A handshake with Gough Whitlam and a divide between my parents that time couldn’t heal | Paul Daley

The election win 50 years ago delighted my father and angered my mother. Their politics were never reconciled yet they stayed together until my father’s death

I grew up hating politics. No good could ever come of it, I knew that for certain. For as a kid I’d heard my parents arguing all those times about Gough Whitlam.

Dad, a lifelong Labor devotee, was at death’s door when he voted against John Howard at the November 2007 election that ended nearly 12 years of Liberal rule. It was, perhaps, Dad’s last moment of great pride.

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