The Dismissal, 50 Years Ago Today
50 years ago today, the democratically elected Australian government was dismissed (sacked) by the governor-general. It was the greatest political and constitutional crisis in the countryâs history. Just as an entire generation of Americans (and many others around the world) could recall exactly where they were when they heard that President Kennedy had been shot, an entire generation of Australians would remember exactly where they were when they heard that prime minister Gough Whitlam and his government had been dismissed. That was how significant and shocking the events of 11 November 1975, Remembrance Day, were and continue to be in the history of Australia.
(This is not just something Iâve read about: my father was a young man in the early 1960s, and heading towards middle-age in the mid-1970s, and he always remembered exactly where he was when he heard of both Kennedyâs assassination and Whitlamâs dismissal.)
A bit of context: If youâre not from a British commonwealth country, then you probably donât understand the role of the governor-general. Itâs pretty simple. In Australia, and thirteen other independent countries that were once British colonies, including Canada and New Zealand, the British monarch remains the head of state. But of course the monarch doesnât undertake any of the day-to-day responsibilities of head of state in these countries. Instead, the monarch has an official representative who carries out the functions of the head of state, including opening parliament. That person is the governor-general.
In 1975, that person was Sir John Kerr â a name that has gone down in history as one of infamy.
Kerr was appointed to the role of governor-general by the Queen in 1974 on the advice of Gough (pronounced âGoffâ) Whitlam, who had been prime minister since 1972. It was a decision that would prove to be one of those fateful mistakes that makes you ask: âWhat if?â There are a lot of what ifs connected to the dismissal, one-off decisions and events that all converged to create a set of circumstances like no other, before or since.
The Whitlam Labor government was elected in December 1972. The previous Labor government had lost office in 1949, so, after being out of office for 23 years, no member of the new government, including Whitlam himself, had any experience of actually being in government. This lack of experience would prove to be a problem, but right then, at the end of 1972, the election of the Whitlam government was a cause for huge celebration for anyone who wanted something else than the continuation of the stagnant conservative government.
Gough Whitlam, from a middle-class background unusual for Labor politicians in those days, was the son of the former Crown Solicitor. He had served in the air force during WWII and later worked as a barrister. Tall and charismatic, well-educated and extremely intelligent, a brilliant public speaker and quick with a witty rejoinder, he was also not without the sort of arrogance that often accompanies that combination of qualities.
(Yes, that's Gough.)
Gough had an ambitious agenda, much of which he carried out very quickly. He changed Australia, and we still enjoy the benefits of his policy achievements today: equal pay for women, no-fault divorce, universal health care (later abolished by the conservative Fraser government but revived by the Hawke Labor government in the 1980s and continuing to the present day), the introduction of the Racial Discrimination Act, the end of the White Australia policy (something that had been a blight on Australia since federation in 1901), the first moves towards Indigenous land rights, free university education (abolished in the late 1980s, but many of the people who benefited from it are still around â including me), the sole parent pension, the opening of diplomatic relations with China (now our major trading partner), the end of military conscription, and lowering minimum voting age from 21 to 18. And those are just the ones off the top of my head. It was a reforming government, a truly progressive government, and the ending of it is only one of the many reasons that weâre still talking about it half a century later.
So, what did the conservative Liberal and Country party coalition opposition think about all this? They were outraged, naturally. And after 23 years in government, they could not let go of the idea that they were born to rule. Gough was an upstart who had upset the natural order of things. He had to go.
Gough made it easy for them in some ways, and other, external factors made things harder than expected for him. The Whitlam government was crisis-ridden, including the notorious loans affair and its popularity waned over time. Meanwhile, the oil crisis hit the global economy in 1973, and the relatively easy prosperity of the post-WWII period was at an end.
In October 1975, the conservative opposition, which had a majority in the senate, blocked supply (ie. They refused to allow the passage through the senate of money bills, already passed by the lower house, that the government needed to finance government expenditure. A bit like whatâs going on in the US right now.). While it was technically possible to block supply, this had never been done before since federation in 1901. The convention had always been that money bills would be passed, regardless of who had the numbers in the senate, so the opposition was really amping up the situation by doing this. The opposition, led by Malcolm Fraser, said they would continue to block supply unless Whitlam called an election. Whitlam refused.
This deadlock continued into November, and came to a head on 11 November 1975, when Whitlam visited the governor-general, Sir John Kerr, to request a half-senate election. He thought that by holding a senate-only election, he could resolve the crisis. Instead, Kerr, using reserve powers in the Constitution â which, again, had never been used before and which itâs impossible to imagine that the Queen herself would ever have used â dismissed Whitlam and his government. Immediately afterwards, Kerr appointed Malcolm Fraser, leader of the opposition, as caretaker prime minister. Fraser had actually arrived at government house ahead of Whitlam and was lurking in another room while Kerr met with and sacked Whitlam. And yeah, if youâre sensing a conspiracy here, youâre not alone.
Why did Kerr do it? There have been many books written about the constitutional crisis of 1975 and Kerr's actions. This post is already getting way too long, so I won't go into it too much here, but I think it's safe to say that Kerr's vanity and self-importance, and his inability to see ahead to the reaction of such a move, all played their part. In later years, even Malcolm Fraser felt that Kerr should have warned Whitlam and not out-right sacked him out of nowhere. But again, that's one of those what ifs.
(Sir John Kerr - yeah, he was fond of wearing a top hat - with Whitlam on the right and Fraser on the left behind him.)
In shock after his dismissal, Whitlam went back to the Lodge, the prime ministerâs official residence, and had lunch. It was some hours before even senior members of the government found out what had happened. Reg âToe-cutterâ Withers, the leader of the opposition in the senate, knew what had gone down, though. So when the opposition unexpectedly agreed to pass the blocked money bills in the senate, Labor senators voted for them. It was just one more deception on that day like no other.
When the news came out later in the day, to say that the country was shocked would be a huge understatement. The governor-generalâs secretary, David Smith, read a speech on the steps of parliament house, dissolving parliament. Gough was there, and made his own speech that included the most famous line in Australian political history: âWell may we say God save the Queen â because nothing will save the governor-general!â He also described Malcolm Fraser as Kerrâs cur, and urged the crowd â and his supporters around the country â to âmaintain your rageâ. (The famous line is at 2:40 in this video:
I was a child when the Dismissal happened, but I have some vague memories of it. I particularly remember my then five-year-old brother banging a spoon on the kitchen table and chanting, like the crowd outside parliament house: âWe want Gough!â.
But not enough people wanted Gough. The Labor campaign focused on the dismissal, while the conservative campaign focused on the Whitlam governmentâs economic management. Gough led Labor to a comprehensive defeat at the election that took place the following month. He remained leader for another two years before retiring from politics.
Malcolm Fraser won a couple more elections and remained in power until 1983. He was often accused by his own side of being too cautious and not being ambitious enough â certainly not something anyone could say about Whitlam.
And Sir John Kerr? He carried the heaviest price, as he should. For the rest of his term as governor-general, he encountered angry demonstrations almost everywhere he went and Labor politicians refused to attend official functions if he was there. And then there was the time he presented the trophy at the Melbourne Cup, very obviously drunk. What an embarrassment. When he died in 1991, his family withheld the news until after his burial so that the state Labor government would not have to decide whether to offer a state funeral â something that would have been automatic for any other governor-general.
Gough lived until 2014, dying at the age of 98. He was Australiaâs longest lived prime minister and, even after all this time, remains one of the most instantly recognisable. As the political journalist Paul Kelly wrote in 1994: "there is no doubt that in three years his government was responsible for more reforms and innovations than any other government in Australian history".
(This portrait by Clifton Pugh won the 1972 Archibald Prize and now hangs in parliament house as Whitlam's official portrait. It captures his personality better than any other portrait of a politician I've seen.)
