AustLit

Norman Graham Freudenberg was born in Brisbane on 12 May 1934. His father was a soldier who fought at Gallipoli and, being a patriot, he named his son after a former colonial Governor of Queensland, Field Marshall Sir Henry Norman. Freudenberg was educated at the Church of England Grammar School in Brisbane. He then studied journalism in Melbourne and worked for some years as a journalist with the Melbourne Sun. 

Freudenberg's political speechwriting career began with the Australian Labor Party, when he was appointed Arthur Calwell's press secretary in June 1961. He principally wrote for the federal Labor leaders Arthur Calwell, Gough Whitlam and Bob Hawke, and the New South Wales Labor premiers Neville Wran, Barrie Unsworth and Bob Carr. Freudenberg is most famous for his work for Whitlam, including the “It’s time” speech delivered as Whitlam led Labor out of a 23-year stretch in opposition in 1972.

He was appointed a member of the Order of Australia in 1990 and inducted as a lifetime member of the Labor party in 2005. Graham Freudenberg died on 26 July 2019, aged 85, after a long illness. The former prime minister Paul Keating paid tribute to Freudenberg, describing him as a “literary prince” whose death ended “a lifetime of fidelity to the precepts of the Labor party and every uplifting thing he understood it to be about”.