Moving from Waltz to Whirlwind

SHORTLY after the Australian Labor Party won power in last December's election, a high U.S. Administration official was discussing the change with an Australian visitor. "Tell me," he asked, "what's this new Prime Minister of yours like--this fellow White-law?" The visitor had barely finished pointing out that the fellow's name was Whitlam when he was confronted by an inquisitive State Department expert. More interested in learning something about other members of the new Australian Cabinet, the expert remarked: "I've already met your two top men--Mr. Gough and Mr. Whitlam."

It is unlikely that anybody in Washington would make either faux pas these days, for Gough (rhymes with cough) Whitlam is stirring things up more than any Australian leader in years. Until recently, Australia resembled a sort of waltzing Matilda, content to glide through life on the strong arm of a big, steady date. To her escort--first Britain, then the U.S.--she was complaisant, undemanding and faithful. In short, Australia could be taken for granted, and often was. No more. The waltz is ended. Australia has started to rock, and to a beat that is her own. To the dismay of officials in Washington, imitation has given way to innovation, reaction to action. Most remarkably, it has all happened in less than four months, since the election of the first Labor Party government in 23 years, and the installation of hard-driving Gough Whitlam, 56, as Prime Minister.

Just a Start. Within 30 minutes of his swearing-in ceremony, Whitlam set the whirlwind tone for a new, independent-minded Australia by announcing the abolition of the military draft, introduced in 1964 to supply Australian troops for the war in Viet Nam. That was just a start. In foreign affairs, a Cabinet portfolio that he gave himself, Whitlam quickly took a whole series of moves to make Australia's stance "less militarily oriented and not open to suggestions of racism."

To the first end, he sent a strong personal note to President Nixon opposing the December bombings of Hanoi; he established diplomatic relations with China, North Viet Nam and East Germany; he ordered the remaining Australian servicemen home from Viet Nam (and granted amnesty to those who had dodged the draft); he supported the concept of a neutralized zone in Southeast Asia; he announced he would petition the International Court of Justice in an attempt to stop French nuclear tests in the South Pacific. (A number of similar steps were taken by Fellow Laborite Norman Kirk, who won power in New Zealand just a week before Whitlam's victory.)

To the second end, Whitlam backed U.N. resolutions against white-supremacist Rhodesia and South Africa and banned visits to Australia by segregated athletic teams. Perhaps more significantly, Whitlam abruptly abolished the "white Australia" policy that had long discriminated against colored immigrants. He also took steps to improve the lot of Australia's own long-abused aborigines; among other things, he acknowledged aboriginal claims to ancient tribal lands.

Nowhere was Australia's new emphasis on independence more evident than in its relations with its mother country. In short order, Whitlam simply announced the end of a number of traditional symbolic ties. He launched a contest for a new national anthem to replace God Save the Queen. He halted the federal government's practice of recommending citizens to the Queen for knighthoods and other titles; and the words "British subject" will no longer appear on Australian passports. As the top envoy to London, Whitlam appointed blunt-talking John Armstrong, who promptly predicted that Australia would inevitably become a republic.

In domestic affairs, the Whitlam government moved with equal dispatch on a number of fronts. It proposed major programs to improve education, transportation and health facilities; prepared legislation to increase old-age pensions and to give the vote to 18-year-olds; successfully supported a hearing before the national wage board for equal pay for women; made it easier and cheaper to obtain divorces; and placed oral contraceptives on the list of subsidized items under National Health.

Gough Whitlam is not without his critics, of course. Billy Snedden, who replaced former Prime Minister William McMahon as leader of the floundering Liberal Party after the election, declares: "The Prime Minister dreams of being a home-grown De Gaulle." Douglas Anthony, leader of the Country Party, which had formed a coalition government with the Liberals for 23 years, says that Whitlam is leading the country in the direction of "a union-run, left-wing republic." Senator John Kane, general secretary of the right-wing Democratic Labor Party, adds: "Under Mr. Whitlam, Australia is dumping its friends and allies and embracing its enemies . . . [he] says to the U.S., 'Go home,' and to the Communists, 'Come on.' "

Nonetheless, the most recent public-opinion polls show Whitlam's popularity at an alltime high, and nobody who listened carefully to his election campaign should be surprised at the measures he has wrought. Virtually all of them were pledged in a policy speech that contained some 130 specific promises. He also promised himself a long time ago that he would become leader of Australia. His outspoken wife Margaret once said: "He has seen himself as destined to become Prime Minister. That sense of destiny has upset lots of people because you're supposed to be a bit Uriah Heepish around here."

Gough Whitlam was born July 11, 1916 in the Melbourne suburb of Kew. His father, Harry Frederick Ernest Whitlam, was a lawyer who eventually attained the high civil service post of Commonwealth Crown Solicitor and also became Australian representative on the U.N. Human Rights Commission. As a boy, Gough liked to sit at dinner with the family encyclopedia at his back, handy for reference in arguments. Gough left one school after a teacher complained of his impudence, a charge that was to be echoed throughout his life. In Canberra Grammar, he was classed as industrious but not brilliant, good in English and Latin, terrible in math and, again, impudent. At Sydney University, where he studied arts and law, he was known as a prankster. In his first role as Prime Minister, he played Neville Chamberlain in a 1940 student skit. Stepping to the footlights in a bowler and carrying an umbrella, he said: "I have seen their leader and I have his reply." Pulling the inevitable collegiate roll of toilet paper from his pocket, he added: "It bears his mark and mine. And I told him what to do with it."

In 1942, 6-ft. 4-in. Whitlam married a fellow student, 6-ft. 2-in. Margaret Dovey, daughter of a Sydney lawyer who later became a Supreme Court Justice in New South Wales. They met at a university party when, as Margaret puts it, their eyes found each other across the heads of their smaller companions. Margaret has been a surprise to Australians, who still generally accept the notion that women should not always be seen, let alone heard. Shortly after her husband's election, Margaret told interviewers that she favored wages for housewives, was not opposed to couples living together outside marriage, and thought marijuana might as well be legalized if it is indeed medically harmless.

Whitlam was a Royal Australian Air Force bomber-navigator during World War II, then completed his law course. After failing in two local contests, he won a by-election for the federal seat of Werriwa in 1952 and has held it ever since. His early years in Parliament were difficult. His own party regarded him suspiciously because he did not fit the image of a typical Labor politician: he had never worked with his hands, worn overalls, belonged to a trade union or been on strike. Well-educated, well-spoken, well-dressed, he was characterized as a "smoothie," and as Labor's "golden boy."

When it came to name-calling, Whitlam gave more than he got. In Australia's rambunctious House of Representatives, where debate is often a euphemism for denunciation, Whitlam has described Liberal Cabinet ministers variously as "bumptious bastard," "queen," "dingo" (Australia's version of a coyote) and something that Hansard recorded as "runt" (which at least rhymed with the actual word). He once became so enraged with one Liberal minister that he dumped a glass of water on him. That minister was Paul Hasluck, who later became Governor General of Australia and, in an antipodean twist of fate, found himself swearing Whitlam into office last December.

Crash. Whitlam did not mince words with his own party either. He constantly badgered it to become more progressive. By 1960 he had gained enough support to be elected deputy leader behind the stodgy and narrow-minded Arthur Calwell. He succeeded Calwell in 1967 and promptly told close friends that he would become Prime Minister in another six years. To help the prediction come true, Whitlam set about remolding the long-moribund Labor Party. Since Australian courts have held nationalization of industry to be unconstitutional, the Labor Party is less ideologically socialist than its British counterpart, but it had long suffered from trade-union domination. Whitlam loosened the union hold by increasing the party powers of the Labor Members of Parliament. As he once told Interviewer David Frost: "When you are faced with an impasse, you have got to crash through or you've got to crash. I crashed through."

Under his leadership, Labor became more a party of reform, appealing to both middle-class white-collar workers and trade unionists. It emphasized a better life for all people in Australia's sprawling cities, which contain 80% of the nation's 13 million population. Whitlam was particularly concerned with the shortage of basic services that developed as Australians spread out into the suburbs. "I lived in such areas over 20 years, raised four children, built two houses, neither of which was connected to the sewer," he once explained. "When I first settled in Sydney suburbs, there was no high school within twelve miles, no paved roads within a mile, still no paved footpaths. We had to wait four years for a phone, and there was more hepatitis than anywhere. More has to be done in such areas."

When Whitlam visited Washington in 1972, he was embarrassed to find himself unable to get an appointment with President Nixon. Although both the White House and Canberra deny that Whitlam was snubbed, Australian newsmen at the time put together a prima-facie case that he was made less than welcome. They said Nixon's office advised Whitlam that the President was "too busy reading about China" to see him. It was an ill-chosen excuse, since Whitlam had talked with Chou En-lai in Peking only a few months earlier.

Against that background, there have been other notable irritants in U.S. relations with Whitlam, whose government came to power during the difficult final period of the Viet Nam truce negotiations. Nixon was furious when three Australian Cabinet ministers bluntly denounced him for the Christmas bombing of Hanoi. Nor is Washington pleased by Whitlam's recognition of Hanoi. "We're not against it in principle," said one senior official, "but Whitlam rushed there with his tongue hanging out." Whitlam later hailed the Viet Nam cease-fire as establishing Nixon "firmly in the foremost ranks of modern statesmanship." But the President's ire rose again when another Aussie politician made a gratuitous crack about U.S. monetary problems. Minerals and Energy Minister Reginald Connor told the Australian Parliament: "There are only three certainties in life today--death, taxes and successive, progressive and ever more frequent devaluations of the U.S. dollar."

All in all, in Washington's view, the once reliable ally has become less certain. Yet there is an inclination to blame not Whitlam so much as his party's fractious left-wing element. Both Nixon and Whitlam seem genuinely interested in repairing, if not exactly restoring, the old friendship between the two countries. Neither has threatened withdrawal from ANZUS, the 1951 mutual-defense pact that links Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. The agreement is clearly beneficial to both Australia, with its small population and limited military resources, and the U.S., which maintains important research, space and naval installations in Australia. The secrecy surrounding the purpose of some of the installations has angered some Australians, particularly Labor's left wing, but Whitlam has resisted pressure to close the bases.

More Respect. As apparent evidence of Washington's hope of improved relations with the Whitlam government, Nixon this month chose as his new Ambassador to Australia a top State Department official, Marshall Green. A skillful career diplomat whose previous experience includes posts in Indonesia, Korea and Hong Kong, Green has been serving since 1969 as Assistant Secretary for Asia. The Canberra assignment has usually gone to political appointees, and Australians are delighted with the change. Said the Sydney Daily Telegraph: "Without taking anything away from Mr. Walter Rice [the former lawyer whom Green replaces], the appointment of Marshall Green is the equivalent of sending Marshal Dillon to replace Chester." Apart from anything else, the selection of Green may indicate that Nixon has more respect now for Whitlam than he had last year.

Whitlam has a tendency to be impatient, to push too much too soon. Internationally, he has already discovered the perils of overreaching. Domestically, he runs the risk of angering too many groups, special-interest though they may be, at one time. The result could be more pandemonium than progress. Beyond his own traits, which include a short temper, Whitlam faces other potential handicaps over which he has less direct control. The trade unions, for instance, still carry considerable weight in Australian affairs, and will expect to carry more now that a Labor government is in power. Despite the specter of inflation, they have already warned Whitlam not to impose wage controls.

Overall, Australians have probably never had it so good. The mining boom has slowed, but wool sales are soaring again (with 1972-73 revenues expected to be the biggest in two decades). Meat sales are up (thanks largely to removal of U.S. import quotas), and so is manufacturing (production figures for ingot steel, bricks and television sets this January were all more than 20% higher than those of a year ago). The Australian way of life, blessed with an abundance of reasonably priced food, a generally temperate climate and long leisure hours, offers the ordinary man a better existence than he could likely find anywhere else. He can relax on endless beaches or, if he is so inclined, attend Sydney's new $100 million opera house.

But there has been a nagging thought among some Australians that prosperity has been more a matter of luck than of good planning. There is also a feeling that maybe self-serving materialism has suffocated opportunities to create an even better life, both for Australians and, by example and aid, others. Few thoughtful Australians blame the people as a whole. Instead they blame the leaders in politics, business and the unions who have failed to lead, who have failed to make Australia extend its reach beyond its grasp. If his first 100 days in office are any guide, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam at least seems ready to give it a go.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.