The Whitlam Government: Barnard and Whitlam: A Significant Historical Dyad

On 8 February 1967 Gough Whitlam was elected Federal Labor leader with Lance Barnard as his deputy. It was the beginning of a remarkable partnership that was most aptly illustrated by the celebrated duumvirate, "the smallest government... since the brief Wellington Administration of 1834", when Whitlam and Barnard assumed government as a two-man ministry in December 1972. It was, however, a close relationship that went back to when they first entered Parliament. "Friendship is a delicate bloom which flourishes only rarely in the jungle of politics" and the Whitlam-Barnard connection was one that seemed to transcend the usual political "marriage of convenience", persisting beyond the inevitable tensions, and generating a unique and historically significant alliance, characterised by Kelly as "one of the most successful in recent years in Australian politics".