Back to the Polls

Compared with other countries, Australia can hardly be said to have problems. Its economy is exuberant, its people are prosperous, and the country is still a magnet for talented immigrants who admire its opportunities and easy, informal living. Yet Australians are troubled--seemingly more uncertain and divided than they have been since they achieved independence from Britain 73 years ago. Their problem is a sudden political crisis that has precipitated the second national election in just 17 months, posing the basic question of what kind of country Australians want.

Many thought that they had decided that in December 1972, when they put into power the first Labor government in 23 years. In short order, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, the towering (6 ft. 4 in.) tornado of Australian politics, abolished the draft, and made it clear to both the U.S. and Britain that they could no longer count on unquestioning Aussie support of their Pacific policies. At home his broom was just as brisk, and his Labor government imposed restrictions on big multinational corporations, which control about two-thirds of the country's mining, and gave big boosts to government programs for education, health and transportation.

Many of Whitlam's domestic reforms were blocked, however, by an anomaly of the Australian constitution--the Senate. Though the 1972 elections gave Whitlam a 67-58 edge in the House, the Senate, with its six-year terms for members, remained firmly in the hands of the opposition Liberal-Country Party coalition. The opposition could count on 31 votes, while Labor had only 26 seats. The Australian Senate is supposed to act only as a slowing brake on the House of Representatives, with deliberative--but not veto--powers. In fact, the conservative-dominated body managed to stop Whitlam's more radical domestic innovations altogether.*

Totally frustrated, Whitlam tried to upset the balance in the Senate by persuading a longtime foe, Senator Vincent Gair, to accept the ambassadorship to Ireland. What Whitlam saw as a masterly stroke, his opponents, together with most of the Australian press, viewed as a cynical ploy. Whatever it was, the plan backfired. Instead of Gair's seat going to a Whitlam supporter as the Prime Minister expected, the premier of Queensland State used a loophole in the law to put in another conservative. Finally, when the opposition in the Senate, spoiling for a fight, began to carry out its threat to reject a bill essential to provide funds for the day-to-day workings of the government, Whitlam had had enough. In retaliation he called for the new elections for both the House and Senate that will be held this week.

Think Again. According to last week's polls the electorate was almost evenly divided between Whitlam's Labor Party and Opposition Leader Billy Snedden's Liberal-Country Party conservative coalition. GO AHEAD, exhorted Laborite banners. "I am appealing to the people of Australia to give a fair go to the government they elected 17 months ago," said Whitlam, 57. THINK AGAIN, countered the Liberals. "The Labor experiment has been tried and it has failed," Snedden, 47, told audiences.

Though Snedden had been derided by one of his critics as a Milquetoast who "couldn't go two rounds with a revolving door," he has, in fact, turned out to have a distinct knack for political combat. He has unexpectedly put the more charismatic Whitlam on the defensive by his broadsides against Whitlam's abrasive policies. In foreign affairs, Snedden has accused Whitlam of needlessly alienating Australia's two closest friends, the U.S. and Britain, and has promised a more traditional, pro-Western policy.

At home, Snedden scored points by promising to restore the incentives to foreign investment that Whitlam took away--necessary incentives, Snedden argued, if Australia is to develop its vast resources--and pledged to give free enterprise a looser rein. Most important of all, he promised to put a curb on the country's worrisome economic problem, inflation, which is now running at the rate of 14% a year. He promised that he would resign in six months if he could not curb inflation--a promise that most Australians viewed with skepticism.

Whitlam belatedly came up with an anti-inflation program of his own, but many middle-class people in Sydney or Melbourne, who see only higher prices in the supermarket and steeper mortgage rates for new houses, may blame him nonetheless. Beyond that, some Australians who were initially attracted by Whitlam's energy and decisiveness were worried that he is now doing too much too fast and that he had basically misinterpreted the conservative, traditional temperament of his countrymen. Whoever wins, Australian politics will never again be so simple and placid as it has been for most of the past generation.

* A similar crisis developed in Britain in 1911 after the House of Lords summarily vetoed the domestic reforms of Liberal Prime Minister Herbert Asquith. The constitutional confrontation was resolved when King George V, fearing a fatal blow to British democracy from the House of Lords, threatened to appoint enough new Lords to give Asquith a majority. The Lords gave in to the King's pressure, and since then the power of the House of Commons has never been seriously questioned.

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