By ABC's Barrie Cassidy  Tuesday 21 October 2014

Photo: No single individual in the history of the Labor Party then or since did more to reform the party than Gough Whitlam. (ABC News)

History will remember Gough Whitlam for his reforms in government and for the way he was elected and then dismissed, but some of his most successful acts were in opposition, writes Barrie Cassidy.

Gough Whitlam's most audacious and stunningly successful act as a politician was in opposition, when, in 1971, he took a delegation to China to advance the concept of recognition.

When he left the shores, he had no guarantee that he would meet with the premier, Zhou Enlai, and no real sense of how he would be received. He ended up having a two-hour meeting with the premier.

Back home, the Coalition government hyperventilated about the visit, horrified that Whitlam should be reaching out to communist China. And yet as Whitlam flew out of China, the United States' national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, flew in, ready to prepare the ground for the historic visit by president Richard Nixon the following year.

It had been a massive gamble, but on foreign policy - from opposition - Whitlam emerged a visionary.

It was the first signal of the "crash through or crash" style that came to characterise his career.

Much will be made of Whitlam's achievements in office - formally ending Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War, releasing the conscientious objectors from jail, opening up the land rights debate, and, especially, reforming the two most important areas of public policy, health and education.

Yet Whitlam did so much of his best work in opposition.

No single individual in the history of the Labor Party then or since did more to reform the party. He put his leadership on the line to increase the parliamentary party's powers over the industrial and organisational wings (the so-called faceless men).

Then he led federal intervention into the Victorian Branch, and again, despite the risks, prevailed and significantly enhanced the party's prospects of election.

Whitlam transformed the mindset of the party. Until the mid to late '60s, significant sections of the  left and their backers in the union movement saw the ALP as a sort of protest party, but Whitlam worked overtime to transform it into a government in waiting. Then in government he set about modernising the country in the same way.

Economics was not his strength and many of his ministers were either overly ambitious or simply not up to it.

But Whitlam was a big man with a big vision, and it has to be said, a big ego, that somehow packaged with an extraordinary wit, endeared him to those around him.

History will remember Whitlam for the way he was elected - triumphantly after Labor had been in the wilderness for 23 years - and for the way he was dismissed - spectacularly and without precedent by the Governor General.

Labor supporters will hold him in their hearts in the same way that Republicans in the United States will forever adore Ronald Reagan and Democrats John Kennedy.

Barrie Cassidy is the presenter of the ABC program Insiders. View his full profile here.

Whitlam's most stunningly successful acts - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)