Susan Mitchell on Don Dunstan and leadership

Dunstan reminds us of what is possible

SUSAN MITCHELL in 'InDaily'

I HAVE just received an invitation to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the first Sex Discrimination Act to be passed in Australia? Where was it enacted? South Australia? By whom? Premier Don Dunstan.

How long is it since South Australia was the first to be known for doing anything?

After a long apprenticeship in the South Australian Labor Party, Don Dunstan had heard endless sorry tales from battlers in his electorate regarding the rip-offs from the housing and used car industries. As a lawyer, he knew that any legal redress was way beyond their means. So in another first he drafted the first consumer protection laws in Australia.

Hot on the heels of this legislation we were the first to abolish discrimination based on race, colour of skin or country of origin.

Which was the first state to enable Aborigines to live on their own lands and determine their own future with assistance from the government?

South Australia under Premier Don Dunstan.

Throughout the 1970s the rest of the nation was astounded that little old Adelaide, city of Churches, was leading the way in much needed reforms?

What followed in the other firsts was homosexual law reform, censorship law reform, and the most controversial of them all in what had become known as “the wowser state”, reform of the Licensing Act. Adelaide still had what was known as the six o’clock swill: no restaurant licences, no permit for alcohol in social clubs and even for those with permits, all alcohol was to be off the table by 9pm. Bowling clubs were regularly raided and lockers were inspected to see if they were hiding grog.

I know it all sounds totally unreal and ludicrous now but how often do we remind ourselves that we were the first state to make these widespread reforms. How did this happen? Was it something in the water? Hardly.

Did the good citizens of Adelaide rear up in passionate dissent? Hardly.

Did the Labor Party members smoke too much dope at one of their conferences? Hardly.

Even though the Labor Party hates to laud individuals over the collective, it must admit that all the firsts sprang from the vision and hard work of one man: Don Dunstan.

Apart from all these outstanding reforms, he set in train his plans for a State Tourism Industry based on the production of the best wine and food. He established Regency Park College to train chefs to international standard. By including tourism under the Industrial Systems Provisions he ensured that a state with a narrow manufacturing base provided employment even in tough economic times. As he said, “computers can’t make a bed or prepare a meal”.

He set up permanent arts companies so that practitioners could live and work in Adelaide. He finished building the Festival Centre, established the State Opera, gave the State Theatre Company a resident company of actors, established the South Australian Film Corporation. And so the list goes on.

I am not engaging in some kind of nostalgic yearning for the past but reminding those who lived here in the 1970s and informing those who were not even born, what can be accomplished by one outstanding leader, even in a small city like Adelaide. We seem to have settled into a malaise of mediocrity.

If firsts have been achieved before, they can be done again.

Leadership is about having a clear and well-thought out plan for the future of the city and the negotiation skills to make it happen. Leadership is not spin or rhetoric or slogans, it is action. Don’t for one minute think that Dunstan’s own ministers weren’t gobsmacked by what he encouraged them to achieve. The comfortable citizens of Adelaide could not believe what was happening before their eyes. Many of them were outraged. Some viciously vituperative in their assessments. But somehow he always managed to scrape over the line at election time.

Some naysayers still wish to wipe away his achievements by claiming that it was just the turbulent times that produced such reforms. If that were true then why was Adelaide the first state to enact them. Why not anarchic Sydney or Marxist Melbourne? Why slumbering Adelaide?

Successive governments of both persuasions have been riding on the coat- tails of Dunstan’s reforms and leadership ever since. Every time we sit outside and enjoy a glass of wine and a delicious meal, we should toast him for being the first Premier to introduce outdoor dining.

I am not claiming that he should be our next saint; as Joe E Brown said in the film Some Like It Hot, “Nobody’s perfect.”

But when we look at the leaders we have had in this State since Dunstan, it is vital to our future that those who experienced the Dunstan decade remind themselves and others of what is possible. He never gave up on Adelaide being the best at everything it did. We don’t have to be the biggest city in the nation but we can still be the best. It all depends on the qualities of the leader. Even the current Prime Minister cited Dunstan as her political role model. It is time, once again, for us to settle for nothing less.

www.susanmitchell.com.au