Whitlam argued that Beazley ran an excellent campaign, but that the ALP had failed to stake out alternative positions, including refugee policy. He praised Simon Crean for having made a good start as ALP Leader-elect by insisting on new faces for the front bench.
This is the full text of Whitlam's interview with Laurie Oakes.
Oakes:
Morning,
Jim. Mr Whitlam, welcome back to the programme. Now, we
invited you here partly because of your legend status but also
because of your expertise, what Sir Robert Menzies called, the
gentle art of Opposition. Why do you think Labor failed? Why
did it lose the election?
Whitlam:
They should have acted for the last five years as
well as they did for the last five weeks. And the two
principle reasons is the only time the public ever watches
parliament is the cover of question time in the House of
Representatives. And we've followed the disastrous policy of
not letting anybody in the Opposition ask a question unless
the Whip gives permission and the text.
Oakes:
So,
there should be less discipline in the party, do you
think?
Whitlam:
Well, at least half the questions ought
to be spontaneous. The other thing about that is, of course,
that Kim and Simon hogged question time and they directed all
their questions against the two smartest blokes in
government.
Oakes:
Howard and
Costello.
Whitlam:
Howard and Costello, and they
scarcely ever won. We never gained a vote, in my opinion, in
the last five years from broadcast question
time.
Oakes:
Can I ask you about a few specific
things. How important is the boat people
issue?
Whitlam:
It was absolutely crucial. From the
onset of the election campaign until the last day itself.
Oakes:
Could Labor have taken any other stand than
the one it did? The me-too stand?
Whitlam:
Of course it
should have but it should have taken it in good time. I mean,
the boat people - refugees - there were two United Nations
conventions on that. One was 1951 to cover the people who were
displaced during the Second World War and Australia followed a
very honourable and effective path in taking refugees,
hundreds of thousand of the, millions.
Then there was
an amendment, a protocol, in '67 which applied the same
principles to people who were refugees but not just from the
Second World War and then the Menzies government didn't ratify
that. My government did in '73 and the New Zealand Labor
government at the same time.
Oakes:
Is that why
you're so disappointed in Kim Beazley's approach to this? You
wrote to him expressing disappointment.
Whitlam:
Yes I
did and quite clearly ... see the party policy had said Labor
will ensure that Australia's international obligations towards
asylum seekers and refugees are met. And Labor will positively
promote the rights of refugees and asylum seekers. And we
never took any step in the parliament to urge the government
to ratify, or to ask all our neighbours, to ratify the 1967
refugees convention.
Oakes:
What about the argument
that if Labor had appeared more sympathetic to the boat
people, to the refugees, they would have had an even worse
loss?
Whitlam:
Oh, yes, having neglected it, having
neglected it. But see, the point is this, that refugees
protocol of '67 has been adopted by a hundred and thirty-two
countries in addition to Australia and New Zealand. And the
whole of the area between the Mediterranean and Australasia,
that is the sea and air routes by which Iraqi and Afghan
refugees come, there's the only four countries that have
belonged to it - Egypt, Israel, Turkey and Iran.
And
there are seven Commonwealth countries and we meet them every
two years. And Howard never ... his government never
approached any of those Commonwealth countries - Pakistan,
India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar or Burma, Malaysia and
Singapore. Never asked any of them and it's never been on the
agenda of CHOGM. It wasn't on the agenda of the CHOGM which
has just been postponed till March.
Oakes:
But your
argument that...
Whitlam:
And we never asked any
questions about them.
Oakes:
But your argument that
Labor didn't prepare the way for a proper policy
...
Whitlam:
Yeah.
Oakes:
... on this relates
to our next question. Do you think that Kim Beazley failed to
stake out a position on a whole range of things? Did he fail
in the job of letting people know what he stood for until too
late?
Whitlam:
Yes, I must say I think he did because
during the campaign it was excellent but to say for five weeks
what you stand for, he should have done that for five months
or five years. And the national party conference in 2000 was
excellent. It stated all these things. But we, for instance,
on the boat people, we never urged our neighbours and
Commonwealth countries to do what we'd all done on the
Vietnamese.
Oakes:
John Howard gave you a
semi-endorsement. He said of you, "although I thought he was a
terrible prime minister, Gough Whitlam was very successful as
a Labor Opposition leader because he set out to present an
alternative program and he built over a period of years an
alternative point of view."
Whitlam:
What Howard said
is completely correct, except for the first half dozen
words.
Oakes:
(Laughs) And did Kim Beazley fail on
that second half?
Whitlam:
Well, it's not ... I'm not
going to blame Beazley because Beazley is a capable and decent
person, and that farewell speech which he made was as good a
speech as I've ever heard a political leader
give.
Oakes:
I'll rephrase it, did Labor then forget
what you taught them about Opposition?
Whitlam:
Yes,
they did, they did. And of course, like Dunstan, I put things
on the agenda and argued them and persuaded the public. But,
of course, you know, Beazley's confidants, that group around
him, were too self-centred, too archaic. And of course, during
the campaign he was guarded by two people - John Faulkner, who
is unexcelled in dedication and diligence and decency,
effectiveness in the parliamentary Labor Party and Stephen
Smith, who in the last year or so has cast off the more odious
aspects of the Western Australian right. That is, they were
two very good minders.
Oakes:
Were they too
effective?
Whitlam:
No, I don't think the campaign, the
five weeks, could have been done better. But it's this larger
number of confidants that wrecked the show for over five
years.
Oakes:
You used to say that you've got to
crash through or you've got to crash. Does Labor need to take
more risks to try and crash through?
Whitlam:
Well,
they do, but Simon Crean I must say is doing very well. He has
knocked a few heads together and choosing people not on
seniority but on capacity.
Oakes:
He's had to use
the factions to get what he wants. Does he need to do a
Whitlam and reform the machine, the structure of the
party?
Whitlam:
I would think so, but as he's been
going in the last week I think he's quite capable of doing
that.
Oakes:
Does he need to do a Blair and weaken
the control of the unions on the party?
Whitlam:
It's
not just ... the point is that unionists should have a say in
the Labor Party not just because they are nominated by a
union, but because... certainly unionists should have a say in
the Labor Party but they should do it as members of the Labor
Party, not just as members of an
organisation.
Oakes:
So how can Crean bring that
about?
Whitlam:
Gradually, but I think it can be done.
I mean, he's going very well so far on loosening the control
of ... by some unions.
Oakes:
Now, he ... his
background as former head of the trade union movement, former
president of the ACTU, does that mean that he's likely to be
captive? Or does that mean that he ...
Whitlam:
No, it
doesn't.
Oakes:
... that he has a better chance of
breaking the type?
Whitlam:
As people always say, there
are four former presidents of the ACTU in the federal
parliamentary Labor Party, but only one of them was ever a
unionist, one of the Fergusons. The other three, lawyers, and
they were union bureaucrats. I mean, they were like ... you
can't say that Hawke was ever on the shop floor or at a
bench.
Oakes:
No, not often.
Whitlam:
Nor
Crean.
Oakes:
And certainly not Jenny
George.
Whitlam:
Nor Jenny George. But they're all very
competent people. And they were good public servants, very
good.
Oakes:
Now, you were ... in your years in
parliament, represented Werriwa in western
Sydney.
Whitlam:
Yeah.
Oakes:
Why do think
western Sydney is now such hostile territory for the Labor
Party?
Whitlam:
Because too many of the people have
been chosen by the factions and there's not been enough input
from the electors in those areas. So the very sad thing is so
many of the members of the federal and state parliament from
those areas aren't on the front bench and in most cases
shouldn't be.
Oakes:
No, certainly the crop of
talent from New South Wales leaves a fair bit to be
desired.
Whitlam:
It is ... one has to say that the New
South Wales machine has fallen down on choosing people who
will be not only effective in their electorates but effective
in the parliament.
Oakes:
Now, Labor has trouble
getting people like that. You recruited some high powered
people when you were Opposition leader, people like Rex
Patterson, Bill Morrison. How can Simon Crean do that? How can
he break this idea that if you're not a member of the party
for years you can't be a ... selected.
Whitlam:
Well,
he's doing it already. You look at the women, quite a number
that obviously he's encouraged the factions and the state
branches and the factions in the state branches to endorse. I
mean, the selection so far has been very good. There's women
and a few men too that obviously should have been on the front
bench and they now will be. See the trouble is thirty people
are on the front bench, fourteen of them have been ministers.
Most of those fourteen will never be ministers again and Crean
realises that. Crean has done very well so
far.
Oakes:
Just to finish the western Sydney issue,
do you think the problem is more the people Labor selects than
the fact the areas have changed and become more
aspirational?
Whitlam:
Oh, it's both, it's both. For
instance, there has been before One Nation came in and of
course was taken over by Howard, there were a great number of
people there who were against further immigration. And it's
quite absurd. See, we've had ... largely in that area there
are about a hundred and seventy-five thousand Australians,
very largely in that area who were born in
Vietnam.
Oakes:
Yes.
Whitlam:
Two hundred and
twenty-five thousand living everywhere in Australia who were
born in China. About a hundred and twenty thousand Australians
were born in the Philippines.
Oakes:
But it seems
to be migrant Australians who were perhaps stronger than many
others against the asylum seekers.
Whitlam:
There is
partly that. One must say that some of the Australians who or
whose parents came here after the Second World War not
particularly keen on those that came after Vietnam, where of
course we ought to have taken refugees because we were
responsible for the situation. And then similarly, I mean if
you endorse Desert Storm you really ought to take some of the
Iraqi refugees.
Oakes:
We're almost out of time, but
the twentieth anniversary program seems like an appropriate
occasion to get away from current issues just briefly and ask
you about your own legacy. I mean, how do you want to be
remembered?
Whitlam:
I think I recognised what people
could do under the constitution. What journos always forget
is, for instance, that in the 1946 referendum the federal
parliament was given jurisdiction over mental, medical and
dental services. And you journos let some of the people get
away with saying, oh, hospitals and health, they're state
matters - they're not.
Oakes:
Well, the Prime
Minister used that argument in the campaign.
Whitlam:
Yes I know and it was crap. It was incorrect.
Oakes:
(Laughs)
Whitlam:
But did any of you
tackle him on it? Since 1946 medical and dental services have
been a federal jurisdiction which it shares with the states.
You wouldn't have had Westmead Hospital if we hadn't said to
Askin, well if you don't get on with it we'll resume it and
conduct it. And we would have.
Oakes:
A quick final
question. Do you acknowledge that Sir John Kerr helped give
you your place in history?
Whitlam:
I think I've made
his place in history...(smiles)
Oakes:
I think that's
true (laughs). Mr Whitlam, we thank you.
Whitlam:
Thanks.
The man who is regarded as the best example of how to propound policies, achieve internal party reform and persuade the public to adopt new directions, the 85-year-old former Labor Prime Mininster, Gough Whitlam, has spoken about the ALP's loss in the 2001 federal election.