Just before his announcement, Fraser assembled the entire shadow ministry, tabled his recommendation that the opposition vote to defer supply, and one by one he asked each shadow his or her view. Along with every other shadow present, I supported Fraser’s recommendation.
This should be recalled, as revisionism about 1975 has included suggestions that Malcolm Fraser had acted unilaterally on the supply issue. There was no dissent in the shadow cabinet ranks. Don Chipp, later to resign from the Liberal Party, form the Democrats and denounce the blocking of supply by Fraser, was one of those present at the meeting who strongly backed his leader’s position. There was enthusiastic support for Fraser’s push at the full Coalition party meeting, immediately following shadow cabinet. The late Alan Missen, a Victorian senator, was the only person to express concern. He stood and said, ‘Leader, you know I have qualms about this.’ Phillip Lynch, the Liberal deputy, replied, saying, ‘Alan, let’s have a talk about it.’ They left the room together. A short while later Lynch came back and said that ‘Everything [would] be okay'. Missen voted with the rest of his colleagues to defer supply.
Labor was understandably bitter at the failure of the Bjelke-Petersen Government to follow normal custom and replace the deceased Queensland ALP senator Bert Milliner with his chosen Labor replacement, Mal Colston. The Labor Party was foolishly stubborn in rejecting the initial request of the Queensland Premier to submit three names from which a choice would be made.
The upshot was that Whitlam was left with only 29 senators supporting him against 30 from the Coalition when the crucial Senate vote to defer supply was taken in mid October. Patrick Field, Bjelke-Petersen’s chosen replacement for Milliner, did not participate in the vote, but this did not alter the fact that if normal practice had been followed, the vote would have been tied at 30 each and supply blocked rather than deferred.
Several months earlier, the NSW Coalition Government had likewise chosen Cleaver Bunton, an Independent, to replace Lionel Murphy, who had been appointed to the High Court. This did not have the same consequences as the Queensland appointment because Bunton voted with Whitlam on the supply issue.
In 1977 the Australian people voted overwhelmingly for a constitutional change, effectively guaranteeing that when a casual vacancy occurred in the Senate the replacement would come from the same Party as the former senator.
Unlike May 1974, Whitlam did not call an election. He was determined to prevail, asserting that as governments were formed by the party having a majority in the lower house, the Senate had no right prematurely to terminate a government so formed by forcing an early election. Politically, he had no option. He would face annihilation at an early poll. Fraser’s biggest challenge was to hold the Coalition together as the weeks of deadlock dragged on.
His argument was as simple as Whitlam’s. Our Constitution gives coextensive powers to the Senate and House of Representatives, so the government of the day needs the approval of both houses to spend money. As the Senate had not given that approval, the Government could not continue to function and should call an election to resolve the issue. Politically, Fraser had to maintain his position. He knew that he would win an early poll, just as Whitlam knew he would lose it. Stripped of rhetorical excesses, it was a titanic clash of political wills between two determined men. A compromise was never likely once the Senate had deferred supply. Fraser did offer to pass supply if Whitlam agreed to hold an election the following May. This was rejected.
Once the two protagonists had staked out their ground, interest focused on who might blink first, and increasingly, as the weeks passed, how or when might the Governor-General act. Whitlam’s operating assumption was that Kerr would always do as he was told. He badly misread his choice as Australia’s effective Head of State. Kerr would be no cipher. No one understood this better than John Carrick. In the days that followed the deferral of supply, he said to me several times, ‘John Kerr will want the judgement of history. He will do the right thing by the office.’ Carrick had known Kerr for a number of years, and well enough to divine that he was not in any way beholden to the Labor Party.
John Kerr was called ‘Old Silver’ at the Sydney bar because of his impressive mane of white hair. Bob Ellicott knew him well. They had been barristers together. He shared Carrick’s opinion that Kerr would want to be seen as having done his Constitutional duty. On 16 October, Ellicott published a prescient legal opinion of what Kerr might have to do; in it he raised the option of dismissal of Whitlam and his ministers as a way through. In a drama which involved many lawyers (mostly from the Sydney University Law School), Ellicott emerged, courtesy of this opinion, as the real star.
Tirath Khemlani, the Pakistani commodities dealer who had been put in touch with the former Minerals and Energy Minister Rex Connor when the latter was on the hunt for overseas loan moneys, landed in Canberra in the middle of the imbroglio, wanting to see the opposition. Ellicott and I were given the job of talking to him and getting details of his contact with Connor. It was disconcerting; if Australia wanted to borrow large amounts of money for development purposes, it beggared belief that it would not act through traditional banking channels. Khemlani was at most a fringe operator, and Connor’s behaviour had made Australia look foolish. Bob Ellicott and I found Khemlani a likeable man when interviewed at the Wellington Hotel, Canberra, but we didn’t see him and Australia borrowing abroad as a natural fit.
Canberra had a beautiful sunny day on 11 November, not a cloud in the sky. The view down from the War Memorial (surely the most impressive monument of its kind in the world) must have been as spectacular as ever, so ordered and serene. Sir John Kerr must have felt anything but serene as he attended the Remembrance Day service, having already resolved upon a course of action which would result, almost certainly, in him being the only Governor-General in Australia’s history to dismiss an incumbent Prime Minister.
What followed is central to the political folklore of Australia. Judgements made are set in cement. It had been a defining political clash between two implacable foes. It fell to John Kerr to find a solution which referred that clash to the Australian people for resolution. He did just that, at immense personal cost.
The money was fast running out; Whitlam wanted a half-Senate election, which would resolve nothing; Fraser would not relent. So Kerr, recognising that it was, above all, a political stalemate, remitted that stalemate to the people for adjudication. It was a thoroughly democratic solution.
When Whitlam called on him to advise a half-Senate election, Kerr asked Whitlam if he would advise a general election, that being the only action which would secure Senate passage of the supply bills, thus resolving the deadlock. Whitlam refused to give that advice, whereupon the Governor-General withdrew Whitlam’s commission as PM, handing him written reasons for his decision.
Kerr immediately commissioned Fraser as caretaker PM, on condition that he advised a general election; secured passage of the supply bills; and made no appointments or conducted any inquiries into activities of the Labor Government. Fraser naturally agreed with these conditions.
Earlier in the day, none of us knew this was coming when the scheduled joint party meeting took place, although most sensed that time was running out and something would soon give. Phillip Lynch said, ‘Keep patient; I think things are coming to a head.’ He had just participated in a meeting of party leaders, convened by the PM to see if common ground to solve the impasse could be found. The meeting was a public-relations prelude to Whitlam advising Kerr to call a half-Senate election.
When the house met, a debate on the supply issue ensued. I continued my normal routine. Leaving the library, I ran into journalists in Kings Hall, who informed me that there would be a half-Senate election, because that is what Whitlam had told his caucus.
The house rose for lunch at 12.55 pm. After eating I went for a walk. As I returned through the front door of Parliament House, Frank Crean, Deputy PM, hurried, and I mean hurried, past me. We exchanged brief greetings. Later I would learn that he was on his way to a hastily convened meeting at the Lodge