It’s Time

its_timeNovember 11, Remembrance Day, is also anniversary of the 1975 dismissal of the Whitlam Labor Government by the Governor-General, still a matter of controversy. I was in Canberra at the time, as a student. I remember (that word again) how angry I felt at the eviction of the first progressive Australian government elected in my lifetime, how hopeful we were when it was elected just three years earlier, and how it had so mismanaged affairs that it brought about its own destruction. The campaign slogan "It’s Time", so fitting when Whitlam was elected in 1972 after 23 years of conservative rule, remains a by-word in Australian politics.