#goughwhitlam — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #goughwhitlam, aggregated by home.social.
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@MarkAsser Many years ago, there was talk of Australia becoming a republic, and one of the models proposed had a president with very little power. At the time, I thought it was a bad idea, not much different to our current arrangement of Governor General who, I thought was "Just a figurehead". Oh, I was naïve...
Later, I learned about Governor General John Kerr, and The Dismissal of Gough Whitlam. And, how that led to the undemocratic handover to Malcolm Fraser, and to many years of political Dark Ages that followed — that was the "normal" when I was a kid growing-up. John Kerr's abuse of power reshaped politics and governance in Australia for many Gen X people and all following generations.
The lesson history teaches us from political skullduggery in 1970s Australia is: you don't want a Governor General going rogue and breaking our system of Democracy.
You _do_ want your ultimate leader to be just a figurehead.
You want your nation's leaders to know their station and act accordingly, which is not to rule the people, but to serve the people.#AusPol #JohnKerr #GoughWhitlam #MalcolmFraser #MaintainYourRage
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@static That’s the thing—last time an Australian PM even hinted at steering our own ship, the rug got pulled out from under us. Just look at Gough Whitlam in the '70s; the moment he started questioning the "status quo" and those bases, he was absolutely shafted. It’s hard to have a sovereign foreign policy when the landlord decides to evict the tenant for asking where the spare keys are.
#auspol #goughwhitlam #pinegap #sovereignty
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A comment from a post in which Gough Whitlam was referred to as a politician who "delivered so much for Australians who had felt overlooked for too long".
I mean, I'm not a fan of politicians... but whatever you want to say about Whitlam, he fucking PASSED some legislation.
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What would Whitlam do? Fifty years on from the dismissal, his values could still guide Australian politics | Peter Lewis https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/11/what-would-gough-whitlam-fifty-50-year-dismissal-anniversary #Artificialintelligence(AI) #Australianpolitics #AnthonyAlbanese #Essentialpoll #GoughWhitlam #Laborparty #Technology
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@mojo @HardBeingGreen @Devorppa
#PaulKeating was no #GoughWhitlam but #AnthonyAlbanese isn't much of anything. I hope that #JimChalmers can be better than #Keating
#AusPol
#chalmers
#Labor -
Ffity years later.
We still remember.
#GoughWhitlam -
Auspol #GoughWhitlam #JohnMenadue #TheDismissal
#Zionism #TheLoansAffair #PinceKingCharles #PineGap
#ForeignInvestments #Power #TheLoansAffairWhat would Whitlam think of the Albanese Government?
an interesting conversation between John Menadue and Bart Shteinman about whitlam’s style, compared to that of albanese
—-a mid length but rewarding read covering a range of topics“John Menadue: On the American relationship, it would be very, very different. Whitlam showed his colours about a month after his election by criticising the American bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong. The Americans were terribly upset with that, because we were supposed to be a locked-in ally. People around the White House with Nixon were calling us — or at least the Australian Government, the prime minister — “North Vietnamese collaborators”. And there were some rude words that Nixon said about Whitlam – that they were “peaceniks” or worse!”
and
“Whitlam was the first person who explained to me the difference between Judaism and Zionism. As a young man I hadn’t appreciated the difference. He explained it to me, and it was quite a revelation.”
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an interjection from maude:incidentally, 🤔 iirc, israel in the 60s & 70s had the west’s sympathy (“remember the holocaust”, and Leon Uris books)… the reaction in 1978 after the oscars where Vanessa Redgrave spoke in favour of Palestine was huge
anyway, back to the article discussing whitlam and albanese
————-“John Menadue: Most people would agree the politics of the Connor fundraising left a lot to be desired. It was messy, very difficult. Gough expressed a lack of confidence in Treasury and Treasury paid it back in spades, leaking a lot of information about the loan raising. So it was politically very damaging.
But what drove Rex Connor and was supported in the Labor Party generally was lost sight of in the whole “loans affair”. It was an attempt by the government to address the problem of foreign ownership of our resources. Now, around 80% of our resource industries are owned offshore: BHP, Rio Tinto, and so on, and Rex Connor was trying to head that off. Instead of selling off our companies, we would borrow but retain ownership in Australia. That would have been difficult to achieve, but that’s what drove Rex Connor, and most Australians would applaud that now.”and
“We often hear Lord Acton: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” but it was Robert Caro who made the point that power reveals what people are really like…”https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/11/what-would-whitlam-think-of-the-albanese-government/
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Lest we forget the day democracy was killed off in Australia... #australia #auspol #CIA #USA #pinegap #UK #goughwhitlam #coup https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/the-role-of-the-united-states-in-the-dismissal-of-the-whitlam-government,20295
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Australia’s republican future faces a Trump-sized foreign threat
As Donald Trump reshapes America int…
#NewsBeep #News #Australia #Americanimperialism #AU #AUKUS #AustraliaUKrelations #AUSTRALIANREPUBLIC #CallumSeanMurray #coerciveempire #constitutionalmonarchy #crown #donaldtrump #geopoliticalpowershift #GoughWhitlam #GrandCoalition #KingCharlesIII #liberaldemocracy #MarkCarney #non-domination #republicanism #sovereignty #USforeignpolicy #US–Australiaalliance
https://www.newsbeep.com/au/69113/ -
I was just a kid in 1975 and had cast my first ever vote. It taught me that I do NOT live in a democracy. #Australia #auspol #australianpolitics #Whitlam #GoughWhitlam #coupdetat #CIA #UK #USA https://johnmenadue.com/whitlams-overthrow-queens-gambit-to-checkmate/
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#GoughWhitlam poured sand into Vincent Lingiari's hand in 1975, symbolising the return of ancestral land to the Gurindji people, a pivotal moment in Australia's land rights movement… #auspol #Dutton
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I believe that Gough is one of Albanese's heroes.
He's certainly one of mine.
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Besides #education #medicare #equality etc etc What did #GoughWhitlam do for #australia #auspol #leadership
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Hailed as the ‘best Australian speech, ever’ - listen to Cape York Indigenous leader Noel Pearson's tribute to former Australian Prime Minister #GoughWhitlam #brilliant #auspol #greatleaders
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I loved this piece published after Whitlam's death:
"The British-American coup that ended Australian independence"
#JohnPilger #GoughWhitlam
#Australia #AusPol -
Australian journalist John Pilger died. His work went hard. RIP.
#AusPol #Cambodia #Vietnam
#GoughWhitlam #KhmerRouge #journalismhttps://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/jan/01/john-pilger-obituary
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#Australian #universities have been a hallmark of equal opportunity since the #Whitlam #Labor government abolished fees in the 1970s. The aim was to allow the growing population of young Australians to get a higher #education – based on their merit over their money – and without the threat of financial ruin.
“We are all diminished when any of us are denied proper education,” #goughwhitlam told parliament, and the economy for a period gained a highly skilled workforce unencumbered by debt.
But now university enrolment growth has slowed, and degree completion is the lowest it’s been in almost a decade. #dumbification
https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjvx4q/why-are-australian-universities-bad-now
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Maybe #Straya need to regime change the #USA and install a real democracy?
#PreferentialVoting aka #RankedChoiceBallots
#Voting on a Saturday, with a polling place within walking distance for most people, easy to #vote in advance, and not too tricky to vote by post
and an independent federal body to draw electorate (district) boundaries, run polling places, and run the counting - like our #AEC https://www.aec.gov.au/
The Yanks can skip the #CompulsoryVoting if they insist. But it is good for calming politics no need for the "bring out the vote" intensity with "or the opposition will eat your kids" madness. And it makes some fraud even harder to do - like voter impersonation or dead people voting - if everybody votes in every election.#Australian #democracy is not perfect, but i think we're probably close to the "least-broken"?
Our worst problem is #mining company influence, to parties and the public
🎶you're gonna get whacked, by the mining tax🎶The expanding #Green and #Teal #CrossBench is providing some push back on the #mining lobby's environmental bullshit.
But we're still getting ripped off, if the government says we "can't afford" something, they're lying. We have an entire continent full of almost every mineral the world wants to buy, we just need to #tax it properly or nationalise it, not let a few individuals hoard all the profits.
But if we went full محمد مصدق or #Gough #Whitlam … then our friends the USA might decide we'd picked the wrong government and change it for us?
I don't necessarily want to change their government, I want to change how they elect it.
a #TwoPartyState is not really any better than a #OnePartyState
cc other mes @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]
#AUKUS #Teals #GoughWhitlam #ClivePalmer #GinaReinheart #GinaRinehart #GautamAdani
#محمدمصدق -
CW: definitely not "hysterical anti communist"
#Rudd was the leader of the #Labor party #ALP - centre left major party - the same party as #Whitlam - Rudd is more Conservative than #GoughWhitlam - but still miles to the left of the USA #Democrats
The hysterical anti-communists are in the #Liberal party #LNP and right wing minor parties (the USA needs minor parties, see image, but that's another story)
#NancyPelosi and the Clintons would probably be in the Liberal Party here?
@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @skua
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@NoodleRecords Yes, I remember the Dismissal.in 1975. I was working in the Sydney GPO at the time and the news spread like wildfire through the office. Was part of the afternoon protest on George street, remmeber the huge election rally for Labor and #GoughWhitlam in the Sydney domain. And yes, well aware CIA were involved in destabilising the Whitlam government, funding the Country Party. https://www.flickr.com/photos/takver/albums/72157651033047187
