The Father of Australian Speechwriting Is Dead

The father of Australian speechwriting died last week. 

Graham Freudenberg wrote for Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and many other Labor Party leaders. Eulogized on Twitter by a longtime colleague as a “labor historian, our greatest political speechwriter, a good friend, and a good, good man,” Freudenberg was the focus of a 2018 documentary,The Scribe.

In it, he says,“It’s a mistake to think that great speeches are just a series of great one-liners, just as it would be a mistake to think of Hamlet as a series of famous quotations,” he said. “A real gutsy speech has an argument, makes a case.”

Rest well, old scribe.