Reality and fiction collide in an alternative history…
The legacy
Add a dose of fiction to a touch of reality and you have an alternative history. The genre takes something that happened and riffs a fictional story on top of it. So it is with this tale where real people, their names changed to conceal their identity, and real places intermix with memoir both personal and historic and with history.
WHERE were we? That’s right. We were at John’s flat, the little place he rented in Bondi, one of those small, attached houses, one in a row at the bottom of the hill where the cascade of houses and apartments abruptly stops at the beach. Had John been the outdoorsy type he could have been on the beach in a few minutes. He wasn’t. John was more the intellectual for whom the indoors is natural habitat.
Who was there? John of course. And Bev, whom he was living with. Rob and Steve were also there. Steve was a tall, lanky guy who could plunk out more than a few good tunes on his acoustic guitar. He had this vision of himself as a singer/songwriter although he had not written any songs that I knew of. There was Yvette and Frank and I was there with Chaz.
Yvette got together with Frank after she and I broke up. That was over Chaz, but I won’t go into the sordid details here. Frank was a tall, slim man who wore his hair brushed back from his face. He considered himself a Marxist, though I doubt that he had waded his way through Marx’s three volumes of turgid text known to readers of economic philosophy as Das Kapital, his critique of Nineteenth Century capitalism. Yvette, in contrast, was a little shorter in stature than the average but made up for it in her assertive and occasionally acerbic way of speaking. She could be sarcastic when someone criticised or annoyed her, something I had witnessed on a couple occasions. I made sure to stay on good terms with Yvette.
Bev had this laid-back ambience as if nothing could perturb her. I never once saw her angry, not even impatient with anyone. She made a contrast to the petite Chaz in being heavily built, her dark brown hair making a contrast to Chaz’s blonde. They had been friends since their high school days and had maintained contact that was sporadic at times but in recent years had become more frequent. Both were Sydney North Shore girls.
Chaz and I had driven over from our flat in Annandale, a place that had been home for the better part of the past year after the sharehouse that all present—other than John, Steve and Frank—had occupied. After we moved we settled into our workaday lives but for a few months now we had been feeling restless. Was it time to move on again? It was one of those feelings the origin and motivation for which you cannot account.
The coffee table in front of the lounges on which we sat was home to two casks of cheap wine, one of them a nasty little acidic white, and a bag of potato chips. I don’t remember whose idea it was to congregate here on this particular night, nor could I have guessed that it was about to become a night that we would remember into our later years.
It was around 8.30 in the evening when our attention moved from the conversation we had been engaged in to the TV with its flickering, grainy, black-and-white images that was wedged against the far wall of the living room. The TV was our reason for being there that night, not the wine.
Conversation is stilled as we watch the image of the presenter at the national tally room come onto the screen. Mugs of cheap wine are held in poise. It is one of those moments on which the future — and the future of a couple of us there — hangs in the balance. Anticipation tinged with suspense, I guess you would call it.
We are silent as the presenter makes his introduction and underlines — as if we need it — the poignancy of the moment. Is he stringing along his viewers — millions of whom would be at home watching these same images — to create suspense? No need for that. Suspense, anticipation and hope are abundant in the nation’s living rooms at this moment, this moment when conversation stops and the nation holds its collective breath.
Then he breaks the news. It is a landslide. The Whitlam Labor Party has been swept to victory, the tired old conservatives vanquished.
That Bondi flat is not the only place from which cheers rise that night. It’s hard to describe the sense of joy and relief… and I believe that is what is being experienced in a great many of the nation’s living rooms at this moment… and a sense of hope that we will now enter a progressive period as we say goodbye and good riddance to too many years of conservative rule. The acidity of the cask white is forgotten as mugs are refilled and our friends express their exuberance at the prospect of a new and very different government.
Wow! That’s a relief. It was Steve. I went for my medical a couple months ago and was scheduled to go into the next intake. Now, with Whitlam’s promise to end conscription for military service for the war in Vietnam, that won’t happen. He tells us this with relief clearly evident in his voice. For Steve, watching the TV that night was to watch the trajectory of his life over the next two years take a turn for the better. He felt the relief more than the rest of us.
We go home to resume our regular lives but there is a new buzz in society as the new government gets to work straight away. Conscription is abolished. The withdrawal of our troops from the Vietnam quagmire, started by the conservative government in its dying months, is accelerated. The nation sets a new course.
The Whitlam government implements numerous progressive policies during its first period in government. Universal healthcare, free tertiary education, indigenous land rights and improving the rights of women are some of its early accomplishments that address social inequalities and improve the quality of life for all Australians.
Free tertiary education is the government's response to systemic change underway in the national economy. Computerisation is starting to make inroads into industry, business and government, new technologies are being introduced. It is the beginning of a process that will only accelerate over the years to come, and it needs skilled workers to make it happen. Free tertiary education provides the training for the workforce that over the coming years will take the reins of this new industrial revolution. It does something else, too, something that would reshape the nation’s demographics over the coming decade. It enables social mobility. Now, people from economically marginal families and regions who would never have considered a university education suddenly have the opportunity. Many grab it and in doing so make the move from working class to the growing middle class that the emerging economy needs.
Over a year into our new future the speed of change is polarising the political environment. Progressive and conservative ideologies clash. The power struggle between the major parties intensifies, leading to a volatile political climate. The whirlwind of reform has been bewildering to many and soon influential voices are urging a slowdown. Change is happening too fast, they say. Conservatives are becoming alarmed. They are also becoming restive.
I had been one of those who took advantage of the free tertiary education. Without it I would have continued in my haphazard working life, drifting from one uninteresting job to another. In the company of Yvette, who had been in that Bondi living room on that momentous night now a few years ago, I had enrolled in a university course, me in journalism, she in creative writing. That is how I and a couple of other wanna-be journalists came to be working with one of the newspaper’s senior journalists.
It was he, as well as a couple of the more experienced political journalists working on the nation’s big metropolitan dailies who picked it up, this rumour among the political class, this whisper that something devious was unfolding behind the scenes. It was exacerbated when the journalist, leaving government house later than the media pack that had attended a perfunctory and unimportant event with visiting dignitaries, noticed the opposition leader arrive in his government car and, rather than getting out at the front entrance, getting out around the back. Odd, the journalist thought.
He sat on what he had seen for a couple weeks during which a call to government house to ask about the mysterious appearance of the opposition leader at the back door had elicited only a ‘don’t know’ reply. Was it real news or something merely humdrum? It was often like this. Something seen or heard through the Canberra rumour mill would raise questions but usually turn out to be something prosaic and unnewsworthy.
Still, journalists are trained to be curious, to notice details, to make links between things and raise questions about what they see and hear. After speaking only to fellow political journalists who would keep his enquiries confidential, and making veiled enquiries among influential figures in conservative circles whom he knew, it seemed that he had come up against a blank wall.
Then came the phone call. He never knew who made it. The call was brief but if true, it was alarming. Yes, the caller said, the opposition leader had been at government house that day. Yes, he did get out of his car at the back entrance rather than the front. And why had he been there? To talk with the governor-general.
About what, asked the journalist?
About a conspiracy to dismiss the government, said the caller before offering a few tantalising details and hanging up.
It was enough. The journalist immediately went upstairs to the editor-in-chief and got his agreement that the government house visit, the phone call and the information and names disclosed by the mysterious informant were sufficient and important enough to run a story, even though corroboration from other sources was unobtainable. He knew that publication would force those names into defensive positions and they would have to either confirm the plot or raise suspicion about themselves if they denied it. To do that would be to risk their political careers, especially were the conspiracy to be foiled. If it came to that, the journalist and editor-in-chief knew, politicians would try to save themselves rather than stick to a story fraying at the edges. Party loyalty would be replaced by the self-interest of political survival.
That afternoon, the story planned for the page one lead for the next morning’s edition became page three news. The alleged plot to overthrow a democratically elected government was now page one.
Outrage was the public response when they opened their newspaper the next morning. The Australian Broadcasting Commission picked up the story and took it national. By midday, a noisy and angry crowd of several thousand was at the firmly locked gates of government house as trade unionists walked off their jobs, students walked out of their universities and working people arrived after their workday finished. They demanded the dismissal of the governor-general, some demanded the complete abolition of the position as well as those of state governors. People were angry.
In the face of the crisis now afflicting their ranks and the response of the public, the conservative forces who would have welcomed the success of the plot kept their silence. The leader of the opposition and his co-conspirators resigned the following day. The governor-general tended his resignation two weeks later.
But… who was the mysterious caller who tipped off the journalist? Speculation abounded. The conservative opposition party started tearing itself apart as it looked for him — or her (there were not many hers in the leadership) — in their midst. To be privy to knowledge of the plot it must have been someone high-up, they figured. The government took a hands-off approach to the opposition’s dilemma, preferring not to interfere when its political enemy was ripping itself apart. Only good could come of that.
Speculation would continue for years after, with various opposition figures being suggested as the informant without any proof being offered. Ignored until the journalist who broke the news raised the question a few years later was that it might not have been a disgruntled opposition politician at all. Perhaps, he wrote, the informant might have been a staffer at government house, even a low-level one who did not like the idea of conspirators plotting to overthrow an elected government and who had somehow overheard their conversation or got wind of it. If so, then that would position he or she as a clandestine champion of democracy. The identity of the informer remains a mystery.
Now, the Whitlam government capitalised on the public outrage. Having legislated equal pay for equal work for women, it started paying more attention to its region. Links to Pacific Island and nearby Asian states were improved. Indigenous land rights were recognised as, in a ceremony at Ayers Rock, the prime minister poured a handful of the red sand of inland Australia into the hand of an indigenous leader to symbolise the start of a new era. Ayers Rock’s new indigenous name was legislated—Uluru. Already committed to multiculturalism and immigration, the government lifted the intake and Australians, sometimes reluctantly and warily, started to embrace ethnic diversity. The move towards a more inclusive society was underway.
Further initiatives aimed to address social inequalities were instigated and a new idea was mooted by the science minister, Barry Jones, who proposed that talks start on securing a better future for all Australians through a guaranteed minimum income. This, Jones said, would provide enough for basic needs and would replace existing pensions, tertiary student allowance, disability and unemployment benefits with a single unified payment. Anything more that people wanted would be provided by working because, he knew, people would aspire to more than the basics. A guaranteed minimum income would provide security for individuals and families and stimulate innovation because people no longer had to worry about their basic needs, and with that would come their following their interests and turning them into products and businesses. Predictably, the opposition mounted a ferocious campaign against the proposal and delayed it for years.
Barry Jones was the political accelerant behind the adoption, already underway, of advanced technology as a new component in the national economy. We must grasp the future, he said during one of his Press Club addresses, and become a leader in the world that is opening up. If we do this, Jones said, Australia would never again be a mere quarry for the world that exported unprocessed mineral ores and forsook the economic advantage of exporting value-added primary products.
Primary products were far from the only focus of Jones’ innovative and science-led policies. His promotion of science and technology, and the government’s boosting of the budget for the nation’s scientific research and development agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, enabled it to step into research into the emerging fields of computing, aerospace technology, medicine and telecommunications. The outcome over the coming years would be the emergence of an Australian computer and information technology industry and, later, the local manufacture and export of microprocessors for computers and electronic devices.
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The opening of the Cape York space launch facility, an initiative made in partnership with local indigenous people, triggered the start of an Australian aerospace industry that saw the launch of a constellation of Australian communications and research satellites. In distant Hobart, the Antarctic Division underwent a substantial expansion as scientific interest in the frozen continent, the Southern Ocean and Tasman Sea grew. The construction of warehousing and port facilities saw Hobart become an international base for Antarctic Treaty nations. All of this was made possible by the numbers taking advantage of the government’s free tertiary education aided by the imagination and drive of Barry Jones.
Every political current produces a countercurrent. The countercurrent to the science and knowledge industry orientation of the Whitlam and succeeding governments came less from backward-looking conservative forces, although there was always a small number of them grumbling away in the background, and more from the counterculture of the seventies and the following decade when tens of thousands of mainly young people forsook the cities and conventional life in search of new ways of living in the countryside. While the intentional communities they set up forced the reform of legislation around the multiple occupancy of land, and while their preferences for natural therapies and owner-building would eventually see the emergence of new industries, their rural lifestyle had more than a few parallels with the Australia of 70 years previously.
Theirs’ was no total rejection of hi-tech, however. Those same back-to-the-landers, as they called themselves, were early adopters of solar energy, first in the form of solar water heating — which accounted for the major energy consumption and expenditure of Australian households —and then in the form of the early photovoltaic systems. They later adopted digital communications when it reached its early mass adopter stage, finding that it reduced the sense of isolation on their rural communities and in rural towns, and offered a way to access further education and to network on projects and improve how they lived. Theirs’ became a hybrid life of rejecting some elements of modern technology while adopting others.
The disregard of the scientific and technological revolution reshaping the nation’s economy among some of back-to-the-landers, while others adopted what was useful, would eventually lead to a fracturing of the movement. Calling itself Permalife, the social movement that emerged from the back-to-the-land counterculture became popular because it embraced Fritz Schumacher’s notion of an intermediate technology midway between traditional and high technology, and because it considered environmental and social questions in its application. Over the years, Permalife gained a substantial following as a do-it-yourself approach to sustainable living.
The traditional lifestyle element of the movement thought that individual change would lead to social change, while the more-tech-and-politically-savvy element said that it would help but it lacked the political power to bring about substantial change because the economic and political forces it sought to overcome were too powerful. This element came to focus more on conventional social practices such as home ownership supplemented by home production of fruit and vegetables as a means of decoupling from the mainstream food system and, for those with the financial resources and time, homesteading. This led to it inadvertently developing a more conservative social attitude tinged with elements of libertarianism, and it was this political drift that alarmed the tech-and-politically-savvy coterie and eventually led to a further split in the movement, this time over social attitude and politics rather than technology.
That the split was cast in terms of conservatives versus the tech-and-politics-savvy radicals was ironic for a social movement that once considered itself radical in its rejection of modernism. It would take years and new leadership of the movement to heal the rift, but when that was finally accomplished, Permalife evolved into a hybrid that embraced both the traditional and hi-tech and, years later, developed into a progressive political force that played a significant role in pushing the global warming adaptation agenda of what would be a new Labor government.
It remains unknown how many of the tradition-focused, libertarian-oriented Permalife people went on to start a new wave of rural communities in which the ways of the past were practised and modern technology avoided or only minimally adopted. Sometimes referring to themselves as the neo-peasantry, they continue to live their chosen lifestyle in which wood is the energy source of choice, farming is little more than subsistence gardening or, when a surplus is produced, is sold at local farmers’ markets, cures come from herbs in the garden and their children are home-schooled. Like the Amish in the US who were an inspiration, they keep mostly to themselves.
The Whitlam government’s early efforts to build stronger ties with Australia’s Pacific and Asian neighbours, especially China, set in motion changes that would have long-term consequences. In 1972, soon after coming to power, Whitlam formally established diplomatic relations with China, appointing Australia’s first ambassador and inviting China to open an embassy in Canberra — an act that marked a turning point in Australia’s foreign policy and laid the groundwork for decades of engagement.
By the late 20th century China had begun a dramatic transformation. After years of isolation, the introduction of market reforms in the late 1970s led to rapid economic growth, turning China into the world’s manufacturing hub and the second-largest economy by the early 2000s. This economic boom lifted millions out of poverty and gave China the resources to expand its global economic and military influence.
As China’s economy and the Communist Party’s control strengthened, its foreign policy became more assertive — especially regarding Taiwan, which Beijing considered a breakaway province. China’s military buildup and public statements about reclaiming Taiwan heightened regional tensions, especially as Taiwan, backed by the US, vowed to resist any forced reunification.
Amid escalating tensions — including a naval incident in the Taiwan Strait that brought China and the US to the brink of conflict — Australia elected a new, left-leaning Labor government after the good part of a decade of conservative rule. Although Australia had long valued its alliance with the US, there was now growing support for a more independent foreign policy and to avoid participation in a potential war over Taiwan in which the alliance with the US would oblige Australia to lend its military support. Despite the presence of influential China hawks in geopolitical circles, and media attempts to talk up war with China, the mood among Australians was to have both China and the US as friends.
Now, it was time for action. Recognising the risk of catastrophic conflict, the new Australian government took the diplomatic initiative. The Prime Minister convened an emergency summit in Darwin with representatives from the US, China and Taiwan, proposing a framework for dialogue and de-escalation. When talks stalled, Australia leveraged its economic and political influence, threatening to cut off iron ore exports to China and to limit its military alliance with the US if hostilities broke out. This raised the potential of disrupting the development of China’s economy thanks to its reliance on Australian iron ore, and to jeopardise US ambitions in the southwest Pacific.
The bold move succeeded: China agreed to a military stand down, the US pledged non-confrontation, Taiwan opened the door to further talks over its future.
The crisis marked a turning point in regional power dynamics. The resulting Darwin Accord established a new security framework for the Indo-Pacific, emphasising cooperation over confrontation and positioning Australia as a key regional mediator and political power. In the space of those few days negotiating the Darwin Accord, Australia had taken a big step up.
Historians would later trace this diplomatic success back to the Whitlam government’s decision to normalise relations with China, arguing that the trust and engagement built in the 1970s ultimately enabled Australia to play a constructive role decades later — a legacy passed from one generation to the next.
All of this was in the future as the Whitlam government went about its reform agenda. Environmental policy was not at the forefront of that agenda, however as the impacts of industrialisation became apparent, and as a social movement grew around environmental issues, the government saw it as a new phase of the agenda for change that had seen it elected. They acted. On appointing a prominent environmental leader, made popular through being the singer in a popular rock band to the role of minister in new environment portfolio, the plan of the Tasmanian state energy authority to dam a major wilderness river for hydroelectric power was abruptly ended when the government took it to the High Court. Five years later another court case set the scene for the ending of the logging of native forests and brought about the successful move towards plantation forestry managed according to environmental principles.
The Whitlam government persisted for a full nine years before the prime minister retired and handed over to the new leader. During that time it led the transformation of the Australian economy and society. The handover saw a less-than-charismatic figure become prime minister. He saw Labor through the following electoral period before the first conservative government in years was elected. This new government would back some of the policies of the Whitlam era. Times had changed as had the leadership of the party, and after a fierce battle with ideologically-driven neoliberal elements in the party, the pragmatic, less-ideological forces prevailed. The Whitlam era had set a new course that unleashed changes that even conservatives could not stop.
The attempted dismissal of the government continues to pose a dilemma that historians still mull over and media commentators discuss. Without it, Labor would probably not have enjoyed so long a period in power. The impetus for change that the attempted dismissal accelerated may never have happened. The economic and social fabric of Australia would have followed a different path. And, still, no one knows the identity of the informant who tipped off the media and brought about the destruction of the conspiracy to dismiss an elected government.
In decades to come the small group of friends gathered in that Bondi living room that night, watching the drama of political change unfold on the grainy images of the TV, would look back on it with affection as a time when there were politicians with vision and the drive to turn those visions into reality.
As the elation of that night dissipated and as the nation started to change around us, our little coterie of friends set off on their own trajectories in life. Our bonds attenuated as we went in different directions, some of us retaining only the flimsiest of links while others remained strong.
I stayed in sporadic contact with Yvette over the years. Sometimes a year or more would go by without either of us making contact. She and Frank had long ago dissolved their partnership and she had gone to work overseas, teaching English to Asian students. She was there for some years during which we had occasional email contact, and I was relieved to learn that she had survived China’s SARS outbreak. She didn’t tell me that she was coming home, so her arrival came as a surprise of the pleasant kind. When she returned, Yvette bought a house in a southern state.
I had been living on the North Coast and it was when I was in the town where she was now living, Yvette told me how she had made contact with Steve, some chance encounter or something. Turns out that not long after that momentous night in Bondi he had gone to California where he thought he would spend a few months, however he ended up marrying a local. Now, years later, they were back. That tall, lanky guy I had known who could plunk out more than a few good tunes on his acoustic guitar now had two CDs to his credit. They settled in a small country town on the lower western slopes of the Great Dividing Range, a town with a pub where locals would get together to play and sing on Saturday nights.
Rob now lives not far from the sharehouse that was once home to some of us. He took early retirement from the postal service and I don’t know what he does with his life now. I have seen him only once since those distant days but from time to time I think of him and hope he is happy and well.
Bev and John long ago broke up and John is now a memory we share, a stronger memory for a couple of us. Bev found her life-long partner and they took off for the far north of the country, initially for a life in the bush before they eventually drifted back to the city. Her son now has his own family.
After Yvette and Frank went their own ways, Frank fell out of contact with us although we know where he is living. We don’t know why he wanted to break his links with we who had been his friends during those heady years of change.
Like the others, and like so many I have known from that time, Chaz and I broke up. That has been the story with so many of our generation and I wonder why it is that we, many of us, anyway, failed to form lasting relationships. Our daughter is the opposite. Her marriage has long ago exceeded the time Chaz and I spent together, and with her partner and their two children they lead a satisfied middle class life in a small southern city. After a career in criminal law, Chaz now lives in the same city in the southern state that Yvette moved to and where our daughter and her family live. After a time on the North Coast and then in the big city, I ended up in a small, southern coastal town with a good surfing beach in that same state that Yvette and Chaz call home.
Scattered in life, that’s us. That night in the Bondi living room where history was made was both a new start for the nation and the beginning of the dissipation of a group of close friends now scattered along the length of the East Coast.
Pocket fiction…
