Word: whitlam
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Australia's first Labor Prime Minister in 23 years, Edward Gough Whitlam, 56, last week was off to the most amazing, assertive start of any leader in his country's history. True to a party promise of new initiatives that would rival those of President Franklin Roosevelt's famous 100 days, Whitlam bounded into action on an extraordinary range of issues from conscription to contraceptives-and left his countrymen, who had yawned through much of the election campaign, suddenly agape...
Moving as fast as a bush fire in the Outback, Whitlam had himself sworn into office along with Deputy Leader Lance Barnard several days sooner than is customary in an Australian change of government, and quickly demonstrated a faculty for imaginative agility. Unable to install a full Cabinet until after his party caucuses this week, the new Prime Minister assumed temporary custody of 13 portfolios (including foreign affairs, which he will keep) and gave Barnard the remaining 14. As perhaps the smallest Cabinet ever in a democracy, the two men promptly engineered a series of sudden shifts in Australian policies...
...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...