Search results

The Whitlam Government has an enduring legacy. Yet scholarship on the Whitlam Government rarely exclusively or extensively focusses on its disability policies. This article applies disability studies to analyse key policies of the Whitlam Government, including increases to the Invalid Pension, Sheltered Employment Allowance and Sickness Benefits, the Australian Assistance Plan, the Handicapped Persons Assistance Act 1974, and the National Compensation Bill 1974 to understand how the Whitlam Government understood people with disability and the ongoing legacy of the policies. It hypothesises that, although from a contemporary viewpoint the policies and how they understand people with disability could be problematised, it postulates that, in the 1970s, they reflect a significant shift in how people with disability were understood and governed. Further, it conjects that the policies can inform current disability policy.

Abstract: Following the election of the Whitlam government in December 1972 changes in the composition, work and style of ministers' offices were substantial. Evaluations of the emerging pattern conflicted, often quite sharply. This paper surveys the pattern of staffing introduced by Labor and examines in particular the roles of ministerial officers as political and policy advisers. The paper also discusses recent experiences with ministerial staff in the United Kingdom and Canada, and makes brief reference to the use of ministerial staff by the Fraser government. Assessing the effectiveness of ministerial advisers is not easy. No straight forward measures of effectiveness exist. It is argued that, despite the ambitions of some ministerial staff during the Whitlam government, the role of ministerial advisers was essentially limited and confined. Ministers found them useful but few found them overwhelmingly so. While the Fraser government has reduced the number and visibility of ministerial staff it has retained the institutional underpinning of Labor's system. In the search for ways of assisting political parties to govern and to respond to changing situations, it is likely that ministerial staff with ability to advise on policy will receive further attention in the future.

The failure of & prospects for the Labor Party in Australia are discussed by analyzing its Medibank Health Insurance program, which was dismantled subsequent to the Labor Government's dismissal in 1975. The demise of the Medibank program is seen as a reflection of the overall failure of the government to adopt a sufficiently radical stance in mobilizing PO behind its policies. Instead, it pursued a consensus policy that vainly tried to unite broad sectors of the public & the medical profession behind the program. If Labor is to have a future in Australia, it must establish an agenda where participation is the first priority & the people are offered conditions of life & services that they themselves can administer locally. S. Karganovic.

Gough Whitlam's Labor government came to office in December 1972 with a vast and transformative reform agenda, at the heart of which was a fundamental policy shift in Aboriginal affairs away from assimilation and toward self-determination, described by Whitlam as; 'Aboriginal communities deciding the pace and nature of their future development as significant components within a diverse Australia'. Whitlam's commitment to self-determination reflected the United Nation's International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which refers to the right of all peoples to 'freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development'. Whitlam made it clear that Aboriginal Affairs would be a priority of his government with the establishment of the first separate Ministry for Aboriginal Affairs and his government introduced a suite of path-breaking policies for Aboriginal people. Pat Dodson, the inaugural chairperson of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, later described the change in policy and intent under Whitlam as, 'a transforming sentiment in this country for Aboriginal people'. This article explores the key features of Whitlam's Indigenous policy and argues that Whitlam's commitment to self-determination was a unique and radical policy reframing in Indigenous affairs not seen before or since. These advances were wound back by the conservative government of Malcolm Fraser and the 'transforming sentiment' soon reverted to one of 'self-management' and unarticulated assimilation.