1975 Australian constitutional crisis

Based on Wikipedia: 1975 Australian constitutional crisis

The Day a Prime Minister Was Fired

On the morning of November 11, 1975, Gough Whitlam walked into Government House in Canberra expecting a routine conversation with the Governor-General. He walked out minutes later as a private citizen, no longer Prime Minister of Australia. He had been fired—not by voters, not by his own party, but by an unelected representative of the Queen.

It was, and remains, the most dramatic political event in Australian history.

The man who fired him, Sir John Kerr, had been Whitlam's own choice for Governor-General just a year earlier. The man who replaced him, Malcolm Fraser, had engineered the crisis through a constitutional gambit that many Australians considered a betrayal of democratic principles. Within weeks, Fraser would win a landslide election victory. Within years, Kerr would flee Australia, hounded by protesters wherever he appeared in public, spending his final years in lonely exile abroad.

To understand what happened that day—and why it still matters fifty years later—requires understanding a peculiar feature of Australian democracy that most Australians themselves barely think about until it explodes into crisis.

A Constitution Designed to Deadlock

Australia's Constitution, drafted in the 1890s and enacted in 1901, contains a fundamental tension that its framers recognized but never resolved.

On one hand, Australia adopted the Westminster system of responsible government, inherited from Britain. Under this system, the Prime Minister and Cabinet must maintain the confidence of the lower house of Parliament—in Australia, the House of Representatives. If they lose that confidence, they must resign or call an election. The executive branch answers to the legislature.

On the other hand, the framers created a powerful Senate modeled on the American system, where each state gets equal representation regardless of population. This was the price of federation—the smaller colonies of South Australia, Tasmania, and Western Australia would never have joined a union dominated by the populous states of New South Wales and Victoria without this protection.

Here's the problem: unlike the British House of Lords, which by convention cannot block money bills, Australia's Senate has nearly equal power to the House of Representatives. It can reject any legislation, including the annual appropriation bills that fund the government's operations.

Some of the Constitution's framers saw this coming. At the 1891 Constitutional Convention, a delegate named Winthrop Hackett made a prediction that would prove remarkably prescient: "There will be one of two alternatives—either responsible government will kill federation, or federation will kill responsible government."

For seventy-four years, this bomb sat unexploded at the heart of Australian democracy, defused by convention and political restraint.

The Whitlam Revolution

Gough Whitlam came to power in December 1972 promising transformation. His Australian Labor Party had spent twenty-three years in opposition—an entire generation—watching conservative Liberal-Country Party coalitions govern. Whitlam was determined to remake Australia quickly.

And he did. In his first two weeks in office, before his full Cabinet was even sworn in, Whitlam and his deputy abolished conscription, released draft resisters from prison, withdrew Australian troops from Vietnam, recognized the People's Republic of China, and announced plans for universal health insurance. More reforms followed in a torrent: free university education, Aboriginal land rights, no-fault divorce, equal pay for women, and the creation of what would become Medicare.

But Whitlam's government faced a structural problem from the start. The Senate had been elected before his victory, and the opposition parties controlled it. The Senators' terms wouldn't expire until mid-1975 at the earliest.

This meant that the opposition could block any legislation they chose. And they did—not everything, but enough to frustrate Whitlam's agenda. By April 1974, faced with what he saw as obstruction, Whitlam took an unusual step. He asked the Governor-General to dissolve both houses of Parliament simultaneously, using a rarely-invoked provision of the Constitution.

This "double dissolution" could only be triggered when the Senate had twice rejected a bill passed by the House. But once triggered, it had a powerful consequence: after the election, if the Senate still rejected the disputed bills, both houses could sit together and vote jointly. Since the House has twice as many members as the Senate, a government with a House majority could theoretically force its legislation through.

Whitlam won the May 1974 election, though with a reduced majority. Crucially, neither major party controlled the Senate outright. When the disputed bills were rejected again, Whitlam convened the first and only joint sitting in Australian history. Over two days in August 1974, his government's legislation passed—including the bill creating universal health insurance.

It seemed like a vindication of his approach. It wasn't.

The Scandals Accumulate

By late 1974, Whitlam's government was bleeding from self-inflicted wounds.

The "Loans Affair" became the most damaging. Whitlam and several ministers had secretly authorized attempts to borrow four billion American dollars from Middle Eastern sources, bypassing normal government financing channels. The intermediary was a Pakistani commodities dealer named Tirath Khemlani, who claimed connections to newly oil-rich Arab nations. No money ever materialized, but as details leaked out over months, the affair became a symbol of government incompetence and secretiveness.

Other problems piled on. Rex Connor, the Minerals and Energy Minister at the center of the Loans Affair, was eventually forced to resign when documents proved he had continued seeking foreign loans after his authority had been revoked. Deputy Prime Minister Jim Cairns was dismissed after misleading Parliament about his relationship with his private secretary. The economy was struggling with inflation and unemployment rising simultaneously—a phenomenon economists called "stagflation" that was plaguing Western democracies globally.

Then there were the Senate appointments.

In February 1975, Whitlam made what seemed like a clever political move. He appointed one of his Senators, Lionel Murphy, to the High Court—Australia's equivalent of the Supreme Court. Murphy was brilliant, and the appointment was defensible on merit. But there was a political calculation too: if a half-Senate election were held, Labor might win back control of the chamber.

Under the unwritten conventions of Australian politics, when a Senator resigned or died, the state parliament was supposed to appoint a replacement from the same party. But New South Wales had a Liberal premier, Tom Lewis, who argued that this convention only applied to deaths, not resignations. He arranged for the appointment of an independent—effectively stealing a Labor seat.

A few months later, when a Labor Senator from Queensland died, that state's premier appointed a man who had once been a Labor member but had left the party years ago. Another seat functionally lost.

By late 1975, what should have been a balanced Senate now had enough opposition-aligned votes to block the government's legislation—including its budget.

The New Opposition Leader

Malcolm Fraser had replaced Billy Snedden as Liberal leader in March 1975. Where Snedden had been cautious about using the Senate's power to block money bills—he had tried it once in 1974 and backed down—Fraser was prepared to go further.

Fraser's reasoning was straightforward if controversial: the Constitution gave the Senate the power to reject any bill, including appropriation bills. The government's scandals had forfeited its right to govern. If blocking supply forced an election, that was democracy in action.

His critics saw it differently. The Westminster tradition held that governments were made and unmade in the lower house, not the upper one. No Senate in Australian history had ever actually blocked supply to force out a government. To do so would be to tear up an unwritten constitutional understanding.

In October 1975, Fraser decided to tear it up.

The opposition-controlled Senate refused to pass the government's appropriation bills. Not rejected outright—that would be too dramatic—but "deferred." The practical effect was the same: without these bills passing, the government would eventually run out of money to pay public servants, keep the military operating, and maintain essential services.

Fraser was betting that Whitlam would blink first and call an election. Whitlam was betting that Fraser would back down under public pressure. Neither man blinked.

The Governor-General's Dilemma

Sir John Kerr had been Governor-General for just over a year, and he was caught in an impossible position.

The Governor-General's role is mostly ceremonial. He opens Parliament, signs bills into law, and represents the Crown at official functions. But the Constitution grants him—technically, her, since the Governor-General acts on behalf of the monarch—what are called "reserve powers." These are the powers a constitutional monarch retains for genuine emergencies, powers that can be exercised without the advice of elected ministers.

The most dramatic reserve power is the power to dismiss a Prime Minister.

In theory, this power exists to resolve constitutional crises—situations where normal political processes have broken down completely. In practice, it had never been used at the federal level. A New South Wales governor had dismissed a state premier in 1932, but that involved a premier who was openly defying the law.

Kerr was receiving conflicting advice. Whitlam insisted that the Senate's behavior was the constitutional outrage, that blocking supply was an abuse of power, and that the proper response was for the opposition to back down or for the Governor-General to do nothing. If the government ran out of money, Whitlam believed, public fury would force Fraser to relent.

The Chief Justice of the High Court, Sir Garfield Barwick, gave Kerr different advice. In a meeting Whitlam didn't know about, Barwick told Kerr that the Governor-General had the power—and arguably the duty—to dismiss a Prime Minister who could not obtain supply. This advice was constitutionally defensible but politically explosive: the Chief Justice was effectively encouraging the unelected representative of the Queen to fire an elected Prime Minister.

Kerr was also, by several accounts, afraid. He had heard rumors that Whitlam might advise the Queen to remove him before he could act. Whether these rumors were accurate—Whitlam later insisted he had no such intention—Kerr believed them. He decided to act first.

November 11, 1975

That morning, Whitlam arrived at Government House to propose a solution to the deadlock: he would advise the Governor-General to call a half-Senate election. This would be held in a few months, and Labor believed it might win enough seats to break the opposition's blocking majority. In the meantime, the appropriation bills would be passed because the crisis would be defused.

Kerr had a different plan.

He presented Whitlam with a letter dismissing him as Prime Minister. Whitlam was stunned. He asked Kerr if he could at least telephone the Queen to discuss the matter. Kerr refused. The meeting lasted perhaps fifteen minutes.

Whitlam walked out of Government House no longer Prime Minister. Malcolm Fraser walked in and was sworn in as caretaker Prime Minister, on the condition that he immediately call a double dissolution election.

There was one piece of political theater left. Shortly after 1 p.m., the Official Secretary of the Governor-General read a proclamation dissolving Parliament from the steps of Parliament House. A furious Whitlam was there, having rushed from Government House. As the secretary finished reading, Whitlam stepped forward and delivered what became the most famous words in Australian political history:

"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... Maintain your rage and your enthusiasm through the campaign for the election now to be held, and until polling day."

But Australians did not maintain their rage—or at least, not enough of them did.

The Election That Followed

On December 13, 1975, Malcolm Fraser won the largest landslide in Australian history to that point. The Liberal-National Country Party coalition won 91 seats in the House of Representatives to Labor's 36. In the Senate, the coalition won a majority of 35 seats to Labor's 27, with two independents.

Why did Australians reward what many Labor supporters saw as a constitutional coup?

Several factors combined. The government's scandals had taken a genuine toll; whatever the constitutional merits of Whitlam's position, many voters were simply tired of the chaos. Fraser ran a disciplined campaign focused on economic management, while Labor was divided and demoralized. The election was held just weeks after the dismissal, leaving little time for the initial shock to translate into organized opposition.

There was also the uncomfortable truth that many Australians, whatever they thought about how Whitlam was removed, were not sorry to see him go. The opinion polls before the dismissal had shown Fraser leading. The crisis accelerated an outcome that might have happened anyway.

The Aftermath

Sir John Kerr became a pariah to Labor supporters. He was shouted at, jostled, and had glasses of beer thrown at him whenever he appeared in public. He resigned as Governor-General in 1977, eighteen months early. He spent much of his remaining years in Europe, dying in Sydney in 1991 after years of poor health. To this day, many Labor supporters cannot speak his name without anger.

Malcolm Fraser governed for nearly eight years, winning three elections before finally losing to Bob Hawke's Labor Party in 1983. In a remarkable historical irony, Fraser later drifted leftward politically, becoming an advocate for refugees and a critic of the Liberal Party's rightward shift. He resigned from the party in 2010. Before his death in 2015, Fraser publicly reconciled with Whitlam, and the two former adversaries developed an unlikely friendship.

Gough Whitlam lived until 2014, dying at ninety-eight. He never returned to power, but he saw most of his reforms survive and become embedded in Australian life. Medicare. Land rights. No-fault divorce. Free tertiary education came and went, but the principle of accessible higher education remained. He was celebrated in later years as a visionary who transformed Australia, with the manner of his departure only adding to the legend.

The Constitution remained unchanged. The Senate retained its power to block supply. The Governor-General retained the reserve powers. But the conventions shifted. No Senate has since blocked supply to force out a government; the political cost is now understood to be too high. State parliaments, after legislation passed in 1977, are now required to replace departing Senators with members of the same party. The bomb in the Constitution was not defused, but everyone agreed not to touch it.

What It All Means

Fifty years later, Australians still argue about November 11, 1975.

To Labor supporters, it was a constitutional coup, the subversion of democracy by an unelected vice-regal official acting in concert with a ruthless opposition leader. The people had elected Whitlam; no one had elected Kerr. For the Crown's representative to dismiss an elected government that still held a majority in the House of Representatives was, in this view, a betrayal of everything Australian democracy was supposed to mean.

To conservatives, Kerr acted properly and even courageously. A government unable to obtain supply cannot govern; that is the fundamental principle. Whitlam had the option of calling an election and declined. Kerr broke a deadlock that the Prime Minister refused to break himself. The subsequent election vindicated his decision.

There is a third view, less partisan but perhaps most troubling. This view holds that the crisis exposed a genuine flaw in Australia's constitutional design—the tension Winthrop Hackett identified in 1891. The Senate has the legal power to block supply but perhaps should not use it. The Governor-General has the legal power to dismiss a Prime Minister but perhaps should not exercise it. Australia's democracy has functioned since 1975 not because the Constitution was reformed, but because politicians and governors-general have agreed to pretend that certain constitutional powers do not exist.

That agreement holds only as long as everyone honors it.

The 1975 crisis also raised questions that extend beyond Australia. What happens when constitutional conventions—unwritten rules that everyone is supposed to follow—collide with constitutional powers that are written down? What is the proper role of an unelected head of state in a democracy? How much forbearance can we expect from political actors who have the power to destroy their opponents?

These are not merely Australian questions. They are questions every constitutional democracy must eventually confront.

The Letters

For decades, crucial documents about the dismissal remained secret: correspondence between Kerr and Queen Elizabeth II, held by the National Archives under a classification of "personal" papers not subject to normal release rules.

In 2020, after a legal battle, the letters were finally released. They revealed that Kerr had discussed the possibility of dismissing Whitlam with the Queen's private secretary as early as September 1975—two months before the dismissal. The Queen, through her secretary, had expressed views about the reserve powers and how they might be used. She had, in effect, been briefed on what was coming.

The letters did not show that the Queen ordered the dismissal. But they demolished the fiction that she had been entirely uninvolved. The Crown, in the person of Elizabeth II, had been part of the conversation that ended Gough Whitlam's government.

For Australians who had long wondered about the role of their British monarch in their domestic politics, the letters provided an uncomfortable answer. The Queen had known. She had advised. And when her representative dismissed an elected Prime Minister, she had accepted the outcome without protest.

Whether Australia should remain a constitutional monarchy, with a British King as its head of state, remains an open question. A 1999 referendum on becoming a republic failed, largely because voters disagreed about what kind of republic they wanted. But the memory of November 11, 1975—of the day a Queen's representative fired an elected Prime Minister—continues to fuel the republican cause.

The day the nation died, some called it. Or the day the Constitution worked exactly as designed, others insisted. Half a century later, Australians still cannot agree on which it was.