Changing the Face of Australia

...Canberra may sign a treaty of friendship, commerce and navigation with Tokyo, something the McMahon government had refused to do because it felt the advantages were already stacked too strongly in favor of the Japanese...

...This "politicization" of Australian society was part of the push that gave Whitlam victory, and he has kept the momentum going with an energetic display of decision-making since the election...

...His diplomatic moves, while generally applauded by the Left, were less ideological...

...Indeed, Harold Holt won a landslide victory over Labor in 1966 on the issue of fidelity to the American alliance and retaining Australian troops in South Vietnam...

...Fully aware that anti-Communism, defense and the American alliance had lost their drawing power, some of Labor's opponents switched to a "law and order" campaign against "the permissive society...

...Mostly they were in the areas of foreign affairs and civil rights...

...Whitlam, a 56-year-old lawyer who has some of the same leadership qualities as Menzies, a sharp intellect, and enormous Self-confidence, was better attuned to the times than the LCP coalition, hobbled by the minority Country party, a rural bloc that has had a disproportionate influence on the nation's development in the past...

...But in 1971 McMahon became Prime Minister, following a series of rather sordid personality Sam Lipski...

...When President Nixon began his pullout from Vietnam, announced his new low-profile policy, and then topped it off with the Peking and Moscow summits, he not only signed the LCP death warrant but made Labor respectable...

...Under the hapless William McMahon, the LCP bloc appeared tired, intellectually bankrupt, and unable to cope with the changing world outside...

...Although Whitlam, a pragmatic technocrat, did not mention the word "socialism" once in his campaign, he is committed to Left-liberal policies in the areas of censorship, sexual behavior, marijuana, abortion, and treatment of the native aborigines...

...In quick succession, Whitlam withdrew the Australian ambassador from Taiwan, recognized China and East Germany, called the last remaining military advisers home from Vietnam (the ground troops had returned under the McMahon government a year earlier), ended all military (but not economic) aid to Saigon, and reversed Australian voting patterns at the United Nations on Rhodesia, South Africa and all other issues that might suggest white racist attitudes...

...There was something felicitous about the chance conjunction of these two events the one political, the other cultural...

...Whitlam has some advantages: He starts off with an expanding economy, still enjoying the benefits of the enormous natural resources discovered during the past decade...

...Whitlam has pledged to set up new guidelines further restricting all foreign takeovers of Australian enterprises...

...And he broke precedent by sending President Nixon a personal letter protesting the resumption of massive bombing over North Vietnam...

...In all of his foreign policy initiatives Whitlam is expected to work in close liaison with the new Labor Prime Minister of New Zealand, Norman E. Kirk, who was elected the same day as Whitlam...

...Some of the hardest decisions lie ahead, though, and a radio address by the Prime Minister shortly before Christmas may offer the best clues to their likely direction...

...Nothing dramatized the collapse of all the old verities more than Whitlam's 1971 visit to Peking...

...he talks like an economic nationalist...

...During his first two weeks in office, Whitlam ran the country with only the help of his deputy, Lance Barnard, now Defense Minister...

...their slowly-won postwar affluence seemed vulnerable to "Socialism," and the Labor party appeared to be controlled by a handful of powerful Communist trade unionists...

...a few days later it was revealed that Henry Kissinger had been secretly in Peking at the same time to negotiate Nixon's visit...

...He has considerable room for maneuver even on those matters of greatest concern to the Left: American investment and secret military bases...

...Whitlam also appears to be in command of events instead of their captive, as his predecessors so often were...

...Average citizens, traditionally cynical and apolitical, flocked to campaign meetings and argued incessantly about the candidates in pubs, offices and on the trams...

...Furthermore, if the Labor government is serious about "the need to look to ourselves," it will have to strengthen its naval and air support forces, acquire highspeed patrol craft for its long coastline, and develop effective antisubmarine and amphibious capabilities...

...The balance of payments and foreign reserve figures are similarly favorable, a troubling 6 per cent annual inflation rate and deficient productivity notwithstanding...

...Perhaps the most intriguing part of Whitlam's speech, however, was his assertion of a "profound belief" that Vietnam had not ended America's role in Southern Asia: "It ended the destructive part of that role, and we believe that a new, better and magnificently constructive role lies ahead for the United States, if only we in the region can encourage the American people the most generous, most idealistic people in history?to accept this new role...

...As if unable to contain themselves after waiting so long for power, the two Labor leaders issued decisions at the rate of one every three working hours...

...In time, anti-Communism became simply an emotional catch-cry manipulated by the LCP leadership, and its political persuasiveness was affected by the course of the Cold War and later the Vietnam War...

...An orchestra played popular classics for an invited audience of construction workers and their families, who joined the sound engineers in pronouncing the acoustics perfect...

...Whitlam also ratified the nuclear nonproliferation treaty and began planning more dramatic protests against French atomic tests in the Pacific...

...There will be no decisive change in relations with Washington, and the anzus (Australia-New Zealand-United States) Pact will remain "the crucial treaty" for the region...

...Despite talk of a landslide, Whitlam and the ALP only increased their vote by a shade under 3 per cent...

...Most voters, especially younger ones, felt that these issues were largely irrelevant...

...The scores of announcements that followed were not all as dramatic, but many contained the same mixture of symbolic gesture and genuine policy shift...

...The permanent garrison of Australian troops in Malaysia and Singapore will come home in 1974, but small air and naval detachments may remain stationed there as part of the Five Power (Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Singapore, Malaysia) agreements...

...Kirk indicated in his campaign that he would pull New Zealand out of SEATO, and Whitlam has discussed the possibility of converting that military alliance into a framework for a new regional economic unit...

...squabbles over the party's leadership that exposed the LCP as a collection of mostly hollow men...

...Inevitably, the letdown will come, yet as one Melbourne editor put it: "It's a great act while it lasts...

...Many Australians took the external threat very seriously because they saw themselves as a beleaguered white European enclave in Asia and recalled fighting a cruel war against a Japan that nearly invaded them...

...Whit-lam also wants Australian troops to participate regularly in exercises with those of neighboring Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines, as well as Malaysia and Singapore...

...Each day brought banner headlines, keeping many Australians aroused, to their surprise, during the normally hot and drowsy Christmas holidays...

...It may work...

...he has revalued the Australian dollar to stem the huge inflow of capital...

...By continuing to act as if Australia was still an agricultural society rather than one of the most highly urbanized countries in the world, the LCP gave Whitlam his best campaign issue: the quality of life in the cities...

...He stopped wheat sales to Rhodesia, banned all segregated sporting teams (i.e...

...A nine-seat majority is comfortable enough, however, and the change in government after a generation is far more significant politically than the relatively small shift in voter preference might suggest...

...Although Whitlam appears ready to take the Nixon Doctrine at its word, his basic pro-Americanism is not shared by the Left wing of his party, and some cooperative projects for example, the exchanging of political and military intelligence may run into opposition...

...This unprecedented two-man government was an early indication that Whitlam intends to be a "presidential" prime minister, rather than a "cabinet" leader...

...While Whitlam is not planning any drastic cuts in the defense budget?the standing Army will come down from 42,000 to 31,000 volunteers neither is he likely to increase expenditures, regardless of what his chiefs of staff advise...

...Most Australians seem to be enjoying it...

...They worried about internal subversion, too, because of their memories of crippling industrial strikes and sabotage fomented by Communist unions in the '40s...

...But neither leader has yet shown any sign of haste to act against the present treaty...

...One major question is whether Whitlam can devise a credible defense policy to match his rhetoric of self-reliance in the era of the Nixon Doctrine...

...The Vietnam War prolonged the potency of anti-Communism as a political weapon...

...Australia still exhibits some of the depressing features of a provincial, transplanted, imitative, and formerly colonial society, but there is a tangible surge of change...

...After a meeting with Chou En-lai, he was denounced by McMahon for threatening the American alliance...

...The foreign policy initiatives were consistent with Whitlam's expressed intention to make Australia more independent, less militarily oriented, and free from racism...

...Sir Robert Menzies was able to stay in power, even during a serious economic recession, by virtue of his skill at a distinctively Australian sport, "kicking the Communist can...

...South Africa) from visiting Australia, and barred skin color as a consideration in the admission of prospective settlers, thus ending the "White Australia" immigration policy...

...Sir Robert Menzies, who was Prime Minister for 17 years until his retirement in 1966...

...Canberra will "not abandon her obligations" to neighbors and allies...

...The reason is political: Australians no longer believe themselves threatened by an external enemy...

...Despite more sophisticated media coverage and a greater acceptance of divergent lifestyles, the vast majority of young Australians remain conservative in outlook and aspiration...

...installations (some provide communications for Polaris submarines, others are part of early-warning satellite networks), blandly noting he and his Defense Minister have all the information they want...

...They now have 67 seats in the 125-member Parliament, against the LCP's 58...

...But it depends on usAll of us in this region As much as on them...

...Australia is considering expanding its trading relationship with Japan, the nation's best customer and a large investor in the development of its natural resources...

...The Labor victory upset a whole constellation of assumptions that had shaped public debate and Australian policy since the reign of the LCP's father-figure...

...The first thing that struck an Australian returning home for an extended visit after four years in Washington was the remarkably widespread sense of excitement about politics...

...they want better working conditions, easier mortgage financing, a more effective educational system, cleaner beaches, and cities designed for the enjoyment of their leisure time...

...He has more goodwill and hope going for him than any other postwar leader...

...He restored a passport to journalist Wilfrid Burchett, an Australian who has often acted as a Western go-between for Asian Communist governments, and withdrew one from an Australian working for the Rhodesian government...

...Whitlam's answer is to get the Federal government deeply involved in urban planning, financing and decentralizing...

...This, his confidants say, is why he was particularly disturbed at Nixon's resumption of heavy bombing, an action that makes it more difficult for a Labor prime minister to praise the generosity and idealism of Americans...

...So far his departures have received considerable support in the Foreign Ministry and among scholars and commentators...

...This brings us to conceivably the most important and certainly the most interesting change in the Australian scene: the decline of anti-Communism as a force in national politics...

...The directors can now proceed confidently with the Opera House's planned opening next September, $100 million and 15 years after it was begun...

...Whitlam gave draft resisters amnesty, released conscientious objectors imprisoned by the previous government, and raised the possibility of providing them with compensation for the time and income lost...

...THE AUSTRALIAN HOUSE OF PARLIAMENT AT CANBERRA Much of this was predictable from Whitlam's campaign promises, but it was executed with a few extra stylistic flourishes of particular resonance in Australia...

...There was a sudden rush of cartoons in Australian newspapers showing a bewildered McMahon caught with his pants down around his political ankles...

...Having promised to replace God Save the Queen as the national authem with an Australian composition, Whit-lam went on to end the system of Queens Honors requiring the Canberra government to recommend Australians to Buckingham Palace for knighthoods and other Imperial titles...

...Roughly 90 per cent live in sprawling suburbs around large urban concentrations...

...In passports and official documents Australians will no longer call themselves "British Subjects," and the British Monarchy, already a fading anachronism, will become even less important in the future...

...The coalition never recovered, and finally the electorate agreed with Whitlam that "it was time...

...But trying to portray Whitlam as the harbinger of pornography, abortion, marijuana, and homosexuality failed...

...They seemed to mark important turning points in postwar Australian history, to reflect the nation's rapidly developing sense of identity, social maturity and optimism about the future...

...For awhile, Harold Holt, and then John Gorton, held back the flood...

...Even so, the election was much closer than early reports indicated...

...Moreover, they began to organize themselves into a wide variety of interest groups: women, doctors, actors, conservationists, etc...

...The abolition of the draft in a high-employment economy may jeopardize the military's ability to maintain any reasonable level of combat readiness, and make redundant large numbers of officers and specialists...

...and he has so far avoided the issue of secrecy at U.S...

...The pace was set within 30 minutes of Whitlam's swearing-in ceremony, when he announced his decision to abolish the draft...

...Still, the anti-American Left is not likely to pose too many problems for Whitlam during a honeymoon period that in view of the long wait in the political wilderness should continue through most of 1973...

...But it may also prove a replay of America's Great Society programs of the '60s...

...He merged the external threat of Asian, especially Chinese, Communism, with an internal danger of subversion by the militant, Communist-dominated trade unions, whom he constantly linked to the Labor party...

...AFTER TWO DECADES OF CONSERVATISM Changing the Face of Australia BY SAM LIPSKI Canberra The day before the Australian Labor party (ALP) met here to choose the ministers of the country's first full Labor government in 23 years, six pistol shots were fired to test the acoustics of the new Sydney Opera House, a stunning, soaring piece of architecture that juts out into that city's harbor...

...The new Labor Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, exploited this mood to wrest power last December 2 from the Liberal-Country party (LCP), a conservative coalition that came to Canberra in 1949 and up to a year ago looked as though it would remain there until Judgment Day...

...Washington correspondent for the Australian, has just returned from a visit down under...

...Introduced in the 1960s to insure that Australia could meet its commitments in Vietnam About 9,000 troops were there at the height of the involvement conscription had become a more controversial and divisive issue than the war itself...

...The tide began to turn against the LCP soon after Menzies stepped down...

...Apparently intended to assure Australia's allies that radicals had not taken over Canberra and the government would maintain a sense of continuity in foreign affairs, Whitlam's speech included the following central points: Australia's first priority is its relationship with Indonesia, one of the "crucial factors which will determine the future of the South West Pacific for the rest of this century...