One of the Whitlam government’s earliest major reform programs targeted Australia’s Federation-era telecommunications arrangements. It culminated shortly before the Dismissal with a new, autonomous government enterprise, known as Telecom, taking responsibility for national telecommunications from the Postmaster-General’s Department (PMG). The reform plans were developed while Whitlam was Opposition Leader and fractured what had long been a benign area of bipartisan policy consensus. They reflected Whitlam’s long-standing support for user-pays principles in telecommunications and his aim to make Australia’s arrangements more financially self-sufficient by reducing rural subsidies, in part to free up government funds for Labor’s other policy priorities.

The Whitlam government’s telecommunications reforms significantly changed Australia’s arrangements and directly shaped later policy decisions by the Fraser and Hawke governments. The paper examines the context and implementation of this program. It argues that the government’s approach was mostly evidence-based and consultative and enjoyed general support from Labor’s Caucus, the telecommunications unions and the PMG itself. It also reveals, however, the extent to which Whitlam and his ministers repeatedly undercut their own policy objectives and political interests – with some important consequences – by high-handedness and insensitivity towards affected parties and a doctrinaire attitude towards their wider policy program.