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The Whitlam shambles.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
SIR: Conrad Mathias (Letters, June 2005) chides me for not filling out his understanding of the events of November 11, 1975. My article (March 2005) was based on a public lunchtime lecture at Old Parliament House, and my speaking time was limited. In any event, those attending the lecture, and readers of Quadrant, would be well aware of what Conrad Mathias has called "the tapestry of the Whitlam years".
On Whitlam's watch as Prime Minister, prices rose by 16 per cent while wages rose by 28 per cent; Commonwealth expenditure grew by 20 per cent in 1973-74 and by 46 per cent in 1974-75; he attempted to negotiate a $4 billion Arab "funny money" loan for twenty years, and based it on a phony legal opinion from his Attorney-General, Senator Lionel Murphy, that such a loan could be considered to be for "temporary purposes" simply to avoid Loan Council scrutiny; and after being dismissed from office he tried to finance the ALP's December 1975 election campaign with a loan of more "funny money" from Iraq.
Whitlam faced that election with his government having been responsible for an ailing economy, soaring inflation, increased unemployment, and diminishing business activity. In just three years he had totally mismanaged the Australian economy; and at the end he sought to bypass parliament by seeking, quite unlawfully, to have the banks finance his government when the parliament refused to. As Whitlam's press secretary Evan Williams put it, during the 1975 election campaign:
Labor [was] so far down the drain in public estimation that it didn't much matter what the newspapers said.... What helped Fraser was not the editorials on one day but sustained reporting of many months of Cabinet sackings, crises, loans, and other political upheavals: in short a general public impression of incompetence and impending national disaster.
That is why the Australian people administered to Whitlam a defeat of catastrophic proportions, with an anti-ALP swing of 7.4 per cent nationally, and with movement away from the ALP in every electorate. I trust I have now filled out Conrad Mathias's understanding of events. He may think these are matters to be chuckled at, but the voters didn't.
Sir David Smith, Mawson, ACT.
SIR: The dismissal of the Whitlam government still prompts heated debates, many based on pre-existing views and convictions, but others based on differing views of what actually occurred. The article by Sir David Smith, "The Truth about the Dismissal" (March 2005) is a welcome addition as it adds facts and observations from someone who was a participant in the events and a keen and close observer of the principals.
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