According to the Top Five schedule – yes, there is one – this week we were going to compile the top five things we would like to get from Santa this Christmas, but it will have to wait for a week because the great man, Gough Whitlam, passed away on Tuesday morning two years short of a century and we are duty bound to devote this offering to him. So here are the South West Voice Top Five Whitlam Gough moments:
Number 5: Exactly 50 years ago he told the Labor Party: “As your deputy leader I ain’t going to party conferences anymore if it’s a bunch of blokes arguing, with the women in the kitchen making tea and washing up.” A lot of people think Germaine Greer (The Female Eunuch) kicked off the women’s lib movement in the early 1970s, but as you can see it was Gough, prodded at the back by wife Margaret.
Number 4. The man was one funny dude: asked by a nurse a few weeks ago how many kids he had, the 98 year old Gough answered: “Four, so far.’’ Also, asked how, on his death, he would deal with God, he responded: Comrade (I made that bit up) I can assure you of one thing: I will treat him as an equal.
Number 3. Asked to describe Prime Minister Billy MCMahon in 1971, he said: Tiberius with a telephone.
Number 2: His opening line at the launch of the It’s Time campaign in 1972: Men and women of Australia: brilliant.
Number 1: Drum roll, please. After G-G John Kerr sacked him on November 11, 1975, Gough went home to the Lodge, ate a big, juicy steak then headed off to Parliament to hear the proclamation from said GG’s official secretary. Gough’s off the cuff speech has stood the test of time for 40 years, and I reckon it will still be quoted 1000 years from now. “Well may you say God Save the Queen, because nothing will save the Governor-General.’’ And of Malcolm Fraser, who had been installed Prime Minister, “who will undoubtly go down in history as Kerr’s cur.’’
Gough, RIP, mate.
