Making Modern Australia: The Whitlam Government’s 21st Century Agenda

‘The changes we have made will remain - like all great Labor legislation - permanent landmarks in our history.‘ Gough Whitlam

The Whitlam government propelled Australia out of the presumptions and certainties of twenty-three years of conservative government and changed it irrevocably. It passed a record number of bills into law and became the most successful reformist government in Australia’s history. This book brings to light aspects of Whitlam’s ambitious reform agenda that have been neglected for too long.

The Australian Assistance Plan generated networks of regional and community cooperation that remain today. Plans for energy infrastructure and self-sufficiency that would ensure the use of the nation’s resources for the common good, appear more and more visionary. The ground-breaking Royal Commission into Human Relationships is clearly a forerunner of the current royal commissions into institutionalised child abuse and family violence. New research shows the extent to which this reforming agenda continued the post-war reconstruction plans of Curtin and Chifley.

Finally, this book reassesses the place of the Whitlam government, and its dismissal, in history, in light of new material that continues to emerge from the personal papers of Sir John Kerr, and new analyses that challenge previous assessments.

Edited by Jenny Hocking, with contributors including Stuart Macintyre, Michelle Arrow, Nicholas Brown, Eric Eklund, Murray Goot, Carol Johnson, David Lee, Lyndon Magarrity, Greg Mellueish, and more.