"My father ran a business in Whitlams time. He said it was a...

"My father ran a business in Whitlams time. He said it was a complete disaster."

Yeah, world events affected Australia. There was a big cost-push problem, trouble in Iran, removal of gold standard, oil shocks and so on. Rising unemployment and runaway inflation leading to the horrible thing to live through called stagflation.
Some of the things leading to cost-push inflation in Australia have been addressed since then, so stagflation is less likely to reoccur. Through recent history we have imported our inflation so it will be interesting to see if that continues over the next couple of decades.