I was 21 when he became prime minister and remember many of these significant changes.

The end of conscription and bringing the troops home from Vietnam was extremely important to so many families in Australia as the huge anti-war, anti-conscription demonstrations proved.

Still important to so many of us now is the free medical services for pensioners, low income earners and the unemployed.

Medicare was even better when first introduced but has been nibbled away at (sometimes in huge chunks) by various Liberal governments, as has the concept of fee-free tertiary education.

I believe that Tony Abbott is doing his best to remove as many of Gough Whitlam's socially conscious innovations as possible.

Many people will not remember the time before Whitlam and his Labor government and have no idea of how hard it was for the working class and underprivileged to get a fair go, no matter how hard they worked or how clever they were.

Please, everyone, do what you can to prevent this from being so again.

Sign petitions, write letters and talk about it I don't want to see Australia go back to those dark days. Do you?