The Dismissal: Australia's day of decision

Thirty years ago, Australia was thrown into turmoil when the governor-general decided to sack Gough Whitlam, then prime minister. The controversy rumbles on, says Kathy Marks

By the time she woke up, the deed - executed in her name - was done. Mr Whitlam, leader of a popularly elected Labour government, had been fired, and his conservative rival, Malcolm Fraser, was running the country.

The Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, had taken it upon himself to tackle a constitutional dilemma in Britain's distant former colony without consulting Buckingham Palace. His radical solution shocked the nation which, three decades on, remains as divided about those tumultuous times.

That a jumped-up public servant could sack the prime minister of an independent nation seems ludicrous to many now. But as Australians have been reminding themselves, as long as they retain their constitutional ties with the mother country, an identical sequence of events could recur at any time.

John Howard, the present head of government and a staunch monarchist helped to torpedo a referendum in 1999 on Australia becoming a republic. And, ironically, Mr Howard's policies have united the principal adversaries in Australia's greatest political and constitutional crisis.

Mr Whitlam and Mr Fraser are in their twilight years, aged 89 and 75 respectively, but neither has mellowed. Both are passionate about issues such as human rights, reconciliation with Aboriginal people, and an independent foreign policy. On most things, in fact, the old foes now see eye to eye, and the pair of them revile the present Prime Minister. Both are appalled by the intolerant and fearful place Australia has become after a decade of right-wing Howard government.

Thirty years ago, white with anger at being ousted from office, Mr Whitlam famously called Mr Fraser "Kerr's cur". This week he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: "These days, I can't readily think of any foreign policy or human rights issue on which I don't agree with Malcolm Fraser." In 1999 the two men campaigned for a republic, even appearing together on the same platform.

It was a political impasse provoked by Mr Fraser that catapulted the Governor-General into the limelight. A self-important man with a mane of silver hair and a reputation as a social climber, he had been appointed by Mr Whitlam the previous year. He had been a member of the Labour Party, and he was assumed to be a safe pair of hands. But the largely ceremonial nature of the office did not suit Sir John's temperament or political ambitions.

In October 1975 Mr Fraser took the controversial step of blocking passage of the government's budget bills, exploiting a narrow majority in the parliamentary upper house. His government paralysed, Mr Whitlam refused to give way and call a general election. For nearly a month, he and Mr Fraser faced off. The situation could not be allowed to persist indefinitely, for it meant the government would run out of money and default on its financial obligations.

Sir John was busy plotting behind the scenes. He had meetings with Mr Fraser, and sought advice from the Chief Justice of the High Court, Sir Garfield Barwick, on the legality of dismissing the prime minister.

Astonishingly, he never told Mr Whitlam that he was even considering that. On the contrary, he went to great lengths to conceal it. Later he said that had he warned the prime minister, Mr Whitlam might have got in there and sacked him first. Each had the power to fire the other. Precisely that situation persists to this day. Some observers, such as the journalist and author, John Pilger, saw the hand of the CIA in "The Dismissal", as it has come to be known. Mr Whitlam was the first Labour prime minister for 23 years; one of his first actions on coming to power was to take Australian troops out of Vietnam.

Sir John did work for an intelligence organisation, the Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs, during the Second World War, and he later joined a conservative group that had CIA funding. But most Australians gave little credence to the conspiracy theories. In their view, Sir John flagrantly misused his vice-regal powers to break the parliamentary deadlock.

Argument still rages about the constitutional propriety of his behaviour. But equally significant was the breakdown in personal relations between the two men. Sir John, a boilermaker's son, had grown to dislike the patrician Mr Whitlam, and was convinced that he had snubbed him and his wife, Lady Nancy ("Fancy Nancy" to her detractors).

On 11 November, he summoned Mr Whitlam to Yarralumla, the governor-general's spacious residence in Canberra. Mr Fraser had been told to come later, but arrived prematurely. He waited inside in another room, his official car concealed. After Sir John had handed Mr Whitlam his letter of dismissal, he installed Mr Fraser as caretaker prime minister.

That afternoon, Sir John's private secretary, David Smith, stood on the steps of Parliament House and announced that both Houses were being dissolved. "God save the Queen!" he concluded. Mr Whitlam, standing nearby, retorted: "Well may we say 'God save the Queen' because nothing will save the Governor-General."

Australians were stunned. In a book published this week, The Dismissal: Where Were you on November 11, 1975?, the writer Frank Moorhouse relates how a waitress relayed the bombshell to him and two lunch companions, both professors of political science. They told her she must be mistaken, since it was "not constitutionally possible" and the Governor-General was "simply a figurehead".

The book's title is apt, for every Australian old enough to remember those events can recall what they were doing when they heard about the dismissal. Annette Willis, a writer and photographer, says: "It was absolutely crushing. Whitlam stood for equality and multiculturalism. Suddenly he was gone. People couldn't believe it."

While Mr Whitlam tucked into a large steak after leaving Yarralumla, senior politicians and aides tried to digest the news. "We all sat there like stunned mullets," said Fred Daly, the deputy Prime Minister.

The sense of shock was all the more profound because of what Mr Whitlam represented for liberal-minded, progressive Australians: a breath of fresh air and a break with the past.

For most of the post-war period, indeed for a whole generation, Australia had been ruled by a conservative coalition led by the Liberal Party. It was an era dominated by Robert Menzies, who was prime minister for 18 years and boasted that he was "British to my boot heels".

Mr Whitlam, who had campaigned on the slogan "It's Time", swept to power on a wave of optimism and idealism. He embarked on a sweeping programme of social reforms, introducing free tertiary education, universal health care, equal pay for women, land rights for indigenous people and funding for the arts.

He also ended conscription, abolished the death penalty, and eradicated the last traces of the racist "White Australia" immigration policy.

His sacking provoked outrage, disbelief and demonstrations, and yet there was no blood on the streets, nor any sense that revolution was around the corner. One reason for the relatively muted reaction, said Paul Kelly, editor-at-large of The Australian newspaper, and the author of a book on the subject, was that Mr Whitlam, as a committed constitutionalist, accepted the decision. "That was important in containing the revolutionary fervour," Mr Kelly said.

The other significant factor was that Mr Whitlam's government, despite its achievements in the social and cultural fields, was deeply unpopular by 1975. Fiscally inept for the most part, and buffeted by global economic turmoil, it presided over massive increases in inflation and unemployment. Two ministers resigned amid scandals. The last straw was the Loans Affair, a secret attempt to borrow money from the Middle East, via a Pakistani broker, Tirath Khemlani.

Mr Whitlam's supporters called for a general strike, but Bob Hawke, leader of the trade union movement and a future prime minister, decided that Labour then was a lost cause. When an election was held the following month, Mr Fraser won by a landslide, a performance he repeated two years later.

Mr Whitlam had urged people to "maintain the rage". But many Australians were already fed up with him, and did not care sufficiently about the manner of his ousting. The dismissal has left a mixed legacy. Australia is still not a republic, largely because of political machinations and disagreement about what sort of republic it should be.

Controversy continues to cloud the office of governor-general, with Peter Hollingworth forced to resign in 2003 after claims that he protected paedophile priests when he was Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane.

History has been kind to the two main combatants, particularly Mr Whitlam, regarded as a national treasure in some circles. He and his wife, Margaret, are still in public life and enthusiastic supporters of the arts. But his party has been out of power for nearly a decade, and his protégé, Mark Latham, lost yet another general election for Labour last year.

Sir John, who died in 1991, was never publicly rehabilitated. Effigies of him were burnt at Labour rallies, and some of his oldest friends never spoke to him again. When he appeared in public, he was greeted by angry protesters.

His image was further damaged when he turned up at the Melbourne Cup race meeting in 1977 plainly drunk.

Among the many criticisms made of him were that he acted prematurely, flouted constitutional convention, and went behind the prime minister's back. "It was an ambush," says Paul Kelly, the author. "He deceived Whitlam. His behaviour was extraordinary and inexcusable."

Sir John also kept Buckingham Palace in the dark about his intentions, he said later, to protect the Queen. The truth is that she was unhappy about his actions, and would have preferred a political compromise.

This week a flurry of new books on the subject has been published, including a fresh edition of Mr Whitlam's account of events, The Truth of the Matter.

Mr Whitlam and Mr Fraser have made clear in interviews that they each remain convinced they did the right thing. But that certainty does not appear to affect their relations. While not exactly best friends, they have a mutual respect.

Mr Fraser said: "We haven't specifically discussed 1975. But our relationship is a good one. I certainly enjoy his company." In a dig at Mr Howard, who follows American foreign policy slavishly, he added: "He [Mr Whitlam] was a prime minister who believed in an Australia with its own view of world affairs, not too beholden to anyone, like the US."

While the two elder statesmen have ended up as ideological soul-mates, Mr Whitlam has never forgiven Sir John. "He was a contemptible person," he said this week. "Let's not beat about the bush."