To the Barricades-with whom and for What?

It was good to be there, to say goodbye and to give thanks. The memorial service for Gough Whitlam, Australia's twenty-first prime minister and a transformational leader for the Australian Labor Party, was held on 5 November 2014 in Sydney's Town Hall. At a time when so many of Whitlam's children lament the state of our democracy, this was an occasion to give us pause. A reminder that at heart Whitlam was a democrat. He talked like one and behaved like one, devoting his professional life to making his party and the national parliament more democratic. It was time as well to acknowledge certain truths about ourselves, as a people, and as a nation. Even old foes seemed to accept the central truth of what Paul Keating said when it was announced on 21 October that Whitlam had died at the age of ninety-eight: 'There was an Australia before Whitlam, and there was a different Australia after Whitlam.'