Howard Holt, the Prime Minister of Australia, went missing while swimming at Cheviot Beach, near Portsea, on December 17, 1967. His body was never found, and he was declared dead two days later. After a brief leadership crisis in the Liberal-National Party coalition, which Holt led, he was succeeded by John Gorton.
But what if he hadn’t died?
Holt had already experienced a recurrence of pain from an old shoulder injury twice in the preceding months – it was widely seen as the likely cause of his death. But what if, this occasion, when his shoulder twinged once more, he had wisely decided to head for shore instead of toughing it out?
Back on land, things had not been going very well for the Holt government. He had succeeded the most popular Prime Minister in Australian history, Robert Menzies, and although his status as Menzie’s designated heir had carried him to an easy victory in the 1966 election, all the signs were that the next election was to be much harder.
There were two major factors in this: the Cold War was entering its hottest phase, as American and Australian involvement in Vietnam ramped up. And in the wake of yet another electoral defeat, the Opposition party, the ALP, had elected a firebrand named Gough Whitlam to lead them.
Whitlam did a very good job of humiliating Holt in both Parliament and the media, and opinion polls were recording the greatest trend away from the Liberal party in a generation. Holt’s continuance as Prime Minister only increased this trend.
The Whitlam opposition was quick to seize on the Vietnam War as the key issue of the next Federal election (due in 1969, but potentially callable much earlier). Although there was some division in the ranks of the ALP on the matter, Whitlam, as leader, got his way. He was staunchly opposed to the war itself and conscription in particular, and his use of the media, especially television, was much more skilful than that of Holt.
In 1969, the Australian Labor Party was elected by a narrow margin, and Whitlam became the first Labor Prime Minister in nearly 30 years.
But his party was long out of government and lacked experience in the ways and means of it. Still, they were determined and reasonably capable, and they made a fair fist of it. Australia withdrew from the Vietnam war in 1970, and conscription was put to a referendum later that year to make it constitutionally impossible. Although this proposal was narrowly defeated, the Whitlam government moved ahead to make it as close to legislatively impossible as they could contrive.
The Whitlam government would, most likely have still have over-reached, although possibly not as badly. They were returned with a reduced majority in 1972. An odd byproduct of this hinges on the tendancy of Australians to vote for one party at the Federal level and the other at the State level: in 1974, John Howard was successful in his attempt to win election to the NSW state parliament, keeping him out of federal politics – something that would significantly have changed federal politics over the next three decades.
That’s not the only change that would have happened to the fortunes of the Liberal Party. In the wake of their electoral defeat in 1969, Holt would have stepped down. The leadership struggle that erupted in 1966 instead erupts now. And although Gorton does reasonably well against Whitlam, he doesn’t do nearly as well without. McMahon retires after the 1972 election, but Snedden’s leadership challenge is unsuccessful (largely because Fraser recognises that if can outlast Snedden, the leadership will be his for the taking).
The Whitlam government may or may not have been re-elected in 1975. Either way, there would have been no blocking of supply and no dismissal. In the longer term, perhaps the greatest difference this would have made is that Don Chipp would never have formed the Australian Democrats party.
Finally, of course, in the event of an ALP victory in 1969, the plot of “Don’s Party” would have been significantly different 
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