50 years ago, a political stalemate led to Australia's first and only joint sitting

For two days in August 1974, Old Parliament House played host to an event that had never occurred before, or since, which resulted in historic changes to the way Australians live and vote.

On August 6 and 7, the two houses of federal Parliament sat as one chamber in the only joint sitting to have occurred in Australia's history.

Journalist Niki Savva reported on the joint sitting as a young journalist for The Australian newspaper.

"There were so many momentous days during that period of the Whitlam government, that its importance, I think, has been overshadowed, both in historical terms and in the public consciousness," she told 7.30.

The Constitution allows for a joint sitting, following a double dissolution election in which both houses face an election, as a mechanism for resolving protracted disputes over legislation.

The joint sitting dealt with six bills that had been rejected twice before the May 1974 election and once after it.

The bills proposed changes to electoral laws which had, until then, given a greater say in Parliament to the bush than the cities, and also changes to give Senate representation to the ACT and Northern Territory.

Bills to introduce Medibank — the precursor of Medicare — were also introduced, as were plans to set up an authority to allow for greater direct government investment in Australia's petroleum and offshore resources.

The event has also provided a rare glimpse into the way the parliament worked 50 years ago, as the event was both televised and recorded in colour: the first and only time parliamentary proceedings were recorded until the televising of parliament began in the 1990s.

The room where it happened

Former prime minister John Howard and former treasurer John Dawkins attended the joint sitting as young MPs who had only been elected three months earlier.

"It was my first experience of a sitting in parliament. I hadn't even made my maiden speech," Howard told 7.30.

"I was quite excited at the opportunity of observing together all of these people who I'd read about, listened to, people such as Gough Whitlam and Kim Beazley (Senior), Jim Killen, Jim Cairns.

The joint sitting occurred in an environment in which the Coalition — which had been power for 23 years — did not recognise the legitimacy, or mandate, of the Whitlam Government from the time it first won office in 1972. 

In all, it had rejected 19 bills by the time of the joint sitting.

"Let me put it this way," Howard says. "The Coalition had been in power for an unprecedented 23 years and the Labor Party had gone through enormous splits. People got used to the status quo."

At the election on May 18, the government had been returned with 66 seats in the House of Representatives, to the Coalition's 61. 

The Senate was split 29-29, with former South Australian Liberal Premier Senator Steele Hall sitting on the cross crossbench with independent Tasmanian Senator Michael Townley.

Showing the extent to which the Coalition continued to deny Labor's legitimacy Opposition Leader, Billy Snedden, famously declared: "We were not defeated. We did not win enough seats to form a government."

The period between the election and the joint sitting was full of drama. There were legal challenges, and no clear answers to basic questions like where the sitting should take place and what its format should be.

Just days before the sitting was due to take place, a Liberal Senator launched a High Court challenge, ultimately dismissed by the Court the day before the sitting.

The joint sitting saw MPs and Senators meet in the House of Representatives chamber.

Prime Minister Gough Whitlam told the sitting that it was "a last resort, a means provided by the Constitution to enable the popular will—the democratic process—ultimately to prevail over the tactics of blind obstruction."

Political showdowns 

The first legislation considered was designed to address a 'gerrymander' which gave greater power to voters in the bush than the cities.

"Some people's votes are worth more than 50 per cent more than others," Whitlam told parliament. "In fact, up to 90 per cent. That is unjust. It is a denial of the very essence of democracy and the travesty of the electoral process."

"It was a system of malapportionment whereby a vote in a rural electorate, for the most part, counted for more than in a city one," historian Frank Bongiorno says.

The government's Leader of the House of Representatives Fred Daly told the sitting that "in Queensland, for instance, the Australian Labor Party with 48 per cent of the votes — more than the combined total of the votes of all the other parties — holds only 33 seats; yet the combined parties with 42 per cent of the votes hold 47 seats".

The major beneficiaries of the prevailing system, the Country Party (now the Nationals), opposed the change.

"What the government is doing is playing political trickery," Country Party Leader Doug Anthony said. 

"It was a distortion of the power of those in the bush and the power of those in the cities," John Dawkins says. 

"And because most of the Labor Party seats were in the cities, we were saddled with fewer seats with larger numbers of constituents, whereas the Country Party or the National Party had more seats with fewer people in them."

The televised proceedings give us our only opportunity to see in action MPs of the time, who had legendary reputations for their wit and command of the Parliament, notably Fred Daly who was not averse to questioning just where his opponents were collecting their votes.

"I'm looking at the Liberal Party," Daly goaded the Opposition during the debate on electoral laws. 

For his part, Daly's long-running jousting partner, Liberal Jim Killen, said that he "must confess my intense admiration for the splendid manner for which [the government] can be flexible on matters of great principle, a party which today has fought with a zeal one would describe as being reminiscent of the early Apostles."

Former Liberal South Australian Premier Steele Hall had split with his old party by 1974 and chided them over their stubborn refusal to accept Labor's mandate.

If they were to "some day understand that they do not have a divine right to govern, but that they have to earn it, they might return to this side of the House a lot more swiftly than they are likely to return at the moment," he said. 

It was Gough Whitlam whose presence dominated the parliament of the day.

John Howard notes "the flair that Gough Whitlam had."

The beginnings of universal healthcare

The then social security minister, Bill Hayden, introduced some of the most bitterly fought legislation for a universal health care system. The idea of Medibank in 1974 would eventually become Medicare after the Hawke government was elected in 1983.

"The program we will be bringing in is a comprehensive program. It is based on equity; it is based on a sense of justice; it will ensure that every person in this community is covered for health insurance purposes; and, most certainly, it is based on a freedom of choice," Mr Hayden told parliament.

"The Labor Party started campaigning for universal health insurance back in the 1969 election," says John Dawkins. "So '69, '72, we're up to '74, the legislation has been passed by the House of Representatives in accordance with what we consider to be our electoral mandate."

"But the opposition to it, particularly from the Liberal Party, was so intense that they refused to accept the government had a mandate."

Opposition Leader Billy Snedden told parliament that "the more it is talked about the more it is exposed for its essential badness. All we need do is abandon this commitment to a socialist philosophy."

The Coalition would continue to oppose universal health care until the 1996 election, including when John Howard was Opposition Leader in 1987.

"I was one of those that said all sorts of critical things of Medibank," John Howard says.

The joint sitting also passed laws to give the federal government control over Australia's petroleum and offshore gas — a push from the legendary Rex Connor who dreamt of making Australia rich from its resources — a dream that would ultimately see him pursue the folly of offshore loans in what became known as the Loans or Khemlani Affair.

It was a legislative push backed by a young 30-year-old MP who had already been in the parliament for five years: Paul Keating.

Historian Jenny Hocking says the legacy of the joint sitting was the legislation that was not just critical to the Whitlam government, "but important to where we are as a nation, as a modern nation, and still extremely popular."

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