Edward Gough Whitlam AC QC, most hated by the Elitists of the Liberal mob rule; the unprecedented Australian social reformer, champion of the working class battlers.
A true Labor Party leader fashioned on traditional Labor ethics.

I've said it many times in the past and I'll say it again -

Gough Whitlam. He dragged Australia kicking and screaming into the 20th century while John Howard and Tony Abbott did everything they could to make sure we stayed there.

Yes, for me too, Gough was the best! Oh to have a bold reformer like him again!

Of course it will never happen. He was removed by the CIA and any contemporary attempting to follow his footsteps would face the same fate, aided and abetted by the big corporations, powerful Israeli and rightwing lobby groups and commercial mainstream media. Visionary reformers driven by egalitarianism and socialist principles have no chance in today's corporately-controlled political landscape.

Albanese will do very little, apart from play it safe. He beat shambolic oppositions, led first by Morrison and then by Dutton, which in Bill Hayden's words 'a drover's dog' could do. He has enormous political capital, but will squander it by sitting on the fence and doing little more than tinkering around the edges. He's a decent man, but we need someone so much bolder and much more of a reformist leader than Albo will ever be.

And as for Howard being one of our best leaders, oh please! He got gun reform right, but little else. He and Costello presided over a mining boom and refused to properly tax the profiteering mining conglomerates to benefit the rightful owners of the mined resources, the Australian people. Howard set in place the investment windfalls which have led to today's housing crisis. He gave us eleven wasted years with his refusal to tackle climate change. He cemented the inequities of Neoliberal economics which have lead to the ever-growing wealth disparities we face today. He gave Pauline Hanson a platform and cruelly and wrongfully demonised innocent asylum seekers. His legacy has been toxic and he should never be revered as some great leader.

The big consolation in this last election is that Dutton will never get to join the list of Australian PMs. May he sink in oblivion, along with his hateful and divisive politics!

To the intellectual elite he was a God who offered them the keys to our Tax Dollars ! The rest of us are still grappling more & more with the social & demographic mess that resulted !
As for the best PM ? Only those who never had to work for a living would say that !
I think the worst move he made was to trade National Service for votes !

But who really made Australia better?

The people who came here to build Australia & of course it all depends on what is meant by "better". In the early days workers lived in shacks, nowadays we hear of Public Servants living in cars imported from China instead of at least cars built here ! The latter are a result of a Governments whose Ministers never served for the Nation due to Whitlam's vote purchase thus were never exposed to the discipline & respect a national Service provides ! Just dig up some old News reels & watch how return soldiers were & are still treated by the intellectuals milling around in Parliament since ! There are good & useless everywhere but more useless are found among the intellectuals than among those who produce wealth !

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Dear Peter (the questioner),

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The best Australian prime minister is yet to come, and probably always will be.

But we should never lose hope. It may be all we have !

.

Has to be Curtin. Bloke loved Australia and Australians, unlike UN Traitor Albanese, who despises them. Led brilliant WWII effort, pivoted Australia away from Mother England, who else would have dared. Gave his life for his country, with no regrets. Incredibly, a third of Perth turned out to farewell him, nobody made them, you wouldn't get 100 for Albanese.

Steve S,

Good point.
Golf Whitlam was the second of two Prime Ministers that actually served active service.

Whereas John Howard lived with his Mother until he was 55 yo.(Nothing wrong with Mothers).

Toss up between Howard and Hawke.

Hawke dragged Australia out of the sclerosis that was 1960s and 70s welfarism and set it on the path to becoming an outward looking economy that saw its future in trading with the world rather than relying on the protection of backward and union controlled manufacturing.

But as a Labor man he could only go so far. Howard completed the job with things like the GST, revamping the Federal-State relationship and further opening us to the world.

Every PM since then has lacked the backbone to continue the works of Howard and Hawke and we are now paying the price for that.

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Curtin... being a winning wartime leader doesn't automatically make you a good leader. There was nothing Curtin did that wasn't the least any barely competent PM would have done. His greatest claim to fame was the pivot to the US and away from Mother England, but following the fall of Singapore there was no alternative but to beg the US for salvation. Whoever was PM at the time would have done the same.

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Whitlam is in the running for the worst PM. He'd openly admitted he had no interest in or understanding of economics. The 30 years prior to Whitlam becoming PM was one of continued economic growth and Whitlam's whole shtick was how to better spend the new wealth even though he didn't know where it came from. When hit with the oil crisis , rather than adjust his policies for the new reality as Hawke and Howard later did, he carried on regardless, resulting in massive unemployment and out of control inflation. The very people he purported to help suffered the most. But he did buy 'Blue Poles' and that makes his supporters swoon.

"John Howard lived with his Mother until he was 55 yo."

He married in his early 30s and lived with his wife and kids. Even if he lived with his mother, she died when he was 47 so unless he had her mummified there's no way he lived with her 'til he was 55.

Where do you people get this rubbish from? Do you just make it up or do you think papers like Mad Magazine are authoritative?

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"He [Gough] was removed by the CIA.... "

In the 1970s that type of thinking was barely tenable. But as new and better data emerged, its clear that the CIA played no part in the removal of Gough. But some prefer the myth to the truth.

In fact Gough was removed by the people at the polling booth (twice) because, as a PM he was an utter failure.

If its a question of "A man for his times", having read extensively about all Prime Ministers, my vote goes to (1) John Curtain, (2) Edmund Barton and (3) Gough Whitlam. The best for the Liberal Party is 'Pig Iron' Bob Menzies, although rather mediocre at best, but did serve for a very long period, and did make some useful post war changes, the worst for the Liberals was Billy "Big Ears" McMahon, totally out of his depth. For Labor, James Scullin was the worse, failed the leadership test, when true leadership in an economic crises was required more than ever. The worse ever PM had to be Stanly Bruce from the National Party, a total conservative, the spats and straw hat man, in 1929 spats and straw haat had been our of fashion for 30 years Stanly failed dismally, when the heat was on. The best bloke who never was PM and should have been, was Jack "The Big Fella" Lang, Premier of NSW 1925/27 and 1930/32 was the leader of Lang Labour (1931 to 1950) in the Federal Parliament. Lang understood the conditions created by the Great Depression, and had a plan, the Lang Plan to tackle the problems. Years later it was shown that Lang was absolutely correct, and others to a man, from both side of politics were totally wrong.

What makes the best, are those that served at a time of crises or rapid change, and were able to positively respond for the good of the nation. The worse are the ineffective, negative men who failed to adapt in a positive way to changing circumstance

It a natural given that academic background people such as bureaucrats, education & media go for the party with the most generous benefits & handouts of Dollars that Government has fleeced off those who actually worked & competed to make enough profit to top up the coffers !
This opportunistic mentality of course results in decline of private enterprise & general economic downturn. The other, just as insidious factor is the creeping loss of of economic & social foresight in a great percentage of a Nation's civil servants. The present is showing indisputable signs of that with the selling of some the peoples' rights via the purchase of votes !

mhaze

<< But as new and better data emerged, its clear that the CIA played no part in the removal of Gough. But some prefer the myth to the truth. >>

The evidence I've read is convincing ...

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023/11/15/new-investigation-exposes-cia-role-in-1975-coup-against-australian-government-which-wanted-to-remove-u-s-spy-base

https://johnmenadue.com/post/2023/11/shame-fraser-shame-the-overthrow-of-edward-gough-whitlam

https://consortiumnews.com/2020/06/01/john-pilger-the-forgotten-coup-against-the-most-loyal-ally

But perhaps you know better ...

Indy,

Another one of you totally inane comments, off topic and nothing to do with Prime Ministers. ttbn accuse me of writing posts using AI, I suspect you are using CI to write your posts, like the above, that's Chimpanzee Intelligence, if you don't already know.

totally inane comments
Paul1405,
Really ? You sure it's not a case of you panicking as to how close those "inane" comments are to what's really happening ?
As I always like to say to posters like you, 'Those with no retort resort to ridicule'.

Indy,

People with intelligence can disseminate and understand the pros and cons that matter, and not simply be bought off with a handful of tidbits, or in your case with CI, a handful of peanuts! Anyway what's that got to do with Prime Ministers?

what's that got to do with Prime Ministers?
Paul1405,
Everything ! The social upheaval that's been building up for over five decades in Australia was given the green light by the Whitlam gang.
On the other hand, the economic near ruin by the three Labor governments preceding Howard was prevented by Howard's much maligned GST & it is still saving our bacon. The willy nilly immigration by Fraser & now Albanese will also need sorting out by a conservative administration.
Try as hard as you can to deny it but there's simply no doubt that enlarging the Public Service & too high a number of immigrants was nothing more than a vote purchasing exercise. What sections of the Public Service have improved lately ? I'll leave that answer to you to explain.
Which Department was that again that has 2000 staff & they couldn't answer 450 enquiries from the public ? A fair way from improved service wouldn't you agree ?

Indy,

You simply view everything from your self serving conservative perch, with blinkers firmly in place, just like another Old Fart here. Claiming the despised Gough created social upheaval, which is untrue. When Whitlam came to power in 1972, Australia was very much divided over the Vietnam War, and forced conscription of young Australian men sent to fight and die in a disgusting war, Whitlam worked to unite the nation. Years of conservative rule had degenerated into stagnation of society, the world was changing, and Australia through Whitlam began the process of change for the better.

As for your hatred of the public service, you once admitted you had worked as a low grade PS, but due to incompetence your were terminated. That experience of failure has engrained an irrational hatred of the PS and its people ever since.

You keep your past a secret, not wanting others to know the real Indy. Answer one question, at what age did you become an Australian citizen?

Paul1405,
Again, don't you have anything sensible to contribute ?