1969 Australian federal election
Channel: all the knowledge of the universe PRINCIPIA
Date: 2022-01-12

1969 Australian federal election, by Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10034323 / CC BY SA 3.0

#Federal_elections_in_Australia
#1969_elections_in_Australia
#Gough_Whitlam
#October_1969_events_in_Australia
The 1969 Australian federal election was held in Australia on 25 October 1969.
The incumbent Liberal–Country coalition government, led by Prime Minister John Gorton, won the election with a severely diminished majority over the opposition Labor Party, led by Gough Whitlam despite losing the two party popular vote.
Both major parties had changed their leaders in the run-up to the election, the first time this had occurred since 1946.
This was the first and only time that a Federal Government won a ninth consecutive term in office.
This election saw the arrival of future Prime Minister of Australia Paul Keating in Parliament, winning the safe Labor division of Blaxland
in suburban Sydney - a seat he would represent until his resignation following the Keating Government's electoral defeat in 1996.
The 1969 election centred on the two leaders, John Gorton and Gough Whitlam.
Both were leading their respective parties in an election for the first time.
Gorton had initially been very popular and was promoted as an "average Aussie bloke".
This image was boosted by his record of wartime service and his craggy, battered appearance （the result of a wartime injury）.
However, he gradually gained a reputation for being erratic and unnecessarily confrontational.
By the time of the 1969 election campaign, his attempts to alter long-standing Liberal Party policies with regard to federal–state
powers, and foreign affairs had alienated the more conservative sections of the Liberal Party and various state Liberal leaders,
such as Henry Bolte and Bob Askin.
Whitlam, by contrast, had reformed Labor and abandoned unpopular policies such as the once-dominant White Australia Policy, as well as the commitment to socialism still held by many members on the left of the party.
He ...