The Rest Is History - 188. Australian Prime Ministers: Harold Holt - Malcolm Fraser

Episode Date: May 24, 2022

In the second part of our Australian PMs trilogy, Tom and Dominic explore Chinese Communist conspiracy theories and talk about the most entertaining of all the Aussie leaders. The final instalment of this mini-series will be in your podcast feed on Thursday. To get the last episode right now, join The Rest Is History Club, where you'll also get ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. Editor: Harry Lineker Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. that dominic sandbrick was of course a didgeridoo uh signaling the fact that we have reached part two of our survey our survey of Aussie PMs. And, Dominic, in the first episode, we got to 1966, hadn't we? We proceeded slowly but steadily in the sort of Jeff Boycott. Yes, yes. Cricketing style. And we've got to the, yes, the departure of Robert Menzies.

Australia's longer-serving prime minister. And so if you missed that, and we talked about Australian political culture and the different sort of forces within it and so on and parallels of Britain and why we don't know more about it in Britain. So if you missed all that, what on earth is wrong with you? Go back and listen to the previous podcast. But we're going to kick off now with Harold Holt and one of the great stories in Australian history. So Harold Holt, Tom, you know where his ancestors were from um probably from cornwall or somewhere they were from the great city of birmingham were they they

were from birmingham fans i don't know if they were villa fans they may well have been birmingham city or they may have preceded um yes the creation of those clubs anyway uh so his ancestors are from birmingham he went to boarding school in melbourne and um had been Australia's youngest MP in the early 1930s. And he was very much a sort of protege of Menzies, I think, right through. And he'd been a Labour – he'd had a sort of great – was regarded as one of Australia's great Labour ministers. So he got on really well with the leaders of the trade unions, which is actually quite –

Were they mates? They probably were mates. And that's quite similar to British conservative politicians of the same period, who also generally got on well with the trade unions until the late 1960s. So – Was that the point? Always preferring Labour prime ministers? Labour prime ministers, exactly. And then he was treasurer, which is the equivalent of chancellor or treasury secretary in the United States, and was seen as good, kind of pragmatic.

I mean, obviously, this is a boom time for Australia, the sort of mid-60s. Everything seems to be fine. Everything's going well. Except for Vietnam. Except for Vietnam, which we'll come to. So Howard Holt becomes prime minister, succeeding Menzies. And he's very enthusiastic about Vietnam, isn't he? I mean, he triples Australia's troop commitment.

And he goes to the White House, doesn't he? And famously says that we're all the way with LBJ. He says he personally is all the way with it. Because if you read the text of the speech, he basically says to Johnson in front of the whole press corps, you'll have moments when you'll be doubting yourself and people are all against you. But remember, there's one person who's all the way with LBJ,

and that's him. I mean, he doesn't say it in that fantastic accent. He says it in his own voice. And Australians are horrified by this because they think it's terribly servile. Yeah, it's demeaning, isn't it? It is demeaning. You're trying to throw off the chains of the British oppressive state. You're throwing british oppressive on the chains but have you seen photos of him with lbj so lbj is obviously massive and harold holt is quite is much shorter and he's look it looks like he's having a brilliant time

but he also looks like he's lbj's batman and not in the cricketing sense and not in the cricketing sense no but they um they go and they get lashed by the swimming pool together at LBJ's ranch in Texas, I think. I mean, LBJ had quite a kind of Australian approach to language, didn't he? He's quite Australian. I think he's quite an Australian figure, LBJ. You can imagine him at a barbecue. Definitely.

I think that's what they do in Texas. They just sit around eating grilled meat, drinking beer, swimming, getting hammered, talking about how they're looking forward to their triumph in Vietnam. And Harold Holt, of course, is a great guy. He loves the beach. He loves to swim. I know it's terrible.

We shouldn't laugh about this. No. I really thought when I was looking at them, you know, getting my notes and stuff, I thought, when we do this, we should do this at the somber tone of tragedy. So this is just before Christmas in at the song, the tragedy. So this is, this is just before Christmas in 1967. Yes,

it is. So he's been climbing a step for just over a year and he goes for a swim off the Victorian coast. Cheviot beach famous for its, for its rips. It's never seen again. Yeah. So he vanishes. So he went with a couple of friends, didn't he?

So they come, they get, they get picked back up, don't they? they so they get back in but he's never seen again and so so so the like his theory is that he drowned well let's let's be honest well he drowned yeah but there are all that there's um that there is another theory that actually all along he'd been um spying for the Chinese. The primary spy is the name of the book by Anthony Gray. And that he'd been picked up by a Chinese submarine and taken to China. So I looked into this theory.

This isn't absolutely. So you don't. Well, let me tell you the theory. The theory is that Harold Holt was recruited as a Chinese agent as a very young man. And he originally thought he was an agent for the Kuomintang the Chinese nationalists then sometime I think in the 1950s or 60s his handlers revealed to him that he was actually an agent for the communists Holt despite the fact that he's working for one of the most anti-communist sort of government chief executives in the democratic world. So how do you think Menzies would, I mean, Menzies wouldn't like.

He'd have been very unimpressed. He would be very unimpressed by the idea of working for Chairman Mao. So the claim is that Harold Holt, he got to become prime minister of Australia, still working for the Chinese. And then eventually the Chinese decided that he was in danger of being rumbled or something. So they sent a submarine to lurk off this beach harold holt swam out to the submarine was picked up and spent the rest of his days very happily eating you know chinese food in china and and his wife when she was presented with this theory said he didn't he hated chinese which is obviously the clinching argument against it but also there's another there's another theory that he didn't he hated chinese which is obviously the clinching argument against it

there's another there's another theory that he was um he might have been murdered by the vietcong so those are the three theories he drowned yeah he was murdered by the vietcong or he was picked up by a chinese submarine you know the chinese theory the most fascinating thing about the chinese theory is the man who who came up with it is who's a British reporter, I think, a Reuters journalist called Anthony Gray, had himself been taken prisoner in China. So I wonder if he'd picked up intimations. Or had been driven mad by his incarceration. Yeah, either, either.

Which is an alternative explanation. Yeah, yeah. But this is still not the best detail about Harold Holt. No, tell us the best detail about harold holt no tell us the best detail okay so the best detail about harold holt is that the memorial to harold holt is a swimming center yes it is in melbourne the harold holt memorial swimming center i believe stands there to this day so the the truth is they were building that swimming center i think before before he drowned and they needed a memorial. But why on earth?

I've actually had a look at it online. It looks a very good, it looks a lovely pool. Yeah, it does. Really nice. It does. But I wouldn't swim in it just because I think... Well, you might be picked up by a submarine. Who wants to swim in a swimming pool that's named after a man who drowned?

Madness. It's distinctive. Yeah, I agree. it's very distinctive i mean it's not like you can i mean it's like naming a car after princess diana or something i mean it's well yes but dominic perhaps it's reflective of the um the can-do aussie spirit maybe that we as as poms as simpering poms yes whereas you know whinging about it whereas australians are plunging into that pool even as we speak i drowned let me get in there yeah so that's that would be my hunch um anyway so he so harold holt has drowned and that's the end so he gets succeeded by a guy called john gorton now he's a very good character. He's an excellent character.

But so unknown outside Australia. Right. He's almost French in his character-ness. Well, which is exactly how he was described by my friend Steve Kinane, who is the ABC Europe correspondent. Right. So I think in the wake of the French president's episode we did,

a number of Aussie followers said, please can you do one on Australian prime ministers? They didn't say it in that accent, Tom. Hi, mate. Could you do Aussie prime ministers? It's what they said. And I was, like you, a bit nervous about that because my knowledge of Australian politics isn't all it could be. But I was having our first cricket match of the season. I had to drive Steve down and his son son who's doing a australian politics course and so they told me all about it and steve then sent me a briefing note and his his account his description of john

gordon was slightly french in his lifestyle slightly french but you know also he started as an oxford man yeah um g uh gorton studied at brazen nose college and was captain of the rowing team like david cameron he was like david cameron well we'll come we'll come to cameron later because there's an interesting kind of link there but um i i saw um a uh a fellow of brazen nose over the weekend and he shall remain nameless because he's apparently there's an anecdote that um the gorton was contacted by the principal of brazen to tell him he was being made an honorary fellow which is a rare echelon and uh gorton asked if there was any money in it that that's pretty funny and then he said please don't say

this because it might be actionable so i apologize gordon's not still alive i mean although he did he did um he died at the age of 90. Yeah, I think 98, wasn't he? No, I think it's another one who's 98. Oh, okay. Yeah. Oh, no, that's Whitlam. It's Gotham, isn't it? Anyway, we'll come to Gotham later.

Let's stick with Gorton because Gorton is great fun. So Gorton is a war hero. He had been in the Air Force, hadn't he? And he'd crashed onto an island in Indonesia. And he'd previously been quite a sort of slightly matinee idol-ish, I would say. And they have to basically rebuild his face. Well, I mean, it's a terrible story because he –

so this is, I think, just after Pearl Harbor. And he's essentially part of the air garrison looking after Singapore. And obviously that goes terribly wrong and so after singapore falls he gets evacuated with various other australian pilots and they get um they get sunk and so he spends a day in a lifeboat surrounded by sharks and they you know they narrowly so he's narrowly avoided death twice he gets picked up um he yeah and they have to basically rebuild his face so he has scarring for the rest of his the rest of his life and he then you know he returns

to the um to the air force and crashes again twice um so slightly slightly jinxed jinxed but also lucky i mean you know he could have been killed then. Yeah, half empty, half full. Well, actually, Tom, just before we come on to his sort of political persona, that bad luck that he had with his physical health, I mean, we think of Australians as the sort of absolute epitome of, you know, strapping good health and so on. But actually, we forgot there was a caretaker prime minister between Harold Holt and John Gorton, who had even worse luck with his health than John Gorton did.

So he was a man called John McEwan, and he was only prime minister for a matter of weeks. Do you know what happened to him? No, I've never heard of him. So he was only really brief as prime minister. I mean, I think sort of weeks. Because of the Lady Jane Grey of Australia. Because after Harold Holtz had drowned or been picked up by the submarine, they needed to elect a new leader. And so while that leadership election was happening. So he was the he was the default one and what happened

to him he had dermatitis so badly that um he would walk around in canberra with kind of blood seeping out of his feet so it's a bit like me when i was like you yes yes except the difference is his was not a one-off his was a serious condition and he ended up in such pain that he starved himself to death. Was this while he was prime minister? No, it was 1980, though. Not long afterwards. Sort of 11 or 12 years afterwards. Okay, that's tough.

That is tough. He was the shortest ruling prime minister. Well, he was the one with the worst skin. I think that's fair. And the worst feet. Yes. Okay. Okay.

So back to Gorton. So back to Gorton so back to gorton gorton then comes in so gorton is a war hero and he is elected as the new um liberal party leader he's very anti-communist isn't he he's very anti-communist he's very but he's also his big identity is that he is an ordinary bloke he's a he's a larrikin he is is a, you know, he's plain speaking. But also just a little bit French. He is a bit French. So how does his Frenchness express itself?

Well, so the first thing, he's only just been prime minister for a matter of months, isn't he? And because of his anti-communism, he's very committed to, you know, the alliance with the Americans, sort of the commitment to Vietnam and all that sort of stuff. And he goes to talk to the U.S. ambassador at the U.S. embassy, doesn't he, about Vietnam? Well, he's been invited to go there. Yeah, but he's been drinking. He's been drinking. And his aide keeps saying, come on, mate, we've got to go to the U.S. embassy.

And he's, oh, I'll just have another. That's very similar to your john lyden and and he's there with a young lady sympathizing i think yeah she's still a teenager yeah she's very very young jerry jerry uh jerry willisey um and so so finally um gordon's that you know he's you know, and they all get bundled into the prime ministerial car. He said, I'll come along, Jerry, come along for the ride. They head off to, they all head off to the, to the American embassy. And Gorton's drunk. The American ambassador is, they have a kind of bust up over strategy whatever the american ambassador starts to get drunk they refuse to talk to each other

um and gordon is basically all his attention is focused on his lady companion jerry yeah so he she told her the next day didn't she told her brother didn't she yeah and so it gets out uh her brother said uh it was an image that stuck with me. 2 a.m., our troops in Vietnam getting killed, and here's the prime minister and the American ambassador getting pissed and refusing to talk to one another. It certainly seemed to me that the prime minister's priority that night was being with Jerry.

There was some inappropriate behavior with Liza Minnelli. He met her at a nightclub called Checkers. And I think he inappropriately touched her. Like Paul Keating in The Queen. inappropriate behavior with the Liza Minnelli. He met her at a nightclub called checkers. Yeah. Um, and I think he inappropriately touched her. Um, like Paul Keating in the queen. I think a bit more inappropriate than that.

Oh dear. This is a real thing. So yeah, I mean, it's, I mean, it is a bit French. I mean,

it's not, it's not up there really, is it with the, but the French wouldn't, or anything, but it's, it's, if you remember,

she, Scott, um, was accused of groping the buttocks of a German reporter at the age of 112 wasn't he yes

it's maybe that that sort of line of yeah maybe yeah so he he manages to win the election in 1969 and the other thing that he

he does brilliantly is to promote the Australian film industry so so we owe the career the rock and all that kind of stuff we owe the films of peter weir and the career of mel gibson to john gorton is john gordon yeah pretty much well that's something isn't it but he loses doesn't he in 1971 yeah he he's well he's is he stabbed in the back by his own by his own party is this the the beginning? Yeah, so yes.

So backstabbing will become an escalating theme. So they call them spills, leadership spills, don't they? And they absolutely love them, Australians. Their MPs love having leadership contests and toppling each other. And generally, the best spills are generally done by people who, up to that point, have usually appeared to be very close colleagues and great friends. And then suddenly one of them just plunges the knife. Well, this is the downside of mateship.

It's that if it ceases to be elite, then it just goes pear-shaped. So, you know, Gorton, after he lost office, he sort of disappeared or whatever. But he then started doing a radio show called Sir John's Viewpoints. Are you familiar with Gorton's radio show? So he attacked the granting of property rights to Aborigines. Thought that was a very bad idea. He called for the legalization of prostitution. That is very French.

I bet you did. that's very french and he attacked um the cacophony known as modern music ah fair enough which he didn't approve of um so so he's a character i think this is before men at work so yeah yeah midnight oil um so he succeeded by um The most boring prime minister. Well, is he boring, though? You've described him as boring, but I think you've missed some interesting things about him. William McMahon.

Well, okay, so the two things that I noted down. Yeah. So he's described in the Australian Dictionary of Biography as a blend of cautious innovation and fundamental orthodoxy. That's very boring, given... That is boring. However, Gough Whitlam, leader of the Labour Party, who we will come to very, very shortly, mental orthodoxy that's very boring given that is boring however you can say anybody goff whitlam leader of the labour party who we will come to very very shortly um described him as tiberius on a telephone yeah tiberius was was notorious for all kinds of shenanigans he wasn't just french

behavior it was roman behavior yeah so have your researchers in the um they have bodleian i've i've not just gone to the bodleian tom i've gone to other other libraries other leading libraries okay so and there was a suspicion that hung over my mom was very he was very dapper he was a he was a dandyish man and there was a suspicion that hung over him that he was in fact gay because he got married very late in life and in fact yes at one at some point he or his wife, I think, came out and said publicly, he's not a pofter in those precise terms. So there was that issue.

And I think actually if you go to websites, I mean, obviously, I don't pretend by any means to be an expert, as listeners will know, on Australian history. But websites on Australian kind of LGBT history sometimes say he's Australia's first gay. Okay, well, that makes it more interesting then. But he's also utterly hated by everybody involved in the world of Australian politics.

And he was posted Australia's worst prime minister. To an extraordinary degree. So there's a veteran Australian political journalist called Laurie Oakes. Do you know what he said about? Yeah, go on. He's like one of the longest serving kind of observers of Australian politics. He said, my man was devious, nasty, dishonest.

He lied all the time. He lied all the time and stole things. What did he steal? He describes this incident where he said said when man came to his radio station to give an interview it's not very french at all um no french valeries just gotta say we're not stooped to this and stole a tape recorder how odd he stole a tape recorder and then went challenged he said he said it's mine i own it despite the fact that it had this radio so not a napoleon of crime he was not the name of the radio station engraved on the machine

but he's like no it's mine and actually well that i say it's not very french but that reminds me of something that i think um meter or somebody said about jack shirak which was um shirak is a man who um if you found him sitting in your chair eating a big eating a big tray of jam tarts with jam all over his face and you challenge deny shirak would say i've never seen any jam tarts with jam all over his face. And you challenge. You deny. Sherry would say, I've never seen any jam tarts. So obviously this Maman is the equivalent of that. Okay. Well, I really take it back.

If he's stolen your tape recorder, he'd deny it. He's a master criminal. He's a master criminal. He's an LGBTQ hero. He's a post boy for diversity. And he's Australia's worst LGBTQ hero. He's a post-boy for diversity. And he's Australia's worst prime minister. So I think we need a break after that, don't we? We do, because that was far too enjoyable.

Talking of enjoyment, after the break, we come to probably Australia's most entertaining prime minister. Do you think so? Yeah, I think so. And definitely the most extraordinary episode in Australian political history. Definitely. And so we will return with the premiership of Gough Whitlam.

I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. and on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club.

If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes, and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. welcome back to the rest is history we promise to excitement and excitement is coming because we have the premiership of goff whitlam upon us so goff whitlam tom is quite a patrician figure isn't he he's he's a patrician figure he yeah, very. He's brought up in Canberra, which had become Australia's capital. Yeah,

under Menzies. So Menzies had really pushed that. And because his father was, was a human rights lawyer, the crown solicitor, and then the Commonwealth secretary general. Yeah. So he's basically Australian royalty.

Yeah. And he's, he's done law at Sydney university and he's been the, and he's done classics. law at sydney university and he's been the and he's done classics he's so under enoch powell who was you know the youngest professor of greek in in the history of the discipline yes yes uh so hence the tiberius on a telephone quip oh right yes so he knows his he knows his roman history but he didn't like powell's teaching is that right didn't rate it yeah he thought he

was boring yeah um maybe william was never boring um and he's so he's um very he's kind of dandyish figure so he i mean essentially you would you would think that he would be on the right he would be a conservative uh you know he's kind of a natural tory but he isn't he's on the label he's on very much on the labor side but he still has the kind of the fondness for dressing up in white tie that you might associate with the kind of the menzies tradition so um he attends a parliamentary reception in 1954 with the queen um all the comrades go in their lounge suits and he goes in white tie and tails well that's a good way of standing out isn't it it is and also the thing is that um if you're a sort of very overtly patrician figure

that can actually play quite well in some ways in a weird way with with on the left because you you look like an eccentric and you look like a kind of a character well but also um i think that i think the british parallel would be with Tony Blair, Tony Blair, because by this point, labor has been out of power for a very, very long time. Yes.

Yes. And essentially people in the, people in the labor party are despairing of ever getting back into power. And the party's riven by kind of factional rivalries, um, arguments, labor scabs and rats and all this kind of stuff um and i think that whitlam is able to come in rather like blair in that he scrambles the antennae of people in the labor party they can't quite place him and so he's able to to kind of bring in you know i mean he foreshadows new Labour.

Yeah, because he appeals to the, we talked a bit about the suburbanisation of Australian political culture. And I think he appeals to the sort of, he brings in some sort of suburban middle class voters as well as the sort of traditional Labour core. Yeah. And he's very, very slick and he's very good at um you know razzmatazz in the election campaign that he fights in um uh in 72 he gets a young australian media magnate who's just setting out on his career to back him and that is rupert murdoch yes rupert murdoch owns the australian which is australia's only national newspaper and they back whitlam and whitlam has already shown a capacity for taking dramatic and unexpected steps because even before Nixon does it, and we talked about how Australian politicians

often blaze a path for American and British politicians, he goes to China. So he goes to China before Nixon does. He goes to meet Chuen Lai. Yeah, which is an extraordinary thing. Does this influence Nixon? I mean, they must be aware of it. I think they must be aware of it, yeah. Which is an extraordinary thing. Does this influence Nixon? I mean, they must be aware of it.

I think they must be aware of it, yeah. I don't think there's a conscious, oh my gosh, Gough Whitlam has gone. Of course, he's not prime minister when he goes to China, is he? He's Labour leader, but he's not prime minister. But this is still the Cultural Revolution. So the very fact that a Western leader has gone is... Exactly. It's a sign of China opening up, I think. I mean, people who know more than me about Henry Kissinger's thinking in 1971 would know more about this.

But I don't think it's a straw in the wind, as it were. But I don't think it's necessarily a massive motivation. But yeah, no, he's a very charismatic figure, isn't he, Whitlam? Yeah. Yeah, really charismatic. massive motivation but yeah no he's a very he's a very charismatic figure isn't he Whitlam yeah yeah I mean he's incredibly fluent and um sort of incredibly self-confident I mean that's one of the things that brings him down is that he clearly is not he's not a man crippled by self doubt and he doesn't well I think he's he's not a he's not a details man but he's very much a broad brush man yeah and he's very good at rather as blair did kind of capturing a spirit

of optimism and and regeneration and rejuvenation and his slogan it's time yeah and it is time well he does all kinds of i mean obviously as with our previous podcast about german and and um french leaders we've we've been reasonably policy free, but Whitlam does, he does things like abolish his conscription. He pulls the troops out of Vietnam. He has, he makes a move towards universal healthcare, which then Bob Hawke will take up again in the 1980s. Equal pay for women.

Equal pay, exactly. There's sort of Aboriginal, there's a ministry of Aboriginal affairs, isn't there? So he sets that up. Yeah. And so this is, yeah, it's under Whitlam that basically white Australia starts to come to terms with the injustices that historically white Australians have done to the native inhabitants of Australia. And also, Owen, he's very hostile to sporting engagement with apartheid South Africa. Yeah. Because he's very anti-racist,

partly because of his father's background as a human rights lawyer. In the Commonwealth, yeah, Secretary General. And also, crucially, he abolishes the sales tax on condoms. Right. Well, that would go down well with Valerius Gerdes. But you know, the thing that Steve Kinane was most excited about was that it's Gough Whitlam who gives Edna Everidge her damehood. I didn't know she'd been officially awarded this damehood.

Yeah. So this is a film, Barry McKenzie, in which Barry Humphreys stars. And Barry Humphreys, Australian comedian, plays the part of Edna Everidge, who is a housewife superstar, isn't it? What is it? Superstar housewife? What't it was it superstar housewife what is it um yeah exactly something like that and in the film she comes back from a tour and goth whitlam is there waiting to to greet her and gives her a damehood and the joke about this is that actually whitlam has abolished knighthoods and damehoods as being, you know,

pommy nonsense. Yeah, because he's quite, he's a reformer, he's a moderniser. That is quite Blairite, isn't it? Yes. He's sort of, he's leading Australia into the shiny new future. And then basically, I think, I mean, it's actually typified by, it's so interesting, it happens in October 1973, the Queen opens the Sydney Opera House.

And the Sydney Opera House, which everyone forgets now but at the time it was very controversial wasn't it over budget and but it's this symbol of modernity of this shiny modernity and of course it's in the it's in october 1973 that as people will know if they've listened to our previous podcasts the world economy is thrown completely off course by the Arab-Israeli war. And that Whitlam's whole sort of agenda, which is based on this kind of bright, optimistic, progressive future, is undone by the oil shock. And by the need for austerity. Because he's not prepared to countenance. So he doesn't want to deflate the economy as some others do.

He doesn't want to deflate the economy as some others do. He doesn't want to raise taxes. He doesn't want to face, in some ways, the grim consequences of this massive injection of inflation into the world economy. Well, what he wants to do is to borrow petrodollars, which is the wealth that's been generated by the sheikhs and so on in the Middle East. But he doesn't want to do it through the middlemen, through the names of Zurich or London or Wall Street or whatever. His, his minister for energy,

the guy called Rex Connor, he says, you know, see if you can, see if you can find someone who would be able to open up negotiations for us to borrow these 4 billion, you know, kind of,

you know, behind the, behind the curtain kind of thing. Yeah. And so Rex Connor, um you know kind of you know behind this behind the curtain kind of thing yeah and so rex connor um he finds a middleman who is a um a pakistani commodities dealer who is working out of london uh tirath kemlani who maybe um talks bigger than perhaps he should have done. Right. He talks a better game than perhaps he is actually able to execute on the pitch. Because the likelihood, basically, he doesn't have the contacts that he's told Conor that he does.

And he seems to have employed his secretary to go around various capitals, sending telexes to give the impression that um that kemlani himself is there negotiating big deals and so it becomes increasingly evident that you know that he's stringing um uh connor along and the opposition and the press start to get wind of this and by this point inevitably murdoch has turned against whitlam yeah and is starting to sharpen the knife um and Whitlam who is not a you know he said he's not a details man starts to wake up to this and so in a measure of panic he he revokes the license that Connor had to borrow this money um but Connor continues to try and get the money and he's staying up all night by the telex machine waiting for you know his ship will come in yeah but it doesn't and although connor's you know

connor stands up and says you know i'm an honest man i wouldn't do this but he has actually you know he's he's he's still trying to do it even though he's legally not allowed to and so this then precipitates the great crisis that undoes Whitlam. So ever since we started this podcast, Tom, I mean, the rest is history. Our Australian listeners have been saying to us, will you do the Gough-Whitlam story and the fall of Gough-Whitlam? Because it obviously looms so large. And look, it's so complicated.

All the stuff about the Senate, the two halves of the Senate being elected at different times and we dissolve half the Senate and all this. But basically the upshot is, isn't it, that he doesn't have a majority. He doesn't have a majority in the upper house and the upper house, who we'll come to in a bit, he basically goes for the kill, sort of twists the knife, and is using his majority in the Senate to block Whitlam's government getting supply so they can't get anything through. Yes, which is legal, but no one had ever thought to do it. It had never crossed anyone's mind that this would be an option. Yeah. But it's there, it's legal, and so they do it it had never crossed anyone's mind that this would be an option yeah but it's there it's legal and so they do it so there is a british parallel again which is um what happens to um asquith and lloyd george at the end of the 1900s so 1909 1910 um the house of lords trying

to block lloyd george's people's budget and you get this massive face-off between the house of commons and the house of lords and it's a little bit like that in the 1970s in Australia. And it's a little bit also like what happens in America, isn't it? Exactly. Yes, it is. The battles between the presidency and Congress. And they end up shutting down the government sometimes in America. But obviously, Whitlam thinks...

Whitlam will not call an election to kind of break the deadlock. He thinks, and this is his confidence, his patrician confidence I suppose even though the government is due to run out of money because it can't get any of its supply bills through he thinks he can just sort of brazen this out and eventually well so the authority so the arbiter as it were would normally oh in Britain it would be the monarch wouldn't it but in australia it's the governor general well like yeah so i think there are two reasons why whitlam is confident well i think there are three i think the first is that he genuinely feels this is a constitutional outrage yeah um secondly the public is behind him so 70 of the australian public regard this you know this threat from the Senate as wrong.

So he feels he's got public backing. And the third reason is that the Governor General, who is the representative of the Queen as head of state in Australia, is a guy called Sir John Kerr, who Whitlam himself had appointed. And Sir John Kerr had once been a Labour Party, I think, member or at least a very keen supporter. What Whitlam doesn't know is that John Kerr's politics have changed since then. And also that, yeah, and also that Kerr is resentful of what he sees as Whitlam's high-handed treatment of him and the way that a lot of Labour MPs laughed him behind his back. They laughed his hair, didn't they?

The Liberace of the law, they call him. Because he's got this sort of very they left his hair don't they the liberace of the law they call him because he's got this sort of very very white yes yeah yeah um and so basically uh kerr is open to siding with fraser yeah and um so it's a it's on remembrance day 1975 and whitlam goes in, basically, you know, so they're running out of money. The guillotine is about to drop. And Whitlam basically goes in to Kerr to say, you know, you've got to sort this out.

And Kerr says, you're sacks. Get out. And Whitlam can't believe it. And rather than kind of laughing at him or telling him to, you know, get on his bike, he walks out and he accepts it. And the moment he's gone out, Malcolm Fraser comes in, swears the oath and is sworn in as prime minister. And there's an amazing scene outside where someone reads a proclamation saying, you know, God save the Queen. And ending with the words, God save the Queen.

Which Whitlam had tried to get with, you know, had basically tried to get taken off all the proclamations and whitlam is standing there where this while this happens and he says well may we say god save the queen because nothing will save the governor general he gives this very defiant yeah and um the proclamation you've just heard was countersigned Malcolm Fraser, who will undoubtedly go down in Australian history from Remembrance Day 1975 as Kerr's Kerr. That's very good. Great stuff. It's very good.

But, I mean, it all turns out disastrously for Whitlam. This is the thing. It's obviously a huge sort of controversy in Australian history because a lot of people still think that um whitlam was the constitutional coup against whitlam that the cia were behind it that the americans put them up to it all this sort of stuff that's john whitlam behaves very well i mean he just takes it doesn't he so he yes and one and and um so he and bob hawk who's very kind of prominent trade union leader who'll become prime minister later on he they both behave very well in that they don't weaponize it because they're worried about imposing too much

too many fracture strains on australian civic society they're the outlaws of uh yeah a bit a bit yeah a bit but the extraordinary thing is that william loses that election because there is an election in december massively i mean fraser wins a massive landslide yeah i think the second largest majority in australian history or something and i would assume this is partly a verdict on the fact that the economy is obviously much worse than it had been a few years earlier because of the oil crisis and so on so there's a general downturn but also because people are sick of the it's a bit of a get brexit done kind of atmosphere they just want it over with and this is a way to get it over with yeah maybe maybe i think yeah i don't know i think i mean i would guess that it's um i mean

pretty much every government that has an election in 1975 loses don't they yeah i mean it's there's an anti-government mood in there yeah because you know in the wake of the old crisis everyone's you know they're all falling like dominoes um so uh so whitlam whitlam resigns um uh and he he becomes australia's representative to unesco in paris so it could be worse it could be worse fate died at the end of 98 yeah so he's the longest lived australian prime minister and he became he became mates with uh with fraser in the end but not with kerr not with kerr apparently had to leave australia he came yes he ended up in London. He just used to stagger around at gentlemen's clubs,

drunkenly saying that he'd been wronged. Well, talking of people staggering around clubs, we now turn to the career of Malcolm Fraser. Yeah. So he's a man who looked, I mean, I couldn't really picture him because I'm not super familiar with Australian politics. But when I looked him up, he looks like all Australian prime minister. He looks like a casting agency.

And he sounds like one, doesn't he? Yeah. He's a sort of, he's quite, you know, looks. I mean, Malcolm Fraser is a Scottish name, but it also sounds quite like an Australian prime minister. It does. It does. He looks like a sort of big, chiseled, you know, a mate, man's man, kind of. Well, he's the son of a sheep farmer.

He is. He's a classic Australian. He's the son of a sheep farmer who studies at Oxford. Magdalen College. So there's the... Do you know the degree? No. PPE.

PPE, oh well. Do you want to guess the class? First. Third. Third? Third. Okay, so there it is. Son of a sheep farmer, Magd uh ppe yeah and he's quite

pragmatic isn't he he's one of those sort of and in britain he would be a sort of ted heathish kind of figure i suppose and his politics is technically technocratic i would guess yeah um he's i mean obviously the left hate him because he's they see him as having played he did play his part in this essentially constitutional coup but he's um you know and and actually he's i mean he's he's not a in any way a kind of tub thumping right winger no so he's he um the the collapse of the white australia policy is absolutely you know he he he's very happy for the vietnamese boat people come to australia he behaves very well over that and he's primed quite a while eight years yeah yeah he's uh he plays a leading role

in opposing apartheid um and then he uh he um he loses the election in 1983 to bob hawk's labor uh and then after his um after he's lost he then he then then goes on foreign travels. So in 1986, he goes to America and he visits the fine and fair city of Memphis. Memphis, Tennessee. And this is the one thing actually that basically he'll be remembered for. People outside Australia who are not quite as,

you know, like us who are not massively fascinated by the details of Australian policymaking. And this is by far the signal fact about him, isn't it? So it's the 14th of October, 1986. And Malcolm Fraser, former Prime Minister of Australia, is discovered in the foyer of the Admiral Benbow Inn in Memphis, with no trousers, wearing only a pair of underpants in a state of some confusion. And the Admiral Bembo Inn is not the most reputable of establishments. I think we can say it's downright seedy. Yeah, it's very, very seedy.

And he has lost his Rolex watch worth $10,000, his passport, his wallet, and $600, I think, in cash. And so there's considerable debate as to what was going on and all kinds of theories his wife says this is an absolutely terrible story and that he's the victim of a practical joke yeah practical joke by fellow delegates at his sort of commonwealth group meeting is that the way that people involved with such groups normally behave would you say tom i don't i have no idea so i don't know so very i don't mix in such rarefied circles very mean-spirited people say that um clearly he was visiting a lady of the night and it went horribly wrong yeah she took his trousers yeah but uh he came downstairs you know what the concierge said? No.

She said, she remembered him trying to conceal his modesty with a towel. She said, they're not real big. And I remember he was a big man. So, I mean, you could take that as a compliment in some ways. Yeah. Good old Ozzy. Well, I think that's, yet again, so much stuff about australian prime ministers that we're running out of time so um should we should we go for a third episode yeah let's do it come on because we still we've got bob hawk we've got um eating who's a great character

yeah the lizard of oz um and then we've got the kind of basically game of thrones bloodletting so australian politics in the 2010s so the two of you who have made it through to the end of this podcast um you can look forward to a third one and this extraordinary trilogy as we will be picking up next time with the career of bob hawk good day thanks for listening to the rest is history for bonus episodes early access ad free listening and access to our chat community please sign up at rest is history pod.com that's rest is history pod.com i'm marina hyde and i'm richard osmond and together we host the rest is entertainment restishistorypod.com. I'm Marina Hyde.

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