The Gorton government was the federal executive government of Australia led by Prime Minister John Gorton. It was made up of members of a Liberal-Country Party coalition in the Australian Parliament from January 1968 to March 1971.
Background
The Liberal Party of Australia-Country Party of Australia Coalition, led by Prime Minister Harold Holt, won the November 1966 election against the Australian Labor Party opposition led by Arthur Calwell. The Coalition won a substantial majority – the Liberals winning 61 seats and the Country Party 21 – with the Labor Party winning 41 and 1 Independent in the Australian House of Representatives (representing the largest parliamentary majority in 65 years). The Coalition had governed since 1949, and the Liberal Party had replaced the retiring Robert Menzies with Holt in January 1966.
Following the 1966 election, Gough Whitlam replaced Arthur Calwell as Leader of the Opposition. On 17 December 1967, Holt disappeared in heavy surf while swimming off Cheviot Beach, near Melbourne, becoming the third Australian Prime Minister to die in office. Country Party leader John McEwen served as Prime Minister from 19 December 1967 to 10 January 1968, pending the election of a new leader of the Liberal Party of Australia. McEwen ruled out maintaining the Coalition if deputy Liberal leader William McMahon became Prime Minister. John McEwen, leader of the Country Party, had been sworn in as caretaker Prime Minister until a new Liberal leader was elected. McEwen had ruled out further participation in the Coalition if William McMahon, the deputy Liberal leader, became Prime Minister. The Minister for External Affairs, Paul Hasluck, Minister for Labour and National Service Leslie Bury and Minister for Immigration Billy Snedden, also nominated for election to the leadership. Gorton won the leadership election with a small majority and resigned from the Senate to stand for election to Higgins, the House of Represensatives seat formerly held by Harold Holt, which he achieved on 24 February 1968.
John Gorton
John Gorton had studied Politics, History and Economics at Oxford University and served as pilot in the Royal Australian Airforce during the Second World War. His aircraft crashed during the defence of Singapore, and Gorton was badly injured. His face remained forever scarred, but Gorton managed to escape, only for his ship to be torpedoed at Batavia – where, by clinging to an improvised raft, he again escaped death and was able to return to Australia for medical treatment and to serve in the air defence of Northern Australian and New Guinea.
Gorton obtained a seat as a Liberal Senator at the 1949 Election and was promoted by Robert Menzies to become Minister for the Navy 9 years later and he went on to serve in various portfolios in both the Menzies and Holt governments. In 1967, Prime Minister Harold Holt appointed Gorton as Leader of the Government in the Senate. Soon after, Holt drowned and Gorton decided to run for the office of Prime Minister, though he lacked a House of Representatives seat. Liberal Patriarch Robert Menzies favoured Paul Hasluck. Future Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser firmly backed Gorton. The leadership ballot was fervently contested. In his 2010 Memoir, Lazarus Rising, long serving Liberal Prime Minister John Howard wrote that Gorton was the first person to win the leadership of an Australian party "through the force of his television appearances". In the lead up to the leadership vote, Gorton was little known but appeared on television, where, wrote Howard, he gave direct answers and his "relaxed, laconic manner, coupled with his crumpled war-hero face, really appealed to viewers". Political commentator Alan Reid said:
Gorton's leadership style
Gorton, a former World War II RAAF pilot, with a battle scarred face, said he was "Australian to the bootheels" and had a personal style which often affronted some conservatives. Gorton told the media that he saw the role of Prime Minister not as being like the chairman of committee, who should submit to majority votes of Cabinet, but rather that a Prime Minister should put his position to Cabinet as what ought to be done, and "if he believes strongly enough that it ought to be done, then it must be done". Accordingly, he visited President Johnson of the United States in 1968 without taking any advisors from External Affairs and interfered heavily in the preparation of Treasurer William McMahon's budgets. According to political historian Brian Carroll: