He dominated the Parliament as few have ever done: always eloquent, often eruditely witty (his description of McMahon as “Tiberius with a telephone” was genius, when one understands the context), frequently cruel, sometimes profane. (Hansard sacrificed assonance for decency when it rendered his description of a Liberal MP as “a truculent runt”. When once a rural MP innocently said “I’m a country member” Whitlam interjected: “We remember!”)

He achieved many great and historic reforms, universal health insurance, Aboriginal land rights and anti-discrimination law among them. Yet there was a Keystone Cops element to his government as well: Lionel Murphy’s midnight raid on ASIO; Rex Connor circumventing Treasury to raise a massive foreign loan (equivalent to 1/16th of GDP at the time) through a dodgy Pakistani commodities broker; the treasurer Jim Cairns attempting to raise another massive loan through a football mate while agreeing to pay him an undisclosed brokerage fee.

Neither those, nor the many other scandals or affairs which blighted his government, were Whitlam’s own doing; he was let down by dangerously inept ministers. His cabinet was a mixture of old Labor survivors like Connor, who were just too exhausted – and too bitter – when at last they came to power; a few younger oddballs like Kep Enderby (a dreamy internationalist who once demanded that all cabinet submissions be in both English and Esperanto); and some veteran oddballs as well, like Cairns.

No prime minister had to dismiss so many senior members from his cabinet. Through all this turmoil, there was never any stain cast on Whitlam’s integrity; he was just unlucky in those he had to work with.

It was in global affairs that Whitlam both revelled, and revealed himself. He was fascinated by – and pretentiously identified with – the great men who fashioned the sweep of history. Napoleon was a particular obsession. He admired the great nations and empires which shape history’s narrative. Perhaps Donald Horne was onto something: Whitlam worshipped power.

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In his memoirs, immigration minister Clyde Cameron records Whitlam’s refusal to accept South Vietnamese refugees – some of whom were family members of local staff at the Australian embassy whose lives were in peril when Saigon fell: “I’m not having hundreds of f---ing Vietnamese Balts coming into this country!” His lack of sympathy for the people of the Baltic States themselves was complete. His objections to Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor were tepid. No brutal autocrat of the 20th century was so lionised in the House of Representatives as Mao Zedong when he died in September 1976.

Whitlam rhapsodised “the greatness of Mao”, spoke admiringly of his “character and his unique gifts as a leader [who] set examples of courage, fortitude and determination to his people”, and of “the veneration in which he was held [as] the authentic father of his people”. These presumably did not include the tens of millions (estimates vary wildly but never in less than multiples of millions) who died in enforced famines, mass executions and “re-education” camps, sacrificed to Mao’s ruthless will.

If you were one of history’s minnows – a Lithuanian, an Estonian or a Latvian crushed by the Soviet police state; or an East Timorese villager shivering in fear of the advancing Indonesian army; or a South Vietnamese refugee fleeing the murderous Viet Cong; or a starving Chinese peasant or dissident who got in history’s way – Whitlam was not on your side. He always backed the big battalions.

Was Whitlam a great man? I think undoubtedly the answer is “yes”, in the way the world pays that dubious compliment to important historical figures without overmuch moral fussiness, averting its eyes from a multitude of sins.

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Most people know Lord Acton’s remark “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Fewer remember the next sentence: “Great men are almost always bad men.” Gough Whitlam would have been happy to accept the accolade, and let the Devil take the hindmost.

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