Curtin, Chifley and Whitlam

The blast of public attention that followed the death of Gough Whitlam established that a moment of national significance had touched Australian consciousness. But what, exactly, had happened? I remain puzzled; it bore such small resemblance to the passing of previous Labor prime ministers, John Curtin and Ben Chifley.

Clearly, in the six decades between Chif’s death in 1951 and Gough’s in 2014, a sea change had transformed the Australian population. Tripling in total number was the least of it; Australians had changed from being one of the most homogenous nations in the world, in terms of national, racial, ethnic and religious roots, to one of the most diverse.

I was never a member of the Labor Party, or any other political party, but in various capacities I knew those three prime ministers. The acquaintance was, on my side, from the respectful distance of junior rank. But certainly I knew all of them in a sense that their deaths meant something private to me, in a way that not even the most deftly crafted and sympathetic obituary notice could convey.

John Curtin’s two terms as prime minister saw Australia through the years of the greatest dangers to its very existence that our Commonwealth ever faced: the Second World War, in both its European and Pacific modes were its salient manifestations, and John Curtin through it all was a figure of national authority and dignity. There were no cheap stunts, no politician’s tricksy dishonesties and expedient lies, and nobody expected that there would be. This son of a police sergeant, who left school at thirteen to work in a printery, this highly unmilitaristic and dedicated trade unionist, dealt through rough and smooth, through agreements and through frictions (there were plenty of both) with the likes of Churchill, Roosevelt and General MacArthur, and earned the respect of all of them. They saw how aptly the famous words of Andrew Marvell applied to John Curtin: He nothing common did, or mean.

John Curtin’s deep humanity was the foundation of his basic decency in public life, but it was not a quality that helped his shoulders bear the awful load that Australia had laid upon them. Decisions depending on the prime ministerial imprimatur had constantly to be made of which the result—even at the best—would be deaths, woundings, maimings, the shattering of families and the ruination of lives. At times when Curtin knew that, perhaps somewhere far away, Australians would be going into action, he would pace the garden all night in his anxiety. The stress undoubtedly contributed to his early death. As surely as any Australian serviceman or servicewoman who died at enemy hands, John Curtin was a battle casualty, and should be honoured as one.

On a day early in July 1945, I sat in the saddle giving my horse a few moments breather. We were at the side of that road which led to Canberra airport and the RAAF base, and close to the “Gun Gates”, where two ancient, long-silent pieces of ordnance still pretended to guard the security of the back entrance of the Royal Military College, Duntroon. A DC3 aircraft approached at very low altitude, having just taken off from the airstrip down the road. Doubtless recalling some recent item in the Canberra Times, a question flashed: “Could that be the plane carrying Prime Minister Curtin on his last long journey back to Perth?” It was, as declared by some prominent notation on the aircraft itself (a banner? a painted message? I forget). I had just time to straighten my cap, sit erect in the saddle, and salute. For the rest of my life I have been warmed by the possibly quaint conceit that Chance had vouchsafed me the privilege of being able to pay my very own humble tribute to such a prime minister.

Treasurer Ben Chifley succeeded to the top post. His shrewd handling of our endangered wartime economy was a distinguished service to his country; but an even greater service may have been his role as Curtin’s loyal, discreet, indefatigable and probably indispensable personal adviser and lieutenant, especially through the catfights which seem to degrade all cabinets (no matter of what political colour). Curtin and Chifley were both cut from essentially similar Labor cloth: working-class parents, patchy and little formal education, early into jobs; aptitude for serious private reading made them well informed and wise on public questions. Both became respected trade union leaders, and both suffered for it. Both were lapsed Catholics.

Neither in life nor in death did either show any taste for personal pomp or publicity. Curtin’s body went promptly home for interment in the local cemetery at Karrakatta, in Perth; Chif back to Bathurst, where he had always retained the status of a native son. Following a heart attack in his plain boarding-house bedroom, Chifley died in Canberra Hospital, while a ball was being held in Parliament House to celebrate fifty years of Federation. R.G. Menzies, now prime minister, instantly cancelled the festivities as a mark of respect.

I met J.B. Chifley first in 1949, when Labor had lost office, and Chif was Leader of the Opposition. (I was already deeply in his debt for his visionary rehabilitation scheme for returned service personnel; this had brought my university place years closer than my peacetime prospects would ever have suggested likely.) My request for an interview was readily granted: “Come in, young fella. Come in and have a cup of tea,” greeted me at the door cheerfully, delivered in what he himself called his “rattle of chains” voice, roughened and ruined by years of political street-corner meetings.

It soon appeared that my name had been mentioned to Chif by Macmahon Ball, Australia’s professor of political science who represented the whole British Commonwealth on the Allied Council for Japan, through which General MacArthur was ruling the now crushed and shattered Pacific aggressor. Mac Ball was one of my most valued friends, and clearly he and Chif had “clicked”. He said with a grin: “I always thought that Mr Ball was an honest man. I liked the cut of his jib.”

While H.V. Evatt (“the Doc”) remained our eccentric and egocentric foreign affairs minister, impossible “misunderstandings” smouldered between Evatt and Ball. Chifley’s calm and commonsense interventions more than once restored tranquillity to a relationship so crucial to Australia’s national interest. After a long talk, I left with a standing invitation to “drop in any time you’re in Canberra”, and a firm conviction that the man who made the famous “Light on the Hill” speech was a sincere Australian patriot.

The third deceased Labor prime minister on our list is Gough Whitlam. A case more thoroughgoingly different from his two predecessors can hardly be imagined. Gough’s departure from this vale of tears filled the media for days; his obsequies (though not a state funeral) were an ostentatious public occasion, where public figures treated us to addresses, sometimes of obscure tenor, and varying lengths. The faint sound of an axe being ground was not necessarily imaginary. One part of the overflow audience which could not secure seats, booed and hissed another such group. Is this the ultimate in modern funeral etiquette?

But the funeral for the disposal of this leader was as nothing compared to the frenzy which had been fabricated to procure his election. Under the mantra, “It’s Time!” a program of reform had been announced, so all-pervading that it seemed to stick in my hair and be mixed up in my Weeties. Everything was going to be fixed up. It was all quite simple! Nothing less than a new Heaven and a new Earth would soon be decreed by the all-wise and all-benevolent Australian Labor Party. No sane citizen would deny that our world could do with much improvement; but might one small and internally split political party have bitten off more than it could readily chew and digest?

I was introduced to Gough Whitlam early in his period as Labor’s leader by Senator Sam Cohen, who had been my close friend at Melbourne University. We had a lengthy private threesome lunch at Triaca’s famous Latin restaurant in Melbourne. I was highly dubious of some of Labor’s policies, but warmly appreciative of Gough’s sharp, witty and sophisticated personal discourse.

Some of the foolish party policies were the sly voting-age change to eighteen, the tricky Khemlani loans affair, the scandalous appointment of Senator Lionel Murphy to the High Court and the appointment of John Kerr as Governor-General—to name a few. The famous editor of Nation magazine and the Sydney Morning Herald bumped into me (literally) on that day in Canberra. We both made the identical exclamation: “Gough’s gone mad! Kerr will destroy Whitlam.”

But his most awful feat was his creation of the premature independence of Papua New Guinea. After twelve years of most painstaking preparation for gradual independence by Paul Hasluck, Whitlam almost flippantly converted it to Australia’s failed foreign next-door neighbour. Can anything more be said?