Australia's first Labor Prime Minister in 23 years, Edward Gough Whitlam, 56, last week was off to the most amazing, assertive start of any leader in his country's history. True to a party promise of new initiatives that would rival those of President Franklin Roosevelt's famous 100 days, Whitlam bounded into action on an extraordinary range of issues from conscription to contraceptives—and left his countrymen, who had yawned through much of the election campaign, suddenly agape.
Moving as fast as a bush fire in the Outback, Whitlam had himself sworn into office along with Deputy Leader Lance Barnard several days sooner than is customary in an Australian change of government, and quickly demonstrated a faculty for imaginative agility. Unable to install a full Cabinet until after his party caucuses this week, the new Prime Minister assumed temporary custody of 13 portfolios (including foreign affairs, which he will keep) and gave Barnard the remaining 14. As perhaps the smallest Cabinet ever in a democracy, the two men promptly engineered a series of sudden shifts in Australian policies, both foreign and domestic.
Even before being sworn in, Whitlam had recalled the Australian Ambassador to Taipei and instructed Canberra's Ambassador to France to start talks with the Chinese in Paris aimed at establishing diplomatic relations with Peking. Now the Australian Ambassador to the United Nations was directed to back moves for a neutralized zone in the Indian Ocean. He was also told to reverse field and support Third World resolutions against white-supremacist Rhodesia. A Rhodesian information of fice in Sydney was ordered shut down. South Africa was told that sporting teams selected along racial lines would not be allowed into Australia, not even as transients en route to other countries. At a press conference, Whitlam said that he favored "a more independent Australian stance in international affairs, an Australia which will be less militarily oriented and not open to suggestions of racism."
Military conscription was stopped, and seven young men who had been imprisoned for resisting the draft were released. The 12,000 Aussie conscript troops were given the option of resigning or completing their 18-month terms with additional benefits; volunteer members of the armed forces were offered re-enlistment bonuses of $1,000. The 140 Australian servicemen still in Viet Nam, remnants of a force that had numbered almost 8,000 in 1968, were ordered home by Christmas.