The Money Men by Chris Bowen (superbooks4u .txt) 📕

parliament is a sackable offence for ministers, one that can only occasionally be avoided by an early correction of the record and an apology. On a matter as significant as this, Whitlam was never going to allow that option to be exercised. A minister with a warm relationship and the full confidence of his prime minister would struggle to survive such a revelation. Cairns had neither.

Whitlam informed Cairns that he was dismissing him from the ministry. When Cairns refused to resign, Whitlam advised governor-general Sir John Kerr to withdraw his commission. Cairns then rang Government House in Canberra in a bid to persuade Kerr not to accept this advice, but the governor-general, at least on this occasion, acted appropriately and declined to take the call. Cairns wasn’t done fighting for his position, however. When the Caucus met on 14 July 1975 and Whitlam moved that the position of deputy leader be declared vacant, given that Cairns had refused to resign it, Cairns opposed the motion. It was carried by fifty-five votes to thirty-three. Crean, destroyed by Cairns as treasurer just six months earlier, replaced him as deputy prime minister. Despite Whitlam warning the Caucus that he would not submit Cairns’ name to the governor-general as a minister, Cairns nevertheless entered the ballot for the ministerial vacancy, along with eight other candidates. In the final ballot, he was defeated by the Western Australian MP Joe Berinson by fifty-four votes to thirty-seven. It was a sad way for a lion of the labour movement to leave the parliamentary party.

Afterwards

The ongoing saga of the Loans Affair gave opposition leader Malcolm Fraser the justification he had been looking for to block supply and force an election. When Whitlam declined to call such an election, governor-general Kerr dismissed the government, and as caretaker prime minister, Fraser called an election for 13 December 1975. Cairns retained his seat of Lalor as the Whitlam government was heavily defeated; he had resisted overtures to vacate his seat to make way for leadership hopeful Bob Hawke.

Cairns did not nominate for a leadership position or the front bench after the 1975 election. He was rarely seen on his feet in parliament and was not active in the Caucus. His main interventions were in support of East Timorese independence. He published the short but rambling book Oil in Troubled Waters in 1976 in defence of his legacy as treasurer. In it, he defended the previous government’s intention to borrow money in the Middle East in typical Cairns style: ‘The hegemonic significance of borrowing from Arab countries was that the Australian Labor Government was trying to by-pass the capitalist, financial establishment which had always monopolized lending to Australia and instead was seeking to do business with its opponents, if not its enemies.’39

In 1977 Cairns announced that he would not contest the upcoming election and retired from politics. He remained prominent, however, becoming involved in the ‘counterculture’ movement and becoming a lead organiser, along with Junie Morosi, of a number of festivals in the Canberra region and elsewhere. These included workshops on such things as yoga, iridology and vegetarianism. He eventually drifted away from the movement, following disputes and splits relating to land purchases for a permanent home for it. He contested the 1983 federal election as an independent in Victoria, but he did not poll well.

Cairns remained an active (self-published) author, writing such books as A New Day: Liberated Biological Human Potential: the Source of Social Reform to the Good Society There’s No Other Way and Reshaping the Future: Liberated Human Potential. He could regularly be seen selling his books at various Melbourne weekend markets. Cairns eventually rejoined the ALP and was made a life member in 2000. He died in 2003.

An Evaluation

Although this is a book about treasurers, Jim Cairns is entitled to have his legacy judged on his twenty years in parliament. He was a man of considerable courage and vision. But when it came to economic issues, his judgement let him down too many times. In fact, when he became treasurer, it was fatal to his career and to his government.

Cairns fundamentally misdiagnosed the economic challenges facing Australia in the early 1970s. He stymied treasurer Crean when Crean was trying to implement a program to bring inflation under control. Cairns argued that inflation should not be slayed at the expense of unemployment. However, after Cairns had sabotaged Crean’s plans and implemented his own, Australia still saw unemployment rise from 2.6 per cent in 1974 to 5.4 per cent in 1975. A good Labor government should always make it a priority to keep inflation low. High inflation makes our economy uncompetitive, endangering jobs. It punishes low- and middle-income earners and those on fixed incomes. The inflationary dynamic in Australia was well and truly underway when the Whitlam government came to office and was worsened by international events during its tenure. However, the government’s failure to get its own spending and wages under control exacerbated the situation. Cairns said that the government should not surrender its social or cultural programs, thus effectively arguing for a worsening of inflation.

The Whitlam government has a laudable record, and many of its reforms were long overdue. Having been in opposition for twenty-three years, Labor’s impatience to implement its program was understandable. As Whitlam backbencher Ralph Willis writes: ‘For all its problems with economic management, wayward Ministers, and poor decision making on crucial issues, the Whitlam Government’s reform program has, however, left a lasting legacy on Australia.’40 But the Whitlam government, and Cairns’ tenure as treasurer in particular, held many lessons for future Labor governments. These include the need for a smaller, streamlined Cabinet, for strict Cabinet solidarity, for wages restraint and for gradual implementation of reforms in a fiscally sustainable way.

Cairns’ judgement on the central issue of the Loans Affair also let him, and the government, down—fatally. The folly of being willing to triple our external government debt in a quixotic attempt to fix a non-problem of foreign ownership of minerals and resources