The tributes for Gough Whitlam flooding mainstream and social media seem to be getting two things a little wrong, one economic, one a matter of personal perspective about death.
As these are business pages, the economic should be dealt with first. It was done so easily and briefly in two tweets by AMP chief economist, Shane Oliver:
(1) Very sad news of Gough Whitlams death. 1972-75 was not great for macro econ mgt - but which country was? It was a bad time everywhere.. — Shane Oliver (@ShaneOliverAMP) October 20, 2014
(2) ..but Gough Whitlam left a massive legacy of a more diverse, open & outward looking Australia that has paid huge econ & social dividends — Shane Oliver (@ShaneOliverAMP) October 20, 2014
It didn't help Whitlam that it took him two-and-a-half of his three years to get a decent Cabinet together, by which stage it was politically too late.
And he deserves credit for his intent in slashing tariffs by 25 per cent – it was of course the right thing to do, but its speed and timing left it open to being called a mistake.
On the personal side, commiserations for everyone who is saddened by Gough's death – but there is a touch of the irrational about it.
It's wonderful and warm and human, but still a little irrational. He was 98.
He had done all and more that a man might reasonably think possible to do.
His contribution had been huge and the years were reducing him. And even Gough had suggested that even Gough might not be immortal. To recall a phrase, it was time.
So why does his inevitable and any-day-now-for-the-past-several-years death strike such a chord?
I think it's partly because of the invidious comparison with what our nation has become.
The optimism, the positivity, the change, the opening up, the justice, the independence, the betterment of the nation, the internationalisation that Whitlam sought and represented has been replaced after four decades with a more general negativity, with so little ambition, with a conservative determination to uphold the status quo or even return to some earlier imagination of it, with white-bread nationalism resplendent.
I fear we don't mourn Gough, but ourselves.
