Gough Gone

[Rorschach]

Whitlam the great intellectual and political icon.....
Made these predictions in 2000 for 2010.

1/ Australia will be a republic. Nope.
2/ There will be Aboriginal Australians in every House of Parliament in Australia. Nope.
3/ The Senate and remaining Legislative Councils will no longer be able to block money bills. Nope.
4/ South Australia will observe Eastern Standard Time. Nope.
5/ The Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge will have been inscribed on the World Heritage List.
The Opera House is...
6/ Australia and New Zealand will use the Anzac dollar. Nope.

Oh well....

More...
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-21/g ... ns/5829718

[Rorschach]

http://www.whitlam.org/__data/assets/pd ... ctions.pdf

For inclusion in Time Capsule planted by Mr Whitlam near Westmead Millennium
Institute, Westmead Hospital on Friday 10 November 2000
YEAR 2010 PREDICTION
Hon. Gough Whitlam AC QC
MHR for Werriwa 1952-78
Prime Minister of Australia 1972-75
■ Australia will be a republic.
■ The Head of State will be called the Governor-General.
■ The Head of Government may be a man or woman who is not on the front
bench in either House or is not yet in the Parliament.
■ Other States may have a Governor or Premier or Chief Justice who is a
woman.
■ There will be Aboriginal Australians in every House of Parliament in
Australia.
■ All Houses of Parliament in Australia will be elected for four-year terms.
■ The Senate and remaining Legislative Councils will no longer be able to
block money bills.
■ The Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council of Western Australia will
be elected by one vote one value.
■ South Australia will observe Eastern Standard Time.
• The Australian Parliament will have enacted the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights.
• Australia will have ratified the eight International Labour Organisation
conventions on occupational safety and health.
■ There will be joint Federal-State hospital systems in New South Wales and
Victoria.
■ The Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge will have been inscribed on
the World Heritage List.
■ There will be a university and teaching hospital in Albury-Wodonga.
■ Australia and New Zealand will use the Anzac dollar.
■ Tentative steps will have been made towards parliamentary democracy,
honest courts and a free press in Malaysia and Singapore.
■ Israelis and Palestinians will have custody of their respective sacred sites
in Jerusalem.
YEAR 2030 PREDICTION
Hon. Gough Whitlam AC QC
MHR for Werriwa 1952-78
Prime Minister of Australia 1972-75
■ Elections for all Houses of Parliament in Australia will be held on the same
date every four years.
■ One-third of High Court, Federal Court and NSW Supreme Court judges
will be women.
■ There will be joint Federal-State hospital systems in every State.
■ There will be two international airports in the Sydney metropolitan area.
■ There will be two universities in Western Sydney.
■ High speed, high voltage freight trains will run between Sydney and
Melbourne.
■ Victoria and Tasmania will be a single State.
■ Malaysia and Singapore will have democratic parliaments, honest courts
and a free press.
■ Taiwan will be a Special Administrative Region of the People

[Neferti]

Gough died, age 98, not remembering a THING about 1975 and probably didn't even know how "famous" he was or what day it was. Poor Old Sod.

Who wants to live until you don't remember who you are?

[Rorschach]

He went in his sleep nef.... to my way of thinking, not a bad way to go.

[Neferti]

He went in his sleep nef.... to my way of thinking, not a bad way to go.

Did I say anything different? Since Margaret died, he has been in a Nursing Home, still collecting Taxpayer's Pension ........

Sure, he died in bed, but did he remember ANYTHING about 1975 ..... in the last few months? He had Dementia. His children will know and they will miss him, for as long as they live ...

Anyway .... RIP Gough Whitlam.

[Black Orchid]

How did this turn into a Howard/Abbott bash?

[Rorschach]

mantra....

[5.56 NATO]

Gough Whitlam, a fluffy bunny revered by the left for no other reason then they have no one else

[Rorschach]

EDITORIAL
Gough Whitlam's tainted legacy
by Peter Westmore
http://www.newsweekly.com.au/article.php?id=56761
News Weekly, November 8, 2014

For a man who was Prime Minister for just three years, four decades ago, the obsequious media coverage surrounding the death of Gough Whitlam has been extraordinary.

After 22 years in opposition, Whitlam led Labor to a narrow win in the 1972 federal election, defeating William McMahon, one of the most incompetent prime ministers since Federation. Whitlam was elected on a populist wave targeting the “baby-boomers”, who had been in the vanguard of the cultural revolution of the 1960s.

Whitlam, a powerful orator, was a striking contrast to the increasingly feeble and divided Coalition governments which had been in office since the retirement of the formidable Sir Robert Menzies in 1966.

Whitlam promised an end to conscription, which had been introduced before Australia became involved in the Vietnam war, and to introduce free university education, easier divorce, free universal health care and a rapid expansion of the welfare state.

He promised to repeal the “penal clauses” of the Arbitration Act, which had been a restraint on the extreme left in the union movement, and to amend the act to entrench union power.

After visiting China in 1971, Whitlam promised a new “independent” foreign policy characterised by a weakening of Australia’s alliance with the United States, the withdrawal of Australian forces from South Vietnam, recognising Maoist China as the legitimate government of China and abandoning Taiwan, and granting independence to Papua New Guinea.

After winning the 1972 election, Whitlam set about implementing what he called “The Program”.

The consequences were predictable. Whitlam’s neutralist foreign policy led to a major breach in Australia’s alliance with the United States, and prompted his Attorney-General Lionel Murphy to conduct a raid on the offices of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). The result was a suspension of intelligence co-operation with Australia’s major allies.

The precipitate withdrawal from Vietnam contributed to the collapse in Western support for the struggling government in South Vietnam, which was facing invasion from communist North Vietnam, armed and equipped by the Soviet Union and China.

When South Vietnam was defeated in 1975, Mr Whitlam did not even assist the evacuation of those Vietnamese people who had worked with Australian military forces over the preceding decade. They were left to the tender mercies of the vindictive Vietnamese communists, whose vengeance was swift and brutal.

The Whitlam government’s social agenda entrenched the feminist network in the federal bureaucracy through the Office of Women’s Affairs; introduced no-fault divorce and the supporting parents’ benefit; politicised ethnic communities by bankrolling those who supported the Whitlam agenda; introduced free tertiary education (an initiative reversed by a later Labor government); and established Medibank, a free universal medical benefit scheme.

The effect of Whitlam’s spendthrift economic policies, coupled with the removal of restraint on union wage demands and an unprecedented 25 per cent cut in tariffs, was the simultaneous growth in unemployment and an acceleration in inflation, which soared from about 2 per cent in 1972 to nearly 20 per cent in 1975.

Within two years of being elected, the Whitlam government was in serious trouble, but the Prime Minister still wanted to pursue his grandiose schemes. In 1975, one of Whitlam’s ministers, Rex Connor, tried to raise $4 billion — then a huge sum of money — for national infrastructure through a Pakistani intermediary, Mr Tirath Khemlani, without parliamentary authorisation. The plan, which became known as the Khemlani Affair, unravelled, further discrediting the Whitlam government.

The opposition, then with a narrow majority in the Senate, decided to block Supply — the appropriation bills needed to spend money to keep government running — in order to force the government to an early election.

Mr Whitlam embarked on an exercise in brinkmanship by refusing to call an election, and prepared to continue to run the government without Supply by the unprecedented action of forcing the banks to lend money to the government.

In the meantime, with the approval of Mr Whitlam, Socialist Left Victorian Senator Bill Hartley secretly went to Baghdad, asking for $500,000 from Iraq’s Socialist Baathist regime, in which Saddam Hussein would shortly come to power, in order to bankroll the ALP’s 1975 election campaign. When the ALP national executive found out, it was appalled, and rightly insisted that “Baghdad Bill” Hartley’s gambit be abandoned.

The political crisis was resolved in November 1975, when the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr — a former NSW Chief Justice and Whitlam appointee — exercised the reserve powers of his office to dismiss the Whitlam government. He then commissioned the opposition leader, Malcolm Fraser, to call an immediate election.

In that election, the Whitlam government was routed, and the result was repeated in 1977, after which Mr Whitlam resigned from politics.

Despite all this, Whitlam continued to be lionised by the left and the “baby-boomer” generation which had been the main beneficiaries of his policies.

Peter Westmore is national president of the National Civic Council.

[skippy]

Whitlam did more in three years than the Menzies, Holt, Gorton, McMahon and Howard governments combined. If it were not for Gough we would be back in the fifties.