Remembering The Dismissal

The Hon John Howard, prime minister of Australia from 1996 to 2007, is also an author – his most recent work The Menzies Era – and commentator on Australian politics. As a young MP in 1975, and Liberal back bencher, John Howard witnessed many of the events of November 1975 at close range. On Monday 9 November 2015, John Howard joined Professor Anne Twomey, Paul Kelly and Gerard Henderson at The Sydney Institute to discuss the constitutional ramifications of the dismissal of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam by Governor-General Sir John Kerr.

REMEMBERING THE DISMISSAL

JOHN HOWARD

I’d like to start by complimenting Gerard and Anne for organising this gathering. It is the subject of endless fascination. I also congratulate Paul Kelly and Troy Bramston on their new book; it has a lot of new material. I’ve read all the extracts in The Australian and I’ll buy the book tonight and read the whole thing. But, without any disrespect to what will no doubt be a fascinating tome, nothing that I’ve heard or read so far alters the fundamentals of the situation.

The fundamentals of the situation were, legally speaking, that the Governor General acted in accordance with the power vested in him under the constitution. One of the important things to remember is that the Australian constitution, vis-à-vis the Governor General, is very different from the Canadian foundation document – the British North America Act passed in 1867. And, of course, it is vastly different from constitutional practice in Britain because we are a bicameral state where the Senate has concurrent powers with the House of Representatives; except with the initiation of money bills.

It is important to understand that. Nothing I’ve read can cast any real doubt on the fundamental constitutionality of what happened. But the broader question is, was it wise on the part of Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser and John Kerr to act as they did? And when you accumulate the behaviour of the three of them, can you really indict one or more of them and blame them for what was certainly a wrenching constitutional crisis?

Australia would have been better if it hadn’t happened, there’s not much doubt about that. I remember – after the Coalition was defeated in 1983 – running into the chairman of the ANZ bank, Sir William Vines, at the airport. He said to me, “John, I’ve just written two letters. I’ve written a letter to Malcolm Fraser thanking him for his work as prime minister and I’ve written a letter to Bob Hawke congratulating him on his election as prime minister and I wish him well. I didn’t vote for him, but I hope he succeeds.” Now, of course, no such conversation could have taken place in 1975, such was the political poison in partisan politics in our country at that time. I also remember getting a very friendly letter from Bill Kelly after I was elected Prime Minister in March 1996. He didn’t resile from any of his detestation of my policies. But, in the spirit of Australian sportsmanship, he at least congratulated the Coalition on having won.

Can I observe, as somebody who was there at the time, a couple of things about the behaviour of those three people. I have always come down with a view that if you’re going to blame two people, you’ve got to blame Fraser and Whitlam equally. John Kerr has received a rougher treatment from history than he deserved. That’s my view. He ended up being the meat in the sandwich. He had a legitimate fear of being removed and there is a reference in Paul Kelly’s book to a letter that Whitlam exchanged with Harold Wilson, the British prime minister, in which he actually said that he would have advised the Queen to get rid of Kerr. So we’re not dealing with a theoretical possibility.

The other thing to remember is that throughout the whole dispute, for whatever combination of reasons (and there may be some material in the letters exchanged between the Palace and the then Governor General), that Kerr was determined, as was his duty, to prevent the Queen being directly involved in partisan politics in Australia.

Given the clarity with which the constitution vests the powers of the Monarchy in the Governor General, you may recall that when the House of Representatives passed the resolution of no confidence in Malcolm Fraser on the afternoon of 11 November, the Speaker sought to see Kerr. Then a letter was sent to the Queen. And the response from the Queen’s Private Secretary, Martin Charteris, was that, clearly, all of these matters are vested in the Governor General under the constitution. So, whatever may be said about Sir John Kerr and his motive and his behaviour, he certainly was successful in shielding the monarch from any direct involvement. And that was one of the duties of his office.

I’ll make a couple of other observations. The fundamental failure of Gough Whitlam was to not depart from that ancient Labor view – that if you appoint somebody, you own them. On the night of the dismissal, Bob Ellicott and I were walking through Kings Hall when we ran in to Senator Jim McClelland. He was, of course, very close to John Kerr and had been years earlier. He was also very close to Gough Whitlam, who was a person, despite our political differences, I respected. He said to Bob and me, “You had the Queen’s man in the bag from the very beginning.” Now, I had no idea on what basis, other than the dismissal of the Whitlam Government, he made that declaration. But it did indicate to me that as far as he was concerned, it was all a question of in who’s bag somebody might be. And of course, Gough Whitlam did misread John Kerr.

As I wrote in my autobiography, my dear friend John Carrick was giving advice to Malcolm Fraser throughout this whole intense period of activity. From 16 October, Carrick was saying that he thought Kerr would want to receive a favourable judgement from history and that he would do not necessarily do the easy thing, but he would do the right thing.

In so many of these disputes, what is involved is the judgement of people. I cannot understand how, in the light of the fact that Kerr had asked for advice via the then Attorney General, Ken Enderby, about the reserve powers that this didn’t represent a very clear warning. You don’t ask about powers that might lead to someone being removed unless you are contemplating using those reserve powers.

The other thing that ought to have given the then Prime Minister reason to pause, was the fact that the Governor General (as well as seeking advice on the reserve powers) sought advice as to when it was believed that the money would run out. That was one of the reasons for his acting when he did. This is not in dispute by Paul Kelly or Professor Twomey. It was generally accepted that if you were going to have any kind of election by the end of 1975, then 11 November was about the last date on which some kind of decisive action could be taken.

I’m interested in the new material that Troy Bramston and Paul Kelly have assembled. There’s a debate about the substance of the conversation between John Kerr and Malcolm Fraser on the morning of 11 November. Was it merely (which I believe it was) as Kerr recalled it – his seeking confirmation that Fraser would not allow supply to pass? Or did the call also include a query to Fraser as to whether he’d agree to certain conditions if he were to become a caretaker prime minister?

I accept that I was member of a shadow ministry that, one by one, was asked by the then opposition leader, Malcolm Fraser, whether we would support deferring supply. I put my hand up along with Don Chip, for example, who was later to form the Australian Democrats – in part, based on a promise never to block supply in the future. A collective decision was taken by the Coalition to block supply but the person who carried the burden of that decision, more than anybody else, was Malcolm Fraser.

I have always taken the view that this was a constitutional dispute of the greatest magnitude. I don’t believe that it will be repeated, because it did do damage as a dispute to the civility of politics in Australia. It did embitter people on both sides and it did have a greater impact on the personality of, therefore the career and reputation of, the then Governor General – more than Gough Whitlam or Malcolm Fraser. Malcolm Fraser became prime minister and the judgements of history to be made about him predominantly will be about what he did as prime minister, rather than his role in bringing about the elections of 1975.

Many people would argue that the circumstances of Gough Whitlam’s removal, the sustained response of the Labor Party and the support for Gough in the community have enhanced, rather than diminished, his reputation – certainly amongst at least 50 per cent of the Australian population. My judgement is that this was a titanic constitutional standoff, shoot out, whatever expression you want to use between two very strong and determined men, neither of who, in my view, would have retreated.

Both Whitlam and Fraser together, certainly not by design but by force of circumstances, put an intolerable burden on the then Governor General. He was forced to find a solution. And the only solution available to him was to dismiss the Prime Minister. I’m not as persuaded as some may be that Whitlam would have not gone to the Queen. I think he almost certainly would have. There was the counter factual of requiring the Palace to engage in some masterly inactivity. And that would have done damage to the monarchy. I don’t believe there’s any doubt about that. I find it impossible to believe that there would not have have been a very strenuous attempt to execute a change of Governors General.

My judgement is that, in those circumstances, I don’t think the monarch would have wanted to have to make the decision – it would have been the last thing in the world she would have wanted. But I’m not sure that she would have dangled the thing along in quite the same way that has been suggested, so that some other device would have been found to resolve the dispute as I think you should in a democracy. People are unhappy about crises. Blame must be apportioned to both sides of politics.

One final point that ought to be said and that is, in the end, it was democratically resolved. There was an election and the Australian people, given the opportunity, expressed the view about the government they wanted for the next three years. They did so in equally resounding terms just two years later.

I wouldn’t want Australia to go through something like that again. It produced rancour and bitterness and I can understand the strength and feeling amongst many people who support the Australian Labor Party. But I would simply say to them, if you’re going to direct your anger 40 years on, direct your anger at the Coalition and their lineal descendants. It’s unfair to dump all of the burden of it, or even a substantial part of the burden of it, on the then Governor General, Sir John Kerr.