Gazing Again At Gough

Professor Jenny Hocking is foundation Head of the School of Journalism, Australian and Indigenous Studies, and a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. She is a well-known biographer and author of the two volume biography of former Australian prime minister, Gough Whitlam – Gough Whitlam: A Moment in History (2008) and Gough Whitlam: His Time (2012). On Wednesday 5 September 2012, Jenny Hocking addressed The Sydney Institute to discuss some of the revelations in her second volume of Gough Whitlam’s biography – especially that around new documents in the Dismissal of November 1975. The paper which follows is taken from an edited transcript of the speech.

GAZING (AGAIN) AT GOUGH

JENNY HOCKING

 Thank you very much Gerard. It’s a great pleasure to be invited to speak to The Sydney Institute once again. I’m delighted to see so many participants in the discussion today.

I speak to you as an academic, as an independent researcher and, as Gerard said, as the author of three biographies; of the late High Court justice and former Attorney-General Lionel Murphy; of the Australian author, communist and activist Frank Hardy and now the two volume biography of the former Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam.

Despite the obvious differences between these subjects, each of these biographies reflects a larger commitment for me, as an academic, to Australian political history, to developments in democratic practice and to the connections between politics and the law. That’s my feeling.

For me, the ideal biographical subject is one that allows me to explore a great sweep of Australian political history and Gough Whitlam’s story certainly does that. It’s in this sense that you might have heard biographers say that they don’t choose their subject but that the subject chooses them. And Gough Whitlam, in many ways, to me is more interesting in what he – as a subject – enables me to explore, than as a personality.

In 2001, Gough Whitlam addressed a group of post-graduate history students at the University of Melbourne. He urged them to avoid what he called the posthumous defamations of Clyde Cameron’s interminable oral history interviews in the National Library. Much of what passes oral history is no more than malice, recollected in tranquillity, Whitlam said. They should turn instead, he insisted, to the contemporaneous documentary record as the basic primary source. “Unpalatable truths,” Whitlam continued, “will not diminish, but will rather enrich our common commitment to the research, the writing, the reading and the understanding of Australian History.” The best history, he told them, will always be based on the documents. Go to the documents.

Never has the truth of that simple rigorous observation been clearer than in recent days, with the revelation from the documents of the extensive interactions between Sir John Kerr and Sir Anthony Mason, unveiled in this biography. And from the equally illuminating responses to it.

I began this biography anticipating a single volume work that would be completed in three years. I thought, as I set out, that I knew a reasonable amount about Gough Whitlam, maybe even a lot about Gough Whitlam. After all, no biographer embarks on such a major undertaking without some idea of his or her subject, or on what that subject might enable them to write about. Now, seven years and two volumes later, I understand how little I really knew about Whitlam.

To my generation, and earlier ones, Gough Whitlam is both the Labor Prime Minister who ended 23 years of conservative rule and the only Australian Prime Minister ever dismissed by a Governor-General.

These two moments bookend the previous span of so much of the writing about Whitlam. What we know of Whitlam, on a personal level, is less substantial, but no less telling. The volcanic temper, the biting wit, his crash through or crash approach, his poor judgement of personal character, the inept caucus and cabinet manager, the self-deprecating humour strangely co-existing with an undisguised healthy ego and the determined reformer.

But for whole generations, younger than mine, “Whitlam” is the name of a popular band – the Whitlams – (my family band, as Gough calls them) rather than the man who led a reforming style of government.

The election of the Whitlam Government on the 2 December 1972, bringing an end to 23 years of continuous conservative government, was an event as dramatic as the exceptional circumstances of that government’s demise on the 11November 1975. Yet, it is above all the dismissal of the government that we consider synonymous with Gough Whitlam.

The eponymous political event – “The Dismissal” – has become part of our pop-political culture. Its established images and iconography, bursting out of everything from coffee cups to tea towels to looped sound bites such as “Well may we say,” and “Kerr’s Cur,” and “Maintain your rage,” convey a settled meaning with the ease of a caricatured history.

It boasts its own television mini-series, countless books, postcards, and t-shirts. The Dismissal tour of Old Parliament House is one of its most popular. There is simply no contemporary Australian political on whom more has been written than Gough Whitlam. Certainly few governments have stimulated such controversy, commentary and critique as that led by Whitlam.

Yet, the focus of this is remarkably narrow. For all the words written about Whitlam, few have strayed from this unremitting focus on the brief, but eventual, governmental rise and fall – Whitlam’s three year period as prime minister, his truncated second government and its unprecedented dismissal by Governor-General Sir John Kerr. Even within this very specific focus, as Clem Lloyd has said, so much of it concentrates almost obsessively on the 25 days between the 16 October and the 11 November 1975.

Our perception of Gough Whitlam has a most unusual feature. It is inextricably bound up with the equally mythical dimensions of a single event that has come to represent his political life – the dismissal of Whitlam as prime minister and his entire government in November 1975.

Ultimately, this prism became a distorting one. In focusing on the irresistible drama of these few years in office, crucial formative aspects in Whitlam’s life were too readily overlooked. We forget his family background and personal relationships, his early years in Canberra, his active war service, the parliamentary decades in opposition and the modernisation of the deeply divided Labor Party and it’s policy. There is also the legendary temper that I mentioned before, that water thrown over Paul Hasluck in parliament, telephones hurled through windows, chairs flying through office doors, the period after office as Australia’s ambassador to UNESCO and later as a member of the UNESCO executive board. On top of all this, there was his work with Margaret Whitlam during the 1990s when they ran study tours through Europe, Britain, South America and Asia. All of this adds up to rich and instructive aspects of Whitlam’s life that, until now, have scarcely rated a mention.

It is this unusual context, that we knew a lot about a little, that presented me with a great opportunity as a biographer – so much more of Whitlam’s life remained to be told. The focus on the three years of the Whitlam Government has left a significant void for biography to explore. In doing so, a biographer uncovers a series of events, circumstances and characters that would do justice to the truism that truth is stranger than fiction.

By the time he came to office as Prime Minister, Whitlam had already spent the best part of two decades in the parliamentary Labor Party, dragging it out of the barren and bitter years, away from the 1955 split and into its period of greatest change. Reworking the platform, reviving the party and finally taking government, only to have it end in 30 seconds in the Governor-General’s office. How did the man who had experienced the greatest shock of his political life, the greatest challenge to his belief in the parliament and in the parliamentary system and, ultimately, his political career, pick himself up and just keep going?

Unlike the Governor-General Sir John Kerr, Gough Whitlam survived those tumultuous years, personally and politically. But it was a great struggle. And as a biographer, this was the great unknown, a part of Gough Whitlam’s life that had rarely been considered in all the frenzied, polarised reflections on his government and its dismissal. For too long, despite the voluminous writings on the significance and lasting impact of the Whitlam Government, and the endless recitations on the rights and wrongs of Kerr’s actions in dismissing that government, the man at the heart of the all had been lost. This was a story that was waiting to be told.

Biography is, at its researched best, a forensic exercise in which our slightly eccentric and certainly passionate labours over the dusty archives we hope might one day lead to that great exhilaration of an unexpected archival find. Uncovering a hidden family secret, personal diaries, or some long forgotten private papers that shed new light on an old controversy.

With Gough Whitlam’s biography, I found all three. Perhaps the most remarkable research finding in the first volume was that Gough Whitlam’s grandfather, Henry Hugh Gough Whitlam, had from the age of 18 spent four and a half years in Pentridge Prison for forging cheques.

This was an entirely unexpected find and for Gough Whitlam it was, no doubt, an unpalatable truth. As you might perhaps imagine, it was with great consternation that I then realised something I had never anticipated. I was going to have to tell Gough Whitlam something he didn’t already know. It was a truth about his own family but, at the same time, bore out Whitlam’s exhortation to those young historians all those years ago to go to the documents. Having experienced the great excitement of uncovering these poignant dusty files in the Melbourne Public Records Office, showing the clumsy criminality of Gough’s teenage grandfather, I sometimes wondered whether this second volume could ever unearth such remarkable archival secrets. I think you’ll agree that it has.

I must admit that I never imagined that, for one of the most closely forensically examined periods of our political history, the dismissal of the Whitlam government, there was still another piece of that puzzle to be found. The revelation from Sir John Kerr’s papers of his lengthy secret meetings with the then High Court Justice Sir Anthony Mason in the months leading up to the dismissal of the government, is in the editorial words of the Australian “a discovery of historical importance”.

Its significance lies not, as some have claimed, merely in the naming of Sir Anthony Mason as the third man in Kerr’s deliberations. As the biography makes clear, Mason had previously been named as the person to whom John Kerr had alluded cryptically in his own memoirs when he referred to a conversation with one person only, other than the Chief Justice. Mason’s identity as this “third man”, as it’s been called, alongside Kerr and Barwick had not yet been confirmed, certainly not by the man himself. And the precise nature and extent of his involvement with Kerr was entirely unknown.

The full significance of this recent discovery lies in three particular interrelated facts that have now come to light. First, the confirmation of Sir Anthony Mason as the previously speculated “third man”. Second, the nature and extent of his deliberations with the Governor-General, which Kerr puts as beginning in early October 1975 and which Mason now puts as even earlier as beginning in August 1975. Finally, and of immense significance, is the public statement this drew from Sir Anthony Mason himself.

For 37 years, Mason has maintained his silence on these matters, refusing to comment publicly despite Kerr’s pleas that he do so (And I have to say, despite my pleas to him to do so in the interests of history) This ensured the continuing public ignorance of Mason’s involvement with the Governor-General in the dismissal of the Whitlam Government. Mason’s statement, released only because of and in response to these revelations as he makes clear (in fact, he refers to this biography in his preamble to the statement), has in turn brought further material to light. Although there are some differences in interpretation between the two versions now put forward by Mason and Kerr, on the substantive matters they are at one.

I want to use this opportunity to work through those two statements or to work in particular through Mason’s statement and to give some indication of the significance of what has been said.

Mason accepts that his discussions with the Governor-General were more extensive than previously imagined. In fact, he states that their conversations began earlier than Kerr had recorded, stretching back to August 1975 when the supply crisis was still two months off.  Mason confirms that he spoke in secret and at length with Kerr, without the knowledge of the Prime Minister. At one point, they met in Lady Kerr’s North Sydney house, to avoid being seen by Whitlam who was that day at Kirribilli House.

 Mason does not dispute that he continued his discussions with Kerr, despite being aware that Whitlam had advised Kerr that he was not to seek external advice. During those weeks, Whitlam had reminded Kerr that his legal advisors were the Solicitor General and the Attorney-General and that his formal chief advisor was himself, as Prime Minister.

Mason also accepts that he discussed the draft advice provided to Kerr from the law officers in regard to the Governor-General’s position and powers. Stating, moreover, that he disputed the advice of the Governor-General’s formal, legal advisors. He told Kerr, “I don’t agree with it.” By what authority Kerr enabled Mason, a justice of the High Court, to view and comment upon this advice which had not yet been intended for publication, is unclear.

Nevertheless, despite having provided Kerr with his own view of the legal advisors’ advice, Mason continues to claim that he did not advise Kerr. Most remarkable is Mason’s statement that he drafted a letter dismissing Gough Whitlam as prime minister for the Governor-General. This extraordinary revelation that Mason assisted with the key dismissal document, has many people (myself included) utterly bewildered. Especially with Mason’s simultaneous claim that he, “did not encourage Sir John to dismiss Whitlam”. If there was ever any uncertainty, I would have thought drafting a letter of dismissal was a pretty big clue.

Similarly, while Mason acknowledges that he expressed relief – and that’s the term both use – to Kerr on hearing of his intention to dismiss Whitlam, he also states that his advice “should not have been understood as encouragement to dismiss the Prime Minister”. We can only wonder what action might have been understood as encouragement in Mason’s view.

The most significant divergence between the accounts of Kerr and Mason on this matter is Mason’s claim that he insisted that Kerr ought to alert Whitlam to his thinking – and many people, of course, agree with this. This would have been the proper course – that the Governor-General should offer the Prime Minister, “as a matter of fairness, the option of holding a general election”.

Mason recounts that he told the Governor-General (very much along the lines of what Sir Roden Cutler later came out and said as well) that “he should warn the Prime Minister and that if he did not agree to hold a general election his commission would be terminated”. But, according to his account, Mason continued to meet with Kerr nonetheless. This, in spite of knowing Kerr had not warned Whitlam during their discussions. Mason did not appear – as another writer has suggested recently – to have thought it important enough to warn Whitlam himself.

Kerr and Mason appear to have disagreed over this advice in their conversations. Mason writes of a dinner conversation between himself and Kerr on 9 November in which this issue arose. This is not only a point of dispute between them, however. It also presents a fundamental and irredeemable inconsistency in Mason’s account. While Mason argues strongly that he did not advise Kerr, in this instance, he claims to have done just that. That is, Mason advised Kerr, urged him even, to warn the Prime Minister of his intentions.

There are other instances in Mason’s statement that suggest a clear advisory role; his suggestion that Kerr ask Whitlam to have the law officers prepare an opinion for him, for instance, and his drafting of the dismissal letter would have to be seen in that light. It is simply inconceivable to me that either party could be unclear, at any point, as to the basis on which some secret, high level discussions about the future of an elected government were being held. As Paul Kelly noted last week, the only tenable conclusion is that Mason was implicated in Kerr’s dismissal of Whitlam.

Finally, and in my view even more alarming, is Mason’s own revelation of his conversation with Kerr on the afternoon of the 11 November 1975, following the dismissal of the Whitlam Government. Mason recounts that Kerr telephoned him later that day, after the most dramatic and turbulent post-dismissal parliamentary session during which the newly installed Fraser Government had lost five motions in the House of Representatives, including a motion of no confidence.

 Kerr telephoned Mason because he was concerned with the surprising, if belated, non-parliamentary process and the conventions of responsible government. Speaker Gordon Scholes of the House of Representatives called to see him. The Speaker had to convey a series of resolutions just passed by the House of Representatives, including an expression of no confidence in the Fraser Government. In a description, as breathtaking as it is bland, Mason states, “I said to the Governor-General that the resolution [that is, the resolution of the House of Representatives] was irrelevant.”

Irrelevant? Kerr had commissioned Malcolm Fraser to form a caretaker government. And a sitting justice of the High Court, Sir Anthony Mason, now was telling the Governor-General that the most significant resolution of the House of Representatives, the resolution by which governments are made and unmade (a vote of confidence or lack of it) was irrelevant. The parliament’s determination of government was to be worth nothing. Mason had already refuted the advice of the Governor-General’s legal advisors and now he refuted the resolution of the House. Yet, Mason says that he did not advise and he did not encourage.

I shall read a brief segment from my book, in conclusion:

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”.

 These revelations have inevitably generated a reconsideration of our understanding of those dramatic events. Since they were first published, ten days ago, not a day has passed where there has not been some further reconsideration of their significance and meaning. It is now clear that as he moved towards dismissing Gough Whitlam as prime minister, and the entire Whitlam ministry from office, that Kerr’s planning was more lengthy, more extensive and more deceptive than previously imagined.

There can simply no longer be any question that Sir John Kerr deceived his Prime Minister. The separation of powers, the primacy of elected government, the mutual respect for and relations between the three most important institutions in our polity, the High Court, the Office of Governor General and the parliament, had all been tested during this extraordinary time. But, ultimately, it was not the institutions that were found wanting, but the individuals within them.

As Mungo MacCallum wrote this week, “the question is not one of law but of judgement and of morals”. Sir Anthony’s statement also raises the final question – why has the letter of dismissal that he drafted for the Governor General not been released to the public? I call upon Sir Anthony, in the interests of accountability and for the historical record, to do so. We should not have to wait a further 37 years for the full story of this extraordinary period of our political history.