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RIP Gough Whitlam

tears have flowed but more for where we have ended up as a country now which is far removed from the one of compassion set by his legacy.


Yeah that to me is really the most upsetting part. He was a politician who acted for the benefit society. So far removed from the type of people who run the country today who follow in the Thatcher footprints of no belief in society and some individualistic Ayn Rand view.

You hear all this great stuff about his legacy;

Healthcare
Education
Multiculturalism
Aboriginal policy
Foreign Policy
Humanitarian Programs


All of these are being trashed by the current government.
 
I am glad he was alive to hear a PM actually say "I'm Sorry" as that's one key thing he wanted all along.

I also loved Turnbull's tribute to him, and it brought me to tears as you could tell it was heartfelt.

IMO, both Abbott and Shorten gave lip service. He deserved a lot better than those two having a say.
 
It is so, so sad watching these giants of the past in all of the tributes.
OMG we haven't had a real leader for 20 years!

To quote Malcolm Fraser, Australia hasn't had a real LEADER & VISIONARY, since Whitlam and Keating.

HSC 2014: We all fell in love with Gough Whitlam
"I know when we studied Gough Whitlam our whole class fell in love with him, we all thought he was such an interesting character."

......regardless of political leanings, Whitlam was inspiring and her classmates even considered trying to visit him just so they could meet him.

"We were all empathetic and when [we learnt] Gough leapt in, he was not even going to wait for a cabinet and we were like "yeah, go Gough..he leapt right into action and everyone found that really good and really inspiring," she said.

"And even if you didn't fully agree with what he did or what he thought and felt, he had such strong views and I think anyone with such amazing conviction is inspirational."

"I think the whole It's Time campaign and all the reforms, particularly with university education, is particularly relevant now because of the discourse of how we are going to progress with the cost of uni in the future," Katie said.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/educ...gh-whitlam-20141021-119ads.html#ixzz3GpyOcOz2
 
I am glad he was alive to hear a PM actually say "I'm Sorry" as that's one key thing he wanted all along.

I also loved Turnbull's tribute to him, and it brought me to tears as you could tell it was heartfelt.

IMO, both Abbott and Shorten gave lip service. He deserved a lot better than those two having a say.

I heard the Malcolm Turnbull tribute on the way home in the car. This is when I first teared up. Only if the other conservatives were more like Malcolm.
 
Gough was and always will be a legend. Some of his visionary and progressive advances may be being dismantled, but he lit a fire in many people that still burns, and will continue to burn in their children and grandchildren and so on, even if they don't know where it started. And a Gough-styled sense of social justice and equity will rise again in Australian politics from these generations.

Haha, I feel like I'm delivering a sermon. But Gough changed Australia forever.
 
... Gough changed Australia forever.

As did Stalin, the USSR.

Fortunately, Oz got rid of Gough after three years and resoundingly rejected him, his ideology, and his political party in the following two elections.

Unfortunately though, we're still paying for the variety of disasters Gough and co managed to inflict upon this once great nation, especially in relation to what is now generational welfare, perpetual victimhood, big intrusive government, and an unhealthy favouring of undeserved and/or so called rights rather than responsibilities.

Gough and his supporters are typically the kind of people who are prone to think in terms of "ask what our country can do for me" rather than "ask not what our country can do for me, ask what I can do for our country". The kind of people forever relying upon other people's hard work and money.

People like me have never needed Gough and his supporters ... but they have always needed people like me and typically always will.

Such is the parasitical nature of totalitarians / socialists / greenazis / left-ardians / same dif.

Anyhoo, at least at long last Gough himself is no longer a drain upon the public purse.

regarDS
 

Cate Blanchett spilling some serious tea. Amazing speech about an amazing man, written/read by an amazing woman.
 
If you mean by spilling tea cate self promoting and either deliberately lying or not having a clue then sure, I can agree that she spilled some tea.

BTW, cate would have been, what, all of around three years old when Gough was doing his country wrecking thing, yes ?

Pretty young to be starting a real tax payer funded arts degree while using her own money to go partying ...

As per usual, left-ardia chooses to believe convenient and self serving lies.

Onya Tony for granting an utterly unrequired state funeral. It should serve as an awesome example to Australia for generations to come as to just how dishonest if not utterly loony the left wing ideology has become. :)

What a contrast it showed between the hate filled parasites of the left and generous, calm and collected nation building conservatism.

Money well spent, PM Abbott!

regarDS
 
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Gough and his supporters are typically the kind of people who are prone to think in terms of "ask what our country can do for me" rather than "ask not what our country can do for me, ask what I can do for our country". The kind of people forever relying upon other people's hard work and money.

regarDS


This kind of line is just typical nonsense that when thought about makes nothing.

What is the point of a country? Why do we all live together in a society?

Why is it that people do things for the country? Because the country and the society is there for the benefit of everyone with in. Which yes does involve people getting health care, education, roads and assistance if they need it. These benefit everyone. People put in and the whole point of putting in and living together is because together it makes everything better and provides more than what people can do on their own.

Now we have some warped view that society is just there for the super wealthy. We have prospered. The modern advances of the western world has come from social and political change. When the industrial revolution happened, you had a small amount of extremely rich people and lots of working poor. A social revolution happened. Minimum wage, health care, the growth of capitalism and unprecedented technological and economic growth. Now the quality of everyones lives is the western world is generally better, there's less poor, less of a wealth divide. However greed has taken over and people like Abbotts and the Gina Rhienharts are now wanting to push the system back. Remove rights and freedoms. Remove protections. All because they could be richer if people have less money and have to work more.

This is a view of a country which does not look after its people. It is not democracy. The push that your ideology wants is an end game whether you know it or not, where most people are working poor. Getting rid of wage protections. Removing services which make people more vulnerable and desperate. There for more likely to work for less in worse conditions. There is an active campaign to remove education. Make access to it harder, so the uneducated poor can't get out of it. Trapping them in a class system. As part of this is the massive role out of insane new laws working to turn the country essentially into a police state where the government can be privy to all your personal ins and outs of your life, while making it harder to know what they are up to. They're changing basic legal fundamentals that were essential for a free and just society. Now we are having crimes where you are automatically guilty.

The reason for the police state is simple. The rich couldn't have gotten so rich if it wasn't for the society, where everyone worked together to make a great place to live. A society where there is good infrastructure, good education, good health care, happy people and so forth. There's a reason someone doesn't work into their business shoot them, take over their business. We have created a good stable society which through this process has allowed people to become wealthy. They are the biggest benefactors of living in a society, they have had the greatest reward. Not because they are special or unique, but this is just the outcome of a free, liberal democratic society. The problem is they want to expand what they have by taking from others. Through making them more desperate and vulnerable, through creating a working poor. Where they lack all compassion for their fellow human being. They will need to keep the people down, keep them in place and this is why we are getting ever stricter laws, why long held legal rights are being removed. Why the surveillance state is being put in place. It's a power grip to keep the poor and huddled masses under control.


Gough had is issues but he made Australia a better place. The people currently in charge are only working to make it a better place for the rich and privileged.


All of this isn't a conspiracy theory. People like Gina who own the government want this. they have explicitly said this. They want to pay people $2 a day in Australia. This police state of people constantly working is what is driving china at the moment. People work for months on end for low wages with no days off. The state comes down on them with an iron fist (or tank) if they try to step out of line. The super rich want to replicate these conditions for their own advantage. Most politicians are inherently power hungry and seek powers and control. This is where the right wing wants to take us.
 
I heard the Malcolm Turnbull tribute on the way home in the car. This is when I first teared up. Only if the other conservatives were more like Malcolm.

I am so with you.
I heard the Malcolm Turnbull tribute on the way home in the car. This is when I first teared up. Only if the other conservatives were more like Malcolm.

It's clear Malcolm has TRUE love and respect for Gough Whitlam.

I hope he's just biding his time and will come out and cause upset and go for a challenge for leadership of the Libs.
 
^ wow, dunno which country our UAN is from or living in but it certainly ain't the one I pay my taxes to.

Anyhoo, "five, six, seven, eight, eyes back on lying Cate."

Full article with comments, here: http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/..._claims_shes_a_beneficiary_of_whitlams_free_/

"Cate Blanchett at the memorial service for Gough Whitlam, whose government ended when she was just six years old:

When I heard Gough Whitlam had died, I was filled with an inordinate sadness. A great sorrow. I wasn’t even in school when his primeministership was ended. Why was I so sad? His public presence over the course of my life was important, but he was no show pony. So what had gone?

The loss I felt came down to something very deep and very simple. I am the beneficiary of free, tertiary education. When I went to university I could explore different courses and engage with the student union in extracurricular activity. It was through that that I discovered acting.

Blanchett was born in 1969. She studied at Melbourne University from 1987 before dropping out and eventually switching to the National Institute of Dramatic Art, from which she graduated in 1992.

Her first, abandoned stint at uni may indeed have been free, but most of Blanchett’s tertiary education was not.

The Hawke Government realised handing free tertiary education to the middle classes was unaffordable and unfair to the poor. In 1988, Labor reintroduced fees and the legislation makes clear that Blanchett did not qualify for exemption from the fees that applied from 1989.

And how fair would it have been for the taxes of struggling Australians to go to giving free tertiary education for a woman wealthy enough to attend Ivanhoe Girls’ Grammar School and then Methodist Ladies’ College?

Was it fair to hit struggling taxpayers for the funds that allowed young Cate to splash on going to bands?:

"I am the beneficiary of good, free healthcare, and that meant the little I earned after tax and rent could go towards seeing shows, bands, and living inside my generation’s expression."

Quote-off


The plain and historical (as opposed to the left-ardian hysterical) and undeniable reality is that the disaster to this country that was Gough and Co not only were fired from the job but were then resoundingly rejected by the majority of Oztralians in the following two election.

In short, Oz was quick to realise (but unfortunately for us all today, not quick enough) the mistake that had been made in electing Gough and Co, so got rid of them and forevermore rejected Gough's attempts to regain government.

[ADIT], Oh and a comment from that link:

"Blanchett may have received some free education as noted in your article, but in 1965 I also received a free university education via the Commonwealth funded scholarship which was awarded according to year 12 academic performance. That scholarship covered all fees, with books, etc paid by students. These Scholarship’s were issued under a Liberal Party Government and only favoured students according to their academic achievement. Whitlam abandoned this Scheme to introduce his less efficient scheme.
Unlike Blanchett, I worked part time through my University years so that I could afford to fund the non fee elements of my University years."


That said, there is no such thing as "free" education, neither before Gough, during Gough's disasterous time in Government, nor after Gough.

Deem "TANSTAAFL" included.

regarDS
 
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This kind of line is just typical nonsense that when thought about makes nothing.

What is the point of a country? Why do we all live together in a society?

Why is it that people do things for the country? Because the country and the society is there for the benefit of everyone with in. Which yes does involve people getting health care, education, roads and assistance if they need it. These benefit everyone. People put in and the whole point of putting in and living together is because together it makes everything better and provides more than what people can do on their own.

Now we have some warped view that society is just there for the super wealthy. We have prospered. The modern advances of the western world has come from social and political change. When the industrial revolution happened, you had a small amount of extremely rich people and lots of working poor. A social revolution happened. Minimum wage, health care, the growth of capitalism and unprecedented technological and economic growth. Now the quality of everyones lives is the western world is generally better, there's less poor, less of a wealth divide. However greed has taken over and people like Abbotts and the Gina Rhienharts are now wanting to push the system back. Remove rights and freedoms. Remove protections. All because they could be richer if people have less money and have to work more.

This is a view of a country which does not look after its people. It is not democracy. The push that your ideology wants is an end game whether you know it or not, where most people are working poor. Getting rid of wage protections. Removing services which make people more vulnerable and desperate. There for more likely to work for less in worse conditions. There is an active campaign to remove education. Make access to it harder, so the uneducated poor can't get out of it. Trapping them in a class system. As part of this is the massive role out of insane new laws working to turn the country essentially into a police state where the government can be privy to all your personal ins and outs of your life, while making it harder to know what they are up to. They're changing basic legal fundamentals that were essential for a free and just society. Now we are having crimes where you are automatically guilty.

The reason for the police state is simple. The rich couldn't have gotten so rich if it wasn't for the society, where everyone worked together to make a great place to live. A society where there is good infrastructure, good education, good health care, happy people and so forth. There's a reason someone doesn't work into their business shoot them, take over their business. We have created a good stable society which through this process has allowed people to become wealthy. They are the biggest benefactors of living in a society, they have had the greatest reward. Not because they are special or unique, but this is just the outcome of a free, liberal democratic society. The problem is they want to expand what they have by taking from others. Through making them more desperate and vulnerable, through creating a working poor. Where they lack all compassion for their fellow human being. They will need to keep the people down, keep them in place and this is why we are getting ever stricter laws, why long held legal rights are being removed. Why the surveillance state is being put in place. It's a power grip to keep the poor and huddled masses under control.


Gough had is issues but he made Australia a better place. The people currently in charge are only working to make it a better place for the rich and privileged.


All of this isn't a conspiracy theory. People like Gina who own the government want this. they have explicitly said this. They want to pay people $2 a day in Australia. This police state of people constantly working is what is driving china at the moment. People work for months on end for low wages with no days off. The state comes down on them with an iron fist (or tank) if they try to step out of line. The super rich want to replicate these conditions for their own advantage. Most politicians are inherently power hungry and seek powers and control. This is where the right wing wants to take us.

I didn't know him but I do know of him and his achievement. I can't understand people denying his work. I know this Government is doing all it can to destroy what he did and that is very sad, very sad in deed.

I love your post :thumbsup:
 
@derspatz .

Just to let you know, I am not one to allow social media input and what X "celeb" may have to say, cloud my personal judgement. I just know the impact of Whitlams reforms, especially as to medicines and health care in general, aid those not being able to afford private coverage.

I don't see it as a matter of "what my country can do for me" but rather a matter of working hand in hand..as in, healthy people are working people. You want people to pay taxes.. then help them stay healthy so they CAN. I believe Whitlam had a WORKING socialist approach and the issue is, he tried to change things too fast. THAT was his only downfall. He was a progressive leader in a country filled with people ingrained in their "Pleasantville" BS mindset. He was a man in office, before his truly appreciated time.

BTW, I am an Aussie woman who from the age of 14 yrs and 9 months has worked. I funded my own education for the most part (NONE of it involved Government assistance) and have never willingly been on ANY Social Security benefit and when I was due to a car accident when I could not work for 4 years, I paid every damn cent of it back to the government and they got their share before I saw a cent, so as far as the country goes.. they are way ahead. I doubt MY case is unique.
 
From here and most bolding, mine: http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/...098967126?nk=e3388031682075d0b58b145845c1fffa


It’s time to face the truth about Gough Whitlam


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 painfully learnt from Whitlam’s disasters.

So Labor today weeps for Whitlam and much of the media with it. But how must this 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 only 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. But at the election the public wholeheartedly backed Kerr’s verdict, destroying Labor in a 44 per cent to 56 wipeout.

The public two years later made clear to Whitlam he 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 which 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 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.

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 nearly 20 per cent.

Many Australians lost their jobs, their businesses, their savings, their dreams and hated Whitlam for what he’d done to them. A new generation of pragmatic Labor leaders – notably Bob Hawke – learnt from this debacle.

For these new leaders, the books had to balance and the workplaces had to tick over. It wasn’t romantic work, yet this 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, the same reckless spending, the same debt blowouts, the same incompetence, the same rising dole queues.

Then Julia Gillard simply made things worse.

If only that were all. But Labor has forgotten other lessons it once learnt 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 health care and giving people a bigger “shot at university”.

What Shorten didn’t spell out was that Whitlam had recklessly made both doctors’ visits and universities free.

These “free” goodies, actually 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 degrees and plans its own Medicare co-payment.


Yes, Whitlam also 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.

But other “reforms” came at a cost we haven’t yet counted. Whitlam outlawed racial discrimination, but those laws inevitably expanded to shut down debates on racial “identity” and preferments, and fed a grievance industry that has empowered a million activists, lawyers and other bullies.

He adopted multiculturalism, only to encourage a dangerous new tribalising of Australia.

Whitlam had grand dreams but too often the price was the smashing of the dreams of the people he was elected to serve.

No, more modest leaders suit Australia best, and hang around longest.

They are the leaders who know Australians wish to live their own dreams and not those of their prime minister.

To those Australians, Whitlam to them was the big-spending menace on the hill and not at all their martyred Saviour."


regarDS
 
and from here: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opi...d-and-tony-jones/story-fnkqo7i5-1227101323401

▪ Australia was a prosperous society in the 1950s and the first half of the 1960s — during Robert Menzies’ prime ministership. Australia experienced low inflation, low interest rates and full employment. There was no torpor.

▪ In 1957 the Menzies government signed the Australia-Japan Commerce Agreement — which was the very antithesis of the Anglo-sphere. And what did Labor have to say about this? Well, the ALP opposed the Australia-Japan Commerce Agreement and Labor MPs, including Gough Whitlam, voted against it in the House of Representatives.

▪ Contrary to the implication in Paul Keating’s comments, Harold Holt’s Coalition government abolished the White Australia Policy in March 1966. Gough Whitlam became prime minister over six years later. Labor supported White Australia in the 1950s and the first half of the 1960s. Whitlam, as a loyal ALP parliamentarian went along with Labor policy.

The claim that Gough Whitlam made it possible for Australians to get a “secondary education and a tertiary one” is a complete myth. Secondary education was available in government and non-government schools throughout the Menzies era. Certainly the Whitlam government introduced so-called “free” tertiary education. Fees for tertiary education were reinstated when Paul Keating was treasurer — because they were a strain on the budget and because they were primarily of benefit to higher income earning families.

and from the same link, this amusing exchange:

▪ Fleur Ramsay to Gerard Henderson — 22 October 2014

Dear Sydney-Institute,

For some reason unknown and unfathomable to me, I seem to be getting your ideological dribble sent to my work email. I have unsubscribed from the email list, but after reading the email, I wanted to let you know that anyone with a brain would consider that the reported opinion of a North Sydney High School girl is not a ‘fact’ but an opinion. However, I understand that people who are so far right, like yourselves, no longer understand the distinction between fact and opinion.

Please ensure that no more emails are sent unsolicited to me. Thanks to Mr Whitlam, I had the benefit of a university education and have the capacity to reason. If the email you sent me is an indication of the reasoning abilities at the Sydney-Institute, perhaps media/public comment and policy is not the right fit for you.

Kind regards,

Fleur Ramsay

▪ Gerard Henderson to Fleur Ramsay — 24 October 2014

Ms Ramsay

I have no idea how you received a copy of the Media Watch Dog special which I put out on Wednesday. I will make sure that you do not receive any such emails in the future.

In view of your somewhat angry note, I feel that I should make a couple of points in response:

▪ Whether Gough Whitlam gave the vote to women is not a matter of opinion. Women voted in all states in the 1903 Federal election — as ABC reporters, producers and editors should understand. This is a matter of fact. I am not concerned about schoolgirls expressing ignorant positions. My point was that the ABC should not run uncorrected howlers in a 15 minute profile devoted to praising the contribution of the late Gough Whitlam.

▪ I do understand the difference between fact and opinion. It’s just that the issue of when women received the vote in Australia is not a matter of opinion — even at North Sydney Girls High.

▪ As you may or may not be aware, there was a generous Commonwealth Scholarship Scheme in operation before the election of the Whitlam Government. It covered all tertiary fees and provided a generous means-tested living allowance. When I studied law in the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were many females in the Melbourne University Law School — this was before Gough Whitlam’s time.

Moreover, it was the Menzies government which presided over the huge increase in Commonwealth funding for universities which took place in the 1950s and first half of the 1960s.

▪ It is true that Gough Whitlam introduced what is sometimes termed “free” tertiary education — this invariably meant that the tertiary education of the middle class and the wealthy was subsided by middle and low income earners not at university — including manual workers.

▪ As I understand it, you studied Law in Australia under the Hawke Labor Government’s HECS scheme which continues today. This replaced Gough Whitlam’s so-called “free education” since it was not financially sustainable.

It is delusional for you to believe that your tertiary education circa 2000 — to which you made a financial contribution — was made possible by Gough Whitlam’s three year prime ministership some four decades earlier and after the Menzies Government had implemented the Martin Report.

Best wishes

Gerard Henderson


quote-off.

lulz at another deluded left-ard having the bright light of truth shone upon their convenient and no doubt self serving delusions.

regarDS
 
And re: some of the blood on his hands, from here: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-...on-gough-whitlam/story-fnpxuhqd-1227097838305

"His foreign policy record was appalling, although it is here that the myth-makers have worked hardest because his economic record was even worse.

Whitlam acted with conspicuous cruelty towards the Vietnamese who had worked with Australian forces and Australian diplomats during the war between South Vietnam and North Vietnam.

His foreign minister, Don Willessee, wanted him to bring some of these people to Australia at the fall of Saigon in April 1975. Whitlam told him: “I’m not having these f..king Vietnamese Balts coming into the country with their religious and political prejudices against us.”

The quote is in Clyde Cameron’s memoir. Whitlam never denied the quote. Once, when I recounted the quote with one word mistaken, Whitlam rang me to correct the mistaken word and confirm the quote generally.


Later, when Vietnamese were fleeing the communists whose victory Whitlam had championed, he remarked: “Vietnamese sob stories don’t wring my withers.”

More important than what Whitlam said was what he did. Australian transport planes left Saigon with rows of empty seats while those who had helped us there were left to their fate in the vast gulag of re-education camps the communists set up after their victory.

Or they were left to a worse fate."


...

and ...

"The two most disgraceful episodes of Whitlam’s leadership concerned the Middle East. Most people remember the loans affair, but an even greater disgrace concerned Whitlam’s efforts to raise election funds for the ALP in 1975 from the Iraqi government.

With Stalinist efficiency, Labor myth-makers have almost entirely elided this episode from history. So let’s recount the facts. Whitlam authorised Bill Hartley, a far-left figure of the Victorian ALP who received subsidies from Arab dictators, to seek election funding of up to $2 million from the Iraqi government or the governing Iraqi Baath Socialist Party.

Their agreed envoy, whom Whitlam met and authorised, was one Henry Fischer. In Iraq, Fischer met Saddam Hussein, then vice-president of Iraq.

He later intimated he could get half a million dollars from the ALP. Whitlam thought this was fine but wanted to keep it secret.

When news of it came out, in 1976, Whitlam was already in opposition. He was condemned, as leader, by the ALP national executive. John Wheeldon, who had been Whitlam’s social security minister and who later became associate editor of The Australian, resigned from Labor’s front bench in disgust and said he would never again serve with Whitlam.

Kim Beazley Sr, who had been Whitlam’s education minister, had already resigned over the issue. “It would be inevitable for the Australian Jewish community to regard any such (Iraqi) money as blood money that might be paid for, ultimately, in Israeli blood,” Beazley said."


So, a wannabe Stalin ?

And from here, some more myth-busting: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/ne...red-man-of-myths/story-fni0cwl5-1227097994683

"Whitlam claimed to have ended (Labor’s) White Australia policy when it was actually Harold Holt’s government, on March 9, 1966, which changed immigration policy so that race was no longer a criterion for entry.

Those who were uni students in the 1960s also remember it was Robert Menzies who effectively scrapped fees by introducing Commonwealth scholarships so any student who did well in high school could go to university for free and receive a living allowance. Whitlam just removed the competitive aspect and extended university to anyone, regardless of aptitude.

Whitlam’s proposals for modernising Australian were really to introduce welfare state measures that were popular in continental Europe at the time. If he did transform Australia it was to start us down the road from self-reliance to entitlement so that half the nation is now on welfare.

Yet the arrogance of Labor’s mythmakers would have us believe Australia was a terrible country before Whitlam."


regarDS
 
Lol.

Swap Vietnamese for boat people and Whitlam for Abbott and we've got any article from 2013 to now.
 
Yeah that to me is really the most upsetting part. He was a politician who acted for the benefit society. So far removed from the type of people who run the country today who follow in the Thatcher footprints of no belief in society and some individualistic Ayn Rand view.

You hear all this great stuff about his legacy;

Healthcare
Education
Multiculturalism
Aboriginal policy
Foreign Policy
Humanitarian Programs


All of these are being trashed by the current government.

YUP! Have a little read of the facts. :)

http://primeministers.naa.gov.au/primeministers/whitlam/in-office.aspx
 
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