Farewell Gough Whitlam (1916 - 2014)

Folks,

I was truly saddened by the death of former Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam yesterday morning. His extraordinary social agenda (universal health care and education), foreign policies (establishing diplomatic ties with China and abolishing conscription - thereby Australia's involvement in the Vietnam mire) and his recognition of Australian Aboriginal land rights ensure he will forever loom large in our country's political consciousness.

Here's a little something from 1969:

“When government makes opportunities for any of the citizens, it makes them for all the citizens. We are all diminished as citizens when any of us are poor. Poverty is a national waste as well as individual waste. We are all diminished when any of us are denied proper education. The nation is the poorer – a poorer economy, a poorer civilisation, because of this human and national waste.”

Remember, he burst on the scene in the late 1960s. Think about that for a minute.

He was a big man with a big voice, a big brain and a big vision. I love the fact that Gore Vidal thought he was our 'most intelligent Australian'. He was an unapologetic agnostic - a 'post-Christian' - (try selling American voters on the idea of a non-Christian, non-believing Head of State). He polarised people. To this day, you drop his name at a dinner party at your peril. If you're kindred spirits, there's nothing like the click of shared infatuation.

Which is why there's not a better time to buy, borrow or steal a copy of George Megalogenis' The Australian Moment, a fantastic political, social and economic history of Australia's last 40 years, essentially starting with the Whitlam years.

For people younger than me who struggle to understand why Gough Whitlam is such a polarising figure, this book sheds much-needed light (and startling objectivity) on the policies, people and power-shifts of Whitlam's tumultuous time in office. It smacks our collective - selective - memories in the face. Hard. Really fucking hard.

Get it, read it.

In the meantime, enjoy this one brilliantly witty rejoinder from the Big Man himself, upon being harangued by a pain-in-the-arse voter who wanted to know his position on abortion:

“Let me make quite clear that I am for abortion and, in your case Sir, we should make it retrospective.”

Gold.

RIP.