Word: whitlam
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Australians have always returned to that reliable old import, God Save the Queen. During the 1972 election campaign, Labor Party Leader Gough Whitlam said that no self-respecting country should wave its flag to the words and music of its former colonial overlord. One of his first acts as Prime Minister was to begin still another search for a new song more befitting "our national aspirations." Although the government offered a prize of $14,850 to the winner, none of the thousands of entries was thought worthy of a kangaroo lullaby, let alone a national anthem. In desperation, the government...
Then the opposition made a blunder of its own. Sensing Whitlam's embarrassment over the Gair affair, it attempted to use its Senate majority to bring down the government. Recklessly, it decided to vote down a money-supply bill essential for the day-to-day workings of the government...
That threatened action, unprecedented in Australia's history, aroused its own storm of protest. The Melbourne Age warned that Australian governments have always been based on a majority in the lower house of Parliament, not in the Senate. Echoing this argument, Whitlam angrily declared: "Senators are proposing to sign the death warrant of the Senate. They must not be allowed to sign the death warrant of Australian democracy...
Bowing to the pressure, the Senate then moved to defer consideration of the money-supply bill. But Whitlam took up the challenge: he said that he would treat a Senate deferral as a refusal of supply. He therefore sought the dissolution of Parliament and called for general elections to be held on May 18. Frustrated by his defeat in the Gair imbroglio and the Senate's long-term obstruction of his program, Whitlam had only one means of gaining control in the Senate-to take the risk of a new election...
...campaign to come, the opposition will no doubt blame the government for Australia's 14% inflation rate; it will almost certainly gain ground in rural areas where farmers are upset at Labor's abolition of longstanding tax concessions. But Whitlam can effectively argue that Labor's social program has been blocked by an obstreperous Sen ate, while in foreign affairs the country has gained a stronger and more independent voice. Whitlam, 58, is also a more popular and commanding figure than the untried Snedden, 47, a former Perth newsboy who took over as Liberal leader after...