Five Australian prime ministers proud to call Western Sydney home

IT’S been home to some of the country’s best and brightest in sport, academia and music but Western Sydney has proved itself as a breeding ground for prime ministers, sending five to The Lodge since Federation.

Billy Hughes served as prime minister from 1915-1923.

IT’S been home to some of the country’s best and brightest in sport, academia and music but Western Sydney has proved itself as an unquestionable breeding ground for prime ministers, catapulting five to The Lodge since Federation.

Between the five of them, they governed for 20 of the 114 years since 1901. Each led the Labor Party, from founding father Joseph Cook to World War I leader Billy Hughes, post-WWII PM Ben Chifley, the great reformer Gough Whitlam and the last PM to call the west home, Paul Keating.

Their combined contributions have changed the face of Australian politics forever.

Apart from helping create the ALP in the first place, between them they played a key part in establishing a national police force, the Commonwealth Bank, the forerunner of the CSIRO, the first Holden, Medibank (now Medicare), the Family Court and the Australian Film Commission.

They also recognised China, floated the Australian dollar, deregulated the economy, introduced native title, compulsory superannuation and no-fault divorce, gave 18-year-olds the vote and for a while abolished university fees, not to mention giving Western Sydney a sewerage system.

What’s more, most did it with little or no education.

Australian Prime Minister Joseph Cook served from 1913-1914.

Cook left school at nine to work in the coal mines of northern England before emigrating to Lithgow, and in 1891 won the first Labor seat in any Australian parliament, the coalfields seat of Hartley in the NSW Legislative Assembly.

Chifley left school at 15 to become a train driver and went on to found the enginemen’s union. He also crafted Labor’s guiding philosophy of delivering the greatest good to the greatest number, the so-called “light on the hill”, and spurned the trappings of The Lodge, opting instead to spend his time in Canberra in the Kurrajong Hotel.

Billy Hughes served as prime minister from 1915-1923.

Keating left school at 15, too, to become an electricity authority pay clerk, but educated himself sufficiently in his political life to become one of the great reforming treasurers during Bob Hawke’s reign before winning the “unwinnable” 1993 election against John Hewson. After John Howard cut short his political career at the 1996 poll he became a visiting professor at the University of NSW, noting that it wasn’t one of those “sandstone” institutions.

Whitlam was the notable exception. The son of a senior public servant who grew up in Canberra, he studied arts and law at Sydney University before becoming a barrister.

But his political roots were always in Sydney’s west after he won the seat of Werriwa, and he made a point of launching his successful 1972 “It’s Time” election campaign at Blacktown, leading Labor out of the wilderness after 23 years in opposition.

Ben Chifley spurned the trappings of The Lodge during his prime ministership, opting instead to spend his time in Canberra in the Kurrajong Hotel.

Along the way the Great Western Five became embroiled in their fair share of setbacks, scandals and battles.

Cook took part in demonstrations against Chinese immigration and, by the time he became PM in the early years of Federation, had spurned his Labor roots and become philosophically opposed to socialism.

Hughes tried and failed to introduce conscription during the World War I.

Chifley sent the army in to break a coal strike in the late 1940s and tried to nationalise the banks.

Whitlam was brought undone by the infamous “loans affair” and subsequently became the only prime minister dismissed by the governor-general in 1975 in the ensuing constitutional crisis over money supply.

A young and ambitious Paul Keating (left) with Prime Minister Gough Whitlam during a 1974 ALP caucus meeting.

Keating presided over the 1990s “recession we had to have”, an ill-chosen phrase that caused him political angst ever after. But generally speaking, his tongue was one of his most formidable weapons, witnessed by his description of Liberal Treasurer Peter Costello as “all tip and no iceberg” and John Hewson’s debating skills as “like being flogged with warm lettuce”.

“You only had to listen to Keating to know he came from the back of Bankstown,” said actor Bryan Brown, from nearby Panania. “It was the way he spoke, his cut-through — have a clear message and get it out there.”

Paul Keating educated himself sufficiently in his political life to become one of the great reforming treasurers under Bob Hawke before winning the “unwinnable” 1993 election against John Hewson.

Keating was “the last of his breed, from the old-style Catholic, intellectual working class”, according to University of Western Sydney political historian David Burchell.

Burchell believes there is no reason Western Sydney can’t produce more PMs, but Labor’s leadership is increasingly drawn from the “leafier, more affluent parts of town”.

“Australia now is a very urban and inner urban society, but as late as the 1970s that still wasn’t true,” Burchell said. “Parramatta was rural or semirural. Prior to the 1980s, country and outer suburban Australians fought above their weight in every area. They dominated sport for a century, and the same was true in politics.’’

Federal Labor’s shadow treasurer Chris Bowen, 42, a Sydney University economics graduate and career politician, is among those touted as a future GWS prime minister.

He fits the Whitlam mould more than the Chifley mould, as politics is increasingly populated by the professional classes, Burchell said.

“The union movement has sadly diminished, and is not such a conduit as before,” he said. “The avenues in (to politics) are narrower, and the number of people who want in has shrunk.”