But the controversy continued. The Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne called it a dogmatic work, and questioned why the government had allowed it in when the English and French governments had not. The minister for housing, Kevin Cairns, a very conservative Catholic, stepped into the fray, describing the book as ‘gross, crude, and frightful’.6 The minister for the navy, Malcolm Mackay, a Presbyterian minister, argued that Australia’s morality was in danger: ‘The nation is under siege right now from moral aggression by literature, drugs, and psycho-political mass communication.’7 Doug Anthony told an audience of Young Australian Country Party members that the book was subversive — ‘a handbook for juvenile revolution and anarchy’ — and DLP senator Jack Kane speculated about whether the book’s communist provenance was evident in the supposed ownership of its copyright by the ‘Radical Action Movement’.8
The optics — of government ministers disagreeing with cabinet decisions, and appearing to align themselves with political opponents — were poor. It highlighted, yet again, the ructions within the government. When The Sydney Morning Herald ran a story implying that Howson, Robert Katter, Wentworth, Mac Holten, and senator Robert Cotton — ministers all — had disagreed with the decision to allow The Little Red Schoolbook to be imported, McMahon insisted on reminding each of them of the principle of cabinet solidarity. ‘Once a decision is taken it is binding on members of the Ministry and personal differences are not to be revealed,’ he wrote.9
Similar attempts to shut down areas where tension and division could be found were constant. They were especially obvious in McMahon’s uneasy handling of the offshore legislation that Gorton had championed before his downfall. Despite receiving its second-reading speech two years before, by April 1972 the Territorial Sea and Continental Shelf Bill was buried at the bottom of the House of Representatives notice paper. Knowing that there was pressure for it to be dealt with, and all too aware that Gorton would vote for it regardless of the government’s position, McMahon, at a party-room meeting on 29 March, successfully persuaded his colleagues to make no decision on it before further discussions with the states. By mid-April, however, there was pressure for McMahon to hurry. Speaking with the prime minister for a ‘solid hour’ on 18 April, Gorton put a deadline to him: McMahon could have some time to consult with the states, but if he was not ‘getting anywhere in a month’, Gorton would cross the floor to bring the Bill on for debate.10 In a letter sent to McMahon the next day, Tom Hughes threatened to do the same.11 Shortly afterwards, Whitlam — correctly suspecting that there was pressure to be found on this point — gave notice that he would seek to suspend standing orders during debate on the government’s Marine Science Institute Bill in order to bring on a debate on the offshore legislation. Quite plainly, he would invite Gorton to vote with the opposition, and challenge Jim Killen and Tom Hughes to join their fallen former prime minister.
McMahon sought to divert Killen and Hughes from doing so. In a meeting on 9 May, a ‘terribly dejected’ looking McMahon asked Killen not to support Whitlam’s motion. ‘I do not want anybody crossing the floor on that,’ he said. The request outraged Killen. Eventually, McMahon sought a promise that Killen would at least approach the motion with an open mind. ‘You’ll make up your own mind, won’t you?’ he asked. Killen slammed the desk with his fingers, so hard that they began to bleed, and told McMahon that he would never do otherwise. He thought McMahon was confused, uncertain of his authority, and unable to understand how the irresolution was damaging the government and the Liberal Party. Killen wrote later: ‘I was convinced the office of Prime Minister was beyond him.’12
On 17 May, when the party room returned to discuss the issue, McMahon continued his attempts to bring Gorton, Killen, and Hughes on board. He told the party room that passing the Marine Science Institute legislation was necessary if Robert ‘Duke’ Bonnett, the member whose Queensland electorate would host the institute, was to hold his seat at the election. Delay could imperil Bonnett’s efforts, he said. An unconvinced Gorton, Killen, and Hughes nonetheless struck a deal with McMahon: in exchange for voting against Whitlam’s motion, there would be a debate on the offshore legislation the next day.
The backdown from the trio was a victory for McMahon.13 Party unity would be maintained, at least on the floor of the House, and the issue could be defused by dragging it out until time ran out — as, indeed, it eventually did.14 The Territorial Sea and Continental Shelf Bill would not be voted upon in the life of the McMahon government.
BELEAGURED as the government was, it was able, on occasion, to assert itself in the Parliament and in national debate. The Whitlam-led opposition did not have the upper hand all year round. In February, the government was able to make much hay over Labor’s candidate for the Victorian seat of Hotham. Barry Johnston, a primary school teacher who had received his national service call-up, had defied the orders and ‘gone underground’ in an effort to dodge authorities. The attorney-general, senator Ivor Greenwood, called for Whitlam to repudiate Johnston immediately. ‘Failure to do so is to give support to those who defy the law,’ Greenwood said, ‘and the ALP, as a party seeking office, should unambiguously show whether it encourages lawlessness.’15 When, three weeks later, Greenwood accused Labor of being in a position to assist the police track Johnston down, he managed to ensnare Whitlam himself. Speaking on the radio, the ALP leader explained the situation by saying, ‘Well, draft-dodging is not a crime. I am not going to assume that this man has broken any law.’ Are you saying that draft-dodging is not a crime? asked his incredulous interviewer. ‘How do you define draft-dodging?’ Whitlam replied. ‘Look, cut out all the nonsense about this. After this next election there will be no draft.’16
The government went immediately on the attack, and in the House of Representatives on 2 March homed in on the statement, attempting to portray the ALP as the party of lawlessness. What was notable, and perhaps why its attacks were most effective, was that Hughes and Killen spearheaded the debate. Hughes told the House that he had admired Whitlam’s courage elsewhere. But: ‘Why, on this occasion, has his courage failed him?’ Hughes asked. ‘Why has he not denounced the candidature of Mr Johnston? Why has he not denounced the methods by which Mr Johnston is promoting his candidature?’ Killen, meanwhile, caught attention with a quip that Whitlam was the only man of whom it could be said that ‘his Achilles heel is in his mouth’.17
Other elements of the ALP also caused problems. In April, the Victorian division voted to express its ‘satisfaction’ at successful advances of North Vietnamese forces into South Vietnam, prompting a pointed rebuke from Whitlam that the Labor Party’s policy was to get a political settlement to end the war — not to applaud either side. There were problems with the party’s immigration policy. In March, former ALP leader Arthur Calwell was the cause of consternation when he suggested his opposition to the ALP’s policy for sponsored immigration. If 27,000 coloured immigrants came to Australia each year, he said on radio, in a decade they would number 270,000, and ‘it wouldn’t be very long before they would be taking the jobs of the Australian-born, even the Aboriginals’.18 Then, in May, Fred Daly lost responsibility for the immigration portfolio when he publicly suggested retaining parts of the White Australia Policy.19
Contentious debates over preselections and whether to retain an ‘inner cabinet’ also caused problems. Later in the year, Whitlam’s suggestions that he would revalue the dollar were he in power caused open disputes with his own shadow ministers. The decision by the People’s Republic of China to resume buying wheat from Australia also undermined Labor’s claim that diplomatic recognition was the only way to resume the sales. None of these was beneficial to the ALP, and they gave the government a boost — albeit a small one. ‘I believe that morale is now starting to impove, and that we could well have turned the tide that has been flowing against us so much in recent weeks,’ Howson wrote, after the debate on draft-dodging on 2 March. By the end of April, he was satisfied by the governmen
t’s supposedly ‘re-established ascendancy’ over Labor. ‘It’s had the effect of improving the PM’s own morale,’ he observed, ‘and once he gets into good spirits he makes wiser and quicker decisions.’20
But, as journalist Bruce Grant had pointed out in March, the mere presence of problems for the ALP was not enough for the government. Its own problems — its confusion over direction, its manifest disunity, the steadily eroding loss of public confidence in its economic management, and the negative image of McMahon himself — would not be overcome without enormous effort. And even that might not be enough. ‘The problem of legitimacy for this Government,’ Grant wrote, ‘is that even if, by some stroke of luck or brilliance, it were to remove unemployment, stop inflation, establish industrial harmony, demonstrate that Australia was defensible and, a week before the elections and just a few days after Mr McMahon had returned from a bigger banquet than Mr Whitlam was given in Peking, have Queen Elizabeth and president Nixon as simultaneous guests, the Australian people might still decide that, after all, it is time Labor had a go.’21
THE press was a persistent problem. Poor headlines proliferated, and McMahon’s efforts to address them were inadequate. He believed his government had a good story to tell; in interviews, he always invoked the tremendous amount of work that was going on. ‘I’ve always been a hard worker,’ he said, ‘[but] never as hard as I work now because I have very little time for myself or, for that matter, my family. I work even in the car when I’m going back to the Lodge or I’m going home in Sydney and I get along with probably four and a half to five hours sleep a night.’22 He sought to emphasise that he was taking ‘decisive’ action: ‘Wherever a decision has to be made, I think I’ll make it.’23 His poor poll numbers, McMahon thought, were caused by a lack of knowledge among the community: ‘I think the biggest problem we face is one of communication … I think that if the people know the reasons [for government actions and policies], they will be satisfied and quickly our popularity will be restored.’24
This led McMahon to concentrate on media management as the solution to his ills. In January 1972, frustrated by leaks and hopeful that more engagement with the press would result in better headlines, McMahon had cabinet agree that he would speak about its decisions with the Press Gallery heads of bureaux.25 ‘I hope this is what you want,’ he said to reporters, at the first briefing; the journalists were unimpressed. ‘When do you think it will be likely we could have a full-scale press conference?’ one asked.26 McMahon’s refusal to schedule such a conference rankled. Then it occupied precious column space, feeding the perception that McMahon was secretive, scared, and that his words never matched reality.27 ‘He has a communications gap,’ one journalist said tartly, on the anniversary of McMahon’s becoming prime minister. ‘He declared this day a year ago he wanted the Australian people to be informed of what the government was doing, and why … and has held few press conferences since.’28
McMahon would not accept this. He criticised the efforts of his press secretary, Reg MacDonald, both to his face and behind his back. Late in February 1972, he decided that he wanted MacDonald re-assigned and to replace him with a new press secretary.29 Then he wanted MacDonald to stay, but with restricted, ‘administrative’ duties.30 His discontent continued, leading to the farcical situation of MacDonald submitting, and then rescinding, his resignation in August.31 Journalist Mungo MacCallum thought McMahon and MacDonald were both responsible for the problems. McMahon told MacDonald nothing, interfered in his work by ringing up journalists and complaining, and insisted on promulgating an image clearly at odds with reality. MacDonald, meanwhile, ‘had no idea what the job was about,’ said MacCallum. ‘He played favourites among the Press Gallery [and] he told you things that in fact weren’t so, simply just because he wanted to appear informed when in fact he wasn’t.’32 Howson thought McMahon himself was more to blame — an assessment echoed by Reid, who argued that suggestions to the contrary were ‘a lot of rot’.33 Writing in his diary, Reid was forthright: ‘There is no love lost between McM[ahon] and working pressmen. But McM[ahon] provides them almost daily with the pegs on which to hang criticism. It is his performance that is key.’34
In an effort to address this performance, McMahon sought out Coombs to provide him with speeches on various aspects of Australian life.35 They would be written, but not used. In February, McMahon had been persuaded to hire journalist Jonathan Gaul in a speechwriting role.36 But McMahon would never be happy with the words that were written for him. ‘They are a disgrace,’ he would say, in late May, of one set of drafts. ‘If I used these I would look as if I were blowing wind into a balloon. Not a single word of commonsense.’37
Gaul soon came to take on more and more of the duties of a press secretary. Long familiar with McMahon through his time working for Ezra Norton, Rupert Murdoch, the Fairfax group, and Maxwell Newton, Gaul believed that McMahon’s relationship with the press was terrible. ‘The media and McMahon had a symbiotic relationship,’ he said later. But that changed. ‘When he became prime minister, that started to fall apart.’ A part of it lay simply in the restrictions on McMahon’s time and position: he could not have the confidential conversations with journalists that he had had in the past. Another part of it was the media’s sceptical regard for McMahon, and their sense that the long afternoon of Liberal and Country Party dominance was drawing to a close. Then there were the problems with McMahon’s public performances. ‘He hardly held any press conferences, because of his disabilities and his long tradition of one-to-one dealings with journalists,’ Gaul said later. ‘As press secretary I thought that McMahon was least effective on television, and not effective in press conferences or doorstops.’38
McMahon’s relationships with the press would not improve. He regarded reporters as deceitful, critical, and biased in favour of Labor. This could lead him to over-react. When he bumped into Whitlam in the This Day Tonight studio for an appearance on 11 April, McMahon believed he had been had. The ABC’s intention for Whitlam to appear on the same programme as him was insulting, and the manner by which it had been arranged was underhanded. Gaul agreed with McMahon. ‘It was an ambush by Richard Carleton,’ he said later. ‘… That was a set-up.’39
The next day, Labor questioned whether McMahon or his office had made a complaint about the incident. McMahon denied all, but a well-informed and mischievous speech from Gorton drew attention to it, fuelling speculation that McMahon had lied in the House.40
Unable to win journalists to his side, McMahon went over their heads. He was constantly in touch with editors and news proprietors alike to seek better coverage. In March 1972, McMahon convinced the chairman of the Melbourne Herald and Sun newspapers, Sir Philip Jones, to run articles praising the government. Jones, as Richard Casey wrote of him that year, ‘was only too ready to be helpful’ and ‘very much’ on McMahon’s side.41 McMahon was able to make use of an offer from the Macquarie Radio Network — not, initially, offered to Whitlam — to make a weekly broadcast entitled ‘Report to the Nation’.42 This was Gaul’s idea. ‘McMahon had more control over it, and interviews were usually with one presenter … We would put McMahon on a few times each week.’43 He also had a natural ally in Sir Warwick Fairfax, the proprietor of John Fairfax and Sons, who had privately confessed in December 1971 that, as an organisation, ‘we do not usually support the Labor Party and certainly not in its present condition’.44 Using that friendship, McMahon prevailed upon Fairfax to axe Killen’s column in The National Times, and thereby subdue the critical backbencher. But that reprieve lasted only a few hours, until Killen accepted an offer to author a column for Rupert Murdoch’s stable of newspapers.45
There were also rumours of McMahon’s ability to pressure editors and proprietors on stories. In early May, Alan Reid heard that a journalist from the Canberra Times had asked some potentially embarrassing questions about McMahon’s travel allowance. Rumours emerged that McMahon had made claims for travel outside of Canberra, including in S
ydney and at the Gold Coast. McMahon seemed concerned, and while he left Bunting to deal with the question of repayments, he also ‘contacted A.T. Shakespeare [owner of the Canberra Times] and virtually pleaded with him’ to have the story quashed.46
The support that McMahon enjoyed from Packer’s ACP and The Daily Telegraph had not waned since he became prime minister; indeed, until June 1972 it remained the one constant in the McMahon prime ministership. In March, when Snedden and McMahon found themselves enmeshed in controversy over a tax on the family unit, sharp-eyed observers noted that The Daily Telegraph had contorted itself in inextricable ways to produce favourable coverage of the prime minister. An early edition editorial argued that McMahon ‘certainly has his problems when his treasurer flies a kite like that’. A later edition was different: ‘The Prime Minister, who revealed last night he had not been consulted about the speech, would be justified in taking strong action against Mr Snedden.’47 Moreover, despite the extensive coverage of McMahon’s failings that he documented in his diary, Reid did not see fit to include criticism of McMahon in his columns. In public, as Reid’s biographers later wrote, the journalist ‘loyally upheld the corporate line’, and focused his attention on Labor and the supposedly adverse effects of its new, voguish policies on a hypothetical ‘Mr and Mrs Average’.48
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