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This is a three-minute excerpt from a five-minute Australian Labor Party television commercial for the 1966 federal election. The commercial has a captioned title, Yesterday Today and Tomorrow. In narration over illustrative footage, followed by Gough Whitlam speaking to camera, the advertisement divides the population into three groups – children, adults and the elderly – to detail the way in which the ALP would instigate a plan to ‘use our wealth and vision as a nation to ensure security and prosperity for every member of our society’.
Curator’s notes
This kind of lengthy articulation of party policy during an election campaign is today the province of the staged debate or the extended media interview, rather than the television commercial. The ad focuses on services to three groups: children, for whom education and, to a lesser extent, health are identified as priorities; adults, for whom affordable housing is identified as a priority; and the ‘elderly’ (now referred to as the ‘aged’), for whom increased pensions and free health care are identified as priorities.
In education, Whitlam refers to the overcrowding of schools, with classes of 45 or more students being commonplace all over the country. It wasn’t until six years after the 1966 election, in 1972 when the ALP finally came to power, that this issue was addressed. Reforms to health and education were cornerstones of the major social and political reform program undertaken by the Whitlam government. Whitlam introduced reforms at every level of education, almost doubling the expenditure of the previous government. He established a Schools Commission and implemented a program of needs-based aid to schools. Spending on teacher training was increased, with preschool teacher and teacher training colleges funded on the same basis as universities. The number of teaching scholarships granted was trebled. A National Employment and Training Scheme was set up, circumventing possible teacher shortages, and fees for all tertiary and technical education were abolished.
In the case of health, the 1960s saw an exponential rise in national health expenditure, well above the rate of increase of GDP. While pressure was mounting for a system of compulsory health insurance contributions, the Menzies then Holt governments remained firmly committed to voluntary health insurance. A tiered system was administered, with varying rates of health care assistance provided to means-tested targeted groups. The system was bureaucratically complex, and left a very substantial percentage of the population without private health cover but with no entitlement to free care. Following the 1966 election, in June 1967 Whitlam met with a group of health economists and doctors to discuss a proposal for a universal, national health insurance scheme. These discussions were the genesis of Medibank, which was established with the Health Insurance Bill 1973 and came into operation on 1 July 1975.
