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Herald Sun October 22, 2014 9:14pm GOUGH Whitlam was lucky his government was sacked in 1975. To our cultural elite, that turned him from a failure to a martyr. That allowed the ruin he caused to gradually become obscured by the giant shadow of his myth. More ominously, it also allowed Labor to gradually forget what it learned, painfully, from Whitlam’s disasters. So Labor today weeps for Whitlam and much of the media with it. The ABC’s massive coverage in particular has resembled the state-ordered mourning for a socialist dictator. But how must this astonishing torrent of tears strike most Australians? Fact is, the elite’s verdict of Whitlam — the hero reformer, Great Leader and victim of a conservative conspiracy — has never been shared by most voters. Aloof and arrogant, Whitlam was no man of the people and no prime minister was shunned by them so comprehensively — twice. Whitlam ruled chaotically for just two years and 11 months until he was sacked by governor-general Sir John Kerr to end a damaging stalemate in the Senate, where the Opposition had cut off the scandal-racked government’s money. The Left raged at the dismissal. On Monday, hours before Whitlam died, prize-winning author Peter Carey was still spluttering on the ABC that his sacking was a wicked conspiracy — “the US government destabilised and helped overthrow our elected government”. But at the election the public wholeheartedly backed Kerr’s verdict, destroying Labor in a 44 per cent to 56 wipeout. Whitlam the martyr — bellowing “maintain the rage” — nevertheless held on to the Labor leadership, convinced he’d be seen in time as more sinned against than sinning. Instead, two years later the public made clear to Whitlam that he really, really wasn’t wanted, rejecting Labor again by another massive margin, 45 to 55. There’s no sign that the public’s damning verdict ever changed. The reason is simple. Whitlam may have had big dreams, but voters prefer to live their own. What they value most are not the kind of grand gestures that had mourners this week ringing talkback to say Whitlam made them “proud to be Australian” — recognising communist China, demanding joint control of US spy bases here, signing a flurry of international conventions and replacing God Save the Queen with Advance Australia Fair. What counts more is that a prime minister helps Australians to realise their own dreams — of a good job, a house, savings in the bank and proper schooling for the children, with work at the end of it. But Whitlam gave them only as much — or as little — as a Big Government man can, quadrupling spending on health and education and letting wages explode by 28 per cent in a single year. Money fell from the sky. But Whitlam had little care for where it came from — so little, that the Labor Party even negotiated with Saddam Hussein’s Baath socialist party for a $500,000 loan to fight the 1975 election. The disaster was inevitable. With the Budget blown and the international oil shock hitting a weakened economy, the Whitlam government saw unemployment nearly triple, the tax take double, the deficit blow out and inflation soar to almost 20 per cent. Many Australians lost their jobs, their business, savings, dreams and hated Whitlam for what he’d done to them. A new generation of pragmatic Labor leaders — notably Bob Hawke — learned from the debacle. Whitlam was shunned and Hawke ministers used “Whitlamite” as the ultimate insult directed at colleagues who promised big government schemes with no care for the cost. For these new leaders, the books had to balance and the workplaces had to tick over. It wasn’t romantic work, yet it made Hawke the great prime minister Whitlam never was. But how far Labor has fallen. A new Whitlam emerged four decades later with Kevin Rudd, a leader with the same grandiose schemes and reckless spending, the same debt blowouts, the same incompetence, the same rising dole queues. In every way Rudd’s national broadband scheme is Whitlamite. Then Julia Gillard, an unrepentant Whitlamite, simply made things worse. If only that were all. But Labor has forgotten other lessons it once learned from Whitlam’s fall — and many voters have forgotten, too. Like many on the Left, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten this week praised Whitlam particularly for bringing in universal healthcare and giving people a bigger “shot at university”. What Shorten didn’t actually spell out was that Whitlam had recklessly made both doctors’ visits and universities free. These “free” goodies, paid for by taxpayers, helped kick off our welfare culture, and later governments of both sides, alarmed by their cost, have tried to wind back Whitlam’s signature schemes. The Hawke government reintroduced university fees and for a while brought in a Medicare co-payment, until public fury forced it to back down. Even today, the Abbott Government is trying to free us from Whitlam’s welfarism. Battling another Labor debt, it is trying to make students pay more for their degrees and plans its own Medicare co-payment. YES, Whitlam made ambitious changes widely accepted as good, bringing in need-based funding for schools, transferring Crown lands to traditional owners, allowing no-fault divorce, legislating for equal pay for women, ending gerrymanders, decriminalising homosexuality and getting sewerage systems to many suburbs. He blew fresh air into power’s musty corridors and to many made Australia seem bigger, broader and brighter. But other “reforms” came at
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