James Morrow: Labor’s culture of entitlement betrays working class roots

What would Gough Whitlam have to say about family reunions at the Grand Final, asks James Morrow.

It is interesting to speculate how Whitlam might view the Albanese Labor government of today. Picture: Martin Ollman

This time one month ago Labor’s true believers were mourning the 50th anniversary of the Dismissal, when the government of the 1.94m-tall Gough Whitlam – his height becomes important in a moment – was cruelly terminated by Governor-General Sir John Kerr.

Speaking ahead of the anniversary Prime Minister Anthony Albanese maintained the rage, reciting ALP dogma that Whitlam was the victim of “a calculated plot, hatched by conservative forces which sacrificed conventions and institutions in the pursuit of power”.

For Albanese and many others Whitlam remains a secular saint, remembered as the man who set Australia on a progressive path and looked out for ordinary folks, right down to digging a proper sewer system for Western Sydney.

So it is interesting to speculate how, 50 and a bit years on, Whitlam might view the Albanese Labor government and its mission to stay in touch with the true blue battlers.

Federal Minister for Sport Anika Wells pictured at the past two AFL Grand Finals.

Particularly in light of the rolling revelations about sports and communications minister Anika Wells and her busy schedule of 40th birthday bashes and Thredbo weekends and days out with her husband to the cricket and the footy.

This is where Whitlam’s tall and sturdy frame comes in.

When he was alive, former Whitlam minister Charlie Jones liked to retell the story of the hulking Whitlam laying the boot into his cabinet team.

“I travel economy and I am a great man,” Whitlam thundered, according to Jones’ account of the incident.

“I could travel economy for the rest of my life and I would still be a great man. But most of the people around this table are pissants and they could travel first class for the rest of their life and they would still be pissants.”

Well, quite.

Even given the more generous economy seat proportions of Whitlam’s era, the image of the nearly two metre tall PM folding himself and his ego (“I am a great man!”) into a middle seat up the back is both evocative and amusing.

But the story also puts to rest any doubt about where he would have stood on the subject of a cavalcade of Labor MPs, including Wells, pushing the boundaries of their legitimate travel entitlements beyond what is gingerly referred to as “community expectations”.

It was not that long ago that Wells herself seemed to grasp this very point, namely that the government of the day is the steward of the public’s money and if they fail in this duty they deserve to be turfed out.

In 2021, when Labor was in opposition and dishing it out hard to the Coalition, Wells (or more likely her taxpayer-funded social media manager) tweeted: “I don’t know about you but I’ve had a gutful of the Morrison government treating taxpayer money like their own looting rorting piggy bank”.

Defenders of Wells and Labor will say ‘well, the spending was all within the rules’ - and there is no evidence to the contrary, writes Morrow.

“Scandal after scandal and they have learned nothing.”

This has, as the saying goes, aged like fine milk.

Wells’ tweet also linked to a Brisbane talkback spot in which she complained that “they (the Morrison government) have learned nothing about waste or corruption or rorting, and we have a trillion dollars in debt now, debt as far as they eye can see”.

Not quite: Australia is set to cross the trillion dollar debt mark any moment now, under the watchful eye of Treasurer Jim Chalmers.

This would be the same Chalmers who, speaking of looking out for the battlers, huffily wound up a press conference Monday after journalists quizzed him about how Wells’s frequent flying might be seen by voters who are having their $300 energy rebates yanked from under them while staring at persistent inflation driven by government spending.

Defenders of Wells and Labor will say, well, the spending was all within the rules (and there is no evidence to the contrary) and that every party has members who put in eye-watering, if legitimate claims (again, no doubt true).

Not surprisingly, Labor spinners are pointing to travel expenses of Coalition members as if to say, oh, the hypocrisy.

Yet the one thing we can be sure is that for all the harrumphing the one thing neither party will do is suggest any sort of end to entitlements such as family reunion allowances because everyone likes them and nobody wants to end the party.

To return once more to Whitlam, it is a bit like when “Saint” Gough said, in a different context, that only “the impotent are pure”.

Or as an actual saint, Saint Augustine, prayed centuries ago: “Lord, make me pure – but not yet!”