Fall of the Larrikin

John Grey Gorton is what Australians call a larrikin--a rough-hewn fellow who often embarrasses his colleagues. Elected Prime Minister in 1968 after the drowning of Harold Holt, Gorton rarely consulted Cabinet colleagues and totally ignored backbenchers from his Liberal Party (which, despite the name, is markedly conservative). When he proposed legislation last year to take away the states' powers over off-shore mining, his party colleagues refused to support him, and he was forced to make a humiliating retreat. Gorton's personal style was, to say the least, indiscreet. He once arrived late at a U.S. embassy party with a 19-year-old lass in tow, then spent the remainder of the evening chatting with her and ignoring his hosts and other officials present.

Heavy Losses. Last week, after what started out as a parochial squabble within his Cabinet, Gorton was deposed at last. The immediate issue was whether he had tried to undercut his able Defense Minister Malcolm Fraser, 40, in a dispute with senior army officers. Tall, tough and outspoken, Fraser was convinced he had been treated shabbily. He resigned, accusing Gorton of "deliberate disloyalty" toward a colleague.

The Fraser affair satisfied Liberal leaders once and for all that Gorton was not the man to lead their party --which has ruled Australia since 1949 in coalition with the smaller Country Party--into next year's elections. The Liberals sustained heavy losses under Gorton in 1969 and 1970, when their popular vote dropped to 38% (from 43% in 1969). In this year's state elections, the opposition Labor Party came to power in western Australia and almost won in New South Wales. After a three-hour Liberal caucus, Gorton's colleagues deadlocked 33 to 33 on a vote to depose him; Gorton, as chairman of the meeting, felt obliged to cast the deciding vote against himself.

Gorton's successor is short, balding William McMahon, 63, who has served in Australian governments for 20 years and hankered to become P.M. for almost as long. He is remembered as Australia's most competent postwar Treasurer, though he was transferred to the less important Ministry of External Affairs in 1969 because Gorton wanted to clip his wings. The hard-working McMahon soon reorganized the department, changed his title to Foreign Minister and remained a key figure in the government.

The new Prime Minister's policies are not likely to differ markedly from his predecessor's. "I will be very anti-Communist and very anti-socialist," said McMahon. Like Gorton, he supports Australia's commitment of 7,100 troops to Viet Nam; indeed, in his first act last week, McMahon named Gorton as his Defense Minister. At home he must deal with an increasingly familiar phenomenon--persistent inflation (7.6% last year) combined with a sluggish economy. But his immediate job is to rebuild the party before the 1972 elections, when the Liberals must face a revived Labor Party under the polished leadership of Edward Gough Whitlam.

One of McMahon's most obvious assets in the job will be his wife Sonia. 38, a striking blonde who at 5 ft. 9 in. stands two inches taller than her husband. The evening before McMahon's victory, a photographer caught Sonia descending the stairs from Canberra's Parliament House just as a fortuitous gust of wind caught her high-slit black crepe maxiskirt. "The wind blew at the wrong moment," said Sonia. Not necessarily. Some observers suggested that the resulting thigh-high picture might well have swung a few votes in McMahon's favor.

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