Key figures in the Dismissal failed the statesmanship demand
Looking back, as the 50th anniversary of the Whitlam government’s removal on November 11, 1975 approaches, the short answer is that, in the midst of Australia’s greatest political crisis, none of the chief protagonists displayed the kind of statesmanship that could have earned them an honourable place in history.
It is necessary to start, of course, with Malcolm Fraser, leader of the opposition, who together with his senior Liberal and National Party colleagues initiated the events that led to the removal of the government.
The ostensible reason for this decision by the opposition was the revelation in mid-October that a government minister was still pursuing an overseas loan that the government had once sought but later rejected. It is true that the so-called Loans Affair reflected almost comical, although not corrupt, conduct on the part of Whitlam and a number of his senior colleagues, but the government was not even halfway through the term for which it had been elected.
The reality was that the opposition had never really accepted the election of the Whitlam government in December 1972 after 23 years of Coalition rule. It had forced an election halfway through the government’s first term in May 1974 by blocking the budget in the Senate and now it had repeated the same exercise 18 months later.
Fraser was not prepared to observe the electoral cycle provided by the Constitution but wanted power in advance of the next election. This was straightforward greed and a preparedness to break political conventions that had stood since Federation.
As it turned out, Fraser was a lacklustre prime minister who squandered his time in government by refusing to implement economic reforms and finished his career by repudiating many of the views he had held during his time in politics.
One extraordinary example of this was his suggestion that the Vietnam War had been a mistake, although during the period of the war he had been first minister for the army and then minister for defence.
Fraser’s nominal opponent in all of this was the prime minister. The key relationship in resolving the crisis was that between Whitlam and the governor-general, Sir John Kerr. Both were ambitious and arrogant men but Whitlam had patronised Kerr and assumed he would take whatever advice he was given on the confrontation between the government and the opposition.
When Whitlam proposed a system under which public servants could be paid by the banks while the budget remained blocked, Kerr became concerned about both the legality and the practicality of the scheme.
In any event Whitlam need to ask Kerr what options the governor-general saw as available if the stalemate in the Senate could not be resolved and, in particular, whether he saw an election for half the Senate – which Whitlam eventually proposed – as one of those options.
This leads to the role of Kerr himself. It can be conceded that he found himself in a difficult position with the prospect of government funding running out if the opposition in the Senate stuck to its guns. But he had been thinking about this problem for months and he had a duty to warn Whitlam that if the confrontation between the two parties continued indefinitely, a general election might be the only way of ending the deadlock.
This would not have been a particularly pleasant conversation and it is hardly surprising Kerr was anxious to avoid it. It was, however, a conversation that had to occur. Kerr was concerned that if he gave Whitlam a warning, he might be removed as governor-general. But the likelihood of Kerr being removed at once by the queen was remote and, in any event, it would have meant the destruction of Whitlam politically.
Kerr paid a high price for his misjudgments. For the rest of his time in office he could not appear in public without risk of protests, and he was eventually driven into exile overseas. He could have been a hero in these events but he cast himself in the role of chief villain, even if Fraser was more deserving of this part.
Two other players have roles in this drama – chief justice Sir Garfield Barwick and his High Court colleague, Sir Anthony Mason. Barwick was a former Liberal cabinet minister and detested the Whitlam government. When asked for advice by Kerr, he was more than happy to say that the governor-general had the power to dismiss the government.
Kerr had the same view and did not need this advice from Barwick. But he did need Barwick’s assurance that the High Court would not become involved if the governor-general exercised this power. By giving his advice, Barwick effectively gave this guarantee to Kerr and precluded any action by the governor-general being challenged in the courts.
Perhaps the most extraordinary conduct in all of this was that of Sir Anthony Mason. Although a judge of the High Court, he advised Kerr constantly in the weeks leading up to November 11 and even drafted a letter on November 9 – which Kerr ultimately did not use – terminating Whitlam’s commission.
On the afternoon of November 11 he was still advising Kerr as to how he should deal with Labor’s parliamentary response to the government’s removal. There could hardly be a clearer abuse of his position as a judge of the High Court and his actions constituted a graphic intrusion by a judicial officer into the world of politics.
All of this means that the verdict on the chief characters in the nation’s most acute confrontation between opposing political forces must be a damning one. They all failed in different ways to meet the demands of their offices and irreparably tarnished their place in modern Australian history.
Michael Sexton is the author of The Great Crash: The short life and sudden death of the Whitlam government.
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