On the 13th of November in 1972 at the Blacktown Civic Centre, Gough Whitlam, having paused momentarily to touch Graham Freudenberg on the shoulder, walked on to the stage and uttered the words ‘Men and Women of Australia'.
These are words that continue to stir the Australian soul. They continue to lift our spirit, they continue to spur us to action because within the cadence of these few words and of the poetry and the prose that followed, we were animated towards hope.
Hope that the Australian political project could be something more than the tawdry accretion of greed and self interest.
Every Australian of a certain age and certainly everyone here remembers the optimism and the hope that that moment generated. As well as the suspense which then ensued. Could our hopes and our dreams of a better world, of a fairer world, of a more prosperous world for all and not just for some, be made into a reality?
Or was it instead all cruel illusion as the conservatives and their singularly dismal political project would always have us believe. The answer is as follows: that the prospect of measurable human progress, of social progress, of economic progress, of political progress does lie within our political reach.
It does lie within our political power so long as our political resolve remains firm. For were it not so, and were the conservatives instead right for the century or more history now of our federation, then why is it that we have things called an aged pension? Why is it that we have things called workers compensation?
Why is it that we have things called the Racial Discrimination Act? Why is it that we have universal education? Why is it that we have universal health insurance? For if the conservatives were right and this was all a matter of cruel illusion, none of these things would have changed. And they have and they have been achieved through the agency of progressive politics.
You see, in the history of this nation, it has invariably fallen to us to be the builders and to them to be the ones that tear down. We seek to unite, they seek to divide. We seek to include, they often seek to exclude.
Our position, our project, our prospect is a project of positive hope; theirs often constructed on the basis of negative fear.
There was an exchange recently, unreported and unremarked on in the House of Representatives, where in what I thought was light-hearted banter with a colleague of mine on the other side of the House, I asked this question, half rhetorically, half seriously, ‘What is it that unites the Liberal Party?'
The answer from the manager of opposition business was ‘what unites the Liberal party is our hatred of the Labor party'.
Therein lies more than a kernel of truth. Ours is a positive project; theirs, the reverse. And on days such as this, it is important to reflect on that core continuing kernel of truth which underpins so much of the divide in Australian politics this last century. And that of course brings us back to Whitlam.
It brings us back to the period in which Whitlam was in power - cut short, those two years and 11 months of Government ushered in a period of progressive change that despite their desperation and determination to do so, the conservatives more than 35 years later have never managed to demolish.
I want you to think of those achievements for just a moment. The transformation of education in Australia, of which I am one beneficiary. I am the product of a Whitlam education. Were it not for Whitlam's education reforms, I doubt that I would have ever darkened the doors of a university. For which Gough, I thank you.
The creation of a national health insurance scheme. The focus on Indigenous Australians. The focus on urban development and the future of our cities. And the change that caught my attention as an earnest teenager in the backblocks of Queensland, the recognition of China and the great helmsman's wider engagement of Asia.
If you reflect on each of those achievements and their impact over time, what is clear about all of them was that EG Whitlam was ahead of his time, well ahead of his time. Or, to use the word of our time, ahead of the curve, well ahead of the curve.
Gough Whitlam woke Australians from a long, long slumber and doze that were the Menzies period. And Gough Whitlam fulfils so much of the promise he set out in that great speech at his campaign launch in November of 1972.
But just here I am getting a little ahead of myself because Gough's speech and the program it set out is the point at which Jenny Hocking's momentous new biography ends, and this in fact is the book's great strength.
It lets us see who Gough Whitlam the person was before he became Gough Whitlam the politician. And how this progressive agenda was in fact formed. We learn a lot along the way through the pages of this biography. And could I say it is an elegantly written and elegantly crafted biography.
Some of what we discover is surprising, like the fact that Gough is a member of that peculiar elite segment of Australian society, the convict aristocracy - his great grandfather having been jailed for forgery. A more elevated form of the felony of the petty theft that my own convict forebears were sent down for. But then again, the Whitlams were always a cut above the rest.
And the fact that he comes from a long line of what he himself is affectionately referred to from time to time as ‘Bible-bashing bastards'. Sin and salvation, those hardy perennials of the universal human story, and of the story of this land, Australia.
Some of the book's revelations of course, are less surprising. Like the story of how his mother, finding her toddler Gough sobbing in her room, asking him what was the matter, only to be told that he'd just learned that Persephone, daughter of Zeus, wife of Hades and queen of the underworld, had been taken away from her parents - and that made him very sad.
You might say in a normal Australian household, toddlers may become saddened by a perhaps the loss of a ball, or someone stole my blocks. Only a toddler like Gough could have been saddened by the unfortunate twists of Greek mythology. But therein lies the man.
And then there's the revelation that while the baby Gough was slow to speak, when he did he not only skipped baby talk but spoke in complete sentences, presumably in the active voice, with a subject, an object, a verb and where appropriate, Latin declensions. And remarkably, all this occurring before Graham Freudenberg was even born! And the many linguistic adornments that Graham would later provide, to our own, our very own Pericles.
Imagine had Gough, with his adoration of classical languages, had been born a Catholic. A career in the Roman Curia would have been almost inevitable. Culminating at least in the red cap if not going all the way to the white.
That will get me into strife too.
As this precocious youth became a man, Jenny's book chronicles how his world outlook was also formed. This is where this biography comes into its own. It points out the importance of growing up in Canberra and the connections of his father, the Commonwealth solicitor-general, to his belief in potentialities of National Government and what National Government could do in the nation's interest.
And the profound influence of his war service. One day would find him navigating his Ventura bomber through the Japanese flak over Timor and the next would find him agitating with his squadron leader for support for the 1944 war powers referendum, resolving that the war when it ended must usher in a better world.
These are genuine renaissance qualities, here in the Antipodes, the art of war and the even more taxing art of constructing the peace. Jenny Hockings' book describes in detail how those war time experiences led Gough to the great political theme that became known as Whitlamism. His associations with the people of Gove and Cooktown had contributed to the development of his understanding of the needs of indigenous Australians. His contact with New Guinea, Indonesia and the Philippines which gave him his first insights into the need to put the fading colonial empires in our region out of their misery once and for all. And his deep admiration for the Curtin Government and its efforts to extend Commonwealth powers for the task of post war reconstruction which made him a lifelong constitutional reformer.
Most of all, beyond all these particular projects, we get a sense of how that war time experience gave him courage, audacity and determination. Crash through or crash, these are qualities of character and those qualities of character have served this leader well.
When you have flown through anti aircraft fire scanning the skies anxiously for marauding Zeroes and guided your bullet-riddled plane back to the tiny remote airstrip on only one engine, taking on the sectarian culture of Arthur Calwell, Eddie Ward and the Victorian Trade Union Defence Committee look like a walk in the grass. Probably these things did not hold many terrors for E G Whitlam.
So Gough took on the big fights within our party, fights which have been forgotten by many but which are in the record. Big fights over the US alliance, State aid for schools, the White Australia policy and in each of these fights, in each of these great policy debates Gough Whitlam prevailed.
The end product of this journey through war and peace was the fashioning of a political style and a policy program characterised by unbounded optimism, unbounded passion for the progressive political project and an absolute fearlessness in assaulting the citadels of conservative political power.
As he said: “Nostalgia should beset conservatives, not socialists.” Or put differently the central organising principle of our political project, the progressive political project, should always be the future not the past.
Gough Whitlam's ideas were based not on left or right but on the essential ideas of progress, a progress based on a deep intellectual immersion in the Labor reformist tradition. He took the kernel of what wartime Labor stood for under Curtin and Chifley, social equality and national progress, and fashioned a program for a new Australia for the half century that followed the war.
Jim Cairns once asked about Gough: “Whose party is it; his or ours?”
The answer of course is that following his conflict with the faceless men it became his party and through that once again it became our party rather than the party of self appointed oligarchs.
Over the decades since 1975 there has been a great debate about the Whitlam legacy. None of us are perfect, although Gough in his own modest world view gives it a good go.
Gough's legacy on legal reform, on social reform and on our place in the world has stood the test of time. Reforms like expanded educational opportunity, a quality public health system, funding the basic infrastructure needed for the future of our cities, our engagement with Asia and enhancing and not undermining the role of the United Nations.
When Gough made that great speech at the Blacktown Civic Centre on the 30 November 1972, those first words ‘Men and women of Australia' were the words originally of John Curtin. Gough took them and gave them new life, new life for a new era. Utilising the full capacity of our constitution and our national political arrangements to bring about progressive change, not to dream about it, not to think about it but to bring it about.
Today we continue that tradition, through a new era of national reform. An education revolution from early childhood education to universities, with the single unifying ambition which goes back to Whitlam's time of turning Australia into the best educated country anywhere in the world.
A new nation building agenda - this time built around the infrastructure of the 21st Century, a new national broadband network. Ratifying Kyoto and implementing a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme so that we can act together to save the planet. An Apology to indigenous Australians and a national reform agenda to close the gap. A foreign policy agenda to act on disarmament, to build an Asia Pacific community and to engage in the creative diplomacy of progressive middle powers in building a more resilient international order for the future. One capable of dealing effectively with the global financial crisis, with the global financial system, with the global challenge that is climate change and with the great challenge and opportunity represented by the rise of China and the dawn of this the Asia Pacific century.
These are the challenges which now lie ahead of us, these are the challenges to which this reformist Government is committed to addressing.
And for Australia that will mean building the closest possible partnership with the United States under this new Obama administration, the closest possible partnership.
Our alliance with the United States is not the preserve of any individual political party. Constructed and formed and shaped under 12 American Presidents and 13 Australian Prime Ministers over many decades, Labor and Liberal, Republican and Democrat. It is not the political property of any single political party and that's why it has been wrong for one political party in Australia to - from time to time - have seen it in their political advantage to attack a candidate for the Presidency of the United States. Let us hope that error is not committed again in the future, it is not in our national interest that it should ever occur again.
Barack Obama spoke of hope, hope for America and hope for the world. The challenges are great and we need to be inspired by hope and committed to a program of common action and this Government in Australia stands prepared to work with the incoming administration of the United States in dealing with these challenges of the global order. Fuelled by hope, fuelled also by a practical resolve to get real results for our common humanity.
Like Jenny Hockings' fine biography, can I just say this: that the reformist project is a task that's only just begun. I am personally looking forward very much reading the next volume of Gough's achievements for the Labor party in Australia.
For Labor as a party in progressive politics, ours by definition is always a work in progress.
It is my pleasure now to declare this biography officially launched and in so doing honouring Gough, honouring Margaret, honouring their children and their grandchildren and their wider family.
And importantly and some might think unusually but importantly given the scope of this great biography honouring also the family that gave Gough his nurture, the family that gave Gough his passion, the family that shaped his intellect and the young EG Whitlam growing up and in so doing prepared Gough Whitlam for his career in service to our nation Australia.