Lessens from Whitlam
I had a really insightful and well thought out piece to write tonight, but as I was scrolling through Fakebook I came across a quote from Gough Whitlam that I really liked, so i have decided to do a small piece on the Grand Old Gough and some of his achievments.
During the Whitlam years, the government cut costs by forcing the government to travel my the most economic route, and travel economy class only. This obviously angered the entire cabinet. But Gough responded with this amazing, and truly Australian quote:
"I fly economy and I am a great man, I could fly economy for the rest of my life and I'd still be a great man. But most of the people around this table are pissants and they could fly first class the rest of their lives, and they'd still be pissants"
This is the mark of a true leader, he wasn't afraid of his cabinet, he told it as it was and called out the BS when he could see it.
A few of the Whitlam governments achivements:
- Ended conscriptions
- Removed aussie troops from Vietnam
- Implemented Equal Pay for Women
- Established the Aboriginal Affairs ministry
- Streamlines the Department of Defence
- Withrew support for apartheid in South Africa
- Gave independence to PNG
- Established the Tertiary Education Assistance Scheme
- Established Medicare
- Developed "No Fault" divorce laws
- Outlawed Racial and Sexual discrimination
- Established Legal Aid
- Created Telecom and Australia Post
- Changed national anthem
- Set up Aboriginal Land Rights.
Plus there are a million more achievments.
The thing to note though, all of this took the government only 3 years to do, not 3 terms but 3 years!!!
I honestly believe the Gough Whitlam was the last of our great leaders, I'm very much a Liberal supporter but I can honestly say in the last 50years the Whitlam Labor government was in a league of its own, it achieved more in 3 years than the Hawke/Keating and then Howard governments did in the 25years they were in power.
He had integrity and the courage of his convictions.
Certainly did, pity the rest of his cabinet were stooges and let him down.
We need more leaders like him again.
He was good wasn’t he - let’s hope we see another leader like him some time soon.
God I hope so to, but I can't see any really strong leaders in any of the parties. Abbot and Turnbull had the glint of a good leader, but fell well short of goodness let alone greatness.
His government was on such a path that it needed to be reined in by the CIA and MI5.
And ever since then, every government has stuck to the narrative proscribed for it by the US/UK. Imagine if we had one that said no, we're going our own way. I can't even imagine it.
That quote is really funny :)
Thanks Sue.
Yes imagine if we had been stronger and not had a weasel such as Fraser to come in and screw it all up.
Yeah. I can't imagine it. I guess we wouldn't be the rich country we are now if we'd gone down that track. They would have interfered with our elections and fucked us over and indebted us and got us onto some IMF and World Bank loans we could never pay back.
So weird how in the last years of his life I felt real affection for Malcolm Fraser though. Just goes to show how shittily centrist/rightward/draconian our governments are now that his commonsense comments on asylum seekers etc made him sound like a screaming raving pinko.
God it all just feels DOOMED today haha! Must go off now and dredge up some hope for change from out the bottom of the toilet,
Determinación y coraje para sus ideas.