Gough Whitlam dies

[flag of convenience]

What's wrong with a 'conservative upbringing?' And if it was so bad, why did Australians rush to bring it back after only three years of 'illumination'? We should have only had three years of Krudd, if the independents had not turned traitor to the people.

 

As I agreed he had his faults but the achievements on the social level may well have been too much for some at the time. Ockerism was swept aside for awhile with progressive politics and pride in real cultural achievements could be celebrated together with a feeling the country was on the move towards a higher place.

 

A conservative background does not need to be adverse to the lifting of higher cultural pursuits in fact both sides are apt to see the advantages, just the right tends to cut such things with greater ease.

[MARYROSE02]

John Pilger's default positions are that the UK is bad, and the USA is far worse. He hates everything about 'The West', whilst rarely criticising, any other nation, or region, because he ascribes all their problems to imperialism, colonialism, and capitalism.

 

Australia joined with Britain in various wars not beacause of any colonial mindset, but more because Australia and Australians thought of themselves as British. Many of them WERE British.

 

Yes, Whitlam introduced some new measures, but other factors helped drag Australia (if it needed dragging) out of its post-War conservative mindset, eg. The Pill, The Swinging Sixties, The Beatles, feminism, student radicalism.

 

I wonder who gets the vote for the British 'Whitlam?' Clement Attlee? Harold Wilson?

[Guest]

I know Pilger isn't every Australian's cup of tea, but this might be of interest

 

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/23/gough-whitlam-1975-coup-ended-australian-independence?CMP=soc_567

The British-American coup that ended Australian independence

 

 

Across the media and political establishment in Australia, a silence has descended on the memory of the great, reforming prime minister Gough Whitlam. His achievements are recognised, if grudgingly, his mistakes noted in false sorrow. But a critical reason for his extraordinary political demise will, they hope, be buried with him.

Australia briefly became an independent state during the Whitlam years, 1972-75. An American commentator wrote that no country had “reversed its posture in international affairs so totally without going through a domestic revolution”. Whitlam ended his nation’s colonial servility. He abolished royal patronage, moved Australia towards the Non-Aligned Movement, supported “zones of peace” and opposed nuclear weapons testing.

Although not regarded as on the left of the Labor party, Whitlam was a maverick social democrat of principle, pride and propriety. He believed that a foreign power should not control his country’s resources and dictate its economic and foreign policies. He proposed to “buy back the farm”. In drafting the first Aboriginal lands rights legislation, his government raised the ghost of the greatest land grab in human history, Britain’s colonisation of Australia, and the question of who owned the island-continent’s vast natural wealth.

Latin Americans will recognise the audacity and danger of this “breaking free” in a country whose establishment was welded to great, external power. Australians had served every British imperial adventure since the Boxer rebellion was crushed in China. In the 1960s, Australia pleaded to join the US in its invasion of Vietnam, then provided “black teams” to be run by the CIA. US diplomatic cables published last year by WikiLeaks disclose the names of leading figures in both main parties, including a future prime minister and foreign minister, as Washington’s informants during the Whitlam years.

Whitlam knew the risk he was taking. The day after his election, he ordered that his staff should not be “vetted or harassed” by the Australian security organisation, Asio – then, as now, tied to Anglo-American intelligence. When his ministers publicly condemned the US bombing of Vietnam as “corrupt and barbaric”, a CIA station officer in Saigon said: “We were told the Australians might as well be regarded as North Vietnamese collaborators.”

Whitlam demanded to know if and why the CIA was running a spy base at Pine Gap near Alice Springs, a giant vacuum cleaner which, as Edward Snowden revealed recently, allows the US to spy on everyone. “Try to screw us or bounce us,” the prime minister warned the US ambassador, “[and Pine Gap] will become a matter of contention”.

Victor Marchetti, the CIA officer who had helped set up Pine Gap, later told me, “This threat to close Pine Gap caused apoplexy in the White House … a kind of Chile [coup] was set in motion.”

Pine Gap’s top-secret messages were decoded by a CIA contractor, TRW. One of the decoders was Christopher Boyce, a young man troubled by the “deception and betrayal of an ally”. Boyce revealed that the CIA had infiltrated the Australian political and trade union elite and referred to the governor-general of Australia, Sir John Kerr, as “our man Kerr”.

Kerr was not only the Queen’s man, he had longstanding ties to Anglo-American intelligence. He was an enthusiastic member of the Australian Association for Cultural Freedom, described by Jonathan Kwitny of the Wall Street Journal in his book, The Crimes of Patriots, as “an elite, invitation-only group … exposed in Congress as being founded, funded and generally run by the CIA”. The CIA “paid for Kerr’s travel, built his prestige … Kerr continued to go to the CIA for money”.

When Whitlam was re-elected for a second term, in 1974, the White House sent Marshall Green to Canberra as ambassador. Green was an imperious, sinister figure who worked in the shadows of America’s “deep state”. Known as “the coupmaster”, he had played a central role in the 1965 coup against President Sukarno in Indonesia – which cost up to a million lives. One of his first speeches in Australia, to the Australian Institute of Directors, was described by an alarmed member of the audience as “an incitement to the country’s business leaders to rise against the government”.

The Americans and British worked together. In 1975, Whitlam discovered that Britain’s MI6 was operating against his government. “The Brits were actually decoding secret messages coming into my foreign affairs office,” he said later. One of his ministers, Clyde Cameron, told me, “We knew MI6 was bugging cabinet meetings for the Americans.” In the 1980s, senior CIA officers revealed that the “Whitlam problem” had been discussed “with urgency” by the CIA’s director, William Colby, and the head of MI6, Sir Maurice Oldfield. A deputy director of the CIA said: “Kerr did what he was told to do.”

On 10 November 1975, Whitlam was shown a top-secret telex message sourced to Theodore Shackley, the notorious head of the CIA’s East Asia division, who had helped run the coup against Salvador Allende in Chile two years earlier.

Shackley’s message was read to Whitlam. It said that the prime minister of Australia was a security risk in his own country. The day before, Kerr had visited the headquarters of the Defence Signals Directorate, Australia’s NSA, where he was briefed on the “security crisis”.

On 11 November – the day Whitlam was to inform parliament about the secret CIA presence in Australia – he was summoned by Kerr. Invoking archaic vice-regal “reserve powers”, Kerr sacked the democratically elected prime minister. The “Whitlam problem” was solved, and Australian politics never recovered, nor the nation its true independence.

•John Pilger’s investigation into the coup against Whitlam is described in full in his book, A Secret Country (Vintage), and in his documentary film, Other People’s Wars, which can be viewed on http://www.johnpilger.com/

 

 

A fascinating read. It seems extraordinary to think that the Governor-General could dismiss a sitting PM. I'm wondering if that could still happen today?

 

Re the plotting against him by British and U.S.security services, this was at the same time that MI6 were working in similar fashion to topple Harold Wilson. I always got the impression that Wilson jumped before he could be pushed, but maybe that wasn't the case?

[Harpodom]

yeah mate.

 

Anyone who refuses to believe that such things happen in the holy grail of 'Western democracy' is living in fantasy land.

 

One wonders how many incidences of orchestrated 'regime change' there have been from within these democracies?

 

It certainly seems credible that the US, at a time when it viewed communism in the same way it now views IS, would do all within its power to crush leaders with such 'dangerous' ideas.

 

A fascinating read. It seems extraordinary to think that the Governor-General could dismiss a sitting PM. I'm wondering if that could still happen today?

 

Re the plotting against him by British and U.S.security services, this was at the same time that MI6 were working in similar fashion to topple Harold Wilson. I always got the impression that Wilson jumped before he could be pushed, but maybe that wasn't the case?

[MARYROSE02]

What did Winston Churchill say about 'democracies?'

 

Why did the 'IllumiatiCIA' allow Bob Hawke/Paul Keating and Tony Blair/Gordon Brown such extended runs in government? Was it because they were all suitably pro American, or was it because they were realistic and efficient, and untainted by leftie ideology?

[DavidCellist]

Well said. Gough recognised the waste of bright lads such as myself not attending university. He made tertiary education free of course - so I attended the University of Melbourne in the 1980s, hitherto a bastion for the wealthy.

A complete visionary. Pyne and the current Liberal Party - you are careerist hacks and nothing more. Whitlam was a giant.

[flag of convenience]

John Pilger's default positions are that the UK is bad, and the USA is far worse. He hates everything about 'The West', whilst rarely criticising, any other nation, or region, because he ascribes all their problems to imperialism, colonialism, and capitalism.

 

Australia joined with Britain in various wars not beacause of any colonial mindset, but more because Australia and Australians thought of themselves as British. Many of them WERE British.

 

Yes, Whitlam introduced some new measures, but other factors helped drag Australia (if it needed dragging) out of its post-War conservative mindset, eg. The Pill, The Swinging Sixties, The Beatles, feminism, student radicalism.

 

I wonder who gets the vote for the British 'Whitlam?' Clement Attlee? Harold Wilson?

 

In the Australian context at state level you could look at the Bjeike Peterson reign in QLD to get an idea of what the other side at the time or a little later looked like. Opposite in every conservable way from the Whitlam years at Federal level. More akin to South Africa and total contempt for democracy.

A majority of Queenslanders did see it fit to continue voting such a disgraceful example of government probably due to the extreme conservative nature of the electorate at the time along with being proud of belonging to a bit of a rogue state, where Jo came over as down to earth and a hatred of liberals.

 

No Howard Wilson pretty much steered a steady course and though came over on tv as comfortable was hardly a visionary. Atlee would be your man in the British context. Of course the times assisted the visionary moves by government of the times.

[MARYROSE02]

Well said. Gough recognised the waste of bright lads such as myself not attending university. He made tertiary education free of course - so I attended the University of Melbourne in the 1980s, hitherto a bastion for the wealthy.

A complete visionary. Pyne and the current Liberal Party - you are careerist hacks and nothing more. Whitlam was a giant.

 

How did you get it for free? I had to pay via HECS for my BA at the UNSW. In any case, nothing is 'free'. Somebody has to pay for it through their taxes.

[MARYROSE02]

I missed all the revolutions, so it was a pity I was not 18 and in OZ in 1972, instead of staid old UK (with the ****ing BBC still banning every song they could find something questionable about but hiding all the child molesters - ****ing hypocrites!)

 

I fancy all politicians are 'careerist hacks'. Whitlam had his piece of the public purse, like all the rest.

[flag of convenience]

I missed all the revolutions, so it was a pity I was not 18 and in OZ in 1972, instead of staid old UK (with the ****ing BBC still banning every song they could find something questionable about but hiding all the child molesters - ****ing hypocrites!)

 

I fancy all politicians are 'careerist hacks'. Whitlam had his piece of the public purse, like all the rest.

 

Britain had its revolutionary spirit in the guise of pirate radio. By the 70's period you speak about the mould had been broken with Radio 4 but Radio Carrolline and Radio Luxembourg were doing some very alternative stuff. Never heard of Bit Information based in London's Notting Hill area. Young legal students or newly qualified will volunteer time to assist those busted on dope offences or homeless folk find a roof over their head, or visit British prisoners banged up abroad etc. Also put together a rough paper on travelling the overland route to India. long before Tony Wheeler and the corporates came into being the main source of info.

UK was very far from being staid with a lot of folk working without profit to bring about change.

 

Career hacks sadly fill many if not most roles these days be it social workers through to politicians. We are far from better off for it but the individual as replaced the collective. Competition and consumption.

Whitlam took on the established orders and pushed agenda's not immediately associated with the masses.

[DavidCellist]

Gough was a great man. Australia was too backward and small to grasp his vision. The current Liberals are pygmies compared to Gough. Sorrow.

[DavidCellist]

Mary-Rose: from 1973 to 1989 tertiary education was free for all Australians. In the UK in this period it was also practically free...I know my wife, who is a British national and my age , never paid a penny for it.

 

Gough did use taxes to pay for it however people such as myself have put a lot of work into making life better for others as a result of our good fortune. I have worked in difficult government schools as well as private schools for over twenty years now.

 

Remember that very few young people attended university in the 1970s and 1980s and the top institutions such as ANU and the Universities of Melbourne and Sydney were very hard to get into in those days. The proportion of young people doing something tertiary has soared in recent years. Figures from the 2011 census show a 25 per cent jump since 2006, to 932,000 people studying at Australian universities. With the federal government pushing for 40 per cent of 25 to 34-year-olds to have a bachelor's degree or better by 2025, student numbers will soon soar to well over a million.

In 1985, when the parents of many of today's students were of uni age, fewer than 140,000 people were studying at university. Source: Sydney Morning Herald.

 

 

This is partly why fees were not charged.

 

[DavidCellist]

Britain has had and still has a galaxy of talented radical thinkers and visionaries - however I know of no political leader like Whitlam. Enlighten me if I am misled!

[Ellie 2]

Being so great, I wonder why he lasted less than 3 years as PM. Don't blame the dismissal, he was hammered at the next and subsequent elections. Bob Hawke saved the Labor party - the only half decent Labor PM in my life time.

[Parley]

Worst PM in Australia's history.

Gough Whitlam. Sent the country broke with his grand schemes and had to resort to trying to borrow billions of a gun runner.

[Guest ozo]

Anybody read his memoirs, The Truth of the Matter?

How subjective is it?

[gee13]

RIP Goughy... Its time ...May god save Australia, because nothing will save Tony Abbott

 

 

[Diane]

....I just hope no one like Abbott, Pyne, Morrison et al attend his funeral........Gough despised them.

 

Don't know about Pyne but Abbott did http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/11/05/cheers-and-jeers-politicians-they-gather-farewell-whitlam

 

Have to say as a fan of Julia's it brought a smile to my face to watch the welcome she got both inside and out

[Harpodom]

Don't know about Pyne but Abbott did http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/11/05/cheers-and-jeers-politicians-they-gather-farewell-whitlam

 

Have to say as a fan of Julia's it brought a smile to my face to watch the welcome she got both inside and out

 

did you hear the speech given by Noel Pearson, Diane?

 

Really powerful, visceral stuff, had me nearly choking up. Hopefully there'll be a link I can post

 

Its like a requiem for politics with principles as well as for a man.

[Parley]

She should be charged by the police for accepting the proceeds of crime.

 

It may still happen too. She has not yet got off scot free.

[MARYROSE02]

It's Time!(nearly) for another Lib govt!

[Harpodom]

Here it is, its worth it, unless you're a fan of Joh Bjelke-Petersen and his ilk

 

[h=1]Noel Pearson's eulogy for Gough Whitlam praised as one for the ages[/h]

 

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/noel-pearsons-eulogy-for-gough-whitlam-praised-as-one-for-the-ages-20141105-11h7vm.html#ixzz3IA9XbhhV

 

 

[Parley]

Funny how we laud people when they have died even knowing they were total failures in life.

 

Really disgusted in that lefty crowd booing.

No class at all. So inappropriate at a funeral.

 

Really does speak volumes about the loony left.

[Harpodom]

Funny how we laud people when they have died even knowing they were total failures in life.

 

Really disgusted in that lefty crowd booing.

No class at all. So inappropriate at a funeral.

 

Really does speak volumes about the loony left.

 

I guess you can thank your mate Abott for that, for dragging politics into the gutter

[Paul1Perth]

Here it is, its worth it, unless you're a fan of Joh Bjelke-Petersen and his ilk

 

Noel Pearson's eulogy for Gough Whitlam praised as one for the ages

 

 

 

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/noel-pearsons-eulogy-for-gough-whitlam-praised-as-one-for-the-ages-20141105-11h7vm.html#ixzz3IA9XbhhV

 

 

 

 

Slow day Harpo? Don't know how you can sit through that stuff mate, I heard the radio on the way to work and it was painful. Found that TripleM Classic Rock has a day of Stones music on and an hour with Alice Cooper and Ronny Wood presenting. Good stuff.