Australian Politics

This book is a useful and lucid account of Australian foreign policy since the very beginning. It does not purport to be an authoritative or a particularly analytical account of the evolution of external policy but is one which senior secondary school children could find helpful in achieving a sense of perspective. As its author concedes, to grasp the essentials of Australian foreign policy this book read in isolation would not be enough, and some general knowledge of world events is necessary.

Sir Samuel Griffith was chief justice of the High Court of Australia for sixteen years, from October 1903 to October 1919; but he had effectively retired in July 1919. Sir John Latham was chief justice for sixteen and a half years, from October 1935 to April 1952; but he had effectively retired in May 1951. Thus, Sir Garfield Barwick, who last month completed his sixteenth year as chief justice, has already established a record for active service in the position; if he remains in office until 24 October this year, he will have broken even Lathams formal record.

The holder of such a record term of office as chief justice would, on that ground alone, be assured of a unique place in Australian legal history; but in Barwick’s case, the years as chief justice are only a climax – perhaps even an anti-climax – to an extraordinary career.

It is impossible to think clearly about modern ideologies without perceiving their rootedness in class-related concepts of a better society. Nor can we understand this without seeing that class is a radical rearrangement in fact and in political discourse of the realities previously referred to as ‘orders’ and ‘ranks’. This vast shift into simpler and fewer forms of relation to the means of production is one way of understanding the enormous change in power and dynamism of western capitalist societies that we abbreviate for discussion into the familiar terms of the French and Industrial Revolutions.

It was inevitable that the phenomenon of Don Chipp’s Democrats would spawn an industry of quickie books; so far we have had two. The Third Man (which was written by Chipp himself in collaboration with the Melbourne journalist John Larkin) and now this one: Don Chipp, written by two journalists from the Melbourne office of The Australian, Tim Hewat and David Wilson. Both books are more or less bad, revolving as they do around a sort of log-cabin-to-White-House theme which is manifestly unsuited to any discussion of Australian politics. But at least Chipp and Larkin have both met the man about whom they are writing. There is no evidence that Hewat or Wilson has; and in fact their brief and boring 113 pages, padded out with an already out-of-date policy statement and a totally unnecessary index adds nothing to the sum of human knowledge, either by way of new facts or sensible analysis.

Central to this collection of essays by Ted Wheelwright is the argument that orthodox economics is a positive hindrance to any real understanding of the problems of the last quarter of the twentieth century. A rebirth of the political economy is necessary to remove the stench (from the corpse of orthodox economics) that is polluting the social sciences.

Now, it is certainly true that orthodox economics (that is the economics taught in ninety-nine per cent of our Universities, practised by Treasuries around Australia and spiritual descendant of Adam Smith, sometimes modified by Keynes) casts little light on some of the most acute problems of our era – the coex­istence of unemployment and inflation, the (Mal) distribution of income between classes, the persistence of poverty, the power of the multi-nationals, etc.

Don Whitington became a journalist seven years before I was born, and moved to Canberra for the first time shortly before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. He died last year, after a tragically bungled series of surgical operations, before he was able to complete his autobiography, Strive to be Fair.

The title is taken from a remark one of the many editors for whom he worked made: ‘There is no such thing as a good objective journalist. If you are not sensitive enough to feel for your subject, to have a point of view, to suffer joy or agony or sympathy about a story you are covering, you will never be a good journalist. Don’t strive to be objective. Strive to be fair.’