Free for educational use
Harold Holt’s Briefcase
Year of production - 2007
Duration - 5min 30sec
Tags - Australian History, commemoration, identity, language, media, Prime Ministers, reporting, representations, see all tags
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Harold Holt’s Briefcase is an episode from the series The Prime Ministers’ National Treasures, produced in 2007.
The Prime Ministers’ National Treasures
Award winning cartoonist and yarn spinner, Warren Brown, reveals the emotional lives of Australian Prime Ministers through 10 objects they used every day or even adored – from Robert Menzies’ home movie camera, to Joseph Lyons’ love letters, Harold Holt’s briefcase and Ben Chifley’s pipe. These treasures reveal the nation’s leaders, as you have never seen them before.
The Prime Ministers’ National Treasures is a Film Australia National Interest Program produced in association with Old Parliament House and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Speaking and listening Standards
At Level 6, students analyse critically the relationship between texts, contexts, speakers and listeners in a range of situations. When engaged in discussion, they compare ideas, build on others’ ideas, provide and justify other points of view, and reach conclusions that take account of aspects of an issue. In their presentations, they make effective use of the structures and features of spoken language to deal with complex subject matter in a range of situations.
The disappearance of our seventeenth Prime Minister, Harold Holt, at Cheviot Beach in 1967 during a beach holiday sparked countless conspiracy theories and ultimately overshadowed his political accomplishments.
At the height of the Cold War, with the Vietnam War escalating, Holt moved Australia’s focus away from Britain and more towards America — substantially increasing Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War. His impromptu speech on the White House lawn declaring himself ‘All the way with LBJ’ indicated his support for US President Johnson.
Holt’s prime ministership represented a major social shift from the tradition and conservatism of the Menzies era, to that of the ‘swinging sixties’. One of the hardest working of Australia’s Cabinet ministers, after 32 years as a parliamentarian, Harold Holt reached the prime ministerial office in 1966.
Holt’s first prime ministerial statement announced the relaxation of restrictions that had blocked the entry of non-European migrants for 65 years. The Migration Act 1966 increased access to migrants other than those from Europe, including refugees fleeing Vietnam. This was the beginning of the dismantling of the 'White Australia’ Policy. In 1966 he brought in Australia’s conversion to decimal currency. The following year on 27 May 1967 Australians overwhelmingly answered ‘yes’ to removing the discriminatory clause in Australia’s Constitution under which Aboriginal people were not counted in the census, and in changing the Constitution so that the Commonwealth parliament was empowered to legislate for Indigenous people.
Holt also brought Australia into the ‘space race’ with the construction of the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station, and the joint US-Australian communications station at North West Cape, Western Australia.
In September 2005, the Victorian State Coroner found that Holt had drowned while swimming. The Coroner had previously been unable to investigate a death where a body was never found. Harold Holt was the third prime minister to die in office after Joe Lyons (1939) and John Curtin (1945).
The items left in Holt’s briefcase are a significant time capsule of his last days as Prime Minister: a pair of socks, theatre tickets, his tax returns and a couple of combs.
Harold Holt (1908 – 1967) was Prime Minister of Australia from January 1966 to December 1967. Harold Holt’s briefcase is held at the National Archives of Australia in Canberra.
1. Creating a newspaper or TV report
Imagine that it is December 1967 and you are a reporter who has rushed to Cheviot Beach to report on the disappearance of Prime Minister Harold Holt.
- Who do you speak to and quote in your report?
- How much information do you give about the time, the place, the weather?
- You learn that Holt was at the beach with a woman with whom he was having an affair — do you report this?
- How do you get across the importance of the event?
- How do you convey the drama of the event?
Prepare your newspaper or TV report.
2. Creating an anniversary newspaper or TV report
Imagine that it is now an anniversary of the event and you are preparing a newspaper or TV report on this historic event.
- What do you include in your summary?
- How do you evaluate the significance of the event in Australian history?
- How do you assess the ‘what might have beens’ of this event?
Prepare your anniversary report.
Compare and contrast the two approaches and styles of your reports.