‘She heard an extraordinary plot against the government’: The call that would haunt Winsome Nash

The afternoon shift began as normal for Winsome Nash, a mother of five and a telephonist at the central telephone exchange in Elizabeth Street, Brisbane, in early July 1975.

In Canberra, a sense of crisis was swirling around the Labor government, with the scandal of the Loans Affair* ensnaring ministers and forcing the prime minister, Gough Whitlam, to sack the treasurer, Jim Cairns, on July 2 for misleading parliament.

That same week, on Monday, June 30, Queensland Labor senator Bert Milliner had died of a heart attack in his Brisbane office. The choice of his replacement, in the gift of the state’s premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen, would be crucial to Whitlam’s ability to govern.

While not a political activist, as the wife of a trade unionist and a Labor supporter herself, Win Nash was politically aware and understood the implications of these events.

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