He was the third long term Liberal prime minister of Australia in five years (excluding John McEwen as he was a caretaker prime minister) after Harold Holt in addition to John Gorton following Sir Robert Menzie's retirement in 1966. The unstable Liberal-Country coalition leadership that this presented in the eyes of the general Australian public may have been one of the contributing factors to Gough Whitlam's let alone the Australian federal Labor party's victory in the 1972 federal Australian election.