The Dismissal by Troy Bramston

Author:Troy Bramston
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781760142032
Publisher: Penguin Group Australia
Published: 2015-10-11T16:00:00+00:00

Eggleton’s record says the shadow cabinet was ‘united and determined’ to stay on course. But there was ‘some disquiet at the doubts and uncertainties’ at the grassroots of the parties. Tactics were agreed in relation to media and the party base. But Eggleton’s record of the 21 October shadow cabinet meeting shows a more aggressive outlook with ‘complete solidarity’ backed by the view that ‘far from weakening in their resolve, they were twice as firm as they were when they made their original decision last week’.6

Eggleton said of Fraser: ‘Once he had made up his mind about something he was hard to move.’7 Fraser’s judgement was that bad polls over supply were unavoidable, but once the crisis was resolved and an election called, the opposition’s polling dominance would return. This is exactly what happened. Labor’s pollster, Rod Cameron from ANOP, told Labor’s national secretary David Combe that the government must not confuse public support on the supply issue with its standing in an election. They were separate: Labor would still lose an election.8

Labor’s tactic was to highlight the public grief that would arise from the Senate’s action. From the start Treasurer Bill Hayden hammered home the consequences: ‘The economy of this country, if the present course of action which the Opposition has set in train is pursued, will get out of hand, there will be a major economic collapse, a substantial number of enterprises in the corporate sector will fail, there will be an upsurge in unemployment and generally there will be the worst deepening of the recession that we have seen at any time since the great Depression of the 1930s . . . Aged persons hostels, aged and disabled persons homes, organisations for assistance to the handicapped . . . will not obtain the money necessary to pay the people who provide the services . . . Hospital services will grind down . . . Education in the states will be short of some $360 million at least . . . People throughout the country will find that they will not be able to obtain their Medibank medical benefits.’9

The question of ‘who’s to blame’ was pivotal. Convinced he was prevailing, Whitlam’s mood became more dogmatic. On 21 October, during the second great parliamentary debate over supply, Whitlam said Fraser’s action, if successful, would divide the nation ‘and leave a legacy of bitterness unequalled since 1916’, a reference to the conscription plebiscite. Hardening his position, Whitlam ruled out not just any House of Representatives election as sought by Fraser but any half-senate election ‘until this constitutional issue is settled’. Whitlam felt he was turning the screws on Fraser, denying Fraser anything but ignominious retreat.

Standing to his full height on the floor of parliament, with the pent-up passion of the Labor benches behind him, Whitlam, in words drafted by Graham Freudenberg, now elevated the historical dimensions of the contest: ‘The message from the Senate constitutes an act of constitutional aggression . . . Not for the first time is government

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