National Observer Home > No. 64 - Autumn 2005
The 1975 Dismissal: Setting the Record Straight
Sir David Smith
Probably no event in Australia’s political
history has received as much coverage
in the media and in the history
books as has the dismissal of the
Whitlam Government by the Governor-
General, Sir John Kerr, on 11 November
1975. And certainly no event
in Australia’s political history has received
so much inaccurate and misleading
coverage. As for Mr. Whitlam
himself, there has grown up around
him almost an entire industry devoted
to polishing his image and turning him
into a legend in his own lifetime.
As
we approach yet another anniversary
of that day, it’s time we had a look at
the basis of that legendary image.
Whitlam and others have described
the events of 11 November 1975 as a
coup, but it was nothing of the kind. A
coup is defined as a violent or illegal
change of government, but the events
of that day were neither violent nor illegal.
The change of government was
in accordance with the letter, the conventions
and the spirit of the Australian
Constitution, and no one knows
that better than Whitlam himself. The
Whitlam Government was removed
from office as the Governor-General
and the Prime Minister sat on opposite
sides of the Governor-General’s
desk in the study at Government
House, Canberra, and by Sir John Kerr
handing Whitlam a letter. The Governor-
General then escorted Whitlam to
the door of the room, told him that he
could win the election that lay ahead,
and wished him good luck. They shook
hands. A few moments later, the
Fraser Government came into office as
the Governor-General and the Leader
of the Opposition stood on opposite
sides of the Governor-General’s desk,
and by Fraser holding a bible in his
hand and taking the oath of office as
Prime Minister. No sign of illegality,
and certainly no sign of violence, in
any of that.
The Governor-General’s parting remark to Whitlam that he might win
the election was no empty gesture. At
that stage a Whitlam win was a real
possibility, and the Governor-General
wanted to ensure that, should that occur,
Whitlam would have available to
him the advantage of being able to
hold a joint sitting of both Houses of
the Parliament, just as he had done after
the 1974 double dissolution. In
addition to the Appropriation Bills,
the Senate had failed to pass twentyone
other Bills of the Whitlam Government,
and the Governor-General
had insisted that Fraser should list
them all in the dissolution Proclamation.
That was unprecedented, but it
was done in fairness to Whitlam so
that, should he win the election, he
would be able to use the provisions of
section 57 of the Constitution to hold
a joint sitting to pass all of his Government’s
blocked legislation. Once
again no evidence of a coup.
With nothing more than some signatures
on a few pieces of paper, a
Prime Minister was removed, another
was installed, and the issue was immediately
referred to the Australian
people in a national election for both
Houses of the Commonwealth Parliament.
One month later the people delivered
their verdict, and it was a decisive
verdict. The Fraser Caretaker
Government was returned in a landslide.
The Governor-General’s actions
were vindicated.
Some of the events of that November
day also provided an interesting
commentary on more recent events in
Australian politics. In what passes
these days for debate on the monarchy/
republic issue, it is often claimed
that Australia must free itself from the
monarchy. But it was Whitlam who
telephoned Buckingham Palace on 11
November 1975 after his removal from
office by the Australian Governor-
General.
It was the Australian Labor
Party that had the Speaker of the
House of Representatives write to the
Queen to ask her to over-rule the Governor-
General, to halt the democratic
election process which had already
been set in train under Australian law,
and to restore Whitlam to office as
Prime Minister.
Mr. Speaker was reminded by Buckingham
Palace that the Australian
Constitution placed all constitutional
matters squarely in the hands of the
Governor-General in Canberra, and
that the Queen had no part in the decisions
which the Governor-General
must take in accordance with that
Constitution. That, surely, put an end
to any claims that Australia’s sovereignty,
independence and national
identity were centred on London. It
also tells us something about the intellectual
dishonesty of those who profess
to want Australia’s constitutional
affairs to be entirely in Australian
hands, which they clearly are under
our present Constitution and system
of government, yet immediately appeal
to the Monarch in Britain as soon
as a decision taken in Australia by an Australian Governor-General goes
against them.
The late Philip Graham, former
publisher of Newsweek and The
Washington Post, said that good journalism
should aim to be “the first
rough draft of history”. On the other
hand, Thomas Jefferson, a former
United States President, once said that
“A man who never looks into a newspaper
is better informed than he who
reads them; inasmuch as he who
knows nothing is nearer to truth than
he whose mind is filled with falsehoods
and errors.” When one looks at
much of the reporting of the dismissal
and the events surrounding it, one
would have to conclude that Jefferson
was closer to the mark than Graham.
So let me now go back to 1975 and
look at what falsehoods and errors the
future historian, searching through
that first rough draft of history, might
find in the contemporary accounts of
those days. I begin with Malcolm
Fraser’s early arrival at Government
House on that fateful day in November
1975, before, and not after, Gough
Whitlam, as the Governor-General
had instructed. That was due to a simple
error by someone on Fraser’s staff,
and had nothing to do with Government
House, but it was presented as
the beginning of a Vice-Regal conspiracy.
It was alleged that Fraser was closeted
in a room at Government House
with the blinds drawn. This clearly was
the figment of a vivid journalistic imagination
on the part of someone who
was not there, for Fraser waited with
me in a room next to the State Entrance,
a room which at that time was
used as a waiting room for visitors who
had arrived early, and the blinds were
certainly not drawn. Why would they
be? And indeed, there was no one outside
trying to look in.
It was alleged that Fraser’s car was
hidden round the back, out of sight. It
was not. His car dropped him off at
the State Entrance, and then drove
around to one of the three “front of
house” parking areas used by visitors.
The driver chose one which gave him
a clear view of the State Entrance, so
he could see when to drive forward to
pick up his passenger. Unfortunately,
that put the car on the inside curve of
that part of the main drive which leads
to the Private Entrance.
It is one of the traditional courtesies
extended to a Prime Minister at
Government House that he comes and
goes via the Private Entrance, so called
because it is used by the Governor-
General and his family, rather than via
the State Entrance, which is used by
all other callers on the Governor-General.
The duty Aide-de-Camp had been
told to expect the Prime Minister and
the Leader of the Opposition, and their
estimated times of arrival, but nothing
more. He knew from experience
that the Prime Minister’s convoy, consisting
of the Prime Minister’s car and
the police security car which followed
it, always travelled very fast, even within the grounds of Government
House. He could see that Fraser’s car,
having arrived out of sequence, was
now parked where it posed, at best, an
inconvenience, and at worst, a serious
hazard, to the Prime Minister’s car as
it swept around the bend.
The Aide-de-Camp used his own
judgment, made a decision in the interests
of safety, and asked the driver
to move his car to the parking area
outside the Official Secretary’s office,
and right next to the State Entrance.
The car was not hidden around the
back, but was in fact moved even
closer to the front of the building, and
was in full view. In deciding to move
the car, Aide-de-Camp did not consult
either the Governor-General or the
Official Secretary, nor did he need to:
the three Aides-de-Camp were responsible
for the smooth and efficient
arrival and departure of all visitors to
Government House, and frequently
directed vehicles where to park in the
interests of safety and convenience.
The first that the Governor-General
and I knew of what had happened to
Fraser’s car was when we read the
press reports next day alleging some
devious conspiracy to conceal it.
It was a measure of the man that Sir
John refused me permission at the
time to correct that story. The Aidede-
Camp had acted properly and in
good faith, and Sir John would allow
nothing to be done or said which suggested
otherwise, even by implication.
The next pair of myths grew out of
my arrival to read the Governor-General’s
proclamation from the steps of
this Parliament House. I came, as always,
to the front entrance. I drove up
to the front steps in a big, black Government
House car, clearly identified
as such by the traditional Crowns
where number plates would normally
be. I wore full morning dress, so I
could hardly have been mistaken for
one of the crowd that had gathered in
front of the building. I was met by a
Senate officer, escorted into Parliament
House via Kings Hall, and taken
to the office of the Clerk of the Senate,
where I was to wait until the top landing
could be cleared and Whitlam had
vacated the microphone which I was
to use.
On being asked to leave the microphone,
Whitlam, who apparently had
not noticed my arrival, expressed surprise
that I was already in the building,
questioned the officer who had
met me, and then he immediately returned
to the microphone. He described
me as an emissary from the
Governor-General, and then, in what
sounded very much like an incitement
to riot, given the way he had already
stirred them up, told the mob that I
would appear shortly, and asked them
to give me the reception I deserved.
Then, having just been told that I had
arrived at the front of the building, he
announced that the Official Secretary
normally arrived at the front of the
building but (untruthfully) that on this
occasion I had come through the kitchens and, as he so elegantly put it,
up the back passage.
Whitlam later claimed that my
reading of the proclamation was an
unnecessary provocation on the part
of the Governor-General. This allegation
was also not true, and he knew it
was not true. The practice of having
the Governor-General’s proclamations
dissolving Parliament read from
the front steps was begun in 1963, on
the advice of the then Attorney-General,
and for good legal reasons. The
1963 public reading was followed by
similar public readings in 1966, 1969,
1972, and 1974, before we came to the
1975 reading, and there have been ten
more since then. My first reading was
in 1974, when Sir Paul Hasluck dissolved
both Houses of the Parliament
on the advice of Prime Minister
Whitlam. Whitlam had no complaints
about my reading of that proclamation,
yet he denounced an identical
reading the next year as unnecessary
and provocative.
So far I have dealt only with minor
events which preceded the main game:
each was not greatly significant by itself,
yet together they helped establish
an atmosphere designed to taint the
public’s perceptions of what was to
follow. They suggested an aura of irregularity
or impropriety emanating
from Government House, which
Whitlam and his supporters then
sought to transfer to the major events
of the day.
The original attack, of course, had
been on the Senate’s refusal to pass the
Labor Government’s budget. The
Whitlam Government’s view was that
the Constitution and its associated
conventions vested control over the
supply of money to the Government
in the House of Representatives, and
that the actions of the Senate in threatening
to block that supply of money
were a gross violation of the roles of
the respective Houses of the Parliament.
This view of the respective roles of
the Houses of the Parliament had not
always been the view of the Labor
Party, nor had it been the view of
Whitlam himself prior to 1975. On 12
May 1967, in this very Senate Chamber,
Senator Lionel Murphy, then
Leader of the Opposition in the Senate,
had this to say about the upper
house and money bills: “There is no
tradition, as has been suggested, that
the Senate will not use its constitutional
powers, whenever it considers
it necessary or desirable to do so, in
the public interest. There are no limitations
on the Senate in the use of its
constitutional powers except the limits
self imposed by discretion and reason.
There is no tradition in the Australian
Labor Party that we will not
oppose in the Senate any tax or money
Bill, or what might be described as a
financial measure.”
On 12 June 1970, the then Leader
of the Opposition, Gough Whitlam,
had this to say in the House of Representatives:
“The Prime Minister’s as sertion that the rejection of this measure
does not affect the Commonwealth
has no substance in logic or fact . . .
The Labor Party believes that the crisis
which would be caused by such a
rejection should lead to a long term
solution. Any Government which is
defeated by the Parliament on a major
taxation Bill should resign. This
Bill will be defeated in another place.
The Government should then resign.”
Let me repeat that view of Whitlam’s,
as he expressed it in Parliament in
1970: “Any Government which is defeated
by the Parliament on a major
taxation Bill should resign . . . This Bill
will be defeated in another place. The
Government should then resign.”
When that same Bill reached the
Senate, this is what Senator Lionel
Murphy, Leader of the Labor Opposition
in the Senate, had to say on 18
June 1970: “For what we conceive to
be simple but adequate reasons, the
Opposition will oppose these measures.
In doing this the Opposition is
pursuing a tradition which is well established,
but in view of some doubt
recently cast on it in this chamber, perhaps
I should restate the position. The
Senate is entitled and expected to exercise
resolutely but with discretion its
power to refuse its concurrence to any
financial measure, including a tax Bill.
There are no limitations on the Senate
in the use of its constitutional powers,
except the limitations imposed by
discretion and reason. The Australian
Labor Party has acted consistently in
accordance with the tradition that we
will oppose in the Senate any tax or
money Bill or other financial measure
whenever necessary to carry out our
principles and policies. The Opposition
has done this over the years, and
in order to illustrate the tradition
which has been established, with the
concurrence of honourable senators I
shall incorporate in Hansard at the
end of my speech a list of the measures
of an economic or financial nature,
including taxation and appropriation
Bills, which have been opposed
by this Opposition in whole or
in part by a vote in the Senate since
1950.” At the end of his speech Senator
Murphy tabled a list of 169 occasions
when Labor Oppositions had attempted
to oppose money Bills in the
Senate for the sole purpose of forcing
the Government of the day to face the
people at an early election.
On 25 August 1970, the Labor Opposition
launched its 170th attempt
since 1950. On that occasion, Whitlam
had this to say in the House of Representatives:
“Let me make it clear at the
outset that our opposition to this
Budget is no mere formality. We intend
to press our opposition by all
available means on all related measures
in both Houses. If the motion is
defeated, we will vote against the Bills
here and in the Senate. Our purpose
is to destroy this Budget and to destroy
the Government which has sponsored
it.”
As Jack Kane, one-time Federal Secretary of the Australian Democratic
Labor Party and former D.L.P.
Senator for New South Wales, wrote
in 1988: “There is no difference whatsoever
between what Whitlam proposed
in August 1970 and what
Malcolm Fraser did in November
1975, except that Whitlam failed . . .
Senator Murphy, for Whitlam, sought
the votes of the D.L.P. senators, nsuccessfully.
That is the only reason
why Whitlam did not defeat the 1970
Budget in the Senate and thus fulfil his
declared aim to destroy the Gorton
Government.”
While all this was going on in the
Parliament, the High Court of Australia
was also given the opportunity
to express its view on whether the Senate
had the power to block supply. On
30 September 1975 the High Court
handed down its judgement in Victoria
v. The Commonwealth. Four of the
learned judges expressed opinions
which supported the view that, except
for the constitutional limitation on the
power of the Senate to initiate or
amend a money Bill, the Senate was
equal with the House of Representative
as a part of the Parliament, and
could reject any proposed law, even
one which it could not amend.
The
judges who expressed these opinions
were Sir Garfield Barwick, the then
Chief Justice; Sir Harry Gibbs and Sir
Anthony Mason, who each, in turn,
became Chief Justice; and Sir Ninian
Stephen, who later became Governor-
General.
The relevant parts of these judgments
were incorporated in Hansard
on 30 October 1975. Yet still the media,
and particularly the Canberra Parliamentary
Press Gallery, except for
one journalist, kept silent on this issue,
and Whitlam continued to rail
against the Senate. As a result, many
Australians still believe that the Senate
has no right to block supply.
The next two myths which Whitlam
sought to propound were part of a
package and they related to the question
of advice to the Governor-General.
The first myth was that the Governor-
General could act constitutionally
only on the advice of his Ministers
or, more particularly, only on the
advice of his Prime Minister, and then
only in accordance with that advice.
The second myth was that the reserve
powers of the Crown, which allow a
Governor-General to act contrary to,
or even without, ministerial advice,
had long since lapsed into desuetude,
and the Governor-General no longer
had any discretion to act other than
in accordance with ministerial advice.
But Whitlam and his acolytes in the
media had forgotten, if they ever
knew, that Lord Casey, as Governor-
General, as recently as 19 December
1967, had exercised the reserve powers
following the disappearance of
Prime Minister Harold Holt. Without
ministerial advice, for there was noone
who legally could give it, the Governor-
General had revoked Holt’s appointment
as Prime Minister, in accordance with s. 64 of the Constitution,
exactly as Sir John Kerr did with
Whitlam’s appointment, and had chosen
Sir John McEwen to be the next
Prime Minister, exactly as Sir John
Kerr did with Fraser’s appointment.
Although Whitlam was constantly
reminding the Governor-General,
both privately and publicly, that he
could act constitutionally only on the
advice of his Prime Minister, the existence
of the reserve powers would
have been, or should have been, well
known in Labor circles. One of the
most definitive and scholarly works on
the subject, entitled The King and His
Dominion Governors, had been written
in 1936 by H.V. Evatt, then a Justice
of the High Court, later to become
a member of the House of Representatives
and Leader of the Parliamentary
Labor Party.
Then there is the more-recent double
dissolution which Prime Minister
Menzies had recommended to Governor-
General Sir William McKell in
1951. On that occasion the Governor-
General did in fact accept the advice
of the Prime Minister, supported by
the opinions of the Attorney-General
and the Solicitor-General, that the
Senate’s failure to pass a Bill which
had twice been passed by the House
of Representative satisfied the requirements
of s. 57 of the Constitution
and allowed the Prime Minister to recommend
a double dissolution. Significantly,
nowhere in the documents submitted
to the Governor-General by
Prime Minister Menzies was there any
reference to any obligation on the Governor-
General’s part to accept the
ministerial advice unquestioningly.
On the contrary, Prime Minister
Menzies advised the Governor-General
that he was entitled to satisfy himself
and to make up his own mind on
the matters submitted to him.
Interestingly enough, and specially
so in the light of the Labor’s contrary
views in 1975, the Labor view in 1951
was that the Governor-General was
not obliged to accept the Prime Minister’s
advice and indeed should not
accept it unquestioningly; that he
should not simply accept the advice of
the first two Law Officers of the
Crown, and should instead seek independent
legal advice; and that he
should seek it from the then Chief Justice
of the High Court, Sir John
Latham.
Labor’s view in 1951, and particularly
that the Governor-General
should consult the Chief Justice, accords
exactly with what happened in
1975. But with the boot on the other
foot, Labor quickly changed its tune.
Whitlam started claiming that Sir
John Kerr, in consulting the Chief Justice,
and Sir Garfield Barwick, in responding
to that request, had acted
improperly and unconstitutionally,
and almost without precedent. The
attacks sought to discredit both the
Governor-General and the Chief Justice.
As a result, as in the case of the
blocking of supply by the Senate, many Australians believe, quite wrongly,
that Sir John Kerr and Sir Garfield
Barwick acted improperly, unconstitutionally
and without precedent.
In fact, at least two other Chief Justices,
in addition to Sir Garfield
Barwick, have given advice to Governors-
General on the exercise of their
Vice-Regal powers. They were Sir
Samuel Griffith and Sir Owen Dixon.
These three Chief Justices gave their
advice, when it was asked for, to no
less than seven Governors-General.
They were Lord Northcote, Lord
Dudley, Lord Denman, Sir Ronald
Munro Ferguson, Lord Casey, Sir Paul
Hasluck and Sir John Kerr.
The research into these consultations
was done by Dr. Don Markwell,
formerly an Australian Rhodes
Scholar; Visiting Fellow in Politics at
the University of Western Australia;
Junior Dean at Trinity College, Oxford;
Fellow and Tutor in Politics at
Merton College, Oxford; and now the
Warden at Trinity College, the University
of Melbourne. Markwell also concluded
that at least one other Chief
Justice, Sir John Latham, and four
Justices of the High Court, Sir
Edmund Barton, Sir Keith Aickin, Richard
O’Connor and Dr H.V. Evatt,
would have agreed with the proposition
that such consultation was permissible.
There are also many examples
of State Governors consulting a
Chief Justice, but I need not go into
details here. The Whitlam falsehood
that “Only one Governor-General, Sir
Ronald Munro Ferguson, had consulted
with a Chief Justice” was finally
laid to rest.
As the supply of money started to
run out in October 1975, Whitlam
sought to bypass the Constitution and
the Parliament by trying to arrange
with the banks for them to advance his
Government the funds which it could
not get from the Parliament. Such action
by the banks would have been illegal,
and they refused to participate,
yet Whitlam has always claimed that
his proposed arrangement with the
banks would have solved the supply
crisis, had the Governor-General given
him more time. This is simply not true.
As the crisis continued, and as calls
mounted in the Parliament and in the
media for the Governor-General to do
something, Sir John Kerr asked
Whitlam for a joint legal opinion on
certain matters from the first two Law
Officers of the Crown — the Attorney-
General, Kep Enderby, and the Solicitor-
General, Sir Maurice Byers.
Whitlam claimed at the time, and continues
to claim today, that these two
men gave the Governor-General their
joint legal opinion on 6 November,
and that he ignored their advice. The
truth is somewhat different.
Attorney-General Enderby did call
on the Governor-General on 6 November
1975 with a document that had
been prepared by the Solicitor-General.
At the top it was headed “Joint
Opinion”, and at the bottom it had
been signed by the Solicitor-General, National Observer No. 64 - Autumn 2005 and there was a place for the Attorney-
General to add his signature. Enderby
told the Governor-General that there
were parts of the document with which
he did not agree and that he could not
add his signature to it. So he took out
his pen, wrote the word “Draft” at the
top of the document, and crossed out
the signature of Sir Maurice Byers –
an insult that caused Sir Maurice great
offence. The Attorney-General went
on to say that he proposed to prepare
another joint opinion with which he
could agree and which he could sign,
and that he would send it to the Governor-
General as soon as possible.
That joint legal opinion never came:
the Attorney-General was perhaps
busy with far more important matters.
So what Whitlam has always described
as a joint legal opinion from
the first two Law Officers of the Crown
was in fact presented as a draft signed
by neither of them and disowned by
the Attorney-General. Despite
Whitlam’s claim to the contrary, the
Governor-General did not receive a
joint legal opinion from the first two
Law Officers of the Crown.
The next myth which I want to dispel
is the one which presented Sir
John Kerr in retirement as an exile
and a recluse. He had asked the Queen
that he might be allowed to retire
early, and he stepped down in December
1977, after only three and a half
years in office, in order that a successor
might set about healing the national
wounds. He had withstood the
public protests and demonstrations of
1976, and had had a further year, 1977,
virtually free of such annoyances. He
had asserted his right, as was also his
duty, to go about his public engagements
throughout Australia without
let or hindrance, and the overwhelming
majority of his fellow Australians
continued to welcome him warmly.
Nevertheless, he felt that the fairest
thing he could do for his successor
would be to remove himself from the
local scene for a few years. Living and
travelling in the United Kingdom and
Europe was no exile for Sir John, and
those who attended his memorial
service in Sydney heard one of his
more recent friends, a young Australian
scholar at Oxford, speak of his time
in England. This was Don Markwell,
to whom I have already referred.
The friendship began in 1982 when
Don Markwell was one of a group of
Australian students who invited Sir
John to speak at an Australian dinner
in Oxford. Of their first meeting
Markwell said: “. . . we were pretty
nervous about entertaining so great a
figure. But all went well. There was immediate
warmth between us, all reserve
vanished, and an enduring
friendship began.” Some nine years
later, at Sir John’s memorial service,
Markwell was able to say: “The man I
knew was a man who enjoyed life — a
serious-minded man, certainly, with a
strong sense of duty, and a man of industry
and achievement; but one
whose seriousness was balanced by a
buoyant sense of humour and of fun;
a man who rejoiced in the joy of life.
He was no exile, no embittered recluse.”
To be the personal representative of
his Sovereign and to be the Head of
State of his country was the high point
in Sir John’s career, but, if history is
to deal with him accurately and fairly,
he deserves to be remembered for
more than that. In the words of Sir
Anthony Mason, then Chief Justice of
the High Court, who also spoke at the
memorial service: “John Kerr’s record
of achievement speaks for itself. Behind
the record was a distinguished
lawyer with wide-ranging interests in
law reform, politics, administration
and public and international affairs.
His vision of the law extended well beyond
the preoccupation of a technical,
professional lawyer. He was conscious
of the intricacy of the relationship between
law, government and society.
These are all values which modern legal
education seeks to foster in future
generations of Australian lawyers.”
Over the past twenty-nine years we
have seen the creation of the Whitlam
legend by those who still believe that
his was a brilliant prime ministership
that was cruelly cut short. And there
is no more committed proponent of
this legend than Whitlam himself. The
facts, however, are somewhat different.
How many times have we read that
Whitlam needed more time to prevail
over Fraser; that Fraser won the 1975
election because Kerr intervened
when he did; that Fraser persuaded
Kerr to close off the issue on 11 November;
and that Kerr chose the timing
that Fraser wanted. The fact is that
it was Whitlam, and no-one else, who
chose the fatal day.
That was the day
he called on the Governor-General to
advise a half Senate election to be held
on 13 December, for the election of
Senators who would not take their
seats in the Senate for another seven
months.
Such a possibility had already been
canvassed in the media. However,
writs for Senate elections are issued
by State Governors, following a request
from the Governor-General, and
there had been much speculation in
the media that the Premiers of
Queensland, New South Wales and
Victoria would be likely to advise their
respective State Governors to ignore
any request from the Governor-General,
and to refuse to issue the necessary
writs for the election of Senators
for their States.
In the event, the Governor-General
did not give Whitlam the opportunity
to present his advice on 11 November,
and for very good reason. Had the
Governor-General refused to accept
his Prime Minister’s advice, that
would have precipitated another constitutional
crisis, right in the middle
of the one we already had. On the
other hand, had the Governor-General
accepted his Prime Minister’s advice
and gone on to ask all State Governors
to issue writs for the election of Senators
for their respective States, a refusal by even one State Governor to do
so, let alone three, would have precipitated
yet another kind of constitutional
crisis.
So the best advice that this so-called
great Prime Minister could give to the
Governor-General in the midst of the
country’s greatest constitutional crisis
ever – a crisis which, if allowed to continue,
could have led this country into
economic ruin and could have resulted
in the collapse of good government –
was to present the Governor-General
with the impossible task of choosing
between two more unprecedented,
and potentially equally disastrous,
constitutional crises.
Had Whitlam not decided to go to
Government House on that day to ask
the Governor-General for a half-Senate
election, the events of 11 November
simply would not have occurred.
If Whitlam had needed more time, he
could have had it. Instead, he chose to
present the wrong advice at the wrong
time. Whitlam was the architect of his
own misfortune; he was hoist with his
own petard.
Whitlam was certainly not the great
leader that his adoring fans would
have us believe. Look at his record as
Prime Minister of this country and as
leader of his Party. He served as Prime
Minister for only one term of three
years. Certainly he had to fight an election
mid term, but that was an election
of his own choosing.
In parliamentary
terms, his prime-ministership
was that of a “oncer”.
Having himself tried to use the Senate
to force a Government to an early
election on two occasions, and with his
Party having tried to do it 170 times
over the previous twenty-five years,
did it never occur to him that his opponents
might one day try to use the
same tactics against him?
And once they did turn the tables
on him, what did he do? On leaving
Government House, with his commission
as Prime Minister withdrawn, did
he return to Parliament House to consult
with colleagues on the strategy to
be employed when the Parliament resumed
after lunch? No! He went back
to the Lodge and ordered a steak for
lunch. And given that the cause of his
downfall had been the Senate, whom
did this great parliamentarian send
for? He sent for Fred Daly, his Party’s
Leader in the House of Representatives.
Did he send for his Party’s
Leader in the Senate? No. Did he let
his Senate colleagues know what had
happened – that they were no longer
in government? No. As a result, when
the Senate resumed after lunch, and
the Coalition said that they were prepared
to vote on the deferred supply
Bills, Labor Senators still thought that
they were in government and that they
were voting supply to themselves,
when in fact they were voting it to the
Coalition.
The fact is that Whitlam was a failure
as the leader of his Party and as
Prime Minister, and he led the most
incompetent Government this country has ever seen. He has never been
prepared to let truth get in the way of
the legend. As a further example, he
still claims, and often is given, the
credit for giving the Queen the title of
Queen of Australia in 1973, when in
fact this was done twenty years earlier
by Prime Minister Menzies, when
he asked Parliament to pass the Royal
Style and Titles Act 1953.
In a press statement he issued on
19 October 1975 Whitlam referred to
the Opposition’s actions in the Senate
as an abuse of power, and as a violation
of every constitutional and democratic
principle. Yet the very same actions
were legitimate and principled
when he was doing them to his opponents
in 1967 and 1970 when he was
in Opposition.
On 28 October 1975 he told the
House of Representatives that the
Senate was in breach of constitutional
conventions relating to the passage of
Appropriation Bills, Supply Bills and
money Bills. Apparently these must
have been new constitutional conventions,
because we saw no sign of them
in 1970 or 1967, nor as far back as
1950. Or maybe they were very specialised
constitutional conventions
that applied only to Coalition Oppositions
and not to Labor Oppositions.
When Whitlam opened his December
1975 election campaign in the Festival
Hall, Melbourne, on 24 November
1975, his theme was that his removal
from office was the end of Parliamentary
democracy as we knew it,
because an elected Government in full
command of a majority in the House
of Representatives had been brought
down by the Senate’s attack on its
Budget. And this was the same Leader
of the Opposition who had attempted
to do the very same thing to the Holt
Government in 1967 and to the Gorton
Government in 1970, and whose Party
had tried to employ the same tactic
against incumbent Governments 170
times.
As I have already said, the Whitlam
Opposition gloried in that record — its =
Senate Leader, Lionel Murphy, had
proudly tabled it in the Senate in 1970.
That which had been a legitimate parliamentary
tactic for twenty-five years
while it was used by Whitlam and his
Party against their political opponents,
suddenly became the end of
democracy as we know it as soon as
his political opponents used it on him.
And today he still likes to falsify the
record when it suits him. In 2002,
when he recorded a television interview
for the A.B.C. with Senator John
Faulkner, he totally misrepresented
the circumstances surrounding my
knighthood, simply in order to have
yet another cheap shot at me, and at
Bill Hayden and Bob Hawke as well,
both of whom were in office as Governor-
General and Prime Minister respectively
at the time of my retirement
in 1990. Whitlam’s version was so outrageous
that Senator Faulkner sought
confirmation – not from me – and although
the Senator was given the facts in writing, Whitlam’s false accusations
were allowed to stand in the final version
of the television interview.
And a
very short time ago his rewriting of
history was repeated when the 2002
interview was telecast by S.B.S.
As Whitlam knows full well, my
knighthood is in the Royal Victorian
Order. It was a personal gift from the
Queen, and therefore required no
ministerial advice, yet Whitlam had no
hesitation in inventing a scenario that
suited his purposes, for it enabled him
to hit not only at me but also at two
former colleagues — Hayden, who
would have been a much better Prime
Minister than Whitlam ever was, and
Hawke, who was a much more successful
Prime Minister than Whitlam.
During the recent federal election
campaign, the media developed a
great interest in truth in politics. The
words “lies” and “liar” were used extensively
in their zeal to expose alleged
misrepresentation and dishonesty. My
challenge to the media is that they
should make this new-found interest
in truth in politics retrospective, at
least to 1975. This year will be the thirtieth
anniversary of the dismissal of
the Whitlam Government, and no
doubt many journalists will go to their
files and regurgitate what they find
there. I suggest that, instead of doing
that, they should invite Whitlam down
from the pedestal on which they have
placed him, and call on him to explain
the litany of lies which he and his acolytes
have spun about the dismissal.
They might begin by asking him a few
simple questions, such as:
• Why did he claim that the Governor-
General acted too soon on 11 November
1975, when it was Whitlam
himself who chose that date to force
the Governor-General’s hand, by giving faulty and defective advice?
• Why did he tell the crowd in front
of Parliament House on 11 November
1975 that I had arrived at the back of
the building, when he had just been
told that I had arrived at the front?
• Why did he incite the mob against
me, when he knew that I was a public
servant simply doing my job?
• Why did he claim that Fraser’s car
had been hidden at the back of Government
House, when it had been
moved closer to the front and was in
full view?
• Why did he ignore the Senate in
planning his Party’s parliamentary
tactics following the withdrawal of his
commission as Prime Minister?
• Why did he describe my reading
of the proclamation from the steps of
Old Parliament House as a needless
provocation when he knew full well
that it was a long-established practice,
and that the previous year I had carried
out the same duty for him and his
Government?
• Why did he describe the Senate’s
actions in 1975 as unprecedented,
when his Party had created 170 precedents
and he himself had created
two of them?
• Why did he describe the consultation
between the Governor-General
and the Chief Justice as almost unprecedented,
himself acknowledging
only one precedent, when in fact there
were many precedents?
• Why did he claim that his scheme
to get money from the banks was lawful,
and would have solved the supply
crisis, when the banks had legal opinions
that it was not lawful, and had
decided not to participate?
• Why did he say that the Governor-
General had received a joint legal
opinion from the first two Law Officers
of the Crown, when he knew full
well that there was no such legal opinion?
As we approach the thirtieth anniversary
of Whitlam’s dismissal as
Prime Minister, I suggest that, instead
of continuing to strut the national
stage as the wronged legendary hero
of Australian politics, it’s time he said
sorry to his Party for being such a failure
as leader, it’s time he said sorry to
the Australian people for being such a
failure as Prime Minister and for giving
us the most incompetent Government
we have ever had, and it’s time
that he told the truth about the events
of 1975.
National Observer No. 64 - Autumn 2005