When one writes about politics, the people and the events, the ideas and the issues, one does not have to engage in the partisan variety which divides the nation and individuals from each other and engages millions in hair-splitting discussions on topics about which they usually or, at least, often know very little. Often the opinions are endless, opinions which get dropped-about now in cyberspace's social media and elsewhere, and in real space. I have studied politics and taught it from grade 10 when I was 15 to these years of my retirement more than half a century later. I am now 70. My parents had political meetings in our home back in the early to mid-1950s. It was in those early, those embryonic, years when I was inoculated against partisan-party politics. That in-house political discussion was characterized by endless hair-splitting and personality clashes in what were my pre-puberal years, and the scene has changed little in those several decades.

1. HEADY DAYS
All my sins are remembered
Part 1:
When one writes about politics, the people and the events, the ideas
and the issues, one does not have to engage in the partisan variety
which divides the nation and individuals from each other and engages
millions in hair-splitting discussions on topics about which they
usually or, at least, often know very little. Often the opinions are
endless, opinions which get dropped-about now in cyberspace's social
media and elsewhere, and in real space.
I have studied politics and taught it from grade 10 when I was 15 to
these years of my retirement more than half a century later. I am now
70. My parents had political meetings in our home back in the early
to mid-1950s. It was in those early, those embryonic, years when I
was inoculated against partisan-party politics. That in-house political
discussion was characterized by endless hair-splitting and personality
clashes in what were my pre-puberal years, and the scene has changed
little in those several decades.
But such experience in my childhood and adolescent years did not
prevent me from being interested in the political world. Nor does it
prevent me now. I just finished watching a two-part doco on Gough
Whitlam.1 He was Australia’s 21st Prime Minister from 1972 to 1974
just after I arrived in Australia from Canada when I was in my late
20s. I wrote the first draft of this statement after watching this doco
in the evening of my life, early or late it is hard to say. I have updated
this statement on hearing of the passing of Gough Whitlam on
21/10/14 and on seeing that doco yet again in the first 24 hours after
his passing.
Part 2:

2. More books have been written about Whitlam, including his own
writings, than about any other Australian Prime Minister. According
to Whitlam biographer Jenny Hocking, for a period of at least a
decade, the Whitlam era was viewed almost entirely in negative
terms, but that has changed. Paul Kelly(1947- ), an Australian
political journalist and author who has written seven books on
political events in Australia, wrote the following on hearing of
Whitlam's passing at the age of 98 yesterday:
"Gough Whitlam’s passing is a sad moment for the nation, but it is the
time to recognise one of the most extraordinary and inspiring figures
produced by the Australian nation and our democracy. Gough’s
glories and follies were writ large. Nothing he did was small,
mediocre or apologetic. He was a giant in stature, learning, presence
and achievement. Nobody who ever met Whitlam will forget him and
those who dealt with him regularly in political life will retell Whitlam
stories to the end of their days."
"He was a prime minister yet he became a figure transmitted into our
national mythology, joining that bizarre cast of uniquely Australian
figures that include Ned Kelly, Don Bradman, Phar Lap, Charles
Kingsford Smith and Nellie Melba, among others. The great paradox
of Gough was his abiding love of tradition yet his visionary sense of
Australia’s future. His mind was an organised expanse of rigid,
disciplined rationality yet his temperament was explosive, thrilling,
funny and egocentric."
"This implanted the fantastic contradiction at the heart of career and
government — the implementation of the most planned agenda in the
nation’s history was rocked by excess, upheaval and boundless
impatience. Gough called it “crash through or crash”. He meant it and
he lived it and, as a consequence, the Whitlam government became
the best of times and the worst of times."
Part 3:
Kelly's book, The Dismissal was used as the basis of the television
miniseries The Dismissal in 1983. I used this film when I was a

3. teacher of politics to matriculation students in Western Australia a
decade later. Whitlam didn’t easily rise to the top to become Prime
Minister; he had to fight to get there.1 He did that fighting all the way
back to the same year my mother joined the Baha’i Faith: 1953. I was
only 9, then, and living in Ontario Canada. Whitlam’s only free ride
into the political arena came on the winds of social change that woke
up conservative Australia and helped deliver the Australia Labor
Party (ALP) victory in 1972. By then I was 28, living in the dry dog-biscuit
land of northern South Australia, and teaching high school at
the beginning of what became, at least for me as I look back over 70
years of living, a rich and rewarding career in the world of teaching
and tutoring, lecturing and adult education.
Part 4:
I'll mention only a few details in relation to Whitlam's rise in the
Labour Party after entering Parliament in 1953. He joined the Shadow
Cabinet in 1959 and became Labor Leader in 1967. I joined the
Baha’i Faith in '59, a non-partisan religion. I knew nothing of
Whitlam. I was teaching Inuit in the Canadian Arctic when he
became Labour leader. He didn’t win his first election as Leader in
1969 but he came close with a big shift to the ALP in the poles.
By 1972, his persona and policies were hitting a chord with rebellious
baby-boomers who were railing against sexism and racism, and
demanding peace not war, especially in Vietnam. Women and
migrants also liked their suburban neighbours Gough and Margaret.
At the campaign launch, TV stars, rock singers and comedians pushed
the “It’s Time” jingle into every Australian lounge room and Whitlam
gave Labour its first Prime Minister in 23 years. In mid-December
1972 I was on my way to Gawler in the Barossa Valley to teach in a
high school outside Adelaide in South Australia. This was much less
the dry-biscuit land of the north and, rather, a popular vine-growing
region.

4. Whitlam exercised his power at breakneck speed in 1973, appointing
his own government advisor on women’s affairs, a world first. There
were many other changes and reforms in child care, Aborigine policy
and flushing dunnies, but I will leave this to readers with the interest.
One reform which affected me was the abolition of university fees on
1 January 1974. Whitlam was all the rage while I was teaching in
South Australia's first open plan high school in 1973. In September of
that year I was hired to teach as a senior tutor in human relations in
what is now the University of Tasmania beginning on 1/1/'74.
Whitlam spoke of breaking the reliance on Britain and America, and
of Australia becoming more independent. He bought Jackson
Pollock’s $1.348 million Blue Poles for the new National Gallery of
Australia and loved the ensuing controversy. The ALP was in the
news a lot of the time and, as 1973 advanced, the ALP became more
and more on the nose. This period is well-documented for readers. I
was far too busy with my 60-hour a week job, with the last and rocky-year
of my marriage, and with my responsibilities in the local Baha’i
community where I served as the secretary. My emotions and my
mental-set were full to overflowing. I was not able to keep pace with
the partisan-political world, a parallel universe which existed far-out
on the periphery of my new Australian life.
Part 5:
In one year in, 1973-74, as I left South Australia and arrived in
Tasmania, and after an initial rise in ALP popularity, cracks appeared.
The actions of an Arab coalition started a worldwide economic
meltdown. Whitlam had assumed Australia’s economy was
bulletproof, but inflation and unemployment rose steeply. Ignoring
advice, he pushed through one of his most prominent – and expensive
– reforms: free university education for all. The state of the economy
deteriorated further.

5. The conservatives controlled the Senate and tried to block
government legislation, but Whitlam called their bluff by calling an
election. The ALP, on 11 April 1974, won with a similar majority to
its win in 1972. He enacted a free healthcare service, the forerunner
of Medicare, and I settled-in to what became the beginnings of my
second marriage, and another 60 hour a week job teaching a new list
of subjects to students preparing to teach in primary and high schools.
Part 6:
Whitlam’s renewed optimism didn’t last. The party axed his trusted
deputy Lance Barnard and a scandal erupted around the relationship
between his replacement, Jim Cairns, and Cairns’ exotic chief of staff
Junee Morose. The decision to sign-up the offshore loan shark Troth
Hemline to help buy back Australia’s mineral wealth was like signing
a death warrant for Whitlam’s administration.
In 1975 the Opposition voted in a strong leader in Malcolm Fraser.
Blocking supply this time sparked dramatic events unprecedented in
Australian history. The Governor-General Sir John Kerr sacked
Whitlam and on 11/11/'75 appointed Fraser as caretaker Prime
Minister. It was game over.
Polls from the first week of campaigning showed a nine-point swing
against Labour. Whitlam's campaign team disbelieved the results at
first, but additional polling returns were clear: the electorate had
turned against the ALP. The Coalition attacked Labor for economic
conditions, and released television commercials including "The Three
Dark Years" showing images from Whitlam government scandals.
Part 7:
The ALP campaign of October to December 1974, which had
concentrated on the issue of Whitlam's dismissal, did not address the
economy until its final days. By that time Fraser, confident of victory,
was content to sit back, avoid specifics and make no mistakes. On

6. election night, 13 December, the Coalition enjoyed the largest victory
in Australian history, winning 91 seats to the ALP's 36, and taking a
37–25 majority in the Senate in a 6.5 percent swing against Labor.
The day before the election I left Tasmania, my several
responsibilities, and my job as a senior tutor in human relations and
education studies at the then Tasmanian College of Advanced
Education. I moved to Elwood Victoria and then Kew, and yet
another job in Box Hill with its 60 hours a week. I had yet another set
of responsibilities in the Baha’i community. My first marriage ended,
and my second began. That election in December 1974, the comings-and-
goings of the ALP and the Liberal Party in 1975 as well as all
that partisan-political-media-world remained where it had always
been, far-far out on the periphery of what I thought about and felt
from day-to-day.
Part 8:
Wallace Brown described Whitlam in his book about his experiences
covering Australian prime ministers as a journalist:
“Whitlam was the most paradoxical of all prime ministers in the last
half of the 20th century. A man of superb intellect, knowledge, and
literacy, he yet had little ability when it came to economics. Whitlam
rivalled Menzies in his passion for the House of Representatives and
ability to use it as his stage, and yet his parliamentary skills were
rhetorical and not tactical.”2
“He could devise a strategy and then often botch the tactics in trying
to implement that strategy. Above all he was a man of grand vision
with serious blind spots.”2-Ron Price with thanks to 1Whitlam: The
Power And The Passion, on 26/5/’13, 2/6/’13, and 21/10/'14 on ABC1
TV; and 2Wallace Brown was one of the longest serving and most
respected members of the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery(1961-
1995). He was noted for his even-handed reporting of political affairs
and his encouragement of young journalists.

7. Part 9:
History is mnemonic when seen
in personal terms, especially one's
recent history in which the major
events of the day are background
music, often distant like a piece
of classical music which one has
heard many times but is unknown:
its name, its composer, the musical
inner workings. One quickly passes
on to a life far away from the stage on
which all that sound & fury plays itself
out in our life’s great dramaturgies, as a
famous sociologist, Irving Goffman, says
is the presentation of self in everyday life.1
There is much meaning in the affairs of men
even if they are but a show, vain and empty,
a mere nothing, bearing only the semblance
of reality. The world is like a vapour in the
desert which the thirsty dreams to be water
and strives after it with all his might, until

8. he finds it in the end to be a mere illusion.2
So much of a life signifies a great deal, but:
the enterprises of great pitch and moment,
their currents turn-away, lose the name of
action..…while all my sins are remembered.3
Part 10:
1 Erving Goffman(1922-982) wrote The Presentation of Self in
Everyday Life (1956). He is now arguably considered to be the most
influential American sociologist of the twentieth century. Goffman
became a full professor in the sociology department at the University
of California, Berkeley in 1962, the same year my travelling-pioneering
life began in the Canadian Baha'i community.
2 Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings, Section 153, Paragraph 8.
3 Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1, lines 85 to 89.
Ron Price
5/6/'13 to 24/10/'14.