Talk:Gough Whitlam

What do you mean by "blocked supply" and why did it cause a crisis? --rmhermen

Refusing to pass the budget, so the Government has no money to run. I wasn't quite sure what to call it, so I just used the term people always use when discussing Australian politics or constitutional law. -- Simon J Kissane

Americans usually just say budget crisis and we have had a few of those too. Of course we can't dissolve congress or boot the president for it. All we can do is complain. ---rmhermen

O.K., how DO you say his name? Guff? Goooch? --MichaelTinkler

Goff. It's a rare name in Australia. I don't know of anyone else with this first name. It does occur as a surname, but not very frequently.

It's not his first name - his first name was Edward. Gough is his middle name. Using one's middle name was a common habit in Australia for some reason (not sure why, or for how long). As middle names were frequently family names (still are, eg William Jefferson Clinton) people then began to be known by names which were otherwise used as surnames. Sidenote: Why am I such an expert on this topic? Because my own mother made the mistake of naming me after a famous australian historian Manning Clark, only to find out that his real first name was William. Anyway I got stuck with "Manning" as a first name - ManningBartlett

I know someone like that -- I have a friend called Antonio, whose middle name is Carlos, yet everyone calls him Carlos, not Antonio. Carlos is in fact his dad's name... He tells me the explanation in this case was that his father used to always call him Carlitos (spanish for "little carlos"), but school teachers mistook that for Carlos... -- Simon J Kissane

Still not worded quite right, but the point of this para should be that the WG is unique in post-war Australian history - no other government achieved anywhere near as much as the WG achieved, not even under the 17 years of Menzies. Before anyone leaps in and says this is POV, these are objectively verifiable reforms. The fact that the WG also achieved a remarkable number of king-sized stuff-ups is irrelevant to this para - but should most certainly be made clear in a para of its own! (If no one else does it first, I'll do this myself in a future edit.)

The reverence of the left for W is mentioned in a following para. Better to leave it there, in the "how people today feel about W today" section, I think. (Expand on it? Or is it clear enough as is?) The fear and hatred that the right still have for the WG (and, I think it's fair to say, a great slab of middle Australia feels this way too, though more mildly) should also be made clear, and should, I think, be expanded a little.

I'm aiming for something like the following structure:

Intro, earlier life
Rise to leadership
Achievements in government (defining "an achievement" as, more or less, "something the WG did that still lasts today")
Failures in government (a different definition as, more or less by definition, failures don't last - someone else comes along and fixes them up)
Reactions (what people say about the WG: hate, love)
Later life

Subject to discussion, I intend to move the "reactions to W" in the following "failures" para to a seperate para on its own. Objective achievements; objective failures; reactions seems like a good structure to me. (Indeed, it mightn't be a bad structure for other PM's bios either.) (Again, unless someone beats me to it - Robert is better at this "how people feel about it" stuff than I am.)Tannin 08:40 Dec 20, 2002 (UTC)

Jtdirl - that is a flagrantly partisan discussion of the constitutional crisis, which correctly identifies but overstates Whitlam's violation of convention, but then entirely obscures Kerr's violation, which the more significant of the two. I don't have the time to correct it at present, nor, to be honest, a great deal of interest, but it should not be allowed to stand unchallenged. Tannin

A fair and non-partisan description of the sequence of events would include three main violations of convention:

The Senate's refusal to pass supply
Whitlam's intransigence
Kerr's actions, in particular his decision to appoint a Prime Minister in defiance of the clearly expressed will of the house.

Tannin

Incorrect, Tannin. Whitlam wasn't merely intransigent. He explicitly broke the rules by which Loss of Supply is governed in parliamentary democracies. One European ex-president I spoke to about the issue once said that if he'd been in Kerr's position, he'd have told Whitlam 'get your arse in your car, get up here now, and either have a resignation or a dissolution request with you.' The Senate and Kerr broke convention, but then convention is basically a gentleman's agreement with no legal enforceability.

Whitlam didn't just break convention, he broke the explicit RULES re loss of supply. No UK PM, French PM, Irish PM, Italian PM, etc would have dared to act as Whitlam did. He created the crisis by how he handled the supply issue.

The central problem wasn't with Kerr, it was with the Aust. Constitution that contains two contradictory flaws that produced the crisis and made solving it so difficult. 1. Government responsibility to the lower house, yet financial responsibility to both. 2. A de facto head of state who can't use informal influence because he lacks the BASIC requirement found in almost every constitution, security of tenure. So if he puts pressure on privately, he can be sacked, in the process causing yet more constitutional problems. Neither flaw has been corrected, and indeed Number 2 would have been made even worse under the proposed republic, which left the proposed president similarly exposed (even though all internal advice (eg, the Appendices of the Republic Advisory Committee, etc) said a president MUST have security of tenure as a basic fundamental requirement.

If Kerr had appointed a PM against the express will of the lower house, and kept it in session, that would have been completely unacceptable. But he appointed a PM on the explicit guarantee of an immediate general election request to solve the crisis Whitlam's failure to act had created, helped by the design flaws in the constitution. If Fraser had not sought a dissolution, and sought to remain with a hostile lower house, he too would have been immediately dismissed.

I haven't got my copy of the Aust. constitution here right now (its in a box somewhere and at 3am here I'm not going to chase it down), but one option other heads of state suggested which might have solved the issue if constitutionally possible was to appoint what some states call 'technical govts'. Some states explicitly require a prime minister be a member of parliament. Others imply it. Others have leeway during an election, when via a dissolution there is no parliament to be a member of. Where there is an absolute political stalemate (and Aust.'s govt financial responsibility to both houses is a classic case of how to cause one!) and a resulting constitutional stalemate because the PM won't obey the law, and where there is the constitutional leeway is there, a non-political govt is appointed simply to get a pm who will advice the dissolution. Such a pm would be a totally non-political figure, a senior civil servant, retired diplomat, etc,. whose only function is to advise the required dissolution. He then would be either immediately replaced, with the previous PM again asked to assume office, or remain in office for the duration of the general election, and replaced once an election result is in. Some states have used that technique. Others name a formateur to form a temporary government, or an informateur to put a govt together under someone else. If it was possible, that might have been a better option for Kerr than in chosing a partisan in the crisis like Fraser.

Kerr's role in the affair is the most famous. But it was reactive, dealing with a mess that Whitlam by his refusal to offer Advice left. Most heads of state have nightmares about having such a mess, and such a prime minister putting his own political survival above solving a national crisis. Internationally, in terms of constitutional law and procedure, Kerr is regarded as clumsely and niaive, but Whitlam is the one regarded as the guilty one. It is nothing to do with politics (I'd share some of his politics). His behaviour is seen as unacceptable, indeed so blatently unconstitutional that if a prime minister elsewhere tried it, he would be drummed out of public life and never get a public post again. In Ireland's case, when Haughey claimed he had 'up to one week' to consider his options, one cabinet colleague told him 'sure you've got time, as much time as it takes to type up your resignation and get through to traffic to the President.' Other politicians considered going to court and getting him judicially ordered to resign. (And remember Haughey was forced to back down in a matter of hours, not days or longer!) The President himself was apoplectic with rage and the position he was very nearly left in. A previous president in his private papers expressed sympathy for Kerr, as he too was dealing with a govt that treated fundamental constitutional rules as optional extras.

Put simply, without Whitlam's blatent refusal to follow the elementary rules on loss of supply, there would have been no crisis, no intervention by Kerr, no dismissal by Kerr. Leaving aside the Australian politics of the situation (pro- and anti-Whitlam, monarchist, republican, etc) the issue all boils down Whitlam's actions and inactions. Kerr found himself in the mother of all constitutional nightmares, and came up with a technically correct but politically unwise solution. He should never have been placed in that position. Only one man did so, Whitlam.

Let's start with your "put simply, without Whitlam's blatent refusal to follow the elementary rules" statement. This is both true and false, correct and misleading. There was a whole series of "refusals to follow the elementary rules", and to focus on one is to completely mislead the reader:

Two state governmemts replaced casual Senate vacancies with appointed men opposed to senators they were replacing. This was naked cheating which the Constitution had never thought to explicitly forbid: Malcom Fraser himself proposed a constitutional ammendment two years later to make sure that it could never happen again. The immediate result, however, was that the Senate was unrepresentative of the electorate - in a word, rigged. (It had been split 30/30 and therefore unable to reject money bills prior to the casual vacancies).
The now-unrepresentative Senate broke convention by blocking supply.
Whitlam did not resign, but indicates his intention to call a half-Senate election if supply is not passed. (In fact, it is a matter of public record that two Liberal Senators were determined to cross the floor and pass supply in any case.) (References available if required, by the way.)
Kerr requested advice from the very same judiciary that might perhaps be required to try a case on the matter - namely, the Chief Justice of the High Court Sir Garfield Barwick.
Kerr sacked Whitlam without warning, and appointed Fraser, meanwhile instructing Fraser's driver to take him in the back door, and hiding Fraser in a waiting room while he sees Whitlam
The Senate passes supply, Fraser moves that the House be adjourned and is defeated, the House passes a vote of no confidence in Fraser and the Speaker asks for an appointment to see Kerr (thus forcing Kerr to appoint the member with the confidence of the Lower House as Prime Minister - i.e., Whitlam) but Kerr refuses to see the Speaker of the House for almost two hours, giving himself time to dissolve Parliment.

There was, in short, a whole series of unfortunate acts, each one of them at best very questionable, and at worst (the first and last ones listed) naked cheating. The account as it stands at present is dreadfully biased.

I hope I'm not going to get sucked into this debate any further. I used to follow politics keenly years ago but ... well .. that was years ago and there are other matters that interest me far more now. But I hate to see partisan views take over what should be an unbiased, strictly factual account. The present stress on just one breech of convention to the exclusion of all the others is unacceptable, and the great weight of words devoted to one short (albeit dramatic) event as compared to the enormous changes that came over Australian society (for both good and ill) as a direct result of Whitlam's time in government is more so. In any case, this is the wrong article for this topic: there is already a "dismissal". It should go there. Tannin

Again, Tannin, you keep missing the point.

The appointments to the Senate were legal, constitutional and wrong.
The Aust. Senate (like the French Senate, the Irish Senate, etc) is not meant to be the 'representative House', so whether it reflected public opinion is irrelevant. It should not have had the power to block or not grant supply. In 1975 it did (because negligent politicians over the decades never bothered to change the constitution to bring the Aus. constitution into line with almost all other 20th century world constitutions) which meant that legally, the Senate was entitled to do what it did. I personally think it was wrong to do so.

This is very incorrect. The authors of the Australian constitution explicitly the modelled Australia Senate after the United States Senate rather than the House of Lords. It was and is intended to reflect public opinion, and is completely unlike the upper house of most every other parliamentary system. Unlike the Canadian Senate or the House of Lords, the Australian Senate is elected and plays a very active role in the legislative process.

In fact, it was the representative nature of the Senate that allowed it to do what it did. If the Canadian Senate tried to block supply it would have had its head handed to it (as occurred with the House of Lords). The Liberals under Malcolm Fraser were able to do what they did because they were arguing that in this particular case, the Senate was closer to public opinion than the House of Representatives. Note that Australia has had several opportunities to reduce the power of the Senate since 1975 and has chosen not to do so.

The Senate, the Opposition and the Governor-General all breached Australian conventions. Whitlam didn't break a convention, he broke a BASIC, FUNDAMENTAL RULE regarding Loss of Supply, followed in parliamentary democracies worldwide. The others breached unwritten, legally unenforceable local Australian conventions, many of which ran contrary to the actual text of the constitution (but which had evolved unlike the constitution, which remained stuck in 1900 political theory). Whitlam broke a RULE that is applied worldwide, from London to Copenhagen, Ottawa to Cape Town, Berlin to Dublin. To put it another way, they broke a gentleman's agreement, he broke one of the constitutional ten commandments.

It's not applied worldwide. Budget crises similar to what happened in Australia are a very common occurence in the United States, and in a number of cases the President has had to literally shut down the government and put the United States technically in default. One might argue that the United States system is different and the rules don't apply to Australia, but on the other hand, the fact that parts of the Australian system (such as the Senate and the Federal system) are modelled after the United States rather than the UK makes it relevant. For example, the procedure for filling senate vacancies in the Senate was explicitly modelled after the American procedure.

My objection to what you wrote in this and in the Australian constitutional crisis of 1975 is not that your arguments are bad. They aren't. It's the implication that they are so obviously correct that any person who holds a different opinion is so obviously wrong that they aren't worth mentioning. This is a topic for which rational and thinking people have come to different conclusions and the article ought to be written as such.

He probably thought he could simply balls the crisis out, in the belief that the opposition would blink first. You can't do that with the constitution. If he hadn't Supply from the Houses charged with granting supply, he was constitutionally obliged to resign, something he seemed to treat as a technicality that didn't apply to him.

This is debatable. The Australian Constitution has explicit procedures to be followed in case of deadlock between the House and the Senate and these procedures have been followed six times. The objection to the Governor-General's actions in 1975 was that rather than follow the procedure in article 57 of the Constitution, the Governor-General and opposition short circuited them.

JTD 19:59 Jan 4, 2003 (UTC)

JTD, you are putting forward a sensible, reasoned argument. However, you need to distinguish clearly between your opinions and the facts of the matter - viz, that the argument you put forward as if it were Holy Writ is, in fact, highly controversial. Somewhat against my better judgement - for I have more interesting things to read and write about - I thought to reply to your sensible and reasoned but clearly partisan post just now by reminding you that the view you are putting forward, both in the article and here in talk, is far from being a consensus view. Opinion in Australia over the Dismissal remains as divided as it ever was. Lest you doubt me, I though I had better pick a half-dozen examples to cite, so I typed "supply convention Whitlam" into Google and the very first hit included these words (to which I have added my own emphasis):

Kerr's third error was to conclude that once the Senate denied supply Whitlam was bound by a convention to advise an election or resign. For that conclusion he relied on the analogy of the undoubted convention that a Prime Minister denied supply by the Lower House or losing its confidence must take one of those courses. It is not a valid analogy. The supposed convention does not satisfy the essential test for a convention: it is not clearly necessary for the effective operation of the constitutional system or preservation of its democratic character. Denial of supply by the Senate or the absence of its confidence does not, at least while there is supply money still available, bring a necessity for the Government to advise an election or resign. It remains the elected Government, with the authority and legitimacy of such a Government, because, having majority support in the House of Representatives, it is the Government chosen by Parliament in the way that Parliament makes such a choice. Kerr puts it that one reason why a Government in that situation should resign or advise an election is to avoid the risk of weakening the office of Governor-General by imposing on it the burden of forcing dissolution and an election through dismissal of the Government.89 That would carry more weight in the United Kingdom, where the monarch is the operative head of state, than in Australia, where all institutions are expected to be of obvious evident utility. Concern for the strength of that office is a consideration which should impel a Governor-General to give the fullest weight to the need for absolute necessity before use of reserve authority. The notion that any Government in the position of the Whitlam Government in 1975 would resign so as to ease the burden on the Governor-General, is not realistic.

Because Whitlam had taken the position that he would not advise an election, Kerr regarded him as improperly retaining office in breach of convention. It followed that Kerr regarded himself as under a constitutional duty to use reserve authority not only to dissolve Parliament for an election but also to dismiss Whitlam from office.

'There never was a convention that bound Gough Whitlam, the leader of the elected Government, to resign or advise an election.

So who is this writing? Some party hack? Some fanatic left-winger?

Ordinarily, I would expect to see more than one single contrary point of view to demonstrate that another view (your view, in this instance) is controversial and cannot be agreed on as the sole statement of events. In this case, however, I think the expertise and stature of the writer is sufficient to make my point without my troubling to harvest supporting views from others. He is both a retired Supreme Court judge and a former Governor of Victoria.

You can read the full text at http://www.mup.unimelb.edu.au/democracy/176.html and on the pages linked from there. Tannin

Some more information

http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/pubs/briefs/brief9.htm

is a Senate document which describes the origins of the Australian Senate.

and more importantly

http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/pubs/briefs/brief7.htm

which describes the conventions to be followed when the House and the Senate disagree. One thing that comes out of this is that the Australian Senate is a totally different beast than upper houses in other countries.

Why don't we shift most of the discussion of the dismissal to the page specifically on it? That way, we can discuss it once properly rather than three times (on the articles for Kerr, Fraser, and Whitlam respectively)? --Robert Merkel 00:26 Jan 6, 2003 (UTC)