WW | exclusive MARGARET WHITLAM At last,

herShe was the PM’s wife who story has refused to live in her husband’s shadow. David Leser talks to Margaret Whitlam about Gough, the Dismissal and growing old.

FORMER AUSTRALIAN Prime Minister of the restaurant windows, the French elite MARGARET WHITLAM is sitting in and his wife, Margaret, are looking out at her, open-mouthed. her living room overlooking a glimmering are arriving at the ultra-chic restaurant, “I would have gone and jumped off bay, the slanting winter light Le Pre Catalan, in Paris’ Bois de Boulogne the Seine Bridge, but Margaret just looked dancing in her thick silver hair and in the garden district, for a lunch at which they down and said, ‘Oh, hello’. That’s exactly pools of her Pacific-blue eyes. She is are guests of honour. what she did, she went, ‘Oh, hello’. laughing at the memory of that French The year is 1985 and Gough Whitlam is “She turned around and – she must farce nearly two decades ago, but offering Australia’s ambassador to the Paris-based have done this on purpose – with her up her own important clarifications. scientific and cultural organisation, UNESCO. bottom facing the window, towards the “It’s true,” she says, “I did [lose my skirt] With them in the car are their daughter, upper-class French voyeurs, and bending … but her description of my underwear is Catherine, and a family friend, Australian from the waist, because she’s not good at not exactly true. I was wearing the usual writer Kathy Lette. The car has just pulled bending from the knee, she gave them the flesh-coloured tights, flesh-coloured panty- up outside the restaurant, where the head full view of the Whitlam posterior. hose and flesh-coloured knickers on top.” waiter and the maitre d’ have been expecting “Then she picked up the skirt, zipped it And no, she doubts she ever gave them the arrival of their distinguished guests. up, turned around and said, ‘Onwards’. And the full Whitlam posterior either, perhaps “I don’t know whether she [Margaret] onward we all cruised into the restaurant, as an oblique angle, and she certainly didn’t had lost weight,” Kathy recalls, “but as if to the chateau born. She was not fazed – say, “Onwards”. She said, “En avant”, she got out, the elastic on the waistband not a blush, not a raised eyebrow from which, in French, means roughly the same of her skirt went and she was suddenly her. Nothing, just absolute calm. Gough thing: “Let’s go”. A subtle, but important standing in a puddle of skirt and she was was on the other side of the car oblivious difference, she’ll have you know. Fwearing these huge white step-ins, thigh- to what had happened, but Catherine and Furthermore, as Margaret points out length down to the knees. I were in hysterics by then. gaily, Kathy Lette is in no position to Margaret Whitlam, “We couldn’t move. We all just stood “And, of course, the French, being gloat over other people’s misfortunes. 86, at the Sydney there, open-mouthed. The maitre d’ and French, did nothing. They just kept their After all, the Australian writer spent an entire home she shares his welcome party were frozen ... like noses so far up in the air we were looking evening with her and Gough in Paris once with husband Gough, 90, Australia’s iconic Stonehenge monuments. up every nostril. I thought, ‘What a woman’. telling a French ambassador that his wife former prime minister. “We were all staring at Margaret, waiting The French are supposed to be suave, but was “very frozen” (très gelé) when she’d Above left: Attending

for her cue, to see what she would do. Out she out-suaved them.” meant to say, “very pretty” (très jolie). WHITLAM. OF MARGARET COURTESY AND MAKE-UP BY CRAIG BEAGLEHOLE. HAIR KENNE. BY INGVAR PHOTOGRAPHY a ball in the 1960s.

2 | WW OCTOBER 2006 WW OCTOBER 2006 | 3 Margaret Whitlam gives a big belly- Not only was Gough a good lover, he sacked the man who had appointed him. laugh at the thought of it and her eyes actually read her poems by Keats, Shelley For the past three decades, we’ve sparkle with mischievous delight. Her body and Byron when they were in bed together. heard plenty from the men involved – might be crumbling from osteoporosis and “I suppose you’d call it foreplay and I just Kerr, , then leader of spinal deterioration, but a lifetime with the thought it was lovely,” she was to tell her the Opposition, and, of course, Gough Confucian figure of Gough Whitlam has biographer, possibly during one of their Whitlam himself. What we’ve not done, refined an already natural gift for sharp “phone sex” sessions. though, is hear from the wives of these ripostes and self-deprecating humour, not As for the man she took a shine to, it men, in particular this wife. to mention warmth, kindliness, curiosity was none other than the world-renowned We’ve never sat on the windowsill and and an absence of pomp or vanity. American-born conductor and composer eavesdropped on history in quite the way we And it is these qualities – among many Leonard Bernstein, whom she met during can now. On the day of Gough Whitlam’s others – that help explain why Australians his concert tour of Australia in 1974. “It dismissal as prime minister, Margaret have always loved this prepossessing was a bit like having a crush on someone,” happened to be at Kirribilli House in woman and why their affections are only she says. “He was so congenial and, at Sydney, hosting a board meeting for the likely to deepen as the details of a new the same time, interesting. And the sort Commonwealth Hostels Association, of book on her life become known. of music he played had never been my which she was a director. She was in the absolute favourite … up till then. But since middle of lunch when the call came. then … wow.” “He’s sacked me.” “I’M ON MY THIRD Would she have had an affair with him? “Who’s sacked you?” PACEMAKER. IT’S “No, no, no. You know how you meet “Kerr.” somebody new and you think, ‘I really like “Don’t be ridiculous. He can’t sack you, RIDICULOUS, ISN’T IT? you … you have all sorts of imaginings you’re the elected prime minister.” WHILE I KEEP GOING, and then you move on. It’s a frequent “I walked into his office, he asked me I’LL KEEP GOING.” occurrence, I would say, with everybody whether I was going to agree to an election throughout life. It’s not a question of saying, of the House of Reps. I refused. He said, ‘Oh, I like him better than my husband.’ ‘In that case, I have no alternative but Written by her friend, author Susan It’s, ‘I like him, too’.” to withdraw your commission’ and he Mitchell, Margaret Whitlam: A Biography Margaret Whitlam might just happen handed me a sheet of paper.” is a deeply revealing and, for the most to be one of Australia’s more delightfully “How ridiculous, why didn’t you part, sympathetic investigation. disarming public figures. The fact that just tear it up?” After years of deflecting would-be she would scoff at such a notion only “Because, Margaret, it was a legal biographers, Margaret, at the age of 86, has further proves the point. Yes, she is document.” finally said yes to the idea of having her Gough Whitlam’s wife, but she is – “So what? You should have torn it up. life chronicled. “For years, people have and has always been – far more than There were only two of you there. Or you been asking me to let them do it,” she tells that. She is the daughter of an upper-class should have slapped his face and told him The Weekly, “or to encourage me to do it. Sydney family with a fierce sympathy to pull himself together.” But I just felt it was not my thing.” for those less fortunate than herself. She Margaret was ropeable. She knew their So why now? “Because my daughter is the shy and awkward teenager who political enemies had always regarded in particular, my kids in general, said became a social worker and, then, much her – daughter of a Supreme Court judge to me: ‘They’ll do it when you’re dead later in life, international tour leader. She father and teacher mother – as well as her and they’ll get it all wrong, so you might is the Cabramatta-based mother-of-four husband, as class traitors. Furthermore, as well do it and say yes to somebody. who became the much-loved and feted they had always viewed Labor’s ascendancy You know Susie [Mitchell] writes well. figure on the Paris diplomatic circuit. She as an unpalatable – but temporary – You like her. She’s a friend.’ ” is the pragmatist and the sensualist, the departure from the natural order. Clockwise from top: Undoubtedly, it needed that kind of traditional wife and the latter-day feminist. She felt certain, too, that they were Margaret sunbathing at Bondi in 1936; trust for Margaret to allow someone to She is all these things and more – responsible for the scurrilous rumours that Gough and Margaret go ferreting around in the dark and often- warm-hearted and sharp-witted, proud, had long been circulating about their in 1973 with their fi rst neglected corners of her psyche. Margaret but deeply modest, grateful for her good marriage – about how Gough would beat grandchild, Alexander, actually took to calling it “phone sex”, fortune, but not ready in the slightest, as her, or how she was leaving the marriage, and, from left, son Tony, daughter Catherine, son the mention of which now sends her again The Weekly discovered during our two- or how Gough was having an affair, or how Nick, daughter-in-law into gales of laughter. hour interview, to loosen her grip on life. Gough was gay, or all of the above. It was Sheena and son Stephen; “We were both very, very busy,” she “I’m on my third pacemaker,” she says, the Liberals’ time-honoured practice of Margaret and Gough offers, “and we would really only have self-mockingly. “It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? playing the man (or woman), not the ball. with son Tony as a time to talk by the time we’d gone to While I keep going, I’ll keep going.” “I’d grown up in the eastern suburbs toddler in the 1940s; on a motoring holiday bed … She’d be in bed at her place and [of Sydney], which in those days was with son Nick in I’d be in bed at mine, and we’d have MARGARET WHITLAM was Australia’s Conservative with a capital C,” Margaret Cornwall, England, in a natter on the phone.” First Lady during one of the most tumultuous says now, wrapping her black cardigan 1967; Margaret off to Certainly, a less secure person than and divisive periods in this country’s tighter around her shoulders and crossing the Melbourne Cup in the ‘40s with her Margaret would have stepped back from political history. It was a time of lofty her arms. “All these ridiculous things they parents, Wilfred and revealing some of the more intimate truths idealism and shattered dreams; a time of would say about Gough, about his private Mary Dovey; the of a 64-year marriage – whether, for breathtaking social and political reform, life – about his properties, which were Whitlams’ wedding instance, she was able to have an orgasm and dubious economic management; a time supposed to be so exotic and so numerous. day at St Michael’s on her honeymoon; whether Gough was, of fleeting glories and suicidal mistakes – “And then it came back to me that if Church in Vaucluse, Sydney in 1942. in fact, a good lover; and whether she ever and it all came to a spectacular end on you couldn’t get him, get her. So they fancied another man. On all three counts November 11, 1975, when the governor- started to circulate all sorts of ridiculous

the answer is a resounding, “Yes”. general of the day, Sir John Kerr, things about me. This is the born-to-rule WHITLAM. OF MARGARET COURTESY 4 | WW OCTOBER 2006 M WW OCTOBER 2006 | 5 Right: Margaret and Gough in the grounds of The Lodge in Canberra during his term as prime minister. Far right: Margaret used to take her knitting to Labor Party meetings.

bit … They, the unthinkers, suddenly utterances on issues of the day, unlike, realised that there he was, somebody with say, Patti Menzies, who’d preferred to keep a few ideas, with a way of expression that her views private; or Zara Holt, who’d was theirs … and they, oh – they behaved mainly confined herself to decorating so abominably. The Lodge; or, indeed, Sonia McMahon Just over a decade later, when the two “And also the way the Dismissal was who’d etched herself into the collective were based in Paris, former Labor leader acquired was appalling. It was so … I memory largely on the strength of the Mark Latham came to stay with them at can’t think of the relevant word.” thigh-splitting dress she’d worn once the Australian Embassy. Margaret was Margaret scans the living room of her to the White House. unimpressed. “I thought he had a long way small apartment as she searches in vain Margaret Whitlam was a trained social to go before he was an acceptable politician,” for the words that might do justice to this worker and devoted mother. She was she tells me. “He needed a bit of smoothing epic moment in Australian history. When deeply committed to various issues – from out. He was inclined to be over-familiar she finally returns her eyes to mine, still her local library and swimming club to the with people who were much older than wordless, I notice for the first time what wider issues of the arts, law, international himself. He had an aggressive approach a truly exceptional, handsome face she women’s rights, adult education and social to politics and political people where it has. If her face were a country, you’d services. In fact, it was because of her that wasn’t necessary.” want to go there for holidays, repeatedly. child-minding centres became known as When he turned on his party and I ask her whether she still feels angry child-care centres. After all, minding a child colleagues, did that surprise you? “It did, about the Dismissal. “No, no … can’t be was hardly the same as caring for one. actually, because at first I thought he was bothered. If you ask me, yes, I was angry Yet what most of us didn’t appreciate taking the [2004 federal election] defeat and, yes, I was angry for some time, and, at the time was just how astute her quite well. But then he went berserk [in yes, I felt that somebody had to be blamed political instincts were as well. She never both the published Latham Diaries and other than us. He [Gough] wasn’t given thought, for example, that John Kerr was subsequent public remarks]. When he got a proper go because there was always an appropriate choice for the governor- sick, I guess he became quite seriously ill, this thing, ‘Oh, he’s just a fly-by-night’. generalship and told her husband so. mentally and physically.” And besides … supply would have “He had a tinny voice,” Margaret says I ask her whether Gough was very hurt passed. Bill Hayden [the then Treasurer] now. “I [also] never thought he was a by Mark Latham’s severing of ties with was really getting [things] on track. It suitable husband for my friend, Peg, his his former mentor and Margaret replies, [would have been] a fantastic budget.” first wife, who did social work with me. softly, “Very, very, very hurt”. But while he was never my favourite FOUR WEEKS after the Dismissal, figure, he seemed harmless enough. Margaret’s anger and surprise transmuted I never thought he was a strong person.” “[MARK LATHAM] into deep hurt when the Australian people And did you tell Gough this? “I did. turned their backs on Labor in favour of You see, I thought he was referring to John HAD A LONG WAY a return to Coalition rule. When Margaret Moore [former head of the Arbitration TO GO BEFORE HE heard the election results, she walked into Commission] because I’d hear him on the WAS AN ACCEPTABLE the butler’s pantry in The Lodge and sobbed. phone, saying, ‘Well, John, I must have She was devastated for Gough, but also you around’ and I thought, ‘Oh, that would POLITICIAN. HE for Labor and for the country; for what be good because he’s a fine person and his NEEDED A BIT OF Australia might have become had there wife was a good, fun girl.’ She wasn’t too SMOOTHING OUT.” been more time, more tolerance, or both. stick-in-the-muddish. I was so stunned During her three years as the prime when it turned out to be John Kerr.” minister’s wife, Margaret had torn up the Gough ignored Margaret’s judgment, MARGARET WHITLAM would have rule book, much like her husband had on this and many other occasions. In late probably made a formidable politician. done, although with far less drastic 1974, for example, the two were in the Certainly, there are people such as John consequences. For a while, she’d had middle of a 13-nation visit when Cyclone Menadue, former head of the Prime Minister her own TV show called With Margaret Tracy struck Darwin. Margaret’s natural and Cabinet Department under Gough, who Whitlam and her own column in the instincts were to return with Gough to believe Margaret’s “strength, warmth and mass-circulation weekly, Woman’s Day. visit the victims of the disaster. Gough excellent common sense would have made Despite criticisms in some quarters, she’d preferred her to stay in Europe and keep her a better politician than Gough”. been lauded for her fresh approach. to the schedule. Margaret’s people skills His views are backed by Dame Leonie She’d granted interviews to people were sorely missed when the prime minister Kramer, the politically conservative former

COURTESY OF MARGARET WHITLAM. OF MARGARET COURTESY such as and made public arrived in the devastated city. chair of the Australian Broadcasting

6 | WW OCTOBER 2006 F WW OCTOBER 2006 | 7 and why, at the age of 70, she started taking tour groups around the world – 18 trips to 24 countries. She wanted to contribute, to feel useful. Besides which, how else could one survive 64 years with a man such as Edward Gough Whitlam? Despite all her tutelage over the years, he was less modest than she would have preferred, more prone to irritation, more dependent on her than ever and less accommodating of her wishes. The purple cyclamens in the living room of their Sydney apartment are, today, a case in point. “He’d say they’re a nuisance to him,” Margaret says now, rolling her eyes. “If we’re sitting here, he’ll be sitting tongue-lashing that was quite wrong.” in that leather chair and he’ll want to put And Margaret would just say, “Oh, shut books and papers up here on the table, Above: The Whitlams have up, you silly old goat. Go and have a and I say, ‘Look, we can’t have an office “the longest prime ministerial shower and cool off.” everywhere’. When he comes home in the marriage in Australian history” at 64 years. Right: Margaret at Bill Hayden, former Labor leader, evening, the cushions are thrown around, 18 months in her fi rst swimsuit. recalls an occasion when he was governor- his attaché case is put on the sofa … I’ve general and he invited the Whitlams to done without flowers in the bedroom a function at Yarralumla, where Gough forever because he always says they spill, Corporation (ABC) and chancellor of was invited to speak. “It was one of his but I say, ‘Well, I’ll put them on my Sydney University, who lauds Margaret for bad nights and he went on and on and dressing table, not on yours’. Doesn’t being a natural leader, far more balanced on. Eventually, Margaret said audibly, matter. So I’ve done without flowers in than Gough ever was. “She always reminds ‘Will somebody tell that man to shut up the bedroom and I’m not doing without you that it’s a good idea to be open-minded. and sit down?’ When no one did as she them here [in the living room].” She’s got no prejudices about class – she had suggested, she started banging her So this is what we can all look forward wouldn’t care if you were the boilermaker’s walking stick on the floor until, finally, to after 64 years of marriage, I suggest? illegitimate daughter. She’s able to tune Gough sat down.” “Quite,” she replies aridly. “A determination into the other person’s wavelength.” to have flowers.” (All except, perhaps, ’s, FROM THE MOMENT Margaret Having said that, the far deeper truth of who Margaret disparages as “useless” in Dovey first met Gough Whitlam shortly the matter is that Margaret has never been terms of her service to the community, after the start of World War II, she was in any doubt that she gave herself to the not to mention discourteous, humourless smitten. The two of them were at a party right man. Nor, it seems, has Gough ever and insulting to the people of Australia hosted by Alice Jackson, then editor of doubted his choice of wife and lifelong for not living in The Lodge.) The Australian Women’s Weekly, when companion. “It’s the longest prime Margaret Whitlam has needed all her Margaret spotted Gough from a distance. ministerial marriage in Australian history,” intelligence and composure to deal with At 193cm, she says now, “he was quite he offers. “Whenever we’ve talked about her husband’s temperament over the years the most delicious thing I’d ever seen”. our marriage, we tell each other that neither – his giant ego, his intransigence, his At times, she still thinks this is the case. of us could have done better. I think that legendary temper, his inability to forgive, Margaret Dovey was just what the we’re both happy that we married and although, it should be said, in later years, marriage doctors might have ordered for have stayed married. he would make a gigantic exception for a brilliant, imperious, fiercely driven man “[And] if she goes before me, I’ve made Malcolm Fraser. (“Gough has sort of such as Gough. As a teen, she’d learned to arrangements for her to have a send-off in forgotten the hurt,” explains Margaret now, overcome her aching shyness – due mainly St Andrew’s [Cathedral, Sydney], which “and he’s getting on with the processes that to her imposing height of 188cm – and … will be big enough, as she’s very he so believes in. They do have much concentrate on the things she could do well-regarded in her own right. What’s more in common now.”) well, which was practically everything. amazing is that she has no enemies.” Richard Butler, one-time principal She could play the piano, sing, dance, Ask him – as his wife’s biographer private secretary to Gough, saw first-hand act and, of course, swim. (In 1937, at 18, finally does – whether he will speak at how the Dismissal affected Gough and the she’d become the Australian breaststroke such an occasion, whether he can imagine role Margaret played in looking after him champion.) Plus, over time, she would also his life without her, and this 90-year-old in the months and years that followed. learn the fine art of conversation, which, in political colossus replies with brimming “Where he was rocky, she was stable,” combination with her natural warmth and eyes, “I’d find it very difficult to speak at Richard says. “Where he would lose his grip unflappability, would prove, arguably, her funeral … It would be very difficult on things temperamentally, she would remainF Gough’s best political weapon. without her … I mustn’t get maudlin, but equable. Where he would feel clearly that Over the years, Margaret would let’s just say … I’ve grown accustomed people hated him, she would love him more.” sometimes hanker for her independence, to her face.” And this despite Gough’s often lacerating so as not to feel like an appendage to The Indeed, as we all have. ■ tongue, his capacity to be both “marvellous Great Man. That’s why she chaired so many and beastly”. “Sometimes,” Richard boards, committees and councils over the Margaret Whitlam: A Biography by Susan continues, “Gough would forget that I years in the field of social services, the Mitchell will be published by Random

was in the room and he would give her a law, opera, dance, international literacy … House on October 1. WHITLAM. OF MARGARET COURTESY NEWSPIX.

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