Gough Whitlam's legacy as an internationalist and social democrat is well established - yet he is not readily know as an environmentalist. Whitlam was indeed a pioneer of environmental protection and the first to make protection of the natural world a key part of Labor's values and mission. As early as 1970 he argued that “The Commonwealth should see itself as the curator and not the liquidator of the national estate.”  

In this publication, E.G. Whitlam Research Fellow, Dr Ben Huf, examines the the lasting impact of the Whitlam Government's urban and environmental policies to provide an alternative narrative to the economic dramas of crisis, reform and neoliberal globalisation that have dominated Australia's policy landscape over the last 40 years.

Environmental politics and just energy transitions, he writes, are usually considered policy problems defining Australia's present and future rather than its past. In this paper, Dr Huf excavates an environmental alternative to the economic narratives that have long dominated histories of Australian policy-making, locating the first attempts to centre ecological thinking in Australian governmental practice in the urban, environmental and minerals agendas of the Whitlam government.

The report recovers the equality, internationalism and conceptual boldness that defined this earlier era of environmental policy-making and considers its contemporary relevance in today’s policy context.