Word: whitlam
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Gough Whitlam was born July 11, 1916 in the Melbourne suburb of Kew. His father, Harry Frederick Ernest Whitlam, was a lawyer who eventually attained the high civil service post of Commonwealth Crown Solicitor and also became Australian representative on the U.N. Human Rights Commission. As a boy, Gough liked to sit at dinner with the family encyclopedia at his back, handy for reference in arguments. Gough left one school after a teacher complained of his impudence, a charge that was to be echoed throughout his life. In Canberra Grammar, he was classed as industrious but not brilliant, good...
...unlikely that anybody in Washington would make either faux pas these days, for Gough (rhymes with cough) Whitlam is stirring things up more than any Australian leader in years. Until recently, Australia resembled a sort of waltzing Matilda, content to glide through life on the strong arm of a big, steady date. To her escort-first Britain, then the U.S.-she was complaisant, undemanding and faithful. In short, Australia could be taken for granted, and often was. No more. The waltz is ended. Australia has started to rock, and to a beat that is her own. To the dismay...
Just a Start. Within 30 minutes of his swearing-in ceremony, Whitlam set the whirlwind tone for a new, independent-minded Australia by announcing the abolition of the military draft, introduced in 1964 to supply Australian troops for the war in Viet Nam. That was just a start. In foreign affairs, a Cabinet portfolio that he gave himself, Whitlam quickly took a whole series of moves to make Australia's stance "less militarily oriented and not open to suggestions of racism...
...neutralized zone in Southeast Asia; he announced he would petition the International Court of Justice in an attempt to stop French nuclear tests in the South Pacific. (A number of similar steps were taken by Fellow Laborite Norman Kirk, who won power in New Zealand just a week before Whitlam's victory...
...second end, Whitlam backed U.N. resolutions against white-supremacist Rhodesia and South Africa and banned visits to Australia by segregated athletic teams. Perhaps more significantly, Whitlam abruptly abolished the "white Australia" policy that had long discriminated against colored immigrants. He also took steps to improve the lot of Australia's own long-abused aborigines; among other things, he acknowledged aboriginal claims to ancient tribal lands...