in 1970 Dunstan wasted no time in organising his new ministry. He served as his own
Treasurer, and took several other portfolios for himself. Bert Shard became Health Minister, overseeing the construction and planning of new, major public hospitals: the
Flinders Medical Centre and
Modbury Hospital.
Geoff Virgo, the new Transport Minister, was to deal with the
Metropolitan Adelaide Transport Study (MATS) plans.
Len King was made Attorney-General and Aboriginal Affairs Minister despite being a new member of parliament. in April 1971 Soon after the election, Dunstan travelled to
Canberra for the annual
Premiers' Conference as the sole Labor premier. His Government, on a mandate to dramatically increase funding in key areas, sought to appropriate further finances from the Federal Government. This brought Dunstan into conflict with Prime Minister
John Gorton, and federal funding to SA was not increased. An appeal was made to the Federal Grants Commission, and Dunstan was awarded more than he had hoped for. In addition to the money received from the Grants Commission, funds were diverted from water-storage schemes in the
Adelaide Hills over the advice of engineers, and cash reserves were withdrawn from the two government-owned banks. The monies were subsequently used to finance health, education and arts schemes. On the death in office of
Governor Sir James Harrison in 1971, Dunstan finally had the opportunity to put forward a nominee for governor of his own choosing to HM Queen Elizabeth II (and by extension the British Foreign Office which still technically oversaw the appointment process of Australian state governors until the
Australia Act 1986): Sir
Mark Oliphant, a physicist who had worked on the
Manhattan Project. Dunstan had never been happy that governors were usually
British ex-servicemen and it was a personal goal of his to see an active and notable South Australian take on the role; Sir Mark Oliphant was uneventfully sworn in. Although the post is mostly ceremonial (with the exception of constitutional responsibilities), Oliphant brought energy to the role and he used his stature to decry damage to the environment caused by deforestation, excessive open-cut mining and pollution. and the MATS plan and water-storage schemes were in planning to accommodate this. These were summarily rejected by the Dunstan Government, which planned to build a new city 83kilometres from Adelaide, near
Murray Bridge. The city, to be known as
Monarto, was to be built on farmland to the west of the existing town. Dunstan was very much against allowing Adelaide's suburbs to further sprawl, and thus Monarto was a major focus of his government. The government hoped Adelaide would not sprawl into the
Mount Lofty Ranges to the east and that the bureaucracy would be dispersed from the capital. In contrast, public servants feared being forced into the rural settlement. Critics (of whom there were many) derided the project as "Dunstan's Versailles in the bush". Environmental activists aired fears of the effects of Monarto on the River Murray, which was already suffering from pollution and salinity problems. Later on, it was noticed that there was hard bedrock underneath the ground, raising drainage problems. drinking laws were further liberalised, an
Ombudsman was created,
seat belts were made mandatory, and the public service was gradually increased (doubling in size during the Dunstan era). Adelaide's water supply was
fluoridated in 1971 and the age of majority was lowered from 21 to 18. although it was viewed with suspicion by some in the Anglo-Saxon establishment. Dunstan himself later recalled: "When I proposed the establishment of a Cornish Festival, in Australia's 'Little Cornwall', people of Cornish descent came flocking." Having been vocal in criticising Playford for sacrificing heritage to the march of development, Dunstan was prominent in protecting historic buildings from being bulldozed for high-rise office blocks. In 1972, the government intervened to purchase and thereby save Edmund Wright House on King William Street from being replaced with a skyscraper. In 1975, the Customs House at
Semaphore was purchased to save it from demolition. In contrast, there were also some controversial developments. Part of the rocky
Hallett Cove on
Gulf St Vincent in Adelaide's southern suburbs was developed for housing, as were vineyards in
Morphettville,
Tea Tree Gully,
Modbury, and
Reynella. This attracted criticism, as Dunstan was prominent in promoting South Australian viticulture and
enotourism. In pursuit of economic links with the nations of
South-East Asia, Dunstan came into contact with the leaders of the
Malaysian state of
Penang in 1973. Striking a note with
Chong Eu Lim, the
Chief Minister, Dunstan set about organising cultural and economic engagement between the two states. "Penang Week" was held in Adelaide in July, and in return, "South Australia Week" was held in Penang's capital,
George Town. In the same year, the
Adelaide Festival Centre was openedAustralia's first multifunction performing arts complex. Over a six-year period, government funding for the arts was increased by a factor of seven and in 1978, the
South Australian Film Corporation commenced work. During Dunstan's time in charge, acclaimed films such as
Breaker Morant,
Picnic at Hanging Rock and
Storm Boy were made in the state. Dunstan's support of the arts and fine dining was credited by commentators with attracting artists, craftspeople and writers into the state, helping to change its atmosphere. The
Legislative Council, the upper house of Parliament, was, due to its limited
electoral roll, overwhelmingly non-Labor. Unlike the Lower House, its members were elected only by voters who met certain property and wealth requirements. Combined with the remains of the "
Playmander" malapportionment, it was difficult for the Labor Party to achieve the representation it wished. The Legislative Council either watered down or outright rejected a considerable amount of Labor legislation; A referendum had indicated support for Friday night shopping, but Labor legislation was blocked in the upper house by the LCL. in Canberra in 1973 Dunstan called an
election for March 1973, hoping to gain a mandate to seek changes to the council. The LCL were badly disunited; the more liberal wing of the party under Hall joined Dunstan in wanting to introduce universal suffrage for the upper house, while the more conservative members of the LCL did not. The conservatives then decided to limit Hall's powers, resulting in his resignation and creation of the breakaway
Liberal Movement (LM), which overtly branded itself as a semi-autonomous component within the LCL. Labor capitalised on the opposition divisions to secure an easy victory. They campaigned under the slogan "South Australia's Doing Well with Labor", while the LCL was hampered by infighting; many LCL candidates were claiming different leaders in their electoral material depending on their factional allegiance. The Labor Party won with 51.5% of the primary vote and secured a second consecutive majority government with 26 seats. It was only the second time a Labor government in South Australia had been re-elected for a second term, the first being the early
Thomas Price Labor government. It would be the first five-year-incumbent Labor government however. They also gained two more seats in the Legislative Council to have six of the twenty members. Labor entered the new term with momentum when a fortnight after the election, the LCL purged LM members from its ranks, forcing them to either quit the LM or leave the LCL and join the LM as a distinct party. Dunstan, seeing this as unfeasible in his term, set about to reform it instead. Two bills were prepared for Legislative Council reform; one to lower the voting age to 18 and introduce
universal suffrage, and another to make councillors elected from a single statewide electorate under a system of
proportional representation. The LCL initially blocked both bills, stating that it would accept them only if modifications were made to the second one. Changes were conceded; unlike the House of Assembly, voting would not be compulsory and the preference system was to be slightly altered. Once the amendments were made, the legislation was passed. During his second term, Dunstan started efforts to build a petrochemical complex at Redcliff, near
Port Augusta. Negotiations were held with several multinational companies, but nothing eventuated. Prior to the
1975 federal and
state elections, Australia, and South Australia in particular, had been hit by a series of economic problems. The
1973 oil crisis had massively increased the cost of living, domestic industry began to erode due to a lack of cost-competitiveness, and government funds were waning. In response, the Dunstan Government sold loss-making railways to the Commonwealth and brought in new taxes to allow wage rises. The changes had unexpected consequences: inflation, already high, increased markedly, and workers were still displeased with wages. The LCL, now known as the Liberal Party, had rebuilt after internal schism and had modernised to make themselves more appealing to the public. Labor remained the largest party in Parliament, but lost the two-party preferred vote at 49.2% and saw its numbers decrease from 26 to 23. The LCL held 20 seats, the
Liberal Movement two, the
Country Party one, and the last remaining with an independent, the nominally Labor Mayor of
Port Pirie,
Ted Connelly. Dunstan appealed to Connelly and offered him the role of
Speaker. However, the reforms to the Legislative Council's election bore fruit. Of the 11 seats up for election, Labor won six with 47.3% of the vote, and the LM two, allowing Labor a total of 10 seats. This meant they could now, with the help of the LM, push through reforms opposed by the Liberals. Dunstan continued to try to push through further legislation; he sought to expand on the Hall Government's electoral-boundaries reform, to bring it closer to
one vote one value. The legislation sought to establish 47 electoral districts containing roughly equal numbers of voters (with a 10% tolerance). Redistributions were to be presided over by an independent boundaries commission. The bill passed with the support of the breakaway LM in the upper houseformer Premier Steele Hall and his former Attorney-General
Robin Millhouse.God would destroy Adelaide with a
tsunami caused by an earthquake. In 1976, the Dunstan Government stepped up its legislative efforts. Some bills, such as the one to remove the
sodomy law and decriminalise male homosexuality, had been initially blocked by the Legislative Council. However, the bill to abolish
capital punishment passed with ease, and the homosexuality law reforms eventually passed in September.
Rape law was properly codified and defined as a crime within marriage for the first time in Australia. Shopping hours, previously the most restrictive in the nation, became the most open. Following a royal commission, Friday night shopping was introduced for the city and Thursday night shopping for the suburbs. In addition, the federal government removed subsidies for shipbuilding at
Whyalla, forcing the operations to be scaled down. However, this appointment was not successful; Seaman became involved in an unspecified scandal and made a statement admitting to a "grave impropriety", without elaborating further. He did not resign and kept a low profile from then on. Dunstan also appointed Dame
Roma Mitchell to become the nation's first female Supreme Court judge. Dunstan broke new ground in Australian politics with his policies on
native title for Aboriginal people. The North West Aboriginal Reserve (NWAR) covered more than 7% of the state's land, and was inhabited by the
Pitjantjatjara people. In 1977, when the NWAR was about to be transferred to the
Aboriginal Lands Trust, a tribal delegation asked for the lands to be given to the traditional owners. Dunstan agreed to an investigation, and subsequently introduced the Pitjantjatjara Land Rights Bill. This bill proposed for a tribal body, the Anangu Pitjantjatjaraku, to take control of the NWAR and further lands after the claims were cleared by an independent tribunal. It also proposed to allow the body to decide mining proposals on the land and receive royalties. The legislation, the bedrock of which was laid by Dunstan, was the most reformist in Australia, and in the 1980s, more than 20% of the land was returned to its
traditional owners. Dunstan called another snap election in September at the
1977 election; he hoped to recover from the previous election, the outcome of which had been affected by the
dismissal of the Federal Labor Government. As the remnants of the Playmander had been abolished, conditions were more favourable for Labor and they wanted to end their reliance on the casting vote of the speaker. The campaign proceeded smoothly and exploited the unpopularity of the federal Liberal government, using the jingle "Thank the Lord for South Australia".
Salisbury affair and departure from office Since 1949, there had been a "Special Branch" within the
South Australian Police, for the purposes of surveillance and espionage. Conceived in 1939 an "intelligence branch", to maintain surveillance of the large
German Australian community during
World War II, it had amassed information on tens of thousands of individuals and organisations. Although only two Labor MPs, from both federal and state parliaments, did not have files, the branch held significantly fewer files relating to Liberal Party figures. but said that he had been assured by the police commissioner that its files were not systematically focused on left-wing political figures. However, Peter Ward, a journalist and former Dunstan staffer, published a story about the files. It said the dossiers did exist and that they were "scandalously inaccurate, irrelevant to security purposes and outrageously unfair to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of loyal and worthy citizens". However, controversy erupted regarding the inquiry and Dunstan's subsequent actions because Salisbury had a reputation as a man of integrity. Ward claimed that Dunstan had known about the true contents of the files for several years. A
Royal Commission under Justice Mitchell, Dunstan had sacked Salisbury for misleading Parliament about the existence of the "pink files" and many of the Special Branch files were burnt. Salisbury retired to the
United Kingdom with a $160,000 payout.
Stewart Cockburn wrote a book,
The Salisbury Affair, about the debacle. There were initially no other major controversies for Dunstan, although the economy remained poor and the Redcliff complex was still in limbo, because an agreement with Dow was still to be finalised. The financial difficulties forced a freeze on public sector expansion and hospital developments, and there were claims of theft and mismanagement in the health system. However, the Liberal opposition was in a disorganised state and unpopular, so they were not able to pressure Dunstan effectively. Towards the end of the year, political and media scrutiny of Dunstan began to grow, and he became uneasy in his dealings with the press. Soon after the Salisbury dismissal, he walked out of a stormy media conference after refusing to be drawn on the rumoured sacking of Seaman from the gubernatorial role. Increasing innuendo about Dunstan's private life, and allegations of corruption and economic mismanagement were worsened by Dunstan's self-righteous tendencies. The premier angrily denied claims that he was using government funds to build an opulent residence in Malaysia, as well as claims about his sexual lifestyle. Dunstan also faced difficulties on policy issues. Factional cracks began to appear in the Labor Party, and the discovery of uranium deposits near the northern outback town of
Roxby Downs put the premier in a bind. Mining the uranium promised to provide a valuable economic boost in difficult times, but a government ban on its mining, on safety grounds, was still in force. By the summer that followed Dunstan became extremely ill. When Parliament resumed, he collapsed on the floor of the House and was forced to use a walking stick; his doctor advised him that he required six months of rest to recover. The Liberal Opposition seized on the state of affairs and charged that the Labor Party was "as ailing as the man who led it". In a stage-managed press conference on 15 February 1979, Dunstan announced his retirement as premier from his room in
Calvary Hospital, clearly shaking and wearing a dressing gown. The book, ''It's Grossly Improper'', by two Adelaide journalists, Des Ryan and Mike McEwen, was published later that year. Political scientist Andrew Parkin said one of Dunstan's main achievements was to debunk the notion that state governments and parliaments lacked the ability to make significant changes with profound impacts. As evidence, he cited Dunstan's sweeping social reforms and the fact that many other state governments followed South Australia's lead. ==Life after politics==