Don Dunstan - Political Beginnings

Political Beginnings

Dunstan was nominated as the Labor candidate for the electoral district of Norwood in 1953. His campaign was noted for his colourful methods to sway voters: posters of his face were placed on every pole in the district, and Labor supporters walked the streets advocating Dunstan. He targeted in particular the large Italian migrant population of the district, distributing translated copies of a statement the sitting LCL member Albert Moir had made about immigrants. Moir had commented that "these immigrants are of no use to us — a few of them are tradesmen but most of them have no skills at all. And when they intermarry we'll have all the colours of the rainbow". Dunstan won the seat and was elected to the South Australian House of Assembly. His son Andrew was born nine months after the win.

Dunstan was to become the most vocal opponent of the LCL Government of Sir Thomas Playford, strongly criticising its practice of electoral malapportionment, known as the Playmander, a pun on the term gerrymander. This system gave a disproportionate electoral weight to the LCL's rural base. He added colour and flair to debate in South Australian politics, changing the existing "gentlemanly" method of conducting parliamentary proceedings. He did not fear direct confrontation with the incumbent government and attacked it with vigour—up to this point most of his Labor colleagues had become dispirited by the Playmander, and were resigned to the ongoing dominance of Playford and LCL, so they were sought to influence policy through collaborative legislating. In 1954, the LCL introduced the Government Electoral Bill, which was designed to further accentuate the undue weight on rural voters. During the debate, Dunstan decried this "immoral Bill ... I cannot separate it from the motives of those who put it forward. Since it is immoral, so are they." Such language, unusually aggressive for prevailing standards resulted in Dunstan's removal from the parliamentary chambers after he refused a request from the speaker to retract his remark. The first parliamentarian to be expelled in years, Dunstan found himself on the front pages of newspapers for the first time. Nevertheless, Dunstan was not able to build up much of profile in his first few years as The Advertiser, the dominant newspaper in the city, had a policy of ignoring the young politician's activities—its editor Lloyd Dumas was the father of one of Dunstan's first girlfriends.