William McMahon is often regarded as the worst prime minister of the past half century. When Paul Keating was looking for an epithet to use against the then hapless Liberal leader Alexander Downer in 1994, he described him as ‘the most foolish political leader of this country since Billy McMahon’. To rub it in, he later apologised to the McMahon family. Deputy Prime Minister Doug Anthony claimed that McMahon was ‘just not big enough for the job’. Donald Horne argues McMahon was ‘perhaps the silliest prime minister we ever had’. However, my research into the cabinet papers of the time show McMahon in a different light. McMahon understood the challenge posed by a resurgent Labor Party under Gough Whitlam and he worked tirelessly behind the scenes to regain the political initiative. McMahon harassed his departments for suggestions, relying heavily on their policy and political advice. But he was caught between a government wanting to maintain its conservative traditions, whilst also acknowledging the need for social change. In the end, of course, he failed. But the path to his eventual failure shows a prime minister with a steely determination to hold on to government.
McMahon was the fifth Coalition prime minister in just over five years, succeeding John Gorton in March 1971. Since the disappearance of Harold Holt, the government had been fraught with disunity. McMahon lacked Whitlam’s media and parliamentary skills. A figure of ridicule, he was not popular and lacked respect among his colleagues. McMahon ended 1971 with an approval rating of just 36.4 per cent, yet it was slightly higher than Whitlam’s personal approval rating at 35.6 per cent. What follows is an examination of several policy areas through the prism of the cabinet papers; space prohibits a more detailed study.
In politics, disunity is death. The disunity and cabinet leaks which had plagued Gorton soon caused McMahon the same anxiety. In 1971, McMahon took it upon himself, at the very first meeting of his cabinet, to make sure that his ministers were ‘familiar with, and to observe, the practices and procedures instituted for the effective operation of the cabinet system’. He emphasised the central role played by cabinet in government: it ‘determines policy and it ensures coordination. It brings together as necessary the political and administrative elements in the decision-making process’. The statement explicitly noted that background briefing of journalists ‘should not be to distort or criticise a government