Days of Wine and Rage

by Frank Moorhouse

  Some of these were repeated at different ends of the electorate. Jeff Bate talked about a ‘telephone campaign of slander’.

  Black propaganda, by the way, is not always inaccurate.

  John Kerin, being a relatively new boy to politics, has spent some time trying to stop rumours against him. He has confronted those he thought responsible for starting them. Although offended by black politics, he has himself been given, and has gathered, statutory declarations containing allegations against his opponents ‘just in case’.

  The defamation laws cause the oral circuit to be used for a lot of information and comment. Public figures, especially Labor people, have used the laws to muffle the media. Public figures have many means of reply and need no protection. The defamation laws create an irresponsible oral circuit.

  Petty patronage is used to win votes. Jeff Bate complains about how many people forget the things he’s done for them. Party printing is shared out around the electorate newspapers.

  Energy centres

  The energy centres of a town are its service clubs – Rotary, Lions, Apex and the others. They are the nuclei of community action. They are a circuit for guest speakers who bring in new information and ideas (within tight limitation). Together with the licensed clubs, they are the facility for public discussion and the generators of consensus.

  They are non-political in the sense that they discourage the raising of uncomfortable and divisive issues. But they still get around to talking about things, however obliquely. The ‘white campaign’ has gone on in some, with the three major contestants being invited to speak.

  The black campaign certainly goes on there.

  The three contestants have links with the service clubs and have given time in their campaign to them.

  The code words

  The moral issues promoted by sexual liberationists are, as in most places in Australia, not subjects for candid discussion. Or discussion. They are rarely raised and when they are the candidates handle them gingerly, vaguely, jokingly.

  The three candidates told me that the liberationists’ issues really didn’t matter.

  Openly, abortion reform did keep coming up and it occurred to me that abortion was the code word. When you said how you felt about abortion you had said everything about your position on permissiveness.

  Liberationists’ theory threatens rigid life patterns to which people cling for security. There is also the resentment of things beyond reach – the imagined pleasures of the liberated life which people in the country feel are denied to them.

  One leader, one country, one flag

  There is no burning issue. The electorate mostly doesn’t make distinctions among local, state, federal or even United Nations issues.

  There was, however, a cry for ‘strong leadership’. A leader who would stand up to the enemy – whatever it was. To stand up to the Unions or Big Business or the Japanese or Foreign Investors.

  There was a need for a leader who would suppress conflict. There was no recognition that conflict – strikes, demonstrations, pressure group activity – was part of the health of the society.

  The Liberal Party people seemed to talk about disorder and to spread the fear of disorder (in this, the most orderly of countries).

  There seemed to be no realisation that you achieve surface harmony only by suppressing the disagreeable.

  Out of all the talking, it was this that worried me most.

  It was, of course, an historic election.

  Labor was in power for the first time in twenty-three years.

  John Kerin won the seat of Macarthur for the Labor Party for the first time, with a majority of 2785, polling 32 706 votes.

  Jeff Bate polled 11 322 votes.

  Max Dunbier polled 29 921 votes.

  Kerin won the seat again in 1974 when I again covered the electorate for the Bulletin. He lost the seat in 1975 to Michael Baume and I again covered the electorate. Kerin is now the member for Werriwa – Gough Whitlam’s old seat.

  Kerin made the remark in 1975 that ‘Gough had us reading constitutional writers like Bagehot when we should have been reading Bismarck’.

  The Moment of Victory, 1972

  Laurie Oakes and David Solomon

  (from The Making of an Australian Prime Minister, 1973)

  Whitlam’s staff spirited him away from his home to the motel soon after 8 p.m. Very few people knew where he had gone. It was well over an hour before a group of journalists and photographers tracked him down, and they were kept locked out of the room where he was studying the results. Around the room were four television sets tuned to different channels. At one end was a table with a bank of seven phones. Richard Hall was constantly on the phone talking with scrutineers and candidates round the country, getting figures before they were posted in the tally room. Clem Lloyd, Lance Barnard’s press secretary, phoned through figures from the national tally room at regular intervals. David White was also manning phones. Mungo MacCallum, the Nation Review journalist, had been co-opted to work a calculating machine. Whitlam sat in an armchair facing the television set tuned in to the ABC, but frequently he screwed himself around to watch the other sets as they showed new figures. Peter Martin was there. Graham Freudenberg sat on the bed listening intently to the analysis of British psephologist David Butler on Channel 7. Another of Whitlam’s press aides, Warwick Cooper, hovered in the background. His private secretary, Jim Spigelman, was making calculations on a notepad. Bob Miller poured glasses of beer and orange juice for the workers. Also present was Ian Baker, press secretary of the Victorian Opposition leader, Clyde Holding. There was whispered conversation. ‘It’s starting to look as though the DLP vote is down in Victoria,’ said Martin at 8.45. ‘A trend is developing to us in the outer suburbs,’ Hall told Whitlam a few minutes later. ‘We’ve got Phillip,’ Freudenberg announced at 8.50. Placing his hand over the mouthpiece of his phone, Hall read out the first figures for Macarthur and told Whitlam: ‘It looks like Bate is going to poll well.’ Less than a minute later he interrupted another phone conversation to tell Whitlam: ‘There’s no doubt about it, the DLP is ratshit in Victoria. They’re going down.’ But Whitlam remained cautious. When the ABC showed figures for Mitchell and compere Robert Moore told viewers that Liberal member, Les Irwin, was trailing his Labor opponent, Whitlam commented: ‘It’s still not marvellous.’ Hall announced: ‘There’s a clear absolute majority to us in Hume,’ but Whitlam replied, ‘Later figures always go against us. We’d have to have a very good lead.’ One of the television screens showed Liberal Alan Jarman trailing in Deakin, but Whitlam said: ‘He’ll still get in, though.’

  Whitlam showed little emotion as he stared intently at the television screen, until a little after 9 p.m. when Hall told him: ‘I reckon we’ve won Casey, Holt, Latrobe, Diamond Valley and Denison.’ On the television set tuned to Channel 9, Alan Reid was saying: ‘If this trend continues I’d say Labor is home and hosed.’ Then Whitlam allowed himself a smile, and sprawled back in his chair clearly more relaxed. At that point he knew he had almost certainly won. There was irony when one of the channels re-screened McMahon’s earlier interview, showing him saying: ‘I feel more confident than I did this morning.’ But there was bad news, too. At 9.05 MacCallum looked up from his calculator and remarked: ‘In Bendigo David Kennedy is only on 48 per cent. He’ll go to preferences.’ Whitlam became sombre again as he said, ‘But will he get them?’ At 9.15 Whitlam gave Hall permission to phone the Labor candidate in Denison, John Coates, to congratulate him on a certain win. Then Hall reported that Labor scrutineers had no doubt the party would win Evans. At 9.18 one of the staff let out a cry of ‘Jesus!’ as figures for Flinders on one of the television sets showed the Labour and National Service Minister, Phillip Lynch, fighting to hold the seat. Then at 9.20 MacCallum performed some more calculations and announced to the assembled company: ‘I think we can send the white smoke up the chimney now.’

  From then on, the mood in the room was one of elation. ‘Welcome home V
ictoria!’ said Spigelman as one of the television computers came up with a print-out showing a swing of 6 per cent to Labor there. NSW party officials had told Whitlam there was a good chance of a Labor win in the Country Party-held seat of Paterson, but he had not believed them. At 9.26, when Freudenberg said: ‘They were right about Paterson’, he sprang out of his chair with an astounded cry of ‘What?’. He rubbed his hands together gleefully when Freudenberg told him a few minutes later: ‘Look. Race is in’. Race Mathews, his former private secretary, had a clear lead over the Minister for the Environment, Aboriginals and the Arts, Peter Howson, in the Victorian seat of Casey. At that point Bob Miller was sent to fetch Mrs Whitlam, and as soon as she arrived Hall popped the cork from the first champagne bottle. Glasses were clinked all round. ‘Many happy returns,’ said Mrs Whitlam. Only the news from the South Australian seat of Sturt, where Labor’s Norm Foster had been defeated, interrupted the celebratory atmosphere. ‘We can’t really do without Norm,’ said Mrs Whitlam. ‘We need someone with that sort of tenacity and ferocity.’ Her husband was quickly on the phone to Foster, offering commiserations and promising to find a job for him.

  But Whitlam was possibly more upset by the bad result for Labor in Bendigo, and he phoned David Kennedy too. The Labor leader has what his staff describe as ‘a thing’ about by-elections. It was his role in the Dawson by-election in Queensland which saved him from expulsion over his fight with the ALP machine on state aid in 1966. In 1967 the by-election victory in Corio in Victoria was his first triumph as party leader, and gave him the leverage to secure reforms to the structure of the federal ALP conference and executive. In the same year the Capricornia by-election success helped him to ‘break’ Harold Holt. In 1969 a by-election in Bendigo had shown his mastery over the then Prime Minister, Gorton. The possibility of losing one of the seats to which he had devoted such time and effort in a by-election campaign appeared to affect him deeply.

  Whitlam had been hoping McMahon would go on television first to concede. But soon after 10.30 he decided further delay would be fruitless, and prepared to return to the house and the waiting cameras and pressmen. But first he and Mrs Whitlam posed for the photographers who were gathered outside the motel room. In typical fashion, they hammed it up. ‘This is my best side,’ said Whitlam. ‘Well, my nose is too big on this side,’ replied his wife, ‘but I’ll do it for you, dear.’ Their eighteen-year-old daughter turned up and gave her father a hug. ‘Are you happy now, Dad?’ she asked. ‘Yes, Cathy,’ he said. ‘I hope you are.’

  Back at the house a British journalist was phoning a story to his paper in London. ‘Australia has a new Prime Minister,’ he dictated. ‘Yes, I’m quite serious.’ In the back garden the party guests were milling around the television sets, sending up loud cheers as each new set of figures confirmed the Labor victory. The NSW ALP President, John Ducker, wandering through the crowd beer in hand, did not seem to quite believe it. ‘There’s no doubt, is there?’ he kept asking people. ‘Billy McMahon’s going to lose his seat,’ a gloriously drunk party worker shouted at the top of his voice. Laughter rippled from one end of the garden to the other. Then the word was passed excitedly through the crowd: ‘Gough’s coming. He’s here.’ Whitlam’s tall figure could be seen slowly forcing its way through the crush as people tried to shake his hand or simply touch him. Photographers held their cameras above their heads, trying to get shots. ‘Good on yer, Gough,’ people shouted. And then the chanting started. ‘We want Gough! We want Gough!’ Slowly he made his way to the sun-room door, stood there a moment smiling, and then disappeared inside.

  Some time later, when he had made his television appearance and done the right thing by his party guests, Whitlam returned to the motel and the stock of champagne for a quieter celebration. And there, away from the cameras and the crush, he was more expansive in his comments to journalists. The Liberals would have lost under any leader, he said, adding: ‘It’s just too silly for them to blame or for us to thank Bill McMahon. The whole show was running out of steam.’ Then, a little wearily: ‘It’s been a long, hard road.’

  The year 1972 was a golden year for me, too.

  The Americans, Baby was published and enthusiastically read and discussed.

  Gough Whitlam was elected and did things that I did not believe any Australian government would do.

  I received one of the first three-year literary fellowships and I was financially secure for the first time.

  I began to live with Sandra Levy, the television producer, in Balmain, the start of a good relationship that was to last six years.

  Angus & Robertson gave me the editorship of the short story anthology Coast to Coast, which had been going since the 1940s. As it happened, this was the last edition of that great old anthology.

  Michael Wilding, Carmel Kelly and I began Tabloid Story magazine, a very bright idea we came up with over lunch. Later on in this book Michael tells the Tabloid Story story.

  I made my first visit to the UK, USA and Canada and went to the city of my romantic fantasy, New Orleans, and went to the party to end all parties – the New Orleans Mardi Gras.

  Michael Thornhill began the film project Between Wars based on my script.

  THE REPUBLIC

  To indicate and record the heat of political feeling in 1975 after Sir John Kerr dismissed the Labor government, I quote from a letter from my father – a Liberal Party supporter.

  I had borrowed money from him. He wrote:

  … I am pleased to enclose my cheque for $1000 with the one stipulation that it must not be used either directly or indirectly to help the Whitlam cause. He has caused us and all small businessmen the worst period in history. Many of us have just scraped through; many will not open in the New Year unless there is a change of government … Our future, the thirteen members of our family and that of the thirty-odd families we support, depends on Whitlam being decisively defeated …

  Communication between myself and my family broke down for a time.

  I Speak for Whitlam at the Opera House

  About 11 000 people heard the speeches – 3000 inside and about 8000 outside. The speakers, apart from Whitlam, included the Olympic gold medallist Michael Wenden, actress Kate Fitzpatrick, pop singer Ross Ryan, writers Patrick White and Manning Clark, poets Judith Wright, Kath Walker and Les Murray, painter Lloyd Rees and playwright David Williamson.

  I said in my speech, ‘I speak on behalf of the anarchists of Balmain. Even Balmain anarchists like myself are supporting Labor this time.’

  Each phrase in every speech was met with hysterical applause.

  … seriously, I see my gesture here today as being a way of paying tribute to a Labor government for its contribution to personal freedom in this country: in particular, its releasing of conscientious objectors from the jails within days of taking office, the ending of conscription, the legalising of homosexuality within the territories, and its abolition of censorship.

  Naturally, as a writer, I am supporting Labor too for its cultural policies – the Labor Party’s superphosphate for culture. They have let the arts get on with their work. Everywhere I discussed them in the USA and UK, these policies on the arts were envied. It has to be pointed out that they are not simply grants to creative people: they are subsidies to readers and to those who value good books, good films, good paintings, good music and good drama. The freer the creative people are to get on with their work, the more those who value the arts as consumers also benefit.

  The Labor government has proved to me, in a way that I honestly did not expect, that it is concerned with civilised values in a way that the Liberal Party is not. And it has shown concretely an interest in personal freedom.

  For me, civilised values and personal freedom are as much issues in this election as inflation.

  I was very cool while delivering the speech to what was the biggest crowd I had ever faced.

  We went from there, some of us, to the Journalists’ Club and while someone was getting drinks, I fell asleep
involuntarily from the suppressed tension of it all.

  The Meaning of Defeat

  Donald Horne

  (from Death of the Lucky Country, 1976)

  By the time I got out of the bus at Martin Place, on Wednesday, the third day of the 1975 election campaign, it was obvious that the retina was buckling at the back of my right eye: there was a grey patch in the vision of the inner corner. I bought a copy of the Bulletin at a news stand and began reading the piece I had written – ‘Why I wouldn’t vote for Malcolm Fraser’. Then I looked for the Morgan Gallup Poll in the Bulletin. I had heard about it the Friday before at Tony’s Bon Gout, a restaurant associated with the Whitlam years, at which I had said that if Whitlam won the election I would cry in front of the television set. In victory one should cry, because of the perils of success; one should laugh in defeat. A friend said I’d better start laughing: next week’s Gallup Poll in the Bulletin was going to show that after the Governor-General dismissed the Whitlam government the swing had gone strongly to the Liberals. The Whitlam government had been sacked by an official it had itself appointed who showed his difference from other people by the number of times he wore striped trousers and top hat, and the voters – or a significant margin of them – had accepted his action. Now in the doctor’s waiting room I read the detailed poll figures. It was true. The hour of glory had not arrived. The people had not responded. I shut my left eye and with my right looked at the page: the grey blindness had spread half across the eye. Now the figures were obscured. That was better.