Tiberius with a Telephone

by Patrick Mullins

  ‘The aim of the motion,’ said Whitlam, who had come with a well-prepared speech, ‘is not just to let the people pass judgment on the extraordinary events of the last week but to give them a voice on who should govern them. The clean air of public opinion should be allowed to flow through Canberra’s musty corridors of power.’ Whitlam’s speech was eloquent, calm, prickling with sharp lines: ‘The very malaise that was at the heart of last week’s convulsion — the bypassing of Parliament and its proper procedures — continues unabated. The Bourbons have learned nothing. They will never learn. The sickness is too far advanced.’ Whitlam homed in on the turmoil that had crippled Gorton and caused Fraser’s resignation. He satirised McMahon’s declaration that all government policies were open for review. He painted McMahon as a stooge of the press and a man of the past:

  To fill his [Gorton’s] place the Press proprietors and the Establishment have nominated a man whose ability and application no one doubts but whose style, rhetoric, and attitudes are part of the [19]50s. His title deeds are doubtful and by whomsoever they have been conferred, they have not been conferred by the people of Australia. The only unity he can offer temporarily is the unity of exhaustion. He offers, in the long term, unity around reaction.31

  McMahon’s response was feeble. His own side was beggared to hear it. He sounded nervous, uncomfortable. To Whitlam’s criticism of the lack of an election, McMahon quoted a constitutional scholar who had been dead for over a decade. His attempts to criticise Whitlam over national service and inflation were lacklustre. Trying to describe the philosophy that would guide his government, McMahon harked back to the days of 1949:

  We are dedicated to political liberty and the freedom and dignity of man; safe from external aggression and playing our part in a world security order which maintains the necessary force to defend the peace; looking primarily to the encouragement of individual initiative and enterprise as the dynamic force of progress; to make just provision for the aged, the invalid, the widowed, the sick, the unemployed, and the children.32

  As an exposition of McMahon’s beliefs it was substantial, but in the circumstances it was flimsy. It did little to rally his side. Worse still was McMahon’s announcement, towards the end of his speech, of a $1 rise in the pension for married couples and of 50c for single persons. Canvassed in cabinet barely three hours before, on grounds that the costs of living was rising and the government would do this in the budget anyway, the announcement was not — as some in the press suggested — an act of generosity spurred by the needs of the moment.33 But that was how it appeared. The speech was ‘one of the worst’ of McMahon’s career, Howson thought.34 Clem Lloyd’s fears that McMahon might find favour were immediately dispelled: ‘It [his speech] was a poor response.’35 The dynamic between the government and Labor was set then and there. Whitlam had the ascendency. It left the government disheartened. ‘Everyone is going round gloomily prophesying imminent disaster,’ Bert Kelly wrote.36

  ON 21 March, McMahon took the list of his ministry to Government House for Hasluck’s approval. There were predictable names on the list: David Fairbairn had been restored to cabinet as minister for education and science; Malcolm Mackay, Kevin Cairns, and senator Ivor Greenwood had been given junior ministries. There were also notable absences: Malcolm Fraser had been left on the backbench, and senator Annabelle Rankin, who had burst into tears when told she was out, had a diplomatic posting to New Zealand as consolation.37

  Other changes were more spiteful but no less expected. Jim Killen had known he was in for demotion; immediately after Gorton’s demise, he had begun packing up his office in anticipation of it. Confirmation came on 18 March, when McMahon summoned him and said, ‘I want you out — right out.’ Killen was more amused than aggrieved during the encounter: he saw a nervous man with sweating hands who could barely clear his throat to speak.38

  Tom Hughes, who was aware that he was synonymous with the measures on offshore sovereignty, the territorial seas, and the growth of Commonwealth power at the expense of the states (this most evident in what became known as the Concrete Pipes case, which was being heard in the High Court), also knew what was coming. McMahon called him in after Killen, and said that he wanted Nigel Bowen to be his attorney-general. ‘Well, that means you want me on the backbench,’ Hughes replied.

  ‘Yes,’ said McMahon, not so nervously this time. ‘I’ve been under great pressure in the party to get rid of you.’39

  But McMahon would not be rid of Hughes so quickly. Until McMahon went to Hasluck on 21 March, Hughes remained in the ministry as attorney-general, contributing to debates, responding to McMahon’s request for advice on the controversial establishment of assistant ministers and parliamentary secretaries — positions that McMahon would use as reward for those who had supported him.40 It was ‘quite bizarre’, Hughes said later. ‘I was there for a fortnight, sitting in cabinet and advising on outcomes. He still wanted my advice. He was a dreadful little man.’41

  Les Bury, too, knew that he was not going to remain in the Treasury, especially once Billy Snedden staked a claim. Accosting McMahon almost immediately after he had been elected, Snedden told him that Bury was not capable of doing the job and that it should be Snedden’s. When McMahon demurred and replied that he would think about it, Snedden pressed his case. ‘Don’t think about it, Bill. You will agree to it now because there is going to be bloody trouble if it is not agreed.’42 Snedden got what he wanted. Bury was moved to Foreign Affairs — but even here there was room made for humiliation. McMahon let it be known that his first choice had been the Country Party minister Ian Sinclair.

  This was not all. The list of ministers that McMahon handed to Hasluck contained some extra, vindictive flourishes. Where Bury had been sixth in seniority under Gorton, he was now eleventh. Alan Hulme, keeping his portfolio as postmaster-general and vice-president of the Executive Council, went from fifth to tenth. Reading the new list, Hasluck was surprised. Did Bury and Hulme know of this? he asked. Was there any risk of ‘unseemly objection, argument, or withdrawal from the room’ by any of them? He also queried McMahon about the appointments of parliamentary under-secretaries. Might those who had been appointed think themselves entitled to a promotion, the moment one became available?

  At this, McMahon looked startled, said he would have to be careful about it, and made a hurried note. Then he began complaining. ‘He said further that he expected Sir Alan Hulme to retire from the Ministry but not from Parliament at the end of the year and that he did not know how long Bury would last,’ Hasluck recalled:

  There seemed to be something wrong with his [Bury’s] health. He seemed to have lost energy and never joined in any discussion. We discussed Treasury briefly. He [McMahon] was aware that departmentally its strength had diminished. He was not sure how Snedden would do. He ‘knew nothing about economics’. Mr McMahon also told me other stories about his difficulties in making the Ministry but as some of them did not square with other accounts I had heard, I doubt very much whether he was speaking the truth, so I will not record them.43

  In the days and weeks that followed, rumours abounded about the ministry. There were whispers that McMahon had originally intended to dismiss ten ministers, but that Anthony had intervened to prevent it, asking if McMahon really wanted to have a whole cabinet’s worth of ex-ministers on the backbench.44 Whatever the veracity of these rumours, few were happy about the ministry. Fairbairn was not pleased to have education and science, dismissing it as hard and unrewarding, and would depart the portfolio after five months, noting that he had not really achieved anything.45 After taking a telephone call from John Jess, an anti-Gorton MP who raged that Malcolm Mackay had been promoted over him, Howson judged that McMahon had attempted to placate his enemies rather than help his friends.46

  If this was so, McMahon’s critics had no knowledge of it. Only a few days after the new ministry was announced, Gorton freely told Hasluck that he would support McMahon so long as
he did not ‘get up to any of his tricks’.47 But, Gorton went on, if McMahon tried to do anything funny, Gorton would ‘smash’ him: ‘And Billy ought to know that I can smash him,’ he said. There were seven or eight other members who would do the same, Gorton added. When Hasluck asked what he meant, Gorton told him that ‘the little bastard is already working against me in my constituency, spreading lies and trying to make me lose the party endorsement for the seat so that he can get me out of the road. If he goes on like that I will smash him even if I smash the party too.’

  Sentiments like this prompted some to wonder about McMahon’s prospects of surviving as prime minister until the election, let alone whether he could win it. In his favour, Hasluck thought, McMahon had no obvious internal rival, had been greeted with a wave of favourable opinion, could play on a public not yet ‘wholly committed’ to Labor, and was unencumbered by ‘ideals or principles’ that could lead him into danger. Weighing against that was Gorton’s attitude, generational shifts within the Liberal Party, tensions with the Country Party, a deteriorating economy, McMahon’s physical health and his ‘defects of character’, the DLP’s attitude, and the potential for a lacklustre electoral appeal. McMahon would survive to the election, Hasluck thought, but that was almost wholly contingent on any decisive shift in the state of affairs.48

  John Bunting expressed a similar view. Observing McMahon up close, he saw McMahon’s propensity for hard work and his efforts to fit the mantle of the office. As he would write in June, McMahon was ‘excellent in so many respects. Instinctively wanting and trying to be statesmanlike rather than merely political.’ The pressures that came with that office, however, would not allow such disguises to be long maintained. McMahon, Bunting wrote, ‘is, in fact, the most political of all politicians’.49

  There were few expectations that McMahon would be a transformative prime minister. ‘We [in the Packer organisation] at no stage thought that enlightened, stable, progressive, and relatively uneventful government would ensue under McMahon,’ Peter Samuel said later.50 ‘The possibility was nil that he would, in any way, prompt the Australian people to create better than they knew,’ wrote Donald Horne, Samuel’s editor at The Bulletin.51

  Most appraisals of McMahon were merely amazed. ‘Who, with any experience of him and with him,’ Arthur Fadden wrote privately, ‘would have ever thought he would live to see Billy-the-flea Prime Minister of Australia?’52 He was no less caustic when writing to Bunting to congratulate him on his reappointment: ‘I hope that during the 12 some years that have elapsed since I had experience of McMahon that his loyalty and stability has most vastly improved. He will, even if he does not vainly make himself Treasurer as well as PM, make himself an intolerable nuisance …’53 International observers were more amused than anything else by McMahon’s accession. As Morrice James, the British high commisioner to Australia, was to appraise that year:

  Mr McMahon is a small, shifty, but dogged and resilient man whose Victorian appearance (bald head and muttonchop whiskers) belies his gift for a highly contemporary brand of political slickness. He seems perennially surprised to find himself Prime Minister of such a solid and substantial country as Australia. Both his countrymen, and — to an embarrassing extent — he himself, know that he is not much good in the part.54

  Menzies was cautiously optimistic about McMahon. In a letter sent the day after McMahon’s swearing-in, he wrote that he was ‘delighted’ to hear of Bunting’s restoration, whom he called ‘the Prince of Civil Servants’. But it was clear that he thought the strength of McMahon’s government would be his cabinet:

  You have my warm wishes … You will, of course, have the aid of a team of able men of your own choice. You will also, having regard to your current circumstances, be able to exercise to the full your own uncommon knowledge of economic and financial matters and to feel assured of the co-operation of the business community. Cabinet decisions on matters of moment, decisions which are those of the whole cabinet, are of the essence … Prime Minister, you will undoubtedly maintain the closest contact with your Ministers so that they all feel that they are members of a team of which you are the chosen Captain and the authoritative spokesman.55

  Menzies’ words were hardly a tonic. In the weeks that followed, it was clear that McMahon’s cabinet was divided, antagonistic, with tensions over personality and policy. The new captain could not wrangle his team. ‘Whatever the circumstances,’ Anthony said later, ‘one has to make adjustments and try to make things work.’56 Gorton, however, seemed to make no attempt. His derisive regard for his successor was always on show. When McMahon resisted allowing Gorton to retain Ainsley Gotto, the deputy leader supposedly told Tony Eggleton that his new boss could ‘go to buggery’.57 Moreover, in cabinet, between interrupting his colleagues and allowing the smoke from his cigarettes to blow into McMahon’s face, Gorton was apt to puncture a vainglorious announcement with a blunt question: ‘That’s got to be fucking stupid, doesn’t it?’58 McMahon, supposedly exasperated by Gorton’s habitual lateness and interference, began shuffling cabinet agenda so as to dispose of more difficult items before Gorton showed up.59

  But there was neither time nor room to dwell on the divisions. Change of an urgent, challenging, and prevailing kind was underway. Old eras were closing; new ones were opening. The economy was changing, presenting inflation problems and exacerbating the difficulties of state budgets. The changes wrought by American intervention in Vietnam, and Britain’s indecision over its role in world affairs, would present dilemmas and demand answers. Australia’s policy towards China was in need of attention and decisions. Unrest over freedoms and equality was becoming manifest in protests over rights for Aborigines, and over charges of racism and sexism. The government would need to grapple with pressure for environmental conservation, for championing the arts, for increasing educational opportunities. In short, the government would need to respond to the new country that Australia was becoming. Personalities would have to wait.

  FOLLOWING his reconstruction of the ministry, McMahon’s first move was to mollify the state premiers. Ahead of a premiers’ meeting in April, he sought advice from the Treasury about the state budgets and what the Commonwealth could do. He had no intention of allowing the premiers to become antagonistic: he wanted them sated and happy. The premiers, too, were aware that McMahon represented a chance to press their claims, and thus made nice in the weeks preceding the meeting. After suggesting that McMahon’s support from the Liberal Party was dependent on his grasping ‘the nettle’ and developing a ‘new-look scheme’ in the federal-state sphere,60 Bob Askin said he thought McMahon would be more sympathetic to the states than Gorton. Henry Bolte said that he believed a new era was imminent in Commonwealth–state relations. All of the premiers came to Canberra with different methods for the same goal: they wanted money to help with their deficits.61 McMahon made almost no attempt to resist them or their demands.

  After only a few hours of meetings on 5 April, McMahon announced that the Commonwealth would provide a special-assistance grant to the states totalling $43m in 1970–71, with the only condition that the money be used to reduce deficits, not increase expenditure. ‘I welcome the degree of co-operation shown between all the premiers and the Commonwealth,’ McMahon said. ‘I feel it was an example of the sensible working of Commonwealth–state relationships.’62 A few months later, there was another buy-off when McMahon offered the premiers access to the payroll tax.

  The appeasement was transparent. The premiers gushed. ‘Mr McMahon has passed his first test as prime minister with flying colours,’ said Bolte afterward, in an assessment that Askin soon echoed: ‘I would say he gets honours.’63 It was an obvious about-turn, particularly when Askin’s critical comments about McMahon were recalled, but there was also a hint that buying the states off would only encourage them. ‘One swallow does not make a summer,’ Askin said at a press conference afterward.64

  And then there was Parliament. Eager to clear
the notice paper ahead of the winter recess, McMahon took advice to pack the last week’s sittings, limiting the amount of time that was available for debate. Thus the government scheduled only nineteen hours and ten minutes to debate seventeen Bills on matters as complicated and diverse as superannuation, communications, the wool industry, defence, state grants, Papua New Guinea, and income tax. If it were to work, the schedule would require a sharp use of the guillotine, a refusal to be shamed, and complete party unity. The latter was missing. Adding his voice to Labor’s loud objections, Harry Turner, the Liberal member for Bradfield, told the House that Parliament was being treated ‘with utter contempt’.65 Killen, freed from the obligation of a ministerial line, was especially aggrieved: ‘This is a disgraceful proceeding. It is a proceeding unworthy of the national Parliament and a proceeding which does great affront to this country.’66

  It was an all-round mess, undignified and ignominious. During the sitting, the Speaker, William Aston, had to throw a pencil at Billy Wentworth, minister for social services, to stop him snoring on the frontbench. The press were aghast. It was rush and chaos all over again. The arrogance and ineptitude was startling. It undid all the work McMahon had done since taking over. ‘Mr McMahon became Prime Minister with a reputation as a systematic, deliberative, and shrewd politician,’ The Australian editorialised two days later. ‘The Liberal Party must now be questioning his political judgment.’67 But McMahon saw no fault on his part. Amid ‘the worst press he had received during his forty days and forty nights’, he had a row with his staff and colleagues about it. Alan Reid, keeping in touch with all that he could, put it pithily: McMahon was blaming everyone but himself for the debacle.68