Gough Whitlam
Gough Whitlam was prime minister of Australia for three years, from December 1972 to 11 November 1975, when the governor-general dismissed him, the only time a Crown representative has removed an elected Australian government, after the Senate had refused supply for a month; in those three years his Labor government ended conscription and the Vietnam commitment, recognised China, abolished university fees, brought in Medibank, the universal health insurance, gave Papua New Guinea its independence, passed the Racial Discrimination Act, returned land to the Gurindji and cut tariffs by a quarter. It legislated more than any government before it, while the ministers borrowed money from a Pakistani dealer and the economy went into stagflation. He was born in Melbourne in 1916, the son of the Commonwealth crown solicitor, grew up in Canberra, read law at Sydney, navigated bombers in the war, and entered parliament in 1952 for Werriwa in the western suburbs. He took the Labor leadership in 1967 after Calwell's third defeat and modernised a party run by what he called the faceless men of its executive. It's Time was the slogan of 1972. The government's first fortnight was governed by Whitlam and his deputy alone as a duumvirate, signing the decisions the twenty-three years of coalition rule had left undone. Papua New Guinea, whose self-government his government pressed on a reluctant territory, became independent in September 1975 with Somare as its prime minister. The loans affair, in which the minerals minister sought four billion dollars from Middle East sources through Tirath Khemlani, gave the opposition under Fraser its reason to block the budget in the Senate in October 1975, and the governor-general, whom Whitlam had appointed, withdrew his commission on Remembrance Day without warning and made Fraser caretaker. Whitlam on the steps of Parliament House told the crowd to maintain their rage, and the election of December gave Fraser the largest majority in Australian history. He lost again in 1977, retired from parliament in 1978, was ambassador to UNESCO, and lived to ninety-eight as the party's grand old man, reconciled in old age with Fraser and never with the governor-general.
- Lived: 1916 CE – 2014 CE
- Nationality: Australian
- Roles: prime minister, politician
