The deliberate theft of free education by successive governments is one of the greatest acts of intergenerational theft in our history. I know, because I was one of the lucky ones who benefited from Whitlam's vision. We must restore it.
#FreeEducation #Whitlam #AusPol #LNPFail #EducationForAll #dumbingdown
𝗪𝗜𝗞𝗜𝗣𝗘𝗗𝗜𝗔'𝗦 𝗙𝗘𝗔𝗧𝗨𝗥𝗘𝗗 𝗔𝗥𝗧𝗜𝗖𝗟𝗘
✧ 1975 Australian constitutional crisis ✧
The 1975 Australian constitutional crisis culminated on 11 November when Governor-General Sir John Kerr dismissed Gough Whitlam of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) as prime minister and appointed Malcolm Fraser, the opposition leader, as caretaker. The Whitlam government had been rocked by scandal...
#AustralianLaborParty #Kerr #Whitlam #ALP #Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional_crisis
A comment from a post in which Gough Whitlam was referred to as a politician who "delivered so much for Australians who had felt overlooked for too long".
I mean, I'm not a fan of politicians... but whatever you want to say about Whitlam, he fucking PASSED some legislation.
Remembering the day school children around Australia broke the news of the sacking of the Whitlam government by the Governor-General...
The announcement of the sacking by the Governor-General's secretary on the steps of old Parliament House was broadcast to all the children watching kids programmes after school. With no social media and most parents working, the children heard about the dismissal of the government first and told their parents when they got home. I remember running out to my parents with my younger brother shouting the news to them. Coincidentally, our car had broken down so my mother arrived in a tow truck pulling the car.
I was in primary school and old enough to understand how big this news was. At school for years afterwards my friends and I recalled this momentous occasion and how we told our parents.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-11/the-dismissal-50th-anniversary-photo/105958494
I started reading newspapers from a young age and remember reading Michelle Grattan's articles in The Age. Here are her recollections of The dismissal:
https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-remembering-the-day-gough-whitlam-lost-his-job-269387
“My proposition was that #Gough should ask (HM) the #Queen to accept his advice to appoint a new #GovernorGeneral,” he said. “In the event that #Kerr resisted, I said to Gough he should be put under police arrest.”
“That is certainly what I would have done if I was #PrimeMinister.”
Keating, in his first filmed interview on the dismissal for the Museum of #AustralianDemocracy at Old Parliament House in #Canberra, said there was a risk that Kerr could win support from the (ADF) Army to protect him from arrest as he was the nation’s commander-in-chief. This was an issue that #Whitlam had to consider. In other words, you’d have to have the #soldiers with you for this to happen,” — Paul Keating, PM, ‘91 - 96.
#dismissal / #Kerr / #GoughKeating / #Straya 1975 <https://theage.com.au/politics/federal/keating-reveals-he-told-whitlam-to-have-kerr-sacked-or-arrested-20251110-p5n93b.html> / <https://archive.md/xkF7z>
I dismiss the rotting, corrupt, parasitical British royalty and all imperial hegemony. Fk off and keep on fking off. Maintaining the rage here :) #AIcartoons #AIart #MaintainTheRage #Whitlam #auspol
Gough #Whitlam, Australian PM 1972–75:
• free universal healthcare
• end of White Australia policy
• Racial Discrimination Act
• abolished university fees
• removed tax on contraception
• no-fault divorce
• equal pay for women
• extended maternity leave and support for single mothers
• abolition of conscription
• abolition of death penalty
• Aboriginal #LandRights and the start of #LandBack
• established Legal Aid and Aboriginal legal services
• doubled arts funding: established SBS, National Gallery, Australia Council for the Arts, National Film and Television School
• withdrew ADF from #Vietnam
• withdrew support for apartheid #SouthAfrica
• first Western leader to visit #China after WWII; re-established diplomatic relations
• independence for #PNG
• democratising the electoral system through One-Vote-One-Value
• first federal legislation on human rights, environment and heritage
• cut #tariffs
• Trade Practices Commission
• Law Reform Commission
• National Parks & Wildlife Service
• Australia Film Commission
• Australia Council
• Consumer Affairs Commission
• Technical and Further Education Commission #TAFE
• abolished appeals to the (UK) Privy Council
• accelerated rollout of sewerage system to disadvantaged communities
• sought to close #PineGap
All this in under three years. #Auspol
Today marks the 50th anniversary of The Dismissal, where the Governor General (the Queen’s representative in Australia), Sir John Kerr, exercised the little known Reserve Powers to sack the democratically elected government of Gough Whitlam.
Whitlam’s Government is now more broadly remembered by the general population for its long list of reforms over the three years they were in government more than the manner of its ending. Those reforms rocketed Australia from a particularly sleepy and inward looking nation in the 1950s and 1960s toward a more outward looking and progressive nation in the 1970s.
I have tooted and retooted numerous articles about The Dismissal in the last week, so I will not be discussing all the details again.
Instead, I will keep it really simple.
What will people be thinking of the Albanese Government in 50 years from now? A government with an absolutely stonking majority, an almost certain third term and no effective opposition other than a rag tag bunch of independents.
I posit that the Albanese Government will likely be remembered as a government that pissed a great opportunity up against the wall, a government that was too scared of its own reflection to make any meaningful change. A government that purported to be progressive and reformist while doing none of those things. A government with tremendous opportunity to make meaningful and lasting change that addressed systemic problems which are holding Australia back. And a government that squibbed its responsibility to the future.
I won’t be around in 50 years … so I won’t be able to reflect back on the Albanese Government. But I ask you to think about this:
What would Whitlam have achieved with a majority half the size of the majority held by the Albanese Government and with a near certainty of a third term from the outset of their second term?
With the 50th anniversary of The Dismissal tomorrow, the article below is an interesting read that goes through a list of who would benefit from the removal of a democratically elected Whitlam Government while noting some of Whitlam’s personal strengths and short comings.
Worth a read.
——-
Quote:
In the case of the US, it took Whitlam no time at all to enrage both US President Richard Nixon and his National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger with a letter criticising the bombing of North Vietnam at Christmas in 1972. While other nations’ leaders were equally critical, it was Whitlam’s style that aroused in the recipients a uniquely high level of fury. As Kissinger made clear, it was Whitlam’s air of moral superiority and placing the US “on the same level as our enemy” that caused the outrage. Kissinger reported that Nixon was also particularly exercised by “Australia treating the US on a par with other foreign countries”.
——-
#auspol #Whitlam #TheDismissal #50Years
https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/11/1-mr-whitlams-style-series-part-1/
This is my day tomorrow: a full day seminar at ANU which I'm very much looking forward to.
The Whitlam Dismissal and the Crisis of November 1975 Program Highlights
Session 1: The Double Dismissal: A 50 Year Reflection
Launch of a new commissioned paper by:
• Distinguished Whitlam Fellow, Emeritus Professor Jenny Hocking AM
• Dr Matt Harvey
Interlocutor: Honorary Professor Esther Anatolitis (RMIT University)
Session 2: The Dismissal from Below
Launch of a new commissioned paper by:
• Distinguished Whitlam Fellow, Professor Frank Bongiorno AM
• Dr James Watson
Interlocutor: Professor Michelle Arrow (Macquarie University)
Session 3: The Crisis of November 1975 and the Dismissal of the Whitlam Government
Facilitated panel discussion featuring:
• Distinguished Professor George Williams AO (Vice-Chancellor, Western Sydney University)
• The Hon Mark Dreyfus KC MP (Member for Isaacs; former Commonwealth Attorney-General)
• The Hon Justice Michael Lee (Federal Court of Australia)
• Julia Baird (ABC journalist, broadcaster, author)
• Troy Bramston (Whitlam Biographer, Journalist, The Australian)
• The Hon Amanda Vanstone AO (former Liberal Senator for South Australia)
Interlocutor: Professor Mark Kenny (ANU)
Session 4: Drawing the Divide: Political Cartoons and the Dismissal
• Mike Bowers in conversation with Cathy Wilcox and Fiona Katauskas
• Featuring historical and contemporary political cartoons reflecting on the Dismissal
Presented by:
• The Whitlam Institute within Western Sydney University
• The Australian Studies Institute, Australian National Univesity
#TheDismissal #Whitlam #ANU #Canberra #Australia #History #Politics
Histories yet to be written. On maintaining our rage.
Below is a link to part two of John Menadue’s reflections on The Dismissal of the Whitlam Government on 11 November 1975 and worth a read.
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Quote:
One reason why the loans affair became such a political issue was that senior officers in Treasury leaked continually to the Opposition and the media about the loan raising. Treasury had chummy relations with companies like Morgan Stanley and didn’t want to upset such relationships. They also believed, genuinely, that the loan raising was bad policy. They were right on that, but by then Whitlam had stopped listening to them.
——-
#Auspol #TheDismissal #Whitlam #50Years
https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/11/the-second-dismissal-the-loans-affair-and-meetings-with-kerr/
The interview with John Menadue (Head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet when Whitlam was sacked by John Kerr) is long but a very interesting read.
Menadue is probably the only remaining significant figure on the inside of the Whitlam Government still alive (Keating was promoted from the back bench to a junior minister position a few weeks before the Dismissal and would have his own views).
There is a fair bit of contrasting Whitlam versus Albanese included. I am left with the feeling that Whitlam is the better of the two and would have done a lot more if he had the stonking majority that Albanese has.
——-
Quote:
Whitlam’s reservations about the American alliance were firming but he was conscious of the politics: of being wedged by conservatives on the issue. What concerned him towards the end was when he found out that Pine Gap was not run by the Pentagon, but by the CIA. That produced quite an outraged response because Whitlam had been deceived for three years into believing it was run by the Pentagon and not by the CIA. That became an issue in the subsequent election and in the American response. I’ve got no doubt that the CIA was directly involved in the dismissal of the Whitlam Government. I had assumed and known they were standing in the background, and I’ve subsequently learned they were very much in the foreground.
——-
#Auspol #Whitlam #TheDismisal #50Years #History
https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/11/what-would-whitlam-think-of-the-albanese-government/
The attached article is written by John Menadue, who was the head of The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet at the time of The Dismissal of the Whitlam Government on 11Novemer 1975, 50 years ago next week.
It makes a very interesting read from an insider’s perspective of what went on leading up to and on the day of The Dismissal and is worth a read.
#Auspol #TheDismissal #Whitlam #50Years
Edited to fix the 5- to 50
@xyz Whitlam’s dismissal was never just a constitutional crisis. It exposed how deeply foreign and corporate interests could reach into Australian democracy. When Whitlam dared to assert real independence, the establishment and its allies in Washington made sure he was removed. A stark reminder that sovereignty means little when power lies elsewhere.
There will be a lot of #Australian younglings who were born after 1975 and thus have only a passing knowledge that Edward Gough #Whitlam was an Australian Prime Minister who was sacked by the Governor General (the Queen’s Representative) on 11 November 1975 - very soon to be 50 years ago.
If that is all you know then you should read this article. The grubby fingerprints,of the USA were all over The Dismissal and the article brings the pieces together coherently.
Background - Whitlam had succeeded to the Prime Ministership in 1972, after defeating the third worst Prime Minister in my living memory - Sir William McMahon. Whitlam led a reformist Government and would have actually done a lot more than he did if he had the stonking majority the current federal Labor government has. I wish Whitlam had that luxury.
#Auspol #AustralianLaborParty #Kerr #Whitlam #Carter
#PineGap #CIA #USPol #Democracy
The role of the United States in the dismissal of the Whitlam Government
By Bevan Ramsden | 23 October 2025
anger & exasperation rekindled...
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/the-role-of-the-united-states-in-the-dismissal-of-the-whitlam-government,20295
In 1975, Australia lost more than a Prime Minister — it lost its independence. The CIA’s hidden hand in Whitlam’s dismissal still echoes today. Bevan Ramsden reports.#auspol #whitlam #dismissal #fuckcia #fuckmerka
