Word: australian
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...paid up to $29 for a ticket. Women reporters, said the singer, are "broads" and "hookers." Frankie, who is traveling with Close Friend Barbara Marx, 44, added, "I might offer them a buck and a half." Next day he learned he was really on alien turf. The Australian Journalists Association demanded an apology and other unions threatened to hamper future performances. Frankie said he was owed an apology for "15 years of shit," canceled the tour and summoned his private jet. Putting down at Sydney, Frank learned that airport refuelers refused to handle his plane. Tense negotiations resulted...
...patchwork anti-inflation package of wage-price controls an unconvincing program, his emphasis on money matters put Whitlam on the defensive. Only midway through the campaign did Labor regain the initiative by pointing to its own inflation suppressants: a combination of tariff cuts and an upward revaluation of the Australian dollar. "It's possible to freeze meat and vegetables but not their prices," snorted the Prime Minister, knocking down the ON SERVICE idea of a wage-price freeze...
Many of Whitlam's domestic reforms were blocked, however, by an anomaly of the Australian constitution-the Senate. Though the 1972 elections gave Whitlam a 67-58 edge in the House, the Senate, with its six-year terms for members, remained firmly in the hands of the opposition Liberal-Country Party coalition. The opposition could count on 31 votes, while Labor had only 26 seats. The Australian Senate is supposed to act only as a slowing brake on the House of Representatives, with deliberative-but not veto-powers. In fact, the conservative-dominated body managed to stop Whitlam...
Totally frustrated, Whitlam tried to upset the balance in the Senate by persuading a longtime foe, Senator Vincent Gair, to accept the ambassadorship to Ireland. What Whitlam saw as a masterly stroke, his opponents, together with most of the Australian press, viewed as a cynical ploy. Whatever it was, the plan backfired. Instead of Gair's seat going to a Whitlam supporter as the Prime Minister expected, the premier of Queensland State used a loophole in the law to put in another conservative. Finally, when the opposition in the Senate, spoiling for a fight, began to carry...
Whitlam belatedly came up with an anti-inflation program of his own, but many middle-class people in Sydney or Melbourne, who see only higher prices in the supermarket and steeper mortgage rates for new houses, may blame him nonetheless. Beyond that, some Australians who were initially attracted by Whitlam's energy and decisiveness were worried that he is now doing too much too fast and that he had basically misinterpreted the conservative, traditional temperament of his countrymen. Whoever wins, Australian politics will never again be so simple and placid as it has been for most of the past...