Page 3529 - Week 11 - Thursday, 23 October 2014
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saw the need to normalise relations with China a full two decades before he achieved it, and before he convinced the Labor Party to adopt it as policy. He led the Western world in repairing Australia’s relationship with China. Indeed he showed that Australia could be a leader in the world.
As he did so, he confronted head-on the malaise of community attitude in much of Australia at the time. Written in the face of this sentiment and a full-blown attack from the McMahon government in Canberra at the time, this passage was sent from Whitlam in China:
The real test of success of our mission lies not with us but with the Australian people. It all depends upon whether Australia is mature enough and self-confident enough to face squarely the facts of life in our region.
The really serious aspect of Mr McMahon’s outburst is that it rehashes all the old slogans which passed for foreign policy in the fifties and sixties. We must either grow up or fossilise …
The anecdotes and stories which further illustrate his legendary turn of phrase have seemed almost never-ending in this week of reflection. But one of the lesser known aspects of Gough Whitlam’s life was his deep connection to Canberra. He remains the only Prime Minister to have spent his formative years here, attending Telopea Park School and Canberra grammar.
He maintained long and enduring links with the Australian National University, including, among other things, the six months immediately following his dismissal as Prime Minister when he and Margaret lived at University House. Gough worked in the Department of Political and Social Change at the ANU from 1978 to 1980 and in 1982 Gough became an Honorary Fellow of University House.
I am also proud to say he is a past member, and probably the most famous member, of my first Labor party sub-branch, the great Canberra South sub-branch. Perhaps due to this Canberra connection, Gough was also a Prime Minister who believed in this city as a great national capital.
One vital reform to take place in the joint sitting of parliament after the 1974 double dissolution election was to give the territories representation in the Senate. His establishment of the Australia Council for the Arts and the National Gallery were further steps from which our city and our country have benefited ever since.
Both Gough’s and Margaret’s contributions to the social fabric of the city, at a time when it was barely recognisable to what we know today, have been fondly remembered in Canberra this week. Margaret was a fine advocate for the arts, the disadvantaged and for community life in the nation’s capital. Last year we were able to name the beautiful new pavilion at the National Arboretum after Margaret Whitlam.
With Gough’s passing we will seek to honour his memory appropriately in this city as well. As a place with so many students of political history, I have no doubt the community will give us plenty of guidance on what they see as the appropriate ways to do this—indeed, as they have already begun to do.
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