Don Dunstan by Angela Woollacott

Author:Angela Woollacott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2019-06-22T00:00:00+00:00

10

Adelaide is not Canberra

The Dunstan government received an immense gift ahead of its campaign for the state election on 10 March 1973: the Liberal Party split. Steele Hall had formed the Liberal Movement, a more progressive group that, confusingly, stayed within the Liberal Party but ran its own campaign. The new Liberal leader, Bruce Eastick, was a less formidable foe. With its opponents in disarray, the government ran on its own record. Under the banner ‘SA’s doing well—with Labor!’, ALP campaign literature boasted of ‘12 new hospital projects, 14 new community welfare offices, 19,610 new homes built, 43 new industrial projects, 498 new pensioner flats, 35 new National Parks, 2253 new classrooms, 3000 new teachers’. Molly Byrne, Labor MP for Tea Tree Gully in north-east Adelaide, pointed to the new Modbury Hospital and claimed that at last ‘South Australia is starting to catch up on social services’.1 In his own electorate, Dunstan capitalised on the brand-new Whitlam government to explain to voters all of the new pension entitlements and social-welfare benefits, and some cuts to rates and taxes, occurring from combined federal and state reforms.2

By this time, Dunstan held the portfolios of Treasury, Mines, and Development, showing his focus on the economy. Again, he campaigned hard around the state. He was particularly disappointed that, despite capital investments and his best efforts in the Riverland, the ALP again lost the seat of Chaffey. It seemed as though the progressive Dunstan just could not get traction in the country seats, no matter how hard he tried.3 Nevertheless, it was a historic victory—the first time ever that a Labor government in South Australia was returned to power. The resulting numbers in the House of Assembly were 26 seats to Labor, 20 to the LCL and a single seat to the Country Party. Labor received 51.5 per cent of primary votes. In the Legislative Council, the ALP achieved a significant increase, with six out of the twenty seats; it was still a minority, but a large enough gain to enable them to move to the next stage of electoral reform for the upper house.4 For Dunstan personally, it was gratifying confirmation that he well and truly held the reins.

Dunstan’s growing national profile was reflected in January 1973, shortly before the election, when new women’s magazine Cleo featured him as ‘the informal Premier’. Journalist Anne Woodham encapsulated Dunstan as ‘the enfant terrible who allows convicted draft resisters to give Press conferences and address rallies from prison gates’. She dubbed him ‘our answer to [Pierre] Trudeau—urbane but hip; patron of the arts; fashion dandy (he wore a gold dress suit to a ballet premiere); small “l” liberal’. Further, she likened him to ‘St George against the dragons of pollution, urbanisation, consumer exploitation, intolerance, racism’ and called him ‘the Clean Broom’ who has ‘led South Australia into the 20th century’.5 But when she accompanied him to a factory canteen meeting at the Adelaide Ship Construction yards, she thought the 500 working men who listened to his clear

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.