Gough Whitlam
November 11, 1975, 50 years ago: Sir John Kerr, the Governor-General of Australia, dismisses the country's Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, from office. It is the only time in the history of the office, which dates to 1901, that its holder has been dismissed, rather than losing the office through death, resignation or an election defeat.
Australia is an unusual country in many ways, including the fact that its leading conservative party is named the Liberal Party. Its leading liberal party is named the Australian Labor Party. (There's another thing that's unusual: They use the American spelling, "Labor," rather than the British spelling, "Labour." Canada's version uses the extra U, while Israel's does not.)
Edward Gough Whitlam, who dropped his first name, became Prime Minister on December 5, 1972, having led the Labor Party to victory in the elections for the House of Representatives (not "House of Commons," as in Britain and Canada), with a small majority. However, the Liberals still held control of the Senate. Another election, in 1974, changed hardly any seats in either house of Parliament.
As a result, while Whitlam was able to get some reforms passed, others were stalled in the Senate. He tried to get a budget passed in October 1975, but the Liberals refused to pass a budget until Whitlam called another election. He tried to bypass this, calling for a "half-election," putting only the Senate up for election, which he had the authority to do, although it had never been tried before, and has not since.
But to get permission for the election, full or half, he had to go to the Governor-General. Since many nations in the British Commonwealth, formerly the British Empire, are far from the home islands, their head of state, the British monarch, appoints a representative, a Governor-General, to act as a "sub-king" or "viceroy" for the country.
Ordinarily, the G-G has very little power. But this person does have the power to call new elections and to dismiss the Prime Minister, even if that person has rightly won an election -- even if, as in Whitlam's case, he has won two of them.
On November 11, 1975, Whitlam went to the Governor-General of Australia, Sir John Kerr, and asked him to call a half-election for the Senate. Instead, Kerr saw this as a power play on Whitlam's part, and dismissed him from office. The Prime Minister was fired. What's more, Kerr appointed the Leader of the Opposition, the Leader of the Liberal Party, Malcolm Fraser, as a caretaker Prime Minister.
John Kerr
It should be noted that this had never happened before in Australia. Nor had it ever happened in the United Kingdom, or in Canada, or in Australia's neighbor, New Zealand. Nor has it happened in any of those countries since.
It was a counter-power play. It was a coup d'etat. And it got worse. This was before social media, and before the rise of mobile phones. Fraser quickly gathered his allies and formed a new Cabinet. They wrote new appropriation bills, and got Parliament to pass them, faster than Labour could even make sure all of its members knew what had happened. Kerr then dissolved Parliament and called a new election.
It should be noted that Kerr was not the head of state. He was the representative of the head of state, Queen Elizabeth II of Britain. This was Kerr's decision, not the Queen's. Whitlam had to get Kerr's permission to do what he wanted. Kerr should have gotten the Queen's permission before doing what he wanted. It was certainly possible by that point to make a telephone call from Government House, the Governor-General's residence in the capital of Canberra, to Buckingham Palace, or to Windsor Castle, or to wherever the Queen was at that point.
Kerr didn't get the Queen's permission. He didn't even try to contact her. He acted completely on his own. He acted like a dictator. Did the Queen punish him for this? No, she took no action at all. That was seen as a royal endorsement of his action.
That, and the fact that there was now action on the budget, convinced Australians that this constitutional crisis might not have been so bad. On December 13, the Liberals gained 30 seats in the snap election, and Fraser remained Prime Minister for 7 years, winning elections in 1977 and 1980.
Malcolm Fraser
What reaction did President Gerald Ford have to this coup? Very little. He sent a letter of congratulation to Fraser upon winning the 1975 election, and hosted a State Dinner for him at the White House on June 27, 1976.
Whitlam, cast into Opposition, remained Labor's Leader until 1977, losing another election, and then stepping down. After Fraser was defeated by Bob Hawke in the 1983 election, Hawke appointed Whitlam to be Australia's Ambassador to the United Nations.
Whitlam may have lost the office and the subsequent elections, but he won the historical argument. Not only has no Governor-General fired a Prime Minister again, but while Kerr got the result he wanted, and Fraser got the support of the people, Kerr did not get the support of the people: They turned on him, and he resigned as Governor-General in December 1977, a few days before Whitlam resigned as Leader of the Opposition. Kerr died in 1991, Whitlam in 2014, Fraser in 2015.
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