equanimity.blog

Revisiting The Dismissal

Remembrance Day November 11th, 2025 was the 50th anniversary of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s Dismissal by the Governor-General Sir John Kerr. If you only saw the mainstream media’s coverage, you would have also been swept along by the herd that missed the point.

Much of the controversy about the Dismissal, even after 50 years, is based on ignorance and unfounded resentment.

I was 15 when Gough was sacked. I’ll never forget it. At the time, the impression was that something unprecedented was happening – and it was. In our young nation’s history, it had only happened once before at the state level.

The three years of the Whitlam government were formative years for me. Gough was like a father figure, in the absence of one at home. I cried at his funeral, but I’ve come to accept his flaws.

Our present Prime Minister underwhelms me. Anthony Albanese’s comments on the anniversary were:

There was no ‘ambush’. The Coalition parties blocked supply in the Senate. It’s what politicians on both sides do – make the most of every advantage at their disposal. Of course it was a constitutional crisis – brought on by a Labor government ‘acting like it only had a short time to live’, in the words of NSW Labor leader Neville Wran. Today, Labor seems to embody victimhood instead of the uplifting, enfranchizing comradeship of the original labour movement.

Whitlam was a constitutionalist. That’s why he obeyed the Governor-General. Paul Keating said ‘Whitlam froze. I would have had Kerr arrested.’ ‘Now, this just goes to show how profoundly ignorant some politicians are’. Professor Anne Twomey says in her video The Whitlam Dismissal – 11 November, 1975 (17:00).

Whitlam left Kerr’s office and went to The Lodge for a steak lunch. Prof Twomey points out how strange it was that he didn’t go to parliament to deal with the unfolding drama. She implies that he might have been able to block supply in the Senate and get a vote of no confidence in the the care-taker Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser passed and then get himself reappointed by the Governor General. After which he could have promptly sacked Kerr. Maybe the idea of doing to Fraser what had been done to him was unpalatable, but it seems to have been Whitlam’s hubris that he chose a steak lunch. I haven’t heard or seen anything about this other than what Professor Twomey implies.

The Dismissal was a first at the federal level, but the system worked previously at the state level, too. A lesser known Dismissal occurred during the 1932 New South Wales constitutional crisis. Governor Sir Philip Game, dismissed Premier Jack Lang on May 13, due to his refusal to withdraw a directive that instructed government departments not to pay money to the Commonwealth, which Game deemed illegal.

Our system of constitutional monarchy works exceedingly well in comparison to the United States. The US federal government has shutdown 22 times due to a lapse in appropriations. The most recent one lasted for a record 40 days.

Our system continues to improve. The Referendum of 1977, which had bipartisan support from both leaders (Fraser and Whitlam), introduced a reform ensuring Senate vacancies are filled by the same party. This helps minimize the likelihood of a repeat of 1975 (not by much, though). We haven’t had another shut down since.