HIST2227 Chap.8 Changing Australia: The Coming of the 1970s
Changing Australia: The Coming of the 1970s
Rights claims and law reform
Week 9 asks how Australia changed as the 1970s arrived.
Leigh Boucher and Robert Reynolds compare Victorian law reform in 1980 with the expungement and apology of 2014 to 2016, arguing that each reworked rather than ended state control of sex.
Universities and the downturn
Hannah Forsyth shows the new universities’ utopian start undone by the economic downturn after 1973, as universities became tools of economic management.
A decade of contested change
The week’s primary document is Whitlam’s It’s Time policy speech of 13 November 1972, delivered at Blacktown.
Read it as a statement of what the government wanted, then test those aims against what the readings show happened, from tuition-free universities squeezed by recession to law reform that kept new limits in place.
Method for the week
Both core readings test a progress story.
Boucher and Reynolds question the idea of an unstoppable march to equality, and Forsyth shows the downturn undercutting Whitlam’s investment in universities. Learning to say what a progress story leaves out is a skill you can use on every later topic.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Whitlam's election in 1972
- 02
Citizenship as a rights claim
- 03
The December 1980 Victorian Act
- 04
Expungement and apology, 2014 to 2016
- 05
The new universities from 1958
- 06
The downturn after 1973
Worked example · free
Two moments of reform, thirty-six years apart
- 12016 minus 1980 = 36, so thirty-six years separate the Act from the apology.
- 1In 1980 the reform changed which acts were crimes, yet it created a new soliciting offence and disowned any intent to condone immorality.
- 1In 2014 to 2016 the state expunged past convictions and apologised, and the redress debates moved from acts towards identities, while public sex remained the unsettled question in both moments.
Key terms
- Expungement
- Removing historical convictions for acts that would no longer be crimes today.
- Progressive Pedagogy
- Teaching built around student learning, such as small groups and continuous assessment.
- Whiggish History
- A narrative of steady, inevitable progress, which Boucher and Reynolds reject.
- New Universities
- Universities founded between 1958 and 1975 to meet rising demand, many with experimental teaching.
Changing Australia: The Coming of the 1970s FAQ
Was the 1980 Victorian law a decriminalisation?
Boucher and Reynolds argue that it reworked how sex between men was criminalised rather than decriminalising it wholesale. The Act created a new offence of soliciting for immoral sexual purpose and stated that parliament did not intend to condone immorality.
What happened to universities in the 1970s according to Forsyth?
The new universities began with utopian and experimental ideals, and Whitlam abolished tuition fees. After the oil shocks from 1973, government spending looked reckless, graduates faced a shrinking job market, and by the mid-1970s universities had become tools of economic management.
What does the course ask about Whitlam?
The tutorial asks what the Whitlam government wanted and how successful it was. The readings help indirectly: Forsyth on tuition fees and universities, and the tobacco reading on the phased ban of broadcast cigarette advertising his Cabinet approved in July 1973.
What are sexual citizenship claims?
Boucher and Reynolds describe citizenship as both activists' claim, that citizens were suffering discrimination, and scholars' frame for the rights and duties between state and individual. Since the 1970s, lesbian and gay activists used that claim to demand law reform, though the authors show its results were mixed.
Which new universities did Forsyth study?
She traces universities founded from Monash in 1958 through Flinders, La Trobe, Macquarie, James Cook, Griffith, Murdoch and Deakin, to Wollongong in 1975, built because older universities planned for at most 2,000 students each were overflowing within a decade.
What did the 1980 Victorian Act change, and what did it keep?
It overhauled the sexual offences in the Summary Offences Act and was praised as a model reform, but it created a new offence of soliciting for immoral sexual purpose and stated that parliament did not intend to condone immorality. Boucher and Reynolds therefore call it a reworking of criminalisation.
Assessment move
Practise the hopes-against-outcomes test on both readings, and learn the key dates: Whitlam's election in December 1972, the 1980 Act, and the 2014 to 2016 redress. Pair each reading with one dated event so your answers stay concrete. Because the Week 9 lecture was pre-recorded around the 5 October public holiday, make time to watch it before the tutorial and before Quiz 2.
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