LA COMUNICACIÓN EN “EL GANSO”

By the end of its term in office Labor faced far more virulent media opposition than in 1973. In the beginning the Whitlam government was supported by some of the media. It entered office in 1972 with considerable support from the press, especially from Murdoch’s Australian and the Melbourne Age. The Australian depicted Whitlam as a man of vision while arguing that McMahon was merely offering the same old policies that had failed in the past (Johnson 1989: 53). More than this, Murdoch provided substantial funds for the Labor party's campaign. However, in 1975 the media presented a united front against the Whitlam government. In this year, the government was subjected to relentless scrutiny by the media which, in turn, severely damaged Labor electorally. The media intensively reported every facet of the Whitlam government's performance in a year of extreme pressure.

Relations between Whitlam and Murdoch soured by 1975, and the Australian became hostile to the Labor. For instance, it made it quite clear how people should vote in the 1975 election. It argued that "the scandal-ridden government was responsible for record inflation, record interest rates, record unemployment and for transferring resources from the private to the public sector" (The Australian, 12 November 1975). Similarly, the Age - though it did denounce Kerr’s dismissal of the Whitlam government as one of the most regrettable days in the political life of nation - during the election campaign in 1975 shifted its view arguing that "Sir John Kerr had

taken the only course of action open to him' (The Age, 12 November 1975). While the Sydney Morning Herald stated that "it was mistaken enough to vote Labor in 1974 since it returned to power a ‘gang of one-eyed zealots seeing only the attraction of change, o f an doctrinaire restructuring’ o f society, and blip to the econom ic imperatives governing the dynamism and stability of society" (The Sydney Morning H erald, 11 Decem ber 1975). Such comments were merely the culmination of an extremely vitriolic anti-Labor media campaign which had already been evident during "Morosi" and "Loans" affairs.

The Labor case was made more difficult by the fact that the government did not appear to have a good record as economic managers, particularly in managing inflation. The rapid growth of unemployment and inflation in Australia from the end of 1974 had been a major basis for news attacking Labor throughout the following years. Media investigations and revelations triggered crucial political events such as the dismissals of Deputy Prime Minister Jim Cairns and, the Minister for Minerals and Energy, Rex Connor, and the Morosi and Gair scandals.

Labor's media problems in the period 1972-1975 were in the main caused by matters unrelated to the policies of the government, for the most part by matters of personal conflict, scandals or the impact of its misconduct. This is not to say that those policies were not also unacceptable to sections of the media and would not have been the subject of attack in the absence of more lurid events. But it was suggested that the m ed ia’s capacity for dam age would certainly have been decreased if it had concentrated on issues rather than personalities (Sexton 1979: 274).

So, the Whitlam government lost the general elections 1975 because of its internal w eaknesses (lacked o f professionalism and skills to handle contem porary Government), the image it gave of confused incompetence, and its unimpressive handling of what was admittedly a complex and difficult economic situation which had produced inflation and unem ploym ent on a scale unm atched since the Great D epression o f the thirties. L ab o r’s more considered and substantial but still controversial policy initiatives, and the activities of an emboldened and increasingly

ruthless Opposition, had generated widespread uncertainty and apprehension. The continued economic slowdown and increased political controversy began to alarm large sections of the electorate, particularly in the light of concentrated press and media criticism o f the government and an extremely effective attack from the Opposition (A rcher and M addox 1979: 141). While the rapid escalation of inflation and the trebling o f unemployment between 1974 - 75 were undoubtedly crucial in moving public opinion away from the ALP government, the general impressions of chaos and dissension were also extremely important (Jupp 1982: 125). Although relatively few people saw any basic threat to the established order, ALP governments frightened the electors. Many were alarmed by "the antic posturing, mutual disloyalty, and apparent incompetence of ministers, and by the random damage done to the existing economic m echanism s which Labor nevertheless assured would continue to sustain the population and its own programs" (Parker 1976: 17).

W hitlam him self has admitted that the Labor government would have been in serious trouble with or without the "coup" (or dismissal) by the Governor General (Whitlam 1985: 199). Sir John Kerr, in sacking the Whitlam government, provided a "coup de grace" to a government whose prospects were already poor. Ian McNair Anderson has established in his research that 63 per cent of all voters in the 1975 election believed that the state of the economy was more important than the dismissal o f the W hitlam government. And more than a half of them accused the Labor government of economic mismanagement (McNair 1977: 94-100). Therefore, though Kerr's action was constitutionally questionable - and it has been seen as constituting the greatest political upheaval since federation in Australia - it gave the electorate an opportunity which the majority clearly welcomed (Parker 1976: 17).

It is true that the Whitlam government - like the other ALP federal governments before it - was plagued by an external crisis not of its own making. But there is little doubt that its own policies aggravated these afflictions - or, at any rate, that many electors thought so. But this only reinforced the cumulative impression left by the record outlined before and by matters not mentioned there; the fact that Whitlam had to

transfer or dismiss four of his most senior ministers for incompetence or worse; the apparent misuse of some ministerial patronage; the government’s cynical (and inept) manoeuvre to gain control o f the recalcitrant Senate by appointing one of its bitterest political opponents, Senator Gair, as Ambassador to Eire; the "Loans Affair" in which a minister sought to borrow "petro dollars" by unorthodox (and also inept) methods; and so on (Parker 1976: 17). It is not that non-Labor governments were exempt from such weaknesses, but that a Labor government can less easily afford them.

CHAPTER TWO

RECONSTRUCTING LABOR UNDER HAYDEN

The years 1972 - 1975 left their mark on the Labor Party. It was left scarred and somewhat disillusioned by the experiences of the Whitlam government, both by its electoral defeat and the tactics adopted to remove it from office and by its own failures to create the changes it hoped for in some areas. Learning from these experiences of failure, Hayden initiated a broadly based reform of the party: its structure, its machine politics and its policy orientation. These reforms were very important for Labor, not only because they represented significant changes in the Party's traditional structure and policy orientation but also because they became the basis for the re-development of Labor that followed. The reforms laid the ground work for the successes of Labor under Hawke and Keating from 1983 until today. This chapter assesses the nature and the extent of reform Hayden undertook within the ALP.