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Whitlam's major move on the home front was to pledge vastly increased federal aid to education, transportation and health facilities. He ordered a new appraisal of the impact of foreign investment in Australia and froze all leasing of land claimed by aborigines. On a somewhat smaller scale, he abolished a 25¢-per-gallon excise tax on wine and, in a flash attack on prim Australian censorship, lifted a ban on the movie Portnoy's Complaint. He also ended a 27½% sales tax on contraceptive pills and made them available through the National Health Scheme at minimal cost. And he persuaded the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission, which sets national wage standards, to approve the principle of equal pay for women. He stopped short of endorsing two views expressed by his wife Margaret: that abortions should be legalized and that there is nothing wrong in childless couples living together out of wedlock. Still, Women's Libber Germaine Greer, home from Britain for a holiday, was sufficiently moved to comment: "I might return to live in Australia now that it is under a Labor government."
In one of several actions taken or planned to reduce traditional British ties with Australia, Whitlam scrapped the practice of Aussies receiving knighthoods or other courtly titles in the so-called Queen's Honors lists. (In fact, the lists are prepared by the politicians in power and are generally handed out to faithful friends and followers.) Whitlam, already committed to replacing God Save the Queen with a distinctively Australian national anthem, also announced the cessation of official royal visits in favor of unofficial visits. Last week his newly appointed envoy to Britain, former Politician John Armstrong, predicted that Australia would eventually become a republic.
It may be that some Australians had simply not yet caught their breath sufficiently to voice protests against the Whitlam whirlwind of change. But generally, the nation last week seemed to be going along with Gough. Columnist Geoffrey Hutton observed in the conservative Melbourne Age that in the stream of decisions issuing from Canberra, "Australia's image has changed more swiftly than it has since the war." The minor swing of votes that put Whitlam in power, he wrote, had shaken Australians "out of the ingrained attitudes of a generation and turned us from spaniels into fox terriers."