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Posts published in July 1973

Foreign Policy: Whitlam’s Washington Address

July 30, 1973

During the first year of his government, Whitlam was not only Prime Minister but also Minister for Foreign Affairs.

This speech, an address to the National Press Club, in Washington, provides an overview of Whitlam’s foreign policy principles, as well as his view of Australia’s position within the ANZUS alliance.

Text of an address by the Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Gough Whitlam, to the National Press Club, Washington.

It is an honour for me to be asked to address representatives of the world’s greatest and most free press in the capital of the world’s greatest and most free democracy.

The strength of each is the strength of both.

In accepting your invitation I pay tribute to the manifest and enduring strength of both.

It’s been suggested that your chief interest today is to hear something about the changes in Australia’s policies as a result of the change in the Australian Government, changes affecting our international relations and particularly the relations between Australia and the United States.

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Whitlam’s Address To The ALP National Conference

July 10, 1973

In July 1973, Whitlam’s Labor government had been in office for seven months.

Whitlam’s Address to the ALP National Conference provides an insight into his thinking, particularly his belief that the government had been elected with a clear mandate to implement the policies developed in Opposition at the three previous party conferences in 1967, 1969 and 1971.

Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s Address to the ALP National Conference.

We would have less than ordinary human failings if on this occasion we were not tempted to indulge in all the emotions from nostalgia to euphoria. And our best friends have never suggested that the Australian Labor Party was short on ordinary human failings. There is, nonetheless, a sort of symmetry which would move anybody with a sense of our Party’s history in the fact that we came back to Surfers Paradise for this first National Conference with our first National Government for nearly a quarter of a century. We met here seven years ago for the Special Conference of 1966 – that annus horribilis in the history of Australia and of the Australian Labor Party. We were at the nadir of our fortunes. Yet that Special Conference, held at a time when we were well on our way to the greatest debacle in our Party’s history, strangely enough contained the seeds of our resurgence and ultimate triumph in a way that none of us could have then discerned. We started on the road back then and here.

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