11
‘AN ENDING FITTING FOR THE START’

The Prime Minister who shouldn’t be Prime Minister is, and the Prime Minister who ought to be isn’t.¹
—Frank Crean

GOUGH WHITLAM arrived at Parliament House with a spring in his step shortly before 9 a.m., brushed past the waiting reporters and went straight through King’s Hall to his office.² The Canberra press gallery was spinning with rumours that the crisis had ended, that Whitlam would soon be announcing a half-Senate election, Fraser had been outmanoeuvred and Supply would be passed that afternoon. Canberra radio stations were already reporting that Malcolm Fraser was ‘now in serious trouble’.³ The latest issue of The Bulletin was just coming off the press, its cover featuring Fraser dubbed ‘The Man in the Muddle’: ‘Something seems to have gone awry with the Opposition Leader’s Grand Plan to throw out the “reprehensible, immoral and corrupt” men on the Treasury benches’.⁴

It was just a few minutes later when Whitlam, Fred Daly and Frank Crean met with Fraser, the Liberal deputy leader, Phil Lynch, and the leader of the National Country Party, Doug Anthony. The senior public servants whose attendance had been presumptuously requested by the leader of the Opposition the previous day had not been invited by the Prime Minister. Despite the immense tensions of the previous month, the meeting was cordial and polite, but both sides were equally determined. In an unexpected turn Whitlam again offered a significant compromise, to delay the date of the half-Senate election by six months, if Fraser would now allow the Senate to vote on the Supply Bills.

It was a remarkable concession, the same compromise position that had been put to Fraser and Whitlam by the Governor-General himself just two weeks earlier. Whitlam was prepared to sacrifice the only real chance his government had of securing a majority in the Senate by delaying the half-Senate election to ensure that the four new Territory senators, of which the Labor Party would most likely gain three, did not take their places until after the newly elected senators had taken theirs. What drove Whitlam in making this offer was a determination to present the timing of any Senate election as his choice, not the Opposition’s. Whitlam sought Fraser’s agreement to immediately allow the passage of the Budget, together with the electoral reform Bills then before the Senate.⁵ This was not, he insisted, a capitulation to the Opposition’s refusal to vote on the Budget in the Senate; he told reporters that a half-Senate election could only be held at a date of the Prime Minister’s choosing and should not be seen ‘as a means of getting the budget passed’.⁶

Although this offer would have removed the Opposition’s greatest political concern—that the government might gain a majority in the Senate for six months if the half-Senate election was held immediately—to Whitlam’s surprise, although Doug Anthony was prepared to consider it, Fraser and Lynch seemed uninterested, reluctant even to discuss it. And despite the fact that the meeting had been held at Fraser’s request, the Opposition leader presented nothing new, offered no compromise and continued to insist on a House of Representatives election as he had from the outset. Daly and Crean wondered why this meeting had even been called. The Opposition’s attitude, their confident rejection of his compromise, puzzled Whitlam particularly since the delayed half-Senate election had been urged upon them by the Governor-General just two weeks earlier as a compromise that would enable Fraser to quietly back down, the Senate to pass the Budget and at the same time avoid the possibility of the government gaining a majority in the Senate.

After thirty minutes the meeting came to an abrupt end, with no agreement. Fraser told Whitlam he would consult his senior colleagues about the compromise proposal but that he did not anticipate any change in their position. If this compromise was rejected, Whitlam told Fraser, he would advise an immediate half-Senate election to the Governor-General and he believed Labor had a good chance of taking the Senate in its own right.⁷ Whitlam also said that he would not be seeking an interim Supply Bill to cover the period of the election, believing that once the Opposition senators knew of the half-Senate election it would be politically impossible for them to continue to refuse to vote on Supply. Whitlam had no doubt that, as had been the case in the 1974 election, the Opposition senators would pass the Supply Bills as soon as the half-Senate election was announced. The morning press reports suggested the same—that the Coalition parties already had a ‘tacit agreement’ to pass Supply for a half-Senate election.⁸ Fraser later confirmed that, faced with a half-Senate election, the coalition would have finally allowed the Supply Bills to pass.⁹

As the meeting drew to a close, with Whitlam to call a half-Senate election, Fraser said, ‘You know, Prime Minister, there are people who think that the Governor-General has got an independent duty and obligation to make up his own mind’.¹⁰ Taking this to be a reference only to the timing of the half-Senate election, Whitlam rejected it as ‘nonsense’. Fraser then made an unexpected request, asking Whitlam not to reveal either his compromise offer or the Opposition’s rejection of it to the media. Whitlam’s excessive concern for propriety and protocol blinded him to the possibility that any subterfuge lay behind this and he agreed at once. For Whitlam, protocol demanded that the Governor-General be told in person before hearing of the parties’ discussions through the media and he agreed to keep the details of the half-Senate election, the documents for which were already with the Governor-General, from the journalists then assembling outside the party rooms: ‘I had always taken the attitude that advice should be given to the Governor-General directly before the nature of it was announced publicly in advance’.¹¹

Frank Crean left the meeting worried by the attitude of the Opposition and perplexed by Fraser’s concern that the details of their meeting not be revealed to the media. He turned to Whitlam and said, ‘Are you sure the G-G’s right?’

‘Of course’, Whitlam replied—as he had to all those who had tried to suggest otherwise over the previous month—‘What can happen? He understands the Constitution and he knows his duty—to accept the advice of the elected Government’.¹² Fred Daly was equally unconvinced by Whitlam’s unshakeable confidence in the constitutional propriety of the Governor-General and left the meeting thinking that the Opposition had ‘something up their sleeve—the Governor-General’. Daly had a great political nose and ‘he had smelt a rat’.¹³

From here, the Prime Minister and Opposition leader’s paths diverged sharply. As the meeting in his office ended, Whitlam’s first call was to the Labor Party national secretary, David Combe, to confirm the start of the party’s third election campaign in as many years. Combe immediately booked the Sydney Opera House for a national election launch on 24 November and contacted the party’s state branches, telling them to prepare for a half-Senate election on 13 December.¹⁴

Whitlam never doubted that the Governor-General could and would act only on the advice of the Prime Minister and that, in the face of prime ministerial advice, there was no room for independent vice-regal action. This fundamental understanding of the constitutional role of the Governor-General in relation to elected government was the basis for all Whitlam’s actions during that time, articulated repeatedly and unambiguously at every opportunity during the political stalemate. Kerr was fully aware that Whitlam believed this and ensured that he continued to believe it, all the while intending to act against it.¹⁵ In relation to the half-Senate election, Kerr’s deception was clear and unabashed: ‘Mr Whitlam had every reason to believe that I was trying to get a late Senate election’, he later wrote.¹⁶ For months Kerr had acted, as he himself described it ‘by stealth’, maintaining what he termed a ‘deliberate and obvious silence’ in his discussions with Whitlam on this fundamental point, but this was a silence maintained precisely in order that Whitlam remained confident, yet at the same time ignorant, of Kerr’s intentions.¹⁷ In justification of his behaviour, Kerr wrote:

 

the Prime Minister was not entitled to know the steps in my thinking … because he was not open to reason. Not having told him of my intention may have led him to the belief that what I had been doing was not genuine but just a front. If he came to that conclusion he was wrong. He was not deceived. He was just mistaken.¹⁸

The Governor-General’s deliberate keeping from the Prime Minister of his intention was a dramatic contrast to his frank exchanges with the leader of the Opposition. Kerr later wrote that Fraser knew ‘that if he acted strongly in denying Supply and kept his Senators together over a significant period of time … he would have the Governor-General in a position in which he would have to act’.¹⁹ As Fraser left Whitlam’s office on the morning of 11 November, he knew that there were just two actions he must take for government to become his: the first was to reject Whitlam’s compromise and the second was to keep his own party room ignorant of it. For Fraser it was imperative that he not accept Whitlam’s compromise offer of a late half-Senate election, and that he not reveal the substance of this meeting to his party room and risk splitting with the wavering senators. Fraser met briefly with his leadership group and confirmed the rejection of Whitlam’s offer. At the joint party room meeting that followed, Coalition members and senators were not told that Whitlam had accepted the Governor-General’s compromise, that Fraser had rejected it, and that an immediate half-Senate election was now to be called. The much-touted ‘last chance’ meeting had been a sham, designed to show Kerr that there would be no compromise, that Supply would remain blocked and that the Opposition senators would hold firm.

Before the meeting with Whitlam that morning, again assuming quasi prime ministerial authority as he had the previous day, Fraser had rung Frank Ley, the Commonwealth electoral commissioner, to find out the last date that a House of Representatives election could be held that year. Ley had been sufficiently concerned that such a request had come from the leader of the Opposition that he had contacted the head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, John Menadue, and had asked him to ensure that Whitlam knew of this call:

 

The advice given by Ley to Fraser, which he conveyed to me, was that any decision on a pre-Christmas election had to be made quickly, perhaps that day or early next week at the latest. This was obviously very valuable advice for Fraser as to when the Governor-General should make a decision. I passed the information from Ley to the Prime Minister.²⁰

Fraser’s call to Ley was one of several unusual episodes that morning that might have alerted Whitlam to the reality of the last few weeks: the vice-regal notice of the Governor-General’s meeting with the chief justice, Fraser’s request that Whitlam not reveal the half-Senate election to the media, Fraser’s presumptuous call to Frank Ley. Whitlam, whose personal acuity was always his weakest point, could see nothing but the principle at stake and read certain victory where he should have seen a warning. Even knowing that Kerr had twice met Barwick the previous day against his clear advice did not prompt Whitlam to challenge Kerr on this. The meeting puzzled him but he dismissed any consternation as unfounded—the half-Senate election had been put to Kerr five days earlier and was already in progress, any meeting between Kerr and Barwick could have no bearing on that outcome. The only hint of uncertainty for Whitlam came after the government leaders’ meeting with the Opposition leaders that morning. Menadue contacted Kerr’s office to make an immediate appointment for the Prime Minister, only to be told that it was ‘inconvenient’ for the Governor-General to see him until the afternoon.²¹ Whitlam then tried to reach Kerr himself, surprised by the Governor-General’s response and keen to speak to him before addressing the caucus meeting at 10 a.m., but Whitlam also had trouble getting through to Yarralumla.

Unable to reach Kerr on the official Government House line, it was after 10 a.m. when Whitlam eventually contacted him on Kerr’s private number.²² Whitlam repeated what he had first told Kerr on 6 November, that he would be recommending a half-Senate election, and asked to see him immediately, to deliver the formal letter advising of it. Kerr had already received the draft letters from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet advising of the election and setting out the timetable for issuing of writs.²³ Again Kerr prevaricated; he had to prepare for the Remembrance Day service at the Australian War Memorial later that morning, he told the Prime Minister, before pushing the meeting time back to 1 p.m. With typical pedantic deference to protocol, Whitlam asked for Kerr’s agreement to his telling the Labor caucus of his decision to call a half-Senate election. Kerr agreed at once. If Whitlam had felt any concerns after his meeting with the Opposition leaders, Kerr had assuaged them. Whitlam told Menadue that he felt reassured by this conversation with Kerr, that there could be no concern over the Governor-General accepting his advice and that he would announce the half-Senate election in the House of Representatives as soon as possible after the luncheon adjournment.²⁴

Whitlam walked into the government party room at 10.10 a.m., just as caucus was debating the amount of financial assistance to be provided to the Old Sydney Town tourist centre near Gosford. ‘This is like the Bishops of Constantinople discussing the colour of their raiments while the barbarians were laying siege to the city’, he told them. His announcement of the half-Senate election was drowned in an eruption of applause and cheers—to a weary caucus it was complete vindication of their leader’s precarious determination and their own nervous acquiescence. Whitlam had taken the initiative in recommending an election, leaving Fraser’s strategy of denial and Senate rejection in tatters. In all his political life Whitlam had never felt stronger about anything than he did about this, telling his colleagues that no government could ever capitulate to the blackmail of the Senate, that this had been a fight not just for their government but for all governments to come. ‘He was absolutely convinced that the House of Representatives should not yield to an Upper House in a situation like that, it was his duty to stand firm.’²⁵ It was not only government members who felt a wave of relief as the crisis now appeared over; the Canberra public service was re-energised and back to work. A sense of normality was taking over from the excitement, tension and uncertainty of the previous month: ‘No one likes stalemates’.²⁶

At the obligatory media briefing that followed, caucus secretary, Tony Lamb, described the feeling of the caucus meeting as ‘relief bordering on euphoria’.²⁷

The House of Representatives convened at 11.45 a.m. in what now seemed a mere formality before the main event that would begin with the Governor-General’s announcement of the half-Senate election. On the notice paper was an Opposition censure motion against the Prime Minister, moved by Fraser who condemned Whitlam in the same terms used since the beginning of the Opposition’s campaign in the Senate—for the Loans Affair, for continuing to govern without the Appropriation Bills having been passed and for not calling a double dissolution as the Opposition demanded. ‘There are circumstances, as I have said repeatedly, where a Governor-General may have to act as the ultimate protector of the Constitution. He ignores that prerogative’, Fraser said of the Prime Minister.²⁸ If Whitlam gave these remarks any particular consideration, it was only to note their irrelevancy—the pending half-Senate election had rendered the censure motion obsolete and only the leader of the Opposition remained stuck in the mire of his failed and damaging strategy of the ultimate Senate obstruction. Political events had moved on and outside parliament the midday news bulletins on Canberra radio stations now confidently reported that there was to be a half-Senate election on 13 December.²⁹ The Supply crisis was already yesterday’s news.

In the House of Representatives, Whitlam moved an amendment to Fraser’s censure motion to now censure Fraser. Whitlam was still speaking when, at 12.35 p.m., Malcolm Fraser stood up and abruptly left the chamber. For the second time that day, Whitlam was puzzled by the actions of the leader of the Opposition. It was inexplicable for a leader to leave the House during such a critical motion, let alone one that he had himself moved. Whitlam hesitated in momentary confusion as he watched the leader of the Opposition depart during one of ‘the most serious of all motions a Parliament can ever debate’.³⁰ Debate on the now-absent Fraser’s motion continued until the House adjourned at 12.55 p.m.

Ten minutes away at Yarralumla, the Governor-General and Lady Kerr were entertaining three young servicemen being considered for the position of aide-de-camp. One of them was Bill Denny, a captain with the Australian Army, who had arrived at Yarralumla that morning. At 12.30 p.m., Sir John invited them to join him and Lady Kerr for drinks in the small drawing room, directly across the corridor from his private study. The conversation was light-hearted, slightly nervous; Lady Kerr talked about travels in France, ‘a topic of passion for her’, Sir John had gin and tonic. Denny recalls that at 12.50 p.m. one of the current aides, Flight Lieutenant Alf Allen, came into the drawing room and announced, ‘Your Excellency, the Prime Minister is here’. The Governor-General finished his drink and left the small drawing room.³¹

Whitlam left the House as soon as he finished speaking and went first to his office, where John Menadue gave him the letter for the Governor-General formally advising of the half-Senate election. He signed it and put it in his upper coat pocket. Menadue told him that the Governor-General’s official secretary, David Smith, had already been sent a draft message for the state governors, setting out the timing for the election.³² Whitlam then spoke briefly to Fred Daly and Senator Doug McClelland, telling them he was going to Government House to advise a half-Senate election and that McClelland was to bring the Supply Bills forward in the Senate as soon as possible after lunch in order to secure Supply.³³ Fraser had already publicly stated that he would abide by any decision of the Governor-General and there could be no doubt the Opposition senators would allow a vote on Supply to take place once the election was announced. Having arranged what he expected to be the straightforward passage of Supply, Whitlam left for Yarralumla.

At 1 p.m., Gough Whitlam alighted at the side door of Yarralumla, the private entrance reserved exclusively for the Prime Minister and the Governor-General. His driver Robert Millar parked the prime ministerial white Mercedes at the front of Government House. Whitlam was met by an aide-de-camp, Major Chris Stephens. ‘Nice to see you, Prime Minister’, Stephens said, as he escorted Whitlam along the corridor that ran from the right of the private entrance, past the drawing room to their right where Lady Kerr was continuing pre-lunch drinks with the three young servicemen, to the Governor-General’s study on their left. Major Stephens knocked and stepped inside: ‘Your Excellency, may I present the Honourable, the Prime Minister?’ He stepped back into the corridor and closed the door.

Sir John Kerr was seated at his desk, several documents arrayed face down in front of him. As Whitlam sat down he reached into his pocket, taking out his letter that he had first advised the Governor-General of nearly a week earlier. Eager to get this strangely delayed call for an election under way, Whitlam began, ‘I have the letter advising a half-Senate election’, when Kerr inexplicably interrupted him, cutting him off in mid-sentence. ‘Before you say anything, Prime Minister, I want to say something to you. You have told me this morning on the phone that your talks with the leaders on the other side have failed to produce any change and that things therefore remain the same’, Kerr said. ‘I have decided to withdraw your commission.’ Ignoring the written advice the Prime Minister was holding toward him, Kerr handed Whitlam a letter of his own, already signed, dismissing him and his entire government: ‘I hereby determine your appointment as my chief adviser and head of the government. It follows that I also hereby determine the appointments of all the ministers in your government’.³⁴ Whitlam read it quickly and absorbed it immediately. For a moment he struggled to contain his thoughts as the greatest shock he had ever experienced swept over him—the shock of dismissal and the shock of an unimagined subterfuge. It was as if his mind had been cast loose from its bearings, from everything familiar, from everything he had understood of the last four weeks—his discussions with the Governor-General, with the Opposition—the cruel charade of propriety, of protocol.

The Governor-General’s high-pitched voice jolted him back into that small, suddenly oppressive room and he fought an urge to leave. ‘My reasons are set out here’, Kerr was saying, as he handed Whitlam the statement drafted days earlier by Sir Anthony Mason, addended and signed by Kerr.

‘Have you discussed this with the Palace?’ Whitlam asked.

‘I don’t have to’, Kerr replied, ‘and it’s too late, I have already terminated your commission’. He added, ‘The Chief Justice approves of this course of action’, alerting Whitlam for the first time to his meetings with Sir Garfield Barwick.

‘So that’s why you had lunch with him yesterday’, Whitlam said, ‘I advised you that you should not consult with him’.

Kerr shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘We will all have to live with this’.

‘You certainly will’, Whitlam replied, before accepting Kerr’s outstretched hand ‘from ordinary habit and simple courtesy’, and left.³⁵ The two men would never speak again.

Kerr reached under his desk for the button to let his aide-de-camp know the meeting had ended and Major Stephens appeared at the door.³⁶ Stephens walked in silence with Whitlam, retracing their steps down the corridor, through the private entrance to the waiting car. Whitlam told Millar to drive straight to The Lodge. ‘The bastard’s done a Game.’

From the other end of the Government House corridor, Malcolm Fraser emerged from a small room near the State Entrance with the official secretary, David Smith, and walked towards the Governor-General’s study. Kerr told Fraser that he had just dismissed the Prime Minister and that he would now commission him as Prime Minister according to the terms they had agreed upon earlier that morning. The Governor-General handed Fraser a letter already prepared for his signature:

 

In accepting your commission I confirm that I have given you an assurance that I shall immediately seek to secure the passage of the Appropriation Bills which are at present before the Senate, thus ensuring supply for the carrying on of the Public Service in all its branches. I further confirm that, upon the granting of supply, I shall immediately recommend to Your Excellency the dissolution of both Houses of the Parliament.

My government will act as a caretaker government and will make no appointments or dismissals or initiate new policies before a general election is held.³⁷

Kerr, unwilling to carry any burden of responsibility for his own actions, now added a further condition, absurd in its premise and craven in its demand, that Fraser ‘accept political responsibility for my decision to dismiss and later dissolve’. With Bible in hand Sir John Kerr immediately swore Malcolm Fraser into office, with David Smith as witness.³⁸

In the small drawing room across the hall, the polite pre-lunch conversation with Lady Kerr was punctured by the sudden entrance of Flight Lieutenant Alf Allen, giggling nervously. ‘He sacked him’, Allen said, ‘He sacked the Prime Minister’. The assembled servicemen were utterly uncomprehending; Bill Denny wondered whether Frank Crean had just been elevated to Prime Minister. Only Lady Kerr, silent and frozen, understood. As the Governor-General joined them they sat down for lunch, Kerr was preoccupied; he ‘swung to extremes … and imbibed freely’. It was well into the lunch when David Smith asked whether he should ring the Palace, making it clear that the Palace at this stage had not been contacted. Lady Kerr instructed Smith to do so.

 

Sir John at this stage was sitting quite silent, almost morose, but upon hearing his wife’s suggestion, he said, ‘Yes—I think you had better do that’ … Sir John said to convey to Buckingham Palace that the reason he took action without reference to the Queen was deliberate—that he did not want to involve her.³⁹

It was 2 p.m. when David Smith contacted the Palace to inform the Queen that the Governor-General had dismissed the Whitlam government.⁴⁰

At 9.55 a.m. Sir John Kerr had telephoned Malcolm Fraser in his Parliament House office, shortly before the Coalition party room meeting began.⁴¹ It was ‘one of the most momentous phone calls in the history of Australian politics’.⁴² With Fraser as he had taken this call were Reg Withers, Vic Garland, Peter Nixon and Fraser’s principal private secretary, Dale Budd. Fraser had told Kerr that the Opposition was standing firm, that Supply would continue to be blocked and that no agreement between the leaders had been reached. Neither the half-Senate election nor Whitlam’s agreement to Kerr’s compromise proposal of a delayed half-Senate election had been mentioned.

As the Governor-General talked, Fraser had made notes on a loose piece of paper, inscribing them with the date and time—11 November 1975, 9.55 a.m.⁴³ Budd had later collected Fraser’s notes and, recognising the significance of what had just transpired, kept a copy for himself.⁴⁴ Reg Withers and Dale Budd had watched, incredulous, as Fraser wrote down six points:

1. Double Dissolution Bills

2. Caretaker

3. No policy change

4. No Royal Commission

5. + Supply

6. Dissolution today.⁴⁵

Absent from this list was the one condition that every government had to fulfil: the confidence of the House of Representatives, the house in which governments are made and unmade. The power to make and unmake governments Kerr had now taken upon himself as he set out the conditions according to which he would agree to appoint Malcolm Fraser Prime Minister. All but one of these conditions put to the leader of the Opposition related either to the current political situation—the need to secure Supply and Kerr’s insistence on a double dissolution election as the Opposition had demanded—or to a caretaker convention that no major policy developments or appointments occur during the election campaign. But no such relevance could be claimed for the fourth condition put forward by Kerr—‘No Royal Commission’—a condition that Fraser acknowledged was ‘less expected but highly significant’.⁴⁶

Fraser had agreed to them all. He would drop his call for a royal commission into the Executive Council meeting of 13 December 1974 and, more than this, he would make this ‘a permanent undertaking, applying not only for the period of the caretaker government, but for good’.⁴⁷ In an exercise of unparalleled personal power, independent of the electorate and independent of the Parliament, Kerr had determined not only the Prime Minister and the government, but the terms on which such a government would be formed—even specifying this future policy outcome regarding a matter in which he was himself involved and that the leader of the Opposition had previously described as ‘illegal’. A greater conflict of interest for both parties to this arrangement to remove the elected government would be difficult to conjure.

Shortly after 10 a.m., having just spoken to the Governor-General on the official Government House line and agreeing to terms, Fraser had telephoned Whitlam and told him there would be no compromise. It was only then that Whitlam had reached Kerr on his private line, unaware that his difficulty in contacting him had been because Kerr had been speaking to Fraser.

At the joint Opposition party room meeting, Fraser had spoken briefly, emotionally and obliquely. He asked the Coalition members to trust him but not to press him on the meeting with Whitlam or on Supply; ‘developments were occurring’, he had insisted. He had told them nothing of Whitlam’s compromise and nothing of his own rejection of it, nothing of Whitlam’s decision to call a half-Senate election and nothing of the Governor-General’s telephone call. Doug Anthony had spoken longest and most urgently, telling them that the next 24 hours were ‘the most vital in the entire history of our parties’ and to remain firm. At 11 a.m., the Coalition party room had observed two minutes’ silence for the fallen.⁴⁸

To the exasperated reporters waiting expectantly outside the party room, Phil Lynch had stonewalled, conceding no decision from their discussions with Whitlam, no change in the Opposition’s strategy but complete confidence nevertheless in its outcome: ‘We believe that events will work themselves out’. Pressed for a response to the proposed half-Senate election, Lynch had answered cryptically, ‘We believe the present course is sound for reasons which will become apparent to you later’.⁴⁹

As Whitlam left Yarralumla and headed for The Lodge, his mind slowly began to thaw. His first instinct was to call Margaret who was in Sydney at a board meeting of the Commonwealth Hostels Association. ‘I’ve been sacked’, he said bluntly.

Margaret, direct and astute as ever, told him not to be ridiculous: ‘He can’t sack you, you’re the Prime Minister’. She was as shocked by Gough’s acceptance of Kerr’s dismissal letter as she was by the dismissal itself, ‘Why didn’t you just tear it up?’

But no-one understood protocol better than Gough Whitlam. ‘It was a legal document’, he told his astonished wife.

‘You should have slapped his face and told him to pull himself together!’ Margaret retorted. Although she immediately planned to join him in Canberra, Gough insisted she should stay in Sydney, reassuring her that he could fix this, that she should not be too alarmed. Margaret primed herself with a fixed smile, tried to ignore the nausea engulfing her, and returned to the board meeting.⁵⁰

Whitlam summoned his colleagues to join him at The Lodge: Fred Daly (Minister for Administrative Services and leader of the House), Gordon Scholes (Speaker of the House), Frank Crean (Deputy Prime Minister), Kep Enderby (Attorney-General), John Menadue (head of the Prime Minister’s department), John Mant (Whitlam’s principal private secretary), David Combe (the party’s national secretary) and Graham Freudenberg.⁵¹ Notably absent were any Labor senators. This was a matter of logistics as much as flawed political strategy: Whitlam’s sole focus was on the House of Representatives, the chamber where he still retained confidence and where the action as he saw it would take place. As far as he was concerned the government leaders in the Senate already had their instructions—to pass the Appropriation Bills—and his task was to secure the confidence of the House of Representatives and to again form government.

As he waited for his colleagues, Whitlam sat at the table in the glass conservatory at the side of the prime ministerial residence, eating a steak, and began to frame a resolution for the House of Representatives. Graham Freudenberg and John Mant were the first to arrive. They walked up the driveway, still believing they were there to discuss the half-Senate election. Whitlam looked up and gave them the ‘V for victory’ sign, which to Freudenberg confirmed that the Opposition’s campaign of Senate destabilisation had ended, that the half-Senate election planning had begun and Supply would shortly be passed. But as they walked in, Whitlam said tersely, ‘Well, I’ve been sacked’. Freudenberg laughed weakly at what he thought was one of Whitlam’s clumsier jokes, until Whitlam passed him Kerr’s letter:

 

It could have been written in Dutch for all the sense I could make out of it. It didn’t register. From that time I was hopeless. I was no help … Oh, I was just so shocked, I couldn’t believe it, and that shock took the form of a sort of temporary dyslexia. I could read the words but they didn’t make sense.⁵²

As his Cabinet colleagues filed in, Whitlam greeted each of them in the same way: ‘We’ve been sacked’. The extent of the shock, the scale of their collective disbelief, cast an incongruous calm over the sunny room in The Lodge. ‘It was the calmness of stunned mullets’, Freudenberg said.⁵³ They took far longer to digest the news than Whitlam did to digest his steak. He was now completely focused on fighting Kerr’s action on the floor of the House of Representatives where he still retained confidence and where he still believed the government would be unmade and then made again.

In the limited time available to them (already less than an hour) before Parliament resumed Whitlam looked no further than this; he did not canvass alternative strategies and he did not call in Ken Wriedt, the government leader in the Senate. His thoughts and his actions were directed narrowly and precisely on proceedings in the House. As he drafted his motion, Whitlam became more and more convinced that, if he played this correctly, he would soon be back in office with his Budget secured. He called Margaret again; he sounded better, less distraught, with more of his usual spirited energy and she began to believe his confidence, that the motion in the House of Representatives would restore him as Prime Minister.

 

That this House declares that it has confidence in the Whitlam Government and that this House informs Her Majesty the Queen that if His Excellency the Governor-General purports to commission the honourable member for Wannon as Prime Minister the House does not have confidence in him or in any government he forms.⁵⁴

In formulating this strategy, the most critical parliamentary strategy of his political career, Whitlam was at a single, fatal, disadvantage: he did not know that Malcolm Fraser was already Prime Minister. Whitlam simply had no idea that when he had arrived at Yarralumla to see the Governor-General, Fraser was already there, and that Kerr had immediately commissioned him Prime Minister and that one of the conditions of which was the passage of Supply. Through the continuing secrecy, this vital hour—the only time Whitlam had to muster his thoughts and to devise a strategy to restore the elected government—had been lost crafting a motion that was already obsolete.

The House of Representatives resumed at 2 p.m. Frank Crean took his usual place on the front bench and continued where he had ended at the luncheon adjournment, speaking against Fraser’s censure motion as if nothing had happened. The public gallery above was rapidly filling as word of Whitlam’s dismissal spread; people craned over the gallery balustrade to witness wherever the afternoon’s historic parliamentary proceedings would lead. The government bench was an eerie mix of those who knew and those who did not; those, like Whitlam, who hoped this thing could be undone and those, like Bill Hayden, who knew it never could: ‘I entered the chamber and was met by an unsettling atmosphere of stillness. It was awful, the mournful silence of the death watch … I sat down beside Joe Berinson who said “Well, it’s all over. Kerr’s sacked us”’.⁵⁵

At 2.33 p.m., Whitlam’s amended censure motion, now reading as a motion against the leader of the Opposition, passed 63 votes to 56.

The atmosphere in the House was electric as Malcolm Fraser then rose to speak above a crescendo of distressed jeers and outraged cries from the Labor members still occupying the government benches, who eventually drowned his voice entirely in a thunderous roar.

 

The Governor-General has commissioned me this afternoon to form a Government until Elections can be held. The purpose of the commission is to permit a deadlock between the Houses of Parliament to be resolved and to return Australia to stable Government. It will be my sole purpose to ensure that Australia has a general election to which it is constitutionally entitled and which has so far been denied it.

Fraser continued without deflection, reading from the letter Kerr had prepared for him that he had signed that afternoon in the Governor-General’s study:

 

You have intimated to me that it is Your Excellency’s pleasure that I should act as your chief adviser and head of the Government. In accepting your commission I confirm that I have given you an assurance that I shall immediately seek to secure the passage of the Appropriation Bills which are at present before the Senate.⁵⁶

At this point Whitlam, stunned to hear Fraser call himself ‘head of the Government’, interjected pointedly that the Appropriation Bills had already been passed. Fraser pressed on, reciting Kerr’s public statement. As he ended, Fraser sought to have the House of Representatives immediately adjourn, but his motion was defeated 64 votes to 55. The House of Representatives remained in session and the tactical battle continued.

Fred Daly then moved the suspension of standing orders so that Whitlam, now the leader of the Opposition but also the leader of the majority party in the House, could move a motion without notice. Daly’s motion was carried 64 to 54.

At 3 p.m., Gough Whitlam rose to speak. The tension was overwhelming and again the House erupted. With the shock of hearing of Fraser’s immediate commission just minutes before, Whitlam had scrapped the motion painstakingly prepared at The Lodge and now had literally to think on his feet. He moved a simple motion of no confidence in Fraser as Prime Minister and requested that the Speaker advise the Governor-General to call on Whitlam as the majority leader with the confidence of the House to again form government:

 

That this House expresses its want of confidence in the Prime Minister and requests Mr Speaker forthwith to advise His Excellency the Governor-General to call on the honourable member for Werriwa to form a government.

The circumstances in which Kerr had commissioned Fraser no longer applied, Whitlam continued; there was no longer a deadlock and Supply had now been passed:

 

Accordingly, the Government which twice has been elected by the people is able to govern. Furthermore, as has been demonstrated this afternoon, the parties which the Prime Minister leads do not have a majority in the House of Representatives. The party I lead has a majority in the House of Representatives. It has never been defeated in the year and a half since the last election and in those circumstances it is appropriate, I believe, that you, Mr Speaker, should forthwith advise the Governor-General … that the party I lead has the confidence of the House of Representatives … and should be called upon to form His Excellency’s Government.

At 3.15 p.m., the House of Representatives passed Whitlam’s motion expressing no confidence in the Fraser government and expressing confidence in Whitlam to form government, 64 votes to 54. Sitting was then suspended and the House of Representatives was set to reconvene at 5.30 p.m., after the Speaker had met with the Governor-General to convey the resolution of the House that Kerr call upon Whitlam to form government. Whitlam believed that at that point he would once again take office.⁵⁷

The Speaker, Gordon Scholes, left the chamber and contacted Yarralumla to seek an immediate appointment with the Governor-General. He was told that Kerr was too busy to see him.

In the 45 minutes since Fraser had announced that Kerr had appointed him Prime Minister, he had lost five motions in the House of Representatives, including a motion of no confidence. The assault on responsible government through the continuation of Fraser in office, despite the no-confidence motion against him, was absolute. Whitlam was as much outraged by Fraser’s actions at this point as he was by Kerr’s:

 

He should have returned to Government House at once, tendered his resignation to the Governor-General and advised him to call the leader of the party that commanded the support of the Parliament. This is the course that honour and precedent and history have sanctioned. Mr Fraser did nothing of the kind. He ignored the will of the House of which he is a member and whose rights he is sworn to uphold. He showed his contempt for the House of Representatives—the same contempt he has shown through this whole affair.⁵⁸

Even within the Coalition parties, members were shocked, some even outraged, that the Governor-General’s unilateral ascension over the House of Representatives had extended beyond calling an election. They might have hoped for vice-regal intervention to come in the form of an election but never had they imagined that Whitlam and the entire Labor government would be removed and replaced by the Opposition leader before an election. ‘It was never, ever uttered or mooted abroad. It was just seen as Whitlam leading the government to an election. That was the assumption’, Senator Kathy Martin recalled. Her colleague, Senator Reg Wright, was outraged by what Kerr had done.⁵⁹

Liberal Senator Sir Magnus Cormack had been the President of the Senate until the 1974 Double Dissolution. Cormack had spent the luncheon adjournment with Opposition Senate leader Reg Withers, the architect of the scheme to force the government from office by refusing to vote on the Budget in the Senate. Cormack had known for ‘a long time’ that Whitlam would be dismissed, although he never revealed how he knew: ‘I knew, that’s all’.⁶⁰ As the two senior Liberal senators met, trying to find a way for the Appropriation Bills to be brought forward and passed as soon as the Senate resumed, on the other side of the Senate offices the Clerk of the Senate Jim Odgers was meeting with Doug McClelland, the manager of government business in the Senate, to discuss the very same thing. Ignorant of the Governor-General’s actions, the Labor senators were seeking to achieve exactly what the newly appointed Prime Minister wanted—the passage of Supply. Odgers drew up a compound motion for McClelland so that the Appropriation Bills could pass through the Senate in a single motion, ‘a procedure which the parliamentary loyalist in him would have instinctively disliked’, but which, he nevertheless advised McClelland, would ensure the immediate passage of Supply.⁶¹

At 2 p.m, as the bells rang to call the Senate to order, Ken Wriedt, the Labor leader in the Senate, and Doug McClelland knew nothing of the momentous events that had taken place an hour before. It is remarkable, even unthinkable, that one hour later none of the Labor senators knew that their government had been dismissed and replaced by one led by the leader of the Opposition. As the Senate resumed for the afternoon sitting, a Government House press release, announcing the dismissal of the Whitlam government, was placed in every journalist’s letterbox in the Parliament House media room.⁶² Reg Withers, ‘grinning like a Cheshire cat’, could not contain his glee at the confusion looking back at him from the other side of the Senate benches. At 2.20 p.m., Ken Wriedt, having heard nothing from Whitlam, moved that the Appropriation Bills be declared urgent, just as Whitlam had previously told him, and using the procedure advised by the Clerk of the Senate, Jim Odgers.⁶³

No sooner had the Bills been brought forward than Odgers told Wriedt that the government had been dismissed. The vote that Whitlam had spent four weeks fighting to secure, the vote that he had always said would be their victory in this struggle—the vote in the Senate on the Appropriation Bills—then granted Supply to a government led by Malcolm Fraser. At 2.24, with the Senate now in uproar, sitting was immediately suspended.

Ken Wriedt and Doug McClelland were stung for years by their inadvertent role in this part of the drama. Wriedt was distressed by rumours that he had known of the dismissal when he bought the Bills forward, rumours fuelled by the fact that he had been one of the most vocal caucus critics of Whitlam’s strategy during the crisis. A staffer had in fact tried to tell Wriedt that Whitlam had been dismissed, but Wriedt dismissed this as rumour. Nevertheless, Wriedt later claimed that at least one Labor senator did know of Whitlam’s dismissal but had said nothing: ‘He had learned at 1.20pm that the government had been sacked, and made no attempt to contact me or my colleagues’.⁶⁴ Wriedt would never reveal the identity of this senator who had knowingly voted for Supply to be granted to the new government but Senator Jim McClelland later revealed it himself. McClelland knew the government had been dismissed, having been told not once but twice: first by Justice Lionel Murphy who called him greatly agitated from his office at the High Court and then by a member of his own staff. McClelland’s response was to go to his drinks cabinet, ‘pour myself a triple whisky’ and say nothing. McClelland did not reveal this to any of his Senate colleagues, returned to the Senate after lunch and voted for the Whitlam government’s budget Bills, knowing that this would grant Supply to the Fraser government.⁶⁵ With Supply passed in the Senate securing the Fraser government, Kerr agreed to see the Speaker of the House at 4.45 p.m.

According to parliamentary procedure, the Appropriation Bills were then sent across to the House of Representatives to be taken by the Speaker to the Governor-General for his signature. Kerr was confronted with a situation of the House of Representatives having expressed confidence in Whitlam as Prime Minister and the Senate having granted Supply to Fraser as Prime Minister—the Governor-General was again facing a political deadlock between the houses that he claimed had necessitated his dismissal of the Whitlam government.

The Speaker of the House, Gordon Scholes, arrived at Yarralumla for his delayed appointment with the Governor-General at 4.45 p.m. only to find, like the re-run of a bad movie, that Malcolm Fraser had arrived before him—and this time Fraser’s car was highly visible. Kerr had given the ‘royal assent’ to the Appropriation Bills passed by the Senate and had signed the proclamation dissolving both houses of the twenty-ninth Parliament, countersigned by Malcolm Fraser, Prime Minister. The Opposition that had, in the past eighteen months, twice rejected 21 government Bills in the Senate and rejected a further 17 Bills once, was rewarded for its ultimate obstruction with government itself. As the Governor-General’s official secretary, David Smith, proclamation in hand, had been driven through the gates of Yarralumla on his way to Parliament House, he had passed Gordon Scholes, driving in.⁶⁶

This was Kerr’s second dismissal, the forgotten one—the dismissal of the parliament itself. While argument will continue over the Governor-General’s actions in dismissing an elected government without warning, over the right of the Senate to refuse to vote on Appropriation Bills in order to force a House of Representatives to an election and over Kerr’s refusal to accept the Prime Minister’s advice for a half-Senate election, there can be no argument over the Governor-General’s refusal to see the Speaker of the House of Representatives in receipt of a motion of confidence in Whitlam and peremptorily closing down parliament instead. The deputy clerk of the House of Representatives, Jack Pettifer, described his shock at Kerr’s insouciance towards the Parliament: ‘For a Parliament which had always followed the traditional Westminster pattern of responsible Government it was a startling and dismaying experience’.⁶⁷

But even then, when the Governor-General had dismissed him as Prime Minister—the leader of the party that had won the last two elections, who commanded the confidence of the House of Representatives—and had commissioned in his place the leader of the Coalition that had lost the last two elections and who lacked the confidence of the House, Whitlam still could not believe that the House of Representatives was now, or ever could be, simply irrelevant. It was as if his imagined capacity to use this struggle to end the claimed financial power of the Senate over government had supplanted reality. Although his was undoubtedly the proper course—a motion of the House of Representatives was always the mechanism for confirming government—any resolution of the House of Representatives was at that moment worthless. Once Kerr had commissioned Malcolm Fraser, nothing the House of Representatives did would matter.

The essence of responsible government—the confidence of the House of Representatives in the leader of the government—had disappeared with the stroke of Kerr’s pen. Kerr later acknowledged both the fact that Whitlam had the support of the House and the certainty that Fraser would be defeated on a confidence vote, the point was that in Kerr’s new order neither of these core requirements, the sine qua non of the formation of parliamentary government, mattered. ‘In my order of priorities I decided to get the Parliament dissolved as soon as possible’, Kerr said of his refusal to see the Speaker: ‘Nothing the Speaker could say could affect that’.⁶⁸

The final act was played out on the steps of Parliament House where a large, agitated, crowd had been gathering throughout the afternoon. They clamoured, they chanted—‘We want Gough’, ‘We want Gough’—they wept. The comic character Norman Gunston climbed the balustrade, microphone in hand, trying to interview infuriated members of the crowd pushing him aside: ‘This is serious, you bastard!’⁶⁹ At 4.40 p.m., David Smith arrived at the top of the steps having come through the side door of Parliament House. He wore full morning dress and an air of satisfaction. Smith read the proclamation dissolving both houses of parliament, his voice completely overwhelmed by the noise of the crowd rising around him. The notional ‘caretaker’ arrangements had been immediately breached with the proclamation’s final words, ‘God save the Queen’. These had been added at Smith’s own decision, reinstating the words that Whitlam had as Prime Minister omitted the previous year: ‘I thought it appropriate to revert to the proper form’, Smith said.⁷⁰ This stark assumption of pure executive power—over Parliament, over policy, over a decision of government—was heady symbolism. The restoration of the monarch, the sham of the ‘caretaker’, the reversion to ‘the proper form’—nothing could better capture the complete repudiation of the Whitlam government than this.

While Smith was speaking, the figure of Gough Whitlam could be seen, pushing his way through the huge crowd until he stood almost shoulder to shoulder with the smaller, artful, Smith. As the inaudible official secretary finished and the crowd roared, Whitlam took the microphone and delivered a speech that would at once become his most memorable, for its precision and its passionate yet controlled fury. It was a spontaneous, impotent, rage that began with Smith’s provocative restoration of the monarch:

 

Well may we say ‘God Save the Queen’, because nothing will save the Governor-General. The proclamation which you have just heard read by the Governor-General’s official secretary was countersigned ‘Malcolm Fraser’ who will undoubtedly go down in Australian history from Remembrance Day 1975 as Kerr’s cur. They won’t silence the outskirts of Parliament House, even if the inside has been silenced for the next few weeks. The Governor-General’s proclamation was signed after he had already made an appointment to meet the Speaker at a quarter to five. The House of Representatives had requested the Speaker to give the Governor-General its decision that Mr Fraser did not have the confidence of the House and that the Governor-General should call on me to form the Government.

Maintain your rage, and your enthusiasm.⁷¹

Inside, the Senate and the House of Representatives stood empty, copies of the proclamation taped across their doors.

Liberal Senator Kathy Martin walked back into Parliament House with her National Country Party colleagues Doug Anthony and Ian Sinclair. As they crossed King’s Hall, staff from the Parliamentary Library were lining the railings above the stairs, booing furiously. They headed for the Senate party room to begin the celebrations. It had been three years since Senator Reg Withers had first promised to use the power of the Senate to overturn the ‘temporary electoral insanity’ of the Australian people. In a moment of appalling hubris they stood on the balcony, champagne in hand, and taunted the angry crowd on the steps of Parliament House below: ‘we behaved outrageously’.⁷²