Eric Harrison, upon the Coalition's victory at the 1964 election, became Australia's most successful Prime Minister in terms of electoral success, becoming the only Prime Minister to lead his party (or parties) to success four times in a row, and four times period, and all with a majority in the House of Representatives. This was partly due to a resurgent DLP, who assisted the Liberals in some close races, and the Country Party gaining more ground, although the Liberals lost votes to these parties, their worst primary vote since the House-only election of 1952. Labor went backwards by around 1% in 1964, and the combined Communist vote was also lower than in 1961, the split in the Communist vote meaning the Communists lost three seats back to Labor, while the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party won enough votes to gain a Senate seat in Victoria, Ted Hill's home state.
Summary of 1964 election:
House of RepresentativesLiberal – 56 (+2)
Country – 21 (+1)
Labor – 43 (nc)
Communist – 4 (-3)
Senate1961: 14
Liberal, 2
Country, 13
Labor, 1
Communist1964: 12
Liberal, 2
Country, 12
Labor, 2
Democratic Labor, 1
Communist, 1
Marxist-Leninist CommunistTotal: 26
Liberal, 4
Country, 25
Labor, 2
Democratic Labor, 2
Communist, 1
Marxist-Leninist CommunistTwo-party preferred vote:
54.31-
45.69Following their fourth successive loss, Arthur Calwell resigned as Labor leader, and was replaced by his deputy, Gough Whitlam from New South Wales. While Calwell had been successful in getting many DLP voters back to Labor, they still weren't quite cutting the mustard, also, after three successive losses, Calwell and the Labor Party felt it was time for a change. Entering its fourth term, the Harrison Government faced a tragedy very early on - on the 6th of Julym Kevin Conway, a Warrant Officer serving as an advisor in South Vietnam, was killed, he was the first Australian casualty of the Vietnam War. Australia's first daily national newspaper, Rupert Murdoch's News Limited's The Australian, went on sale on the 15th of July.
The situation in Vietnam would shortly go from bad to dreadful though - on the 2nd of August, the American destroyer USS Maddox, came into conflict with three North Vietnamese torpedo boats. A battle ensured, which saw the US damage three boats, kill four North Vietnamese soldiers, and wound another six. This battle, known as the Gulf of Tonkin incident, resulted in drastic escalation in the US involvement in Vietnam, which resulted in the RAAF sending a flight of Caribou transport planes to South Vietnam, by the end of 1964, 200 Australian military personnel were in Vietnam. Away from war, the British Invasion had spread to Australia in the 1964-65 period, with the Beatles touring in June of 1964, followed by the Rolling Stones and the Kinks in January 1965.
Prince Philip oversaw the opening of the Royal Australian Mint in Canberra, on the 22nd of February, 1965. This new mint would mint all coins used in Australia, notes had been manufactured in the RBA's Note Printing Australia facility, in Melbourne's northern suburbs since 1913. Over the 1964-65 period, the Harrison Government had prepared for what was originally going to be a twin set of referenda - one that would count Aboriginals in the Census, and thus Australian citizens, removing explicit exclusionary causes in the Constitution, and one re-aligning House of Representatives numbers so that they were as close to twice the number of Senate seats. Following the Gulf of Tonkin incident, however, and the increase in military involvement in Vietnam, a conscription question was also developed, to assist the armed forces in their fight against the North Vietnamese Army.
The referenda have been set for the 19th of March, 1965.
Referendum Question A (Aboriginals):
"DO YOU APPROVE the proposed law for the alteration of the Constitution entitled— 'An Act to alter the Constitution so as to omit certain words relating to the People of the Aboriginal Race in any State and so that Aboriginals are to be counted in reckoning the Population?"
Referendum Question B (Parliament):
"Do you approve the proposed law for the alteration of the Constitution entitled 'An Act to alter the Constitution so that the number of members of the House of Representatives may be increased without necessarily increasing the number of Senators'?"
Referendum Question C (Conscription):
"Do you approve the proposed law that would enable a lottery-based conscription system, to assist the armed forces during the ongoing conflict in Vietnam?"
Voting is open for three days.
Me:
*On a side note, I probably would have voted NO, had I been able to foresee the remainder of the Vietnam War as it occurred IRL.
Poll
