They were outraged by Labor senator and attorney-general Lionel Murphy’s decision to ‘raid’ ASIO offices in Canberra and Melbourne in March 1973, an incident that brought back on to the agenda McMahon’s handling of the Sydney Travel Agency bombings in September 1972.38 They were aghast at plans to abolish fees for university and technical education, to repeal penal sanctions against workers, to introduce universal health insurance, and to reform Australia’s electoral law by giving the vote to eighteen-year-olds and reducing the permissible variation in electorates to a maximum of 10 per cent. The government’s mid-July decision to implement a 25 per cent cut in tariffs was a sharp shock that prompted outrage, and polls that followed suggested that the Liberal and Country parties had regained enough support to win an election, should one be held.39 This point was most evidently borne out when the Liberal Party retained Nigel Bowen’s marginal seat of Parramatta in a by-election after the former foreign affairs minister resigned to join the New South Wales Court of Appeal.40
Elements of the coalition parties regarded the Whitlam government as an aberration, the result of a temporary bout of insanity in the electorate, and advocated as a cure for that insanity the use of radical measures — most notably, the blocking of the government’s supply Bills in order to force it to the polls. Snedden held out against this idea for some time, but he maintained the Coalition’s obstruction in the Senate, which repeatedly rejected or deferred Whitlam government Bills.
By April 1974, the obstruction was undeniable. Aware that a half-Senate election was necessary within the next few months, Whitlam saw an opportunity to increase the ALP’s strength by inducing former DLP leader Vince Gair to accept an appointment as ambassador to Ireland. But the controversial and underhanded attempt to create an extra vacancy at the half-Senate election, which Labor might win, went awry. The Country Party’s Queensland premier, Joh Bjelke-Petersen, secured the writs for only five vacancies, not six. The controversy over Gair’s appointment and outrage at Whitlam’s scheming led Snedden to succumb to internal party pressure, including from McMahon, to block supply. Snedden announced that the Coalition parties would exploit their numerical strength in the Senate and refuse supply until Labor went to an election. ‘I think some of them [his colleagues] were in favour of it rather recklessly,’ Snedden said later, ‘feeling “Let’s give the bastards a go, we’ll win.” You know, let’s kick them out. You know, they were gung ho.’41
The threat, along with the six Bills languishing in the Senate — Bills that would establish Medibank, Senate representation for the Northern Territory and the ACT, ensure greater equality between electorates, and establish the Petroleum and Minerals Authority — was all the reason Whitlam needed to bring on the election. He went to Hasluck to secure the dissolution of both houses of Parliament, with an election scheduled for 18 May.
McMahon was an enthusiastic proponent of getting rid of the Whitlam government via an early election. As he had said in March, ‘It is time — time to think again; time to act; time — a little more than a year later — to give the Australian voter the opportunity to kick out this Labor Government; time to do so before irreparable damage is done to the fabric of the Australian economy and society.’ To McMahon, the Labor government was most egregiously offensive in its mishandling of the economy. He accused it of fuelling inflation by failing to restrict the growth of government expenditure. To him, it was obvious that voters would see matters as he did.42
They did not. The election saw the Whitlam government returned with 49.3 per cent of the vote, the DLP wiped out in the Senate, and Labor supporters elated.43 It was the first time that a Labor prime minister had won consecutive terms, and Whitlam claimed that the result was a renewal of the mandate of 1972. But it was an election from which all but the DLP could draw succour. The government had been re-elected, yes — but it did not have control of the Senate; it had lost a minister, in Al Grassby, and its majority in the House had fallen from nine seats to five. Largely the consequence of two new seats that had been added to the House, the Liberal and Country parties could count all these as victories. The ability to draw this kind of conclusion allowed Snedden, the next day, to deny that the government had a mandate.
The Coalition’s loss at the 1974 election resulted in McMahon’s dismissal from the frontbench. In the wake of the defeat, Snedden recognised that preference could no longer be given to eminences and elders, particularly those who were getting in the way. Therefore, he sacked Gorton, senator Kenneth Anderson, and McMahon. Snedden had had enough of the former prime minister. In addition to urging Snedden to bring on the election, and then disavowing it once it failed,44 McMahon had made a nuisance of himself. Snedden was sick of having to deal with him. ‘He wanted to talk on every issue and was, to put it frankly, a hindrance to the proper progression of consideration of issues,’ Snedden recalled.45
But, as Snedden later found, sackings invariably result in enemies. McMahon was not impressed by his ignominious removal, and a year later had the satisfaction of watching Snedden also be dispatched. ‘There are a lot of people who feel they would like this problem of leadership determined very quickly,’ McMahon said.46 Although Malcolm Fraser was still an object of considerable venom within the Liberal Party, disliked and distrusted for sparking Gorton’s downfall, his formidable talent could not be denied. In late 1974, Tony Staley, the Liberal member for the Victorian seat of Chisholm, came to the view that Snedden simply ‘should not be Prime Minister’, and decided to begin working for Fraser’s election in Snedden’s place.47 It took two attempts, but eventually it was successful.48 McMahon voted for Fraser, and, on 21 March 1975 had the satisfaction of watching an enraged Gorton hurry from the party room to spit at the journalists waiting outside: ‘That bastard’s got it!’49
McMahon was quick to ingratiate himself with his new leader. When Snedden returned to his office following the meeting, McMahon followed soon after. ‘Well, that little twirp [sic] McMahon is here asking for Mr Fraser,’ Snedden’s secretary told him. ‘He thinks he is in the office already!’50
Fraser, however, had no trust in McMahon whatsoever. Prompted by his experiences working alongside him and suspicions about his honesty, Fraser would not countenance a glorious return for the former prime minister. A position in the shadow cabinet was not in the offing. McMahon stayed on the backbench. ‘I don’t think he had any future in a senior or leadership role,’ said John Howard, who had entered the House as member for Bennelong at the 1974 election.51 Why was McMahon staying in Parliament, then? Why was he not packing it in, retiring, as he had intimated to Hasluck in 1972?
A faith in the rewards of endurance may have influenced McMahon’s refusal to retire. If there was one lesson that his experience gave him, it was surely the value of persistence. He had outlasted Menzies; survived McEwen; prevailed, in the end, over Gorton. Why would it now be any different? Even outside the question of a particular position or role, however, McMahon believed he still had things to give. ‘I don’t believe that he had in mind that there would be a return to power,’ said Robert Ashley, who worked as McMahon’s private secretary for two bouts between 1973 and 1975. ‘I think his role gave him a platform and public position to achieve what he was looking to achieve … Sonia would have said to him, “You having something to offer, Bill. Keep at it.”’
Nor was McMahon wholly fixed on the past, in Ashley’s opinion. McMahon had ideas. ‘He didn’t slow down. We were always writing something — a speech, an article. There was always something on the boil.’ McMahon was still energetic, still hardworking, still demanding, still desirous of being involved. He was always building his knowledge bank, whether through books, articles, briefing papers, or by phone. The days were long, beginning before eight o’clock and usually running until after McMahon went home at seven o’clock. ‘The pressure on staff was really quite demanding.’
Moreover, there was a clear public appetite for McMahon’s presence. However much colleague
s might grumble about him, the party had no hesitation about using him in campaigns. ‘There was a serious bit of stardust about Bill and Sonia,’ Ashley recalled. ‘There was a lot of glamour. He was amazingly friendly with people. So was Sonia. He was an electioneering asset for them, but they were very careful about how they used him.’ No doubt the attention — ‘They need me,’ he would frame it — flattered McMahon. Politics, Sonia would say, was his passion: ‘What else was he going to do with himself? He didn’t have many other interests. He played squash and golf, but he never dwelt on his political defeat.’52
Staying ensured that McMahon could continue to assert and protect his legacy. ‘He was also looking to put some perspective on his time in office, on saying what was behind his decisions,’ recalled Ashley. ‘He would challenge any articles. He was always available for television interviews. He was always on AM. He always enjoyed exposure.’53 But there were also, always, clear signs that McMahon was looking forward to the time when he could say everything that he wanted. Once, when it was put to him that his legacy might be more easily defended if he could set out all that had happened — the crises and compromises, the personal animosities and secrets — McMahon simply grinned. ‘I’ll give my side of it eventually — when I write my memoirs.’ But when would that be? ‘When I feel that the time is right, but not now.’54
Ashley was in no doubt about it. Shortly before he returned to work for McMahon in 1974, McMahon moved from his longstanding office in the Commonwealth Bank Building to one at Westfield Towers. The amount of paper that came with him was enough to fill the boardroom ‘wall-to-wall’. ‘McMahon was determined to write his autobiography,’ Ashley recalled. ‘Quite anxious to do so, too.’55
NO longer being prime minister was, in some ways, a godsend for McMahon. As he was later to say, he was no longer as exhausted as he once was; nor was there so much pressure on him. He could enjoy life with Sonia and their three growing children, largely out of the media spotlight.
It also gave him time to join the Freemasons, the theistic fraternal organisation brought to Australia at the time of the First Fleet.56 While McMahon did not speak publicly of the decision, it seems to have been prompted by an experience he had as prime minister. Attending a series of lectures organised by Lodge University of Sydney in the Great Hall on 27 August 1971, impressed by the regalia and tradition in evidence, McMahon presented a petition to the Lodge in November 1973 to be initiated as a Freemason. After a ballot in February 1974, he was initiated and passed in the following month. In doing so, McMahon joined a series of former prime ministers who had also been Freemasons: Edmund Barton, George Reid, Joseph Cook, Stanley Bruce, Earle Page. Even his own contemporaries Menzies, Fadden, McEwen, and Gorton were members. ‘To have an ex-Prime Minister among our members was a great distinction,’ wrote one of McMahon’s new peers, ‘just as it was to have a man of such mature age and sound judgement seeking to join our assemblies.’57 Whether it prompted any reconsideration of his religious beliefs is unknown.
In the three years that followed McMahon’s loss of office, long-palpable changes in Australia’s society were given legislative effect. They exposed gaping fissures on all sides of politics, and foreshadowed how McMahon’s beliefs could leave him isolated from his party. The Whitlam government’s reform of family law was but one example.
McMahon was a keen participant in and supporter of its changes. ‘It is path-breaking in the sense that it introduces liberal principles into family law,’ he said.58 Believing that the government should act to remove the anguish and fear associated with divorce proceedings, McMahon sought to redefine marriage, not as a ‘voluntary union entered into for life’, but rather a ‘union intended to be permanent’ that ‘should not be dissolved by law unless the marriage … has irretrievably broken down’.59 He believed that there should be no demonstration that a marriage was irretrievably broken beyond a twelve-month separation. ‘Irretrievable breakdown is a fiction,’ he said. ‘The real ground is twelve months separation.’60 Votes on that Bill made for a curious display of the varying attitudes towards marriage: on the bellwether vote, McMahon, Gorton, and Whitlam sat on the same side of the House — opposite Fraser, Keating, and Howard.61
Another matter that would draw attention was McMahon’s comments on the intelligence community. In August 1974, Whitlam acceded to long-running calls to establish a royal commission on intelligence and security, to be chaired by New South Wales Supreme Court justice Robert Hope. The decision followed a meeting with ASIO’s acting director-general that had been prompted by the leaking of an ASIO file on Jim Cairns (who had just displaced Lance Barnard as Labor’s deputy leader and thus deputy prime minister). Told, in that meeting, that ASIO had undertaken considerable surveillance of Australian political figures, Whitlam moved to establish a commission into the history, administrative structures, and functions of Australia’s national security agencies.
McMahon had gone some way to stoke the issue. In an appearance on Channel 9’s Federal File, on 23 June 1974, McMahon had let slip the existence of a secret intelligence agency known only to very few: the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), also known by the codename M09, which obtained and distributed foreign intelligence about threats to Australian interests in Asia and the Pacific. Asked about the ASIO file on Cairns, McMahon denied having anything to do with it, and criticised ASIO for acting without authority. The law should be changed so that it was accountable, he said. What about the other intelligence arms, his interlocutor asked. ‘The JIO and M09,’ McMahon replied. ‘Yes, I know a fair bit about them too. Particularly JIO, when I was Minister for Foreign Affairs and Cambodia was on. I had a fair bit of information coming in to me daily about the operations there. But M09 too, again I took a deep interest in …’62
There was, immediately, speculation about what McMahon was referring to, and whether his response had been deliberate.63 Rob Ashley had no doubt that it was accidental: ‘He was a bit concerned about it, how it had slipped out, and he tried very hard to make good.’64 Whether or not it was accidental, it certainly ensured that the prospect of a royal commission could linger in the public consciousness.
McMahon gave evidence to the Hope commission just under a year later, on 29 May.65 He pointedly admitted to, and discussed, the utility of intelligence that he received while minister for labour and national service. Believing that the relationship between Harry Bland and Sir Charles Spry (then director-general of ASIO) was central to the sharing of that intelligence, McMahon said it was used to ‘pre-empt’ moves by militant or communist-controlled unions. ‘You would give a warning to the people involved and they would be, to a considerable extent, able to ensure that they could take anticipatory action,’ McMahon explained. But in every one of his roles after that, McMahon said, ASIO intelligence was next to useless. ‘During the time I was Prime Minister, I became extremely disturbed about the quantity and quality of the information that was coming to me from ASIO.’ It was so bad and so little, McMahon said, that sometimes he wondered if the agency even existed.
Telling then director-general Peter Barbour of his regard for ASIO did nothing, McMahon claimed. He recounted how, in the aftermath of the travel-agency bombings in September 1972, he had decided to cut ASIO out of the handling of the investigation. According to McMahon, it was only the police investigation of the first bombing that enabled the truth to emerge that it was far from a deliberate terrorist attack: ‘So it was pretty complicated and rather amusing, I felt,’ he said.
But McMahon also felt clear anger that he had not been able to air this in the House, in order to dispel suggestions that the government had ignored extremism within the Croatian community. To McMahon, it was merely the latest example of how he had been ignored or unable to speak:
I wasn’t given a brief to speak on Vietnam, and yet I was the only person in the government, in the Parliament, who knew of John Kennedy’s famous operational order, 24 ot [sic] 34A, when he first comm
itted … to go ahead with further commitment of American advisers and military technicians and experts into North Vietnam [sic]. I was the only one who knew about the operations, the decisive influence, that Governor Averell Harriman had in stopping the Americans from going over the border into North Vietnam … I was the only one who knew anything at all of the mission here of Clark Clifford and Maxwell Taylor and the offer of what they wanted us to do and our refusal to give a battalion so that the Americans could step up efforts and bomb Hanoi and Hai Phong and the industrial centres. I knew more about the Guam doctrine, which was the beginning of our failure, and the end, so far as I was concerned, of a need for participation there [in Vietnam] … And so we too when we accepted the doctrine of privilege sanctuary and gave up the rights of hot pursuit. So I was the only one who knew these things.
He was disappointed he had not been able to speak publicly on these matters, he said, but ‘you suffer your disappointments in some anguish, particularly when you know that the others haven’t a clue what it is all about’.
And yet McMahon did not appear to have all the clues to hand, either. Confessing that he had first heard of ASIS/M09 through journalist Max Suitch, McMahon said that he had been ‘bewildered’ by the setup and expense of operating the agency. He called a meeting with Sir John Bunting and Sir Keith Waller, he said, to tell them that it was a waste of money. ‘And they laughed,’ McMahon said. They ‘giggled’. He was shocked. Then they told him that they would prefer he do nothing about it. McMahon accepted the advice, but maintained his annoyance at ASIS. Speaking of the intelligence sent by one ASIS station, McMahon described it as ‘bedroom gossip … without any association with the realities of life’. Nor was it intelligence that would have any impact on the government’s policy. ‘It would have been valueless.’
Asked for his suggestions for reform, McMahon argued that there should not be tenure for ASIO directors-general on grounds that long-established heads of department become ‘inbred’, ‘self-centred’, and ‘build their own empires’. He illustrated his point with the Treasury and Sir Frederick Wheeler:
Tiberius with a Telephone Page 71