Word: whitlam
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...exactly a battle of titans. A pre-election poll for the Sydney Telegraph showed that neither Incumbent Prime Minister William McMahon nor Opposition Leader Edward Gough Whitlam was regarded as trustworthy by a majority of the Australian electorate. An editorial in the Melbourne Age said that voters faced a choice between "the flawed pragmatism of McMahon versus the flawed vision of Whitlam." But in a nation where failing to vote can bring a $10 fine, it was a choice that had to be made. Last week the Aussies made it. They rejected the Liberal Party-Country Party coalition government...
...Smooth. For hulking Gough (rhymes with cough) Whitlam, 56, the campaign was his second since taking over the Labor Party leadership in 1967. Smoother in garb and in gab than most of his country's politicians, Whitlam sometimes strikes down-to-earth Aussies as being too smooth by half. One of his own party members complains that he is a "distinctly middle-class intellectual with both a prickly personality and a captious turn of mind." He also has a renowned temper. In Parliament he once dumped a glass of water on a member of the Cabinet...
...attempt to revive the Labor Party, Whitlam maneuvered it more toward the political center. As a result, voters were confronted with Labor policies not radically different from those of the government. Among the few distinctive Whitlam commitments: immediate recognition of China, an end to conscription, extension of the vote to 18-year-olds and a new national anthem to replace God Save the Queen. With so little to choose between the parties and platforms, it was probably not surprising that voters spent much of the campaign inventing new ways to show irritation. Some pelted McMahon with jelly beans...
...next elections, which must be held by November 1972, the opposition Labor Party under Edward Gough Whitlam, a capable but lackluster politician, has its best chance for victory since 1949, when it last ruled. If the Liberals win, however, McMahon will probably be replaced by a stronger figure in his own party. In both parties, the survivors of the era of Sir Robert Menzies are being crowded by a new generation of bettereducated, broader-minded, less complacent men. Among the Liberals are Malcolm Peacock, who at 31 is the country's Army Minister, and Steele Hall, 40, the party...
There are other noticeable stirrings in Australia these days. Last week the government responded, if a bit tardily, to the problem of easing tension with mainland China. A few hours after Labor's Gough Whitlam announced that he would go to Peking with a party delegation next month, the Prime Minister hastily announced that he too was trying to start a "dialogue" with Peking. In other steps toward establishing a new posture in a changing world, McMahon gave the Soviet Union permission to establish a trade office and a shipping agency in Sydney, and approved the sale...