XPost: soc.history.war.misc

What we were talking about the other night, The Queen's representative
taking control --

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/zib3pz/why_did_australians_accept_the_queens/

Why did Australians accept the Queen's representative sacking elected
prime minister Gough Whitlam in 1975?
Was listening to a podcast about this and it seems very odd. Was Whitlam
that unpopular or was it a constitutional issue?

Archived post. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast.

•
Edited 1 yr. ago
The Dismissal, as it's known, was controversial, but not illegal.

Clause 64 of the Australian constitution ("Ministers of State") says
that "the Governor-General may appoint officers to administer such
departments of State of the Commonwealth as the Governor-General in
Council may establish. Such officers shall hold office during the
pleasure of the Governor-General."

In other words, the Governor-General giveth, and the Governor-General
taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Governor-General.

But seriously.

It is the Governor-General's constitutional role to appoint Ministers -
and to remove those Ministers.

In 1975, the government was coming to a stand-still. The Opposition
under Malcolm Fraser was denying supply, which meant the apparatus of government was running out of money to operate. Prime Minister Gough
Whitlam had been unable to find a way out of the deadlock (as far as the Governor-General was aware).

Governor-General John Kerr was obtaining private legal advice with
regard to his "constitutional authority and power to make a decision of dismissal and force a dissolution [of Parliament]". For this purpose, he consulted with Chief Justice Garfield Barwick of the High Court of
Australia. Chief Justice Barwick advised that "If, being unable to
secure supply, [the Prime Minister] refuses to [advise a general
election or resign], Your Excellency has constitutional authority to
withdraw his Commission as Prime Minister." In short, Kerr had the legal
power to dismiss Whitlam.

There was also precedent for this: in 1932, the Governor of New South
Wales dismissed the Premier of that state. These "reserve powers", as
they're called, exist in all Australia's constitutions, state and federal.

So, in 1975, Governor-General Kerr exercised those reserve powers and
dismissed Prime Minister Whitlam because Whitlam was unable to perform a
key function of government: obtain money from the Parliament to keep the government and public service running. He had an interview with Whitlam
on the morning of the 11th November, and asked Whitlam if he intended to
keep governing without supply. When Whitlam said "yes", Kerr decided
that was the trigger he needed to exercise his reserve powers.

There was a lot of controversy about this. Given that Kerr delivered
exactly the outcome that Fraser had been working toward (a dismissed
Prime Minister), a lot of people assumed that Kerr had conspired with
the opposition leader. This implied that he had made a political
decision, rather than a legal decision. There's no evidence of this in
the sources I've read. Kerr made his own decision, for better or worse,
without consulting any politicians (although, as I said, he did get
legal advice about what he was allowed to do under the constitution).

However, even if Kerr's decision was seen to be flawed by some, the
legality of his actions were never seriously called into question. Most
people accepted, to some degree, that the Governor-General was legally
within his rights to do what he did.

It helped that, when the Governor-General appointed Fraser as an interim
Prime Minister, he required Fraser to commit to two things: securing
supply, and holding a new federal election as soon as possible. Fraser
did both these things that same afternoon: he got Parliament to pass the
supply bill, and he visited the Governor-General to advise him to
dissolve Parliament and call a new election. The new election was
announced the same day, and took place 30 days later.

This meant that the Australian people were given the option to elect the
Prime Minister they wanted. This "lanced the boil" of bad feeling, so to
speak. It's hard to accuse the Governor-General of unconscionable
actions, when those very actions gave the Australian people the chance
to override his decision if they wanted to. Aussies could have elected
Gough Whitlam back into office, thus telling the Governor-General
exactly what they thought of his actions. However, Malcolm Fraser's
Coalition won in a landslide.

It's not like the Governor-General seized power for himself, or connived
at a military coup. He acted constitutionally, and moved immediately to
hold a democractic election.

In summary: many people were surprised by the Governor-General's
decision to sack the Prime Minister, and some people decried his
decision, but most people accepted that he had the legal right to do so.

Some further reading:

'The Dismissal' by Paul Kelly and Troy Bramston

'Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs' by Malcolm Fraser and Margaret
Simons

'Matters for Judgment: An Autobiography' by John Kerr

'The Truth of the Matter' by Gough Whitlam

1 yr. ago
There was a lot of controversy about this. Given that Kerr delivered
exactly the outcome that Fraser had been working toward (a dismissed
Prime Minister), a lot of people assumed that Kerr had conspired with
the opposition leader. This implied that he had made a political
decision, rather than a legal decision. There's no evidence of this in
the sources I've read. Kerr made his own decision, for better or worse,
without consulting any politicians (although, as I said, he did get
legal advice about what he was allowed to do under the constitution).

While I cannot fault the comment in the slightest for answering the
question, this point, I feel, is somewhat contentious.

For many, many years after the Dismissal, the line of thinking was that
'where there's smoke, there's fire' regarding the actions of Kerr and
whether or not he consulted with any politicians in general and the LOTO
in particular - but there was nothing more solid than a general
suspicion and the recanted comments of Malcolm Fraser himself, and
serial braggart/powerbroker Rupert Murdoch.

On August 9th, 1974, Kerr sought the advice of the Attorney-General, the government's chief legal officer, over whether it was seemly for the Governor-General to be associating with the Leader of the Opposition in
any capacity, since such a thing is not done in the Australian political system. The advice given to Kerr by the office of the Attorney-General
was a firm don't do that under any circumstances, that's a resoundingly
bad idea.

(Attorney-General's Department Internal Memo: Governor-General: Leader
of the Opposition. Whether the Governor-General should grant an audience
to the Leader of the Opposition. 9 August, 1974. NAA A432 A1975)

Now, this was a different LOTO, but it demonstrates that Kerr, despite
his position being apolitical, had previously entertained the idea of
seriously breaching etiquette for his own ends.

But the real point is that all of the sources that Algernon_Asimov
cited, and they're great sources - but all of them were released prior
to 2020. In May 2020, the Australian High Court ruled that the personal correspondence of John Kerr be released to the Australian public. These
had been sealed since the Dismissal and both the Australian National
Archives and Buckingham Palace had spent over 40 years and millions upon millions of dollars attempting to keep them sealed.

These letters, from Kerr's own hand, demonstrate that the Dismissal was
far from a spontaneous event and one that he had planned for months, and involved then Prince Charles and Sir Martin Charteris, the personal
secretary of Elizabeth Windsor.

So to say that Kerr acted as a rogue agent is incorrect. Still legally
and constitutionally within his purview, if not within the bounds of
convention or morality, but by no stretch of the imagination did he do
this out of the blue.


--------------------

This is the letter that Governor-General Sir John Kerr handed to Gough
Whitlam on 11 November 1975, terminating his appointment as Prime
Minister of Australia. Written on the Governor-General's letterhead,
Kerr’s letter explains that (under section 64 of the Constitution) he
has the power to ‘determine’ the appointment of the Australian head of government and of his ministers.

---------------

or

https://digital-classroom.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/whitlam-dismissal




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