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

ambition from law to economics because his experiences in parliament soon led him to believe that economic policy was the key political battleground. He ran for the front bench after being re-elected in the 1963 federal election, but narrowly missed out on promotion. This led him to intensify his studies in economics, to the chagrin of some of his colleagues, with Labor leader Arthur Calwell asking in 1965: ‘Why does young Hayden keep raising the problem of the balance of payments? Why doesn’t he just be a normal politician and worry about his electorate?’4

Hayden was a regular contributor to economics debates in the House and completed his degree in 1968. After having again missed out on election to the front bench in 1966, Hayden was finally elected to the shadow ministry, and allocated the health and welfare portfolio after Labor’s good result in the 1969 election. (Following his graduation, he spent more time with parliamentary colleagues in social settings and less time in the parliamentary library studying, which would have played a part in his success in the ballot.)

The health and welfare portfolio suited Hayden well. His interest in, and study of, economics had not been at the expense of his strongly held views about social justice and his sympathy with the progressive causes of the late 1960s. He was still seen as being on the Left of the parliamentary Caucus, although ALP factions at the time were less formalised than they are today. Hayden made one of his priorities as shadow minister the development of a policy proposal for a universal superannuation scheme paid for by employer and employee contributions. It went nowhere during the course of the Whitlam government, not finding a place in its substantial reform agenda, but it would become a centrepiece of the Keating Labor government’s policies.

Unlike superannuation, Labor’s commitment to a universal healthcare system, for which Hayden had responsibility as shadow minister for health and welfare, was very much part of the Whitlam plan. It also became an important part of the 1972 election campaign, with a poll in September of that year showing that free medical services had been identified as the most important issue by 46.3 per cent of electors, beating the age pension (for which Hayden was also responsible) into second place. This factor, together with the Australian community having grown weary of Liberal – Country Party governments after twenty-three years of them, and the huge disparity in the campaigning skills of the respective leaders, Whitlam and McMahon, saw Labor elected to government on 2 December 1972 with a clear, though not huge, majority.

Medibank and the Wages Explosion

In the Caucus ballot for the ministry following the 1972 election, Hayden outperformed his traditional poor results in Caucus elections by tying for second place with Frank Crean. Under the existing system of determining Cabinet seniority, it meant that he became the fourth-ranking minister after Whitlam, deputy prime minister Lance Barnard and first-place getter Jim Cairns. Hayden was appointed minister for social security, retaining responsibility for the introduction of the universal health system, which was to be known as ‘Medibank’, and therefore responsibility for one of the biggest policy changes and political battles that the Whitlam government would undertake.

While a popular reform, it took a huge effort from Hayden in particular to overcome the virulent opposition of the medical establishment to Medibank. In keeping with the experience of ministers who’d come before him, and who would come after him, Hayden had to endure a scare campaign about what the reform would mean for Australians, and also personal attacks of a particularly nasty nature. His wife, Dallas, for example, received a phone call at home one evening from someone purporting to be a public official, telling her that her husband had gone berserk on an aeroplane and had been taken by the police to a mental institution. Hayden also got into a spat with his family doctor, a vocal opponent of Medibank who had been endorsed as the DLP candidate against him at an upcoming election, which resulted in the Hayden family’s medical records outrageously being read out in the Queensland Parliament.

The sort of extreme rhetoric that is often invoked against social reform was also invoked against Medibank. Joh Bjelke-Petersen, then the Country Party premier of Queensland, told the Legislative Assembly:

Throughout history, man has had to cope with many disasters. Some of these disasters have household names—the Biblical flood, the eruption of Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii, the Titanic. Well, as from Friday we can add another monumental disaster that will affect every household in Queensland and the rest of Australia—Medibank. For that reason Mr Speaker, I wish to propose that Friday, 1st October 1976 be designated Bill Hayden Day. On this day each year, from now on, as Queenslanders sit down and fill out their tax forms, they will look back and shudder. They will remember that, on Black Friday, like Frankenstein’s monster, Hayden’s horror was officially born.5

In April 1974, the Liberal – Country Party opposition voted to deny supply to the government in protest at Whitlam’s decision to appoint former DLP leader Vince Gair as ambassador to Ireland. What became known as the Gair Affair was instigated by Labor in order to create another Senate vacancy that the Labor Party had a chance to win in the scheduled May Senate election. Whitlam immediately called an election, in which Labor’s plans for Medibank played a considerable role. Labor suffered a 1 per cent swing but still secured 51.7 per cent of the vote, with a net loss of one seat in the House of Representatives.

As well as continuing as social security minister, Hayden took an increasingly active, and concerned, role in Cabinet debates on the economy. He was appointed acting treasurer upon each of the (regular) overseas visits of treasurer Frank Crean. It was during one of his stints as acting treasurer that Hayden vocally opposed Labor minister Clyde Cameron’s attempt to reintroduce wage indexation, forcefully arguing that such a move would have disastrous