade unions in the late 19405 and early 19505. A Catholic episcopally backed organization which carne to be known as "the Movement" as sumed inf1uence in the trade unions and, increasingly, in the Labor party. Meanwhile Menzies, increasingly prone to terrify the electorate with the "red threat" and then promise to save it, set up a royal commis sion to investigate charges of espionage carried by a defecting Soviet agent, Vladimir Petrov, which seemed to implicate, among others, members of the personal staff of the then ALP le ader, H. V. Evatt. Evatt, a prominent barrister, defended his associates before the commission and, in October 1954, released a press statement attacking the Move ment for its attempts to subvert the Labor party. The internecine strug gle then became public, and the party was irreconcilably sundered. A breakaway group formed a new, virulently anti-Communist, Labor par ty which was eventually to call itself the Democratic Labor party (DLP). This splinter party's preoccupations remained anti-Communism and a strong forward defense, and under Australia's preferential voting sys tem, the DLP henceforth was able to split the Labor vote by directing all DLP preferences to coalition candidates, and thus to keep the ALP from power. Menzies continued to drum up the Communist specter in every election campaign, with the enthusiastic support of the DLP. The Demo cratic Labor party maintained its inf1uence in this manner until the ap parent certainties of the cold war era were eroded by the debacle of the Vietnam War: it disappeared as a political power in the early 19705. Not until the mid-1960s did the Australian Labor party start to emerge from its preoccupation with dissension and faction fighting and to rid itself of aging leaders who forever looked back to the bitter years of the split. Then, in 1967, Gough Whitlam was elected le ader of the parlia mentary Labor party. Whitlam, aggressive and lively and with a parlia mentary manner not unlike (some would say modeled on) a younger Menzies, had won advancement through unremitting work and sheer ability. He, and those whom he had impressed, realized that political ACHIEVEMENT AND SHORTFALL IN THE NARCISSISTIC LEADER 233 success would only be achieved when the party overcame its fragmenta tion through internal reform and demonstrated its relevance through the articulation of progressive rather than backward-Iooking policies. They set about this with zeal, and by the late 1960s their success was becoming apparent. Indeed, during those years the Australian Labor party seemed to many the only repository of genuine liberal values, with its newly evident concern for urban reform and enhanced educational facilities, its projected social welfare program, its reasoned opposition to Australia's Vietnam War commitment, its independent foreign policy, its antiracism, and its concern for equal opportunity and human rights. The changes in the ALP that burgeoned under Whitlam took place against the background of a government of erratic and relatively rapidly changing leadership that appeared increasingly flat and unsure of its direction. Sir Robert Menzies, after seventeen years as prime minister, had chosen to retire in 1966, and the succession of Liberal party leaders thereafter indicated one thing: that in reinforcing his own preeminence, Menzies had, over the years, deposed aU potential crown princes, to leave only the untried and the second-rate. His chosen successor, Harold HoIt, was beginning to appear an ineffectual prime minister when he disappeared in the sea in December 1967. Hoit was foUowed by John Corton, who, having come from the Senate, had a tenuous grasp of the forms of the House and whose propensity for unconsidered pro nouncements and politicaUy damaging personal behavior lost him the support of his party. Corton, in the face of an even division on a confi dence vote in his leadership in the parliamentary party room, used his casting vote against himself and William McMahon was elected in his stead. McMahon, a diminutive, balding man of poor diction, was an unfortunate contrast to the taU, prepossessing and carefuUy coiffed Cough Whitlam, then at the height of his oratorical powers. Neither Corton or McMahon proved a match for Whitlam in the House. Leadership aside, the increasingly volatile economic climate of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and successive contrivances by the coalition to cope with it, militated against the sort of authoritative impression Menzies had been able to maintain in a more stable climate. It was not that the Menzies policies were seen to fail, but rather than Liberal Country party by 1971 appeared to be a coalition that lacked policies, in contrast to the detailed articulation of policy by Whitlam and the Aus tralian Labor party. The ALP at last appeared united, offered direction, and promised solutions and optimism. Thus it was that the Australian Labor party won the federal elec tions of December 1972, and Whitlam became the first Labor prime minister in twenty-three years. The Labor government carried the hopes 234 CHAPTER 12 of a generation who had known nothing other than conservative rule, and who were persuaded by the ALP campaign slogan: "It's Time [for a change]!" Even conservative commentators hailed Whitlam's accession as "the end of the ice age." These high expectations were to be con founded by the eventful but disappointing record of the Labor govern ment from 1972 to 1975 and the unprecedented manner of its downfalI. The debate about what went wrong has continued ever since. It is rea sonable to assume that the many articles and books on these events among them one by this author1-were fueled not only by the unusual course of the government, but also by their authors' attempts to come to terms with these disappointed hopes. Certainly, in my own case, this has been a motive, for 1 was one of those for whom Whitlam's accession represented a better future, and who were disillusioned and baffled by what carne to pass. On one level, the failure of the Labor government can be explained by reference to factors over which it had little control. It was Whitlam' s misfortune to be elected on an expansively reformist platform at a time when the world economic clima te was beginning to dictate restraint and caution. The blight thus cast on his designs was exacerbated by the structural weakness of the Australian economy, dependent as it is on investment and stimulation from overseas sources, which were then under considerable pressure. Business interests, unchecked during the prolonged conservative rule, were resistant to change and strongly en trenched to defend their practices; business leaders were allied with conservative politicians in questioning the very right of these interlopers to rule. The media, largely owned and controlled by these same busi ness interests, reflected their conservative presuppositions, and, after a brief initial honeymoon, pronounced daily judgments on the "reckless socialists." The federal bureaucracy, habituated to years of

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