Exits

“A conservative government survives essentially by dampening expectations and subduing hopes. Conservatism is basically pessimistic, reformism is basically optimistic.” Gough Whitlam, 1985¹

Rather than being conventionally composed, either visually or structurally, Exits (Paul Davies, Carolyn Howard and Pat Laughren, 1980) floats hazily into a rough-hewn narrative. Its daylight cafés and barbershops are dusty, quiet, alive but meek. People walk freely but everything feels still, trapped, choked. The camera whirls around and around but we aren’t going anywhere – we are circling the drain of once-great Melbourne. Gough Whitlam has been sacked in an unprecedented move, and the last spark of optimism for a future free from corporate and imperial tyranny has been snuffed with his ousting. The final vanguard against the oncoming wave of regressive social politics has fallen. Next to a newspaper stand running the story of the Dismissal are the graffitied words, emblazoned in red: “Past, Present and Futile”. Is there anything more terrifying than the death of hope? 

Gough Whitlam was a socialist beacon, a light in a dark tunnel. When he rose to Prime Minister of Australia in 1972, his Labor government immediately began to enact some groundbreaking, transformative legislation.² He terminated military conscription and ended Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War, implemented universal healthcare, free university education, and legal aid to protect those at a systemic disadvantage. Under his government, women were granted equal pay and no-fault divorce, and Australia’s precious natural landscapes were protected with the National Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act. He connected homes to sewerage, established the National Gallery of Australia and the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, and abolished the death penalty. He was a major voice in Indigenous land rights, establishing the Aboriginal Land Rights Commission, alongside returning a portion of the Gurundji people’s land in 1975. He was a hero of social justice, political equality, and a key figure in boosting the profile of Australia’s cultural heritage in the arts – among other things, he introduced the national anthem that we still use to this day, “Advance Australia Fair”.³ His three short years in government resulted in more reform than ever before – no one in Australian Parliament ever approached this level of positive social change, before or since.

When the opposition-controlled Senate began to continually delay the passage of his bills, Whitlam called for a double-dissolution in 1974 which resulted in a more even-partied Senate split. However, he began to face enormous problems when a scandal occurred: the Loans Affair of 1975.⁴ It emerged that some ministers in his government were secretly planning to borrow billions of dollars from the Middle East via a Pakistani broker, violating constitutional processes. A political deadlock ensued, where the senate once again began to block supply bills from being passed, financially haemorrhaging Whitlam’s government. In order to resolve this impasse, the Crown-appointed Governor-General of Australia, Sir John Kerr, made the highly controversial decision to dismiss Whitlam from his position on 11 November 1975, and appointed the opposition leader Malcolm Fraser in his place. No Governor-General has done something so extreme before or since, and it was a move that was viewed as the Crown encroaching into where it did not belong, threatening the very separation of powers that Australia had fought for. 

Exits feels like an allegory and a eulogy all at once. Everything here is twisted and upside-down, with a mad, frenzied feeling amidst urban suffocation. Like Whitlam himself, Exits prioritises ordinary working-class Australians. Scattered through a series of vignettes are men and women struggling with poverty, wages and the uncertain future of Australia. These, it seems, are not documentary snapshots – but they certainly feel like it. Each character feels raw and tangible, unpretentious and ordinary. Real radio broadcasts overlay the transitions, further blurring the line between fiction and documentary. We cannot tell what is true, what is recreated, what is dreamed. We are bobbing in a sea of disorientation, and letting the emotion of each moment, each metaphor, wash over us. Job ads in the paper are scanned by hopefuls in one corner, while a woman is shorted her paycheck in another. A dishevelled man picnics by disused railway tracks as “we theorise in the cold hard winds of unemployment”. 

Our everyman – a character who seems to stand in for working Australian men – tries to muster compassion from his fellow Australians for Whitlam, waxing poetic about everything he did for ordinary people. But his soliloquies fall on deaf ears as a beating drum reverberates louder and louder until it crashes and he screams: “You’re all to blame… all of you!” He cries for the “gutless wonders” around him, too cowardly to “spill blood in the streets”. His desperation throbs like the drum until it is spent, and he can only continue onwards. Various scenes are broken by heartfelt and cutting spoken poetry by Eric Beach, as well as intercutting with rarely-seen war footage of Australian soldiers. A dead body is carried away in war, just as a passively-resisting protestor is carried away in the present. One particularly frustrating ride with a boot-licking taxi driver has our hero exclaim: “you like being trapped… you’re afraid to go, afraid to change…” People cannot be politically involved forever, they must work, they must move on, and their survival depends on ceasing to resist and looking the other way. 

Yet there remain some whispers of an even greater international interference in Australia, and even the most sycophantic men and women cannot help but speculate. Throughout the film, a question is posed as to whether the US also influenced Sir John Kerr’s decision. Certainly there were many rumours, inflamed by tensions caused by the building of the US-Australian intelligence facility Pine Gap, and the resulting vulnerable position of Australia in the event of nuclear war. Of course, the public will never know the full extent of all conversations between the CIA and ASIO, however much circumstantial evidence continues to arise⁵. A barman points to a newspaper crossword and insists it contains hidden truths – the clues seemingly pointing to a conspiracy against the former Prime Minister. His fervour does not seem out of place. All’s mad in a post-Whitlam world, so think nothing of one more way in which the powerful betrayed the proletariat.

Exits knows that a great era has ended, and the film deeply mourns Whitlam’s Prime Ministership. His ousting may be talked about in official terms as being legitimate in Australia’s constitution, but it doesn’t change the feelings of the Australian working class. Anyone who ever felt disenfranchised – the draughted soldier, working men and women, the Indigenous activists fighting for treaty, the poor and the exploited – had their lives tangibly improved by Whitlam’s government in a few short years. As one observant man notes, the real scandal is that “there was no scandal”. To the public it is clear: a great injustice has occurred and a utopic vision of Australia has been sullied forever by those who would trespass on sovereignty – and so the Crown takes Australia again.

Exits (1980 Australia 47 mins)

Dir, Prod: Paul Davies, Carolyn Howard, Pat Laughren

Cast: Paul Davies, Charlie Dale, Carolyn Howard, Mary Anne Grey, Robert Antoniades

Endnotes