Word: whitlam
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...time Australia's 8 million voters went to the polls last week, the early groundswell of sympathy for Whitlam had all but vanished. Fraser and his coalition swept to power in a landslide victory, handing Whitlam the worst defeat of his career...
...Whitlam's mistake was to wage his campaign chiefly on the issue of his ouster. He claimed that the future of Australian democracy required that he be returned to office to void the Governor General's "legal coup d'état." In a brief paroxysm of rage over Kerr's action, strikers shut down slaughterhouses, construction sites and steelworks all over Australia. But before long, Australian voters decided that Whitlam's firing was not the main issue after all. Opinion polls showed that voters were more concerned about bread-and-butter issues-inflation, industrial unrest...
...rate from 5% to a high of 17% during what he called the "three dark years of Labor." Capitalizing on concern over unemployment (which went as high as 5.3%), Fraser claimed that one job had been lost for every seven minutes Labor was in power: "Don't give Whitlam the chance to break the job-a-minute barrier because if you do, I'm sure he will...
...late last week polls showed Fraser leading Whitlam by 52% to 42%. More than anything else, it was the soft economy-and the soaring price of Labor's ambitious social welfare program-that proved Whitlam's undoing. For most of Australia's middle-class voters, Whitlam's program, which included a new national health scheme providing free medical care for all and expanded education and welfare benefits, was simply too much too soon...
Closer to U.S. A wealthy sheep rancher from western Victoria, Fraser has promised cutbacks in domestic programs and tax cuts for individuals and business incentives. He will also move to pull Canberra's foreign policy back onto its pre-Whitlam path. Fraser has criticized the Labor government's steps to improve ties with Communist and Third World countries "while neglecting friends and allies with whom we share political ideals and philosophies." That would forecast a return to Australia's traditionally close foreign policy relations with Britain...