Gerard Henderson's Column: 31st October 2000
Constitution Conspires Against Conspiracy
Guess who’s no longer maintaining the rage against John Kerr? Gough Whitlam, it seems. Can it be that, a quarter of a century after the dismissal of the Whitlam government and almost a decade since Sir John’s death, the former prime minister is going soft? Or is it time-out for a reassessment of one of the few genuinely interesting events in Australian history? And what will this mean for those who believe that it was all a CIA-initiated conspiracy?
On October 12 Gough Whitlam spoke at a forum in Canberra organised by the Parliamentary Education Office. Among the issues under discussion was the decision of the Malcolm Fraser led Coalition to block supply (i.e. money bills) in late 1975.
When Gough Whitlam refused to break the deadlock by requesting an election, the Governor-General dismissed the Whitlam government on November 11, 1975. Kerr then commissioned Malcolm Fraser as caretaker prime minister, pending an election for both the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Gough Whitlam did not present a paper at the Canberra forum. However the proceedings were recorded. According to reports of the function, Whitlam refrained from blaming his predicament in November 1975 on the role played by the Governor-General. Instead the former prime minister sheeted home ultimate responsibility for the 1975 constitutional crisis to the framers of the Australian Constitution. He claimed that "the business in 1975 arose because our founders squibbed the issue of what happens when there is a different political composition of…the Senate and the Lower House".
It is unclear whether Gough Whitlam’s decision not to discuss John Kerr and the dismissal at the same forum indicated a cease-fire. Or just a temporary truce. No doubt we will all find out when the former prime minister addresses the Dismissal Dinner at the Australian National University on November 11.
There is little doubt as to who was primarily responsible for the 1975 constitutional crisis. Namely Malcolm Fraser – who decided to block supply. And Gough Whitlam – who refused to advise the Governor-General to commission an election.
This despite the fact that, when Labor was in opposition in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Gough Whitlam and Senator Lionel Murphy had opined that the Senate could block supply. And that, if this were to occur, the government of the day would be forced to call an election. The relevant quotes are cited in David Smith’s 1991 Nan Phillips Memorial Lecture which is published in the March 1992 issue of the Canberra Historical Journal.
It became John Kerr’s lot to resolve the impasse between two extremely confident and stubborn men. Agree with his actions or not, it was no easy decision. Moreover, subsequent events have delegitimised the most telling criticism of Kerr’s actions on Remembrance Day 1975. Namely that he should have waited for a week or more to see if the Coalition senators would remain as one in continuing to block supply.
In 1993 Poplar Press published Anton Hermann’s important political biography Alan Missen: Liberal Pilgrim. For some time the theory had developed that, in 1975, the late Senator Missen was uncomfortable with his party’s decision to block supply and would have supported Whitlam’s cause. If only the Governor-General had not acted when he did.
Hermann demolished the myth that Missen would have crossed the floor in the Senate to pass supply. The Victorian Senator had decided only to take such a move if he had a solid core of Coalition colleagues to support him. That never eventuated. In the midst of the crisis Missen wrote in his diary that it was "clear" to him that "nobody" among the Coalition was prepared to defy Fraser and cross the floor. In other words, Kerr’s assumption that the constitutional crisis was deadlocked turned out to be correct.
No doubt the controversy about the propriety of Kerr’s 1975 decision will continue. Yet there should be no doubt about what actually happened in the lead-up to, and on, Remembrance Day 1975. We know why Kerr did what he did – it is set out in his autobiography Matters for Judgment (Macmillan 1978). And we know to whom he went for legal advice. Namely (then) Chief Justice Sir Garfield Barwick and (then) Justice Sir Anthony Mason. In a speech at Griffith University in July 1993, Whitlam commented that, for the first time in his own lifetime, the "High Court has in Sir Anthony Mason a Chief Justice who is adequate in both national and international terms".
The revelation that Anthony Mason had agreed with the constitutional propriety of Kerr’s actions at the time of the dismissal (see Herald January 8, 1994) seems to have diminished the anti-Kerr rage somewhat. Except among those who prefer the conspiracy view of history.
To his credit, Gough Whitlam has never claimed that his government was destroyed by United States’ intelligence agencies.
In 1984 he was asked by journalist Peter Hastings whether be believed that "the CIA had got to the Governor-General of the time". Whitlam replied: "No I don’t; I never have." (Herald, March 24, 1984).
Yet this has not stopped the conspiracy theorists from spouting their theories. Most recently in the Sunday Age of October 15 where journalist Andrew Clark quoted Bill Morrison (Defence Minister in the Whitlam government) as claiming that Kerr requested, and received, a briefing from the CIA shortly before the dismissal. Morrison did not assert that the (alleged) meeting was "decisive". But suggested that it may have "reinforced his position".
Then there is Phillip Knightley’s Australia: A Biography of a Nation (Random House, 2000). According to the author, in intelligence matters "proof…is hard to come by". So, there is no alternative but to run with theories. Knightley draws some "probable conclusions". Namely that the CIA’s role may have amounted to "an accumulation of minor interventions". Consequently he maintains that Kerr "may have sacked [Whitlam] anyway, but to believe that the CIA…had not the slightest influence on his decision defies logic".
Who’s logic? To accept Knightley’s "probable conclusion" you have to hold the view that without the CIA’s involvement the dismissal would not have happened. But Malcolm Fraser did not block supply to support the US interests in the region. And John Kerr did not seek advice from Justices Barwick and Mason about foreign policy matters.
John Kerr told me in January 1988 that it was "simply not true" that his decision to dismiss the Whitlam government had any connection whatsoever with the CIA or any other Western intelligence agency. There is no plausible evidence to the contrary.
In his appearance at Parliament House earlier this month, Gough Whitlam did not raise the spectre of the CIA. Nor did he bag John Kerr. Instead he drew attention to the fact that the constitutional issues raised in 1975 had not been resolved. As Professor Cheryl Saunders has recently pointed out, the "events that precipitated the 1975 crisis could recur". Even if the Governor-General were much loved and the CIA not extant.
