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This is a three-minute selection from a five-minute Australian Labor Party television commercial for the 1966 federal election. The commercial has a captioned title, The Forgotten Land. In narration over illustrative footage, followed by Gough Whitlam speaking to camera, ALP election policy is presented in relation to services to rural Australia and development of the interior of the continent.
Curator’s notes
A five-minute political television commercial would be unheard of in today’s election campaigns – more commonly characterised by the eight-second grab. This three-minute excerpt demonstrates the policy detail that could be incorporated into party television advertising. The ad focuses on issues relating to rural Australia – urban drift of population, drought, and the delivery of health and education services to rural communities. It also raises concerns about neglect of the country’s mineral and oil resources, and the predominantly overseas ownership of existing resource development.
For most of the century, the proportion of the country’s population living in rural areas had been declining, and by the 1966 election it had reached roughly 14 per cent – rendering Australia among the most urbanised nations in the world. Nevertheless activities in the interior of the continent continued to play a central role in the shaping and reshaping of Australia’s economy, its landscape, environment, history and, importantly, its ethos.
In the ad, Whitlam talks about improvements to rural services. He mentions schools, medical and dental health, roads, railways, water management and sewerage. Many of these improvements would later be implemented when he came to power. A hallmark of 1974, Whitlam’s second full year as prime minister, was his program of urban decentralisation. Under the program, regional infrastructure was built and renewed, leisure and tourist facilities were established, and community health centres and regional-based hospitals were developed. Special purpose grants to the states financed construction of a national highway system and a standard gauge railway line to link Perth, Adelaide, Sydney and Alice Springs. In the same year the Albury-Wodonga Development Corporation, which was intended to be the first of similar schemes creating ‘regional growth centres’, was established.
