by Alan Watterson (Letter to The Byron Shire Echo, 26 August, 2014, pp. 13-14)

I too have ‘long and first-hand memories of the Whitlam government’, Tim Harrington (Letters, August 19 – p 18)).  I remember that it funded badly needed new hospitals across Australia, introduced community health centres, support for the homeless, women’s refuges, funded the building of over 13,000 homes for low-income families, doubled support for home carers, introduced support for single mothers, increased pensions and other welfare benefits to liveable levels, and introduced universal health care (which the Fraser government, like the current one, tried to dismantle), increased funding to the neglected schools sector and abolished university fees, initiated reconciliation and self-determination for Aboriginal people, passed the Racial Discrimination Act, lowered the voting age, ended conscription, abolished capital punishment, enacted ‘one vote one value’ electoral reforms, established the Australian Legal Aid Office, introduced our own national anthem and honours system, extended the minimum adult wage to include female workers, instituted no-fault divorce and established the Family Court, cleaned up corporate behaviour with the Trade Practices Act, brought oversight to ownership with the Foreign Investment Review Committee, provided work to 32,000 otherwise unemployed Australians, enacted environmental protection legislation, protected  the Great Barrier Reef (Bjelke-Petersen wanted to drill for oil), ratified the World Heritage Convention (which later enabled the /¹⁴ protection of the Franklin River), signed up to RAMSAR, CITES AND JAMBA conventions to protect endangered species, created the Australia Council for the Arts and the Film Commission, brought sanitation to Australian cities through the National Sewage Program, and prevented the destruction of Glebe and Woolloomooloo, among other things.

All this was done while the western world was in recession due to the oil crisis, and having to fight an election every 18 months.  They may not have got everything right, but they transformed a backwater into a progressive member of the international community and laid the foundations for much of which Australia can be proud today.

Alan Watterson

Mullumbimby

In case you need to be reminded of the acronyms,

The Ramsar Convention (formally, the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, especially as Waterfowl Habitat) is an international treaty for the conservation and sustainable utilization of wetlands,^[1] recognizing the fundamental ecological functions of wetlands and their economic, cultural, scientific, and recreational value. It is named after the city of Ramsar in Iran, where the Convention was signed in 1971.

CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, also known as the Washington Convention) is a multilateral treaty to protect endangered plants and animals. It was drafted as a result of a resolution adopted in 1963 at a meeting of members of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The convention was opened for signature in 1973, and CITES entered into force on 1 July 1975. Its aim is to ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten the survival of the species in the wild, and it accords varying degrees of protection to more than 35,000 species of animals and plants. In order to ensure that the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was not violated, the Secretariat of GATT was consulted during the drafting process.^[1]

The Japan Australia Migratory Bird Agreement (JAMBA) is a treaty between Australia and Japan to minimise harm to the major areas used by birds which migrate between the two countries. Towra Point Nature Reserve plays a role in the agreement, being an area in Australia used by migratory birds. JAMBA was first developed on February 6, 1974 and came into force on April 30, 1981.

JAMBA provides for cooperation between Japan and Australia on measures for the management and protection of migratory birds, birds in danger of extinction, and the management and protection of their environments, and requires each country to take appropriate measures to preserve and enhance the environment of birds protected under the provisions of the agreement.