Are nearly all dead now, more’s the pity. Certainly, they have all long retired.
These are the people who made the self-serving, short-sighted, foolish and out-of-touch decisions in Cabinet 30 years ago. Under the 30-year rule, the ministerial Cabinet submissions of 1963 were made public on January 1, 1994.
We learn of a Minister outlining the electoral advantage for the Menzies Government if Aborigines were counted at census time as ultimately came about in the 1967 referendum. By counting them, the conservative states of Western Australia and Queensland might each get an extra seat. We learn that Cabinet rejected a ban on tobacco advertising despite the obvious evidence of tobacco’s dangers because Australian tobacco growers would lose. We learn of a pompous plan to put a 100-metre Westminster-style tower on the shore of Lake Burley Griffin. We see how the Menzies Government knew that Australia would be made a nuclear target by allowing the joint-US North-West Cape naval communications base to be built, but agreed anyway. And we see how none of the sycophantic Cabinet raised a word of protest before Menzies announced that the new unit of decimal currency would be called the Royal. Only when it was laughed out court, so to speak, in the pubs and cafes did anyone come back to Cabinet with something more in touch with popular sentiment.
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