Gough turned Abuse-of-Power into Constitutional Resurrection

My last interaction with Gough Whitlam was at the J.M.W. Turner exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia in March 2008. Watching him like a praetor, Margaret made sure that he kept away from the booze. “Gough, the champagne will kill you, and it’s not very nice anyway!” She had moved away to secure herself a life-restoring glass of bubbly. As I handed him a surreptitious glass of fizz, Gough’s last words to me were “Comrade, you’re a lifesaver”.  

Those of us who were at our desks, working away in the interests of the nation on the afternoon of 11 November 1975, had no idea that the Governor General had been conspiring to undermine the integrity and legitimacy of our elected government. 

But the dismissal of the Prime Minister, the No Confidence motions and the Speaker’s attempt to do his constitutional duty to inform the Governor-General that the Parliament had no confidence in his appointment and did have confidence in the elected leader of the majority lower house party certainly got our attention. In the old Admin Building – affectionately known as The Kremlin by its Foreign Affairs and Attorney-General’s inmates – we left our desks, hung out the windows, and progressively wandered over to the lawns in front of Parliament House. 

The parliamentary roller-coaster came to an abrupt stop when the Prime Minister appeared on the front steps of Parliament House just before 5pm. At the back of the swelling crowd, the suited and tied public servants (sadly, not many women in those days) could barely hear the Prime Minister as he boomed over the head of the Official Secretary “Well may we say ‘God Save the Queen’, because nothing will save the Governor General”. 

Many have rightly identified the prophetic character of Whitlam’s words. Like the anti-hero in a Greek tragedy, Kerr met his fate, breathing life (or what might pass for it) into the phrase “drunk and disorderly” – a decline into the dissolute. But Whitlam’s words were much more than that, and many of us in the crowd knew it. They were much more than a statement of acceptance. They were much more than a statement of democratic defiance. They were a statement of Australia’s immediate political resurrection, and of Gough’s personal and political resurrection as well. 

Everyone in the crowd was shocked at Kerr’s hubris and over-reach. We all knew that the politics of supply had much further to go, and that the Senate had not finished its consideration of the bills. The impertinence of the Palace Poodle masquerading as a defender of democracy was palpable. We all knew that the integrity of our Parliament was in peril. We were all angry. 

Mayhem might have followed, and a lesser Prime Minister (and wow! hadn’t we seen one in Gough’s immediate predecessor) might have brought the nation to crisis. But Gough demonstrated his innate nobility, and in so doing the nobility of our democratic system in the face of the ignobility of Kerr’s interference, with the foreknowledge and complicity of the House of Windsor, as Jenny Hocking has demonstrated comprehensively.  

Gough knew politics, and he knew the mood of the electorate. He knew that his government would not survive a general election. He also knew that by rising above the immediacy and the insult of Kerr’s intervention, he would protect the Parliament and the democratic processes of which the Parliament is emblematic. An agnostic at best, Gough understood the pre-emptive nature of resurrection.  

I had enjoyed the enormous privilege of a couple of hours with Gough and Margaret at the Istana Tetamu in Kuala Lumpur during his Malaysia visit in early 1974. The subjects for discussion? Greek tragedies (Gough preferred Aeschylus, I preferred Sophocles); the idea of metanoia (repentance) in the Pauline epistles; and the arrogance of Enoch Powell as the 25-year-old Professor of Greek at Sydney University when Gough studied under him in the late thirties. I didn’t get a word in. 

Gough displayed no trace of metanoia in how he dealt with Kerr’s hubris. For Gough, 11 November 1975 was not about him, or even about the Labor party. It was not about Fraser and even less was it about Kerr. It was about Australia and its democracy. And in that, Gough displayed his character as a true national leader, protecting and promoting the life of the nation and its key institutions – a lifesaver and a life preserver.

Allan Behm is an international & security affairs advisor at the Australia Institute. He is a former Chief of Staff to Greg Combet, and former senior advisor to Senator Penny Wong.