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Too inspissated, too dithyrambic

Seismic times for Whitlam’s speechwriter
by
September 2009, no. 314

A Certain Grandeur: Gough Whitlam’s life in politics by Graham Freudenberg

Viking, $35 pb, 486 pp, 9780670073757

Too inspissated, too dithyrambic

Seismic times for Whitlam’s speechwriter
by
September 2009, no. 314

Gough Whitlam’s 1972 policy speech, delivered before a crowd of thousands at the Blacktown Civic Centre in a scene that bore a closer resemblance to a pop concert than to a political campaign, is seen as the ultimate articulation of the Whitlam Labor government’s radical program for change. If its chief political architect was Whitlam, its amanuensis was Graham Freudenberg. With Whitlam’s election as leader of the Australian Labor Party in 1967, Freudenberg eagerly joined his staff as press secretary, a position he had previously and less happily held with Arthur Calwell, who was leader from 1960 to 1967.

A Certain Grandeur: Gough Whitlam’s life in politics

A Certain Grandeur: Gough Whitlam’s life in politics

by Graham Freudenberg

Viking, $35 pb, 486 pp, 9780670073757

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