The making of a reformer: Don Dunstan before the ‘Dunstan Decade’^*

Don Dunstan, Premier of South Australia 196768 and 197079, was one of the most influential political figures of twentieth century Australia. Dunstan blazed a trail of nationally significant reform, and introduced his vision of social democracy in one state. Passionate about social equality and civil rights and liberties, Dunstan legislated against racial discrimination and for Aboriginal land rights, oversaw the decriminalisation of homosexuality, worked to improve the status of women, and urged Australians to see themselves as part of the Asia-Pacific region, not merely an outpost of Britain. Prominent Labor figures burnished his national image. The staunchly left-wing Federal member for the SA seat of Hindmarsh, Clyde Cameron, loved to take personal credit for having made Dunstans career and giving him all of his big breaks.11 For example, State Library of South Australia, JD Somerville Oral History Collection, interview by Peter Donovan with Clyde Cameron, 24 November 2004. View all notes In 1978 Bob Hawke, then President of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), and later Prime Minister, testified: I hold Don Dunstan in greater esteem than any other Labor parliamentarian with whom I have been associated in the past generation. In 1999 former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam said nostalgically: It is difficult to rekindle the brightness of the light which seemed to shine from Adelaide around Australia during the Dunstan years. The fact is that no one has done more to transform his own community and society and, by his example, the whole of Australia.