Amid the scale and sweep of the list of decisions made by the Whitlam government in their first week in office, most people remember the big changes: freeing all draft resisters from prison, or official recognition of Communist China.
The removal of the sales tax on the contraceptive pill, and adding it to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, which came into effect on December 9 1972, is easily overlooked. Yet this reform was both symbolic and materially important. It signalled to Australian women that their new government would be much more responsive to their demands for reproductive rights and freedoms, and ushered in a wave of feminist reforms under the Whitlam government.
