Why That Old Whitlam Fire Just Won't Die

by Alan Ramsey - Sydney Morning Herald

Every year the people at National Archives release 12 months of official cabinet papers under the Commonwealth's 30-year rule. For example, in 11 days' time, on January 1, you'll be able to read the cabinet records of 1975, the Whitlam Labor government's tumultuous last year in office. These were released, under strict embargo, to reporters on Tuesday of last week, the idea being the press is given time to sift the relevant truckload of papers before their general release.

At last week's press conference by the archives people on the embargoed release, Geoffrey Barker of The Australian Financial Review asked the bureaucrat hosting the conference: "Where is Ian Hancock?" The official, after a brief pause, said Hancock had "retired".

The reply will surely have amused him greatly.

Ian Hancock was, for 10 years, the archives's consultant historian on the annual release. He'd be there at the embargoed press conference each year to give his rundown on the year in question, and to introduce some former politician or senior bureaucrat of the era to talk about some aspect of the year under review. Two years ago that politician was Gough Whitlam, who brought with him Graham Freudenberg, his celebrated speechwriter.

The year under review was 1973, Whitlam Labor's first year in government. The archives press conference went off well that year.

But not the next year. Whitlam turned up yet again for the 1974 release, this time with John Menadue, a former Whitlam staffer and Murdoch News Ltd executive whom Whitlam had appointed head of the prime minister's department in 1974. In fact, archives had invited Menadue, and when Whitlam insisted, despite Hancock's opposition, that he accompany Menadue, the archives's new director-general, Ross Gibbs, invited Whitlam a second time.

The press conference that year did not go well.

Hancock did his usual briefing rundown, then left. Reporters were told by archives at the time that Hancock had "another engagement". Hancock had nothing of the sort. He simply sat outside the conference room - where he was later seen, quite openly - while Whitlam, inside, bagged Hancock to reporters for "the crap" he'd just given them.

You might recall that 1974 was the year Whitlam and a handful of his senior ministers set about what became the insanity of the politically crippling loans affair. Whitlam felt Hancock's briefing 30 years later had simply regurgitated what Whitlam likes to call "the Treasury line" - that is, Treasury, when it learnt the Labor government was seeking unofficial overseas loans, was "appalled and violently opposed".

Hancock is out of Canberra at the moment, apparently researching a book, but one of his colleagues said yesterday: "Ian believes archives decided he was 'being political' because Gough had convinced them. Whatever, the new director decided last year to advertise, for the first time, for a consultant historian to brief on the cabinet papers release this year, and Ian simply chose not to apply.

"Don't be taken in by this nonsense he 'retired'. Ian felt 10 years was long enough, but his decision was compounded by what he saw as Gough's politicising of the release of cabinet papers as they related to his government. He felt all Gough did was turn the whole thing into a political defence of himself and of Labor."

Whitlam was back a third time last week for this year's 1975 release.

This time Gibbs invited both Whitlam and his 1975 Liberal usurper, Malcolm Fraser. Responding to a phone call, Fraser said yesterday he'd withdrawn late after initially accepting. He'd thought better of it, he said. I asked Whitlam if he'd "blackballed" Hancock.

No, Whitlam replied, "but I'm glad he wasn't asked to be there this year". He admitted he'd "got stuck into him last year" because Hancock, he felt, had "delivered the Treasury line". And, yes, he might have referred to Hancock's "crap" - "something like that. I'm not sure."

I can't tell you about the cabinet papers. They're embargoed until January 1. What I can tell you is Whitlam distributed last week an extraordinary letter written, he said, by a nephew of Sir Roden Cutler, governor of NSW at the time of John Kerr's dismissal of Whitlam's government 30 years ago.

The letter, dated November 8 this year, is signed "David Tyrer, BA". No official embargo applies, of course. The letter begins: "Dear Mr Whitlam, with a sense of history and duty, I am writing to you with new information" about Kerr's actions in sacking Labor in 1975, and it "concerns information given to me by my uncle, Sir Roden Cutler".

Three pages detail his nephew's claims of Cutler's knowledge of Kerr's intentions, and of Cutler's "forceful" advice that Kerr "must" first advise Whitlam of what he planned to do. Cutler went to his grave saying nothing. Now we get yet more fuel for an old fire from a dead man. Fortuitous, indeed.

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