The former prime minister Paul Keating says he advised Gough Whitlam to arrest the then governor general Sir John Kerr at the height of the dismissal saga, calling the incident a “coup” from which Australian politics “never really recovered”.
Keating, recently promoted to a junior ministry position in the Labor government when Prime Minister Whitlam was dismissed on 11 November 1975, said Kerr should have been detained by officers of the law, but admitted he was concerned about a potential standoff between military and police.
“My proposition was that Gough should ask the queen to accept his advice to appoint a new governor general,” Keating said in an interview with the journalist Niki Savva, to mark half a century since the dismissal.
“In the event that Kerr resisted, I said to Gough he should be put under police arrest.”
Keating, who was prime minister himself between 1991 and 1996, served as minister for northern Australia under Whitlam between October and November 1975. In the taped interview with Savva, played at Old Parliament House as part of events marking the anniversary of the dismissal, Keating described Kerr’s dismissal of Whitlam as “brutality”, and claimed the governor general “completely deceived” the prime minister.
Keating’s analysis rings true with the current prime minister’s summation of the dismissal, which Anthony Albanese described on Monday night as “a calculated plot” to remove a democratically elected government via partisan ambush, rather than a constitutional crisis.
Keating recounted attending a meeting between Kerr and Whitlam at Government House, the governor general’s residence in Canberra, just five days before the dismissal. He said the two men were “more than friendly” and engaged in “boisterous banter” during the meeting, with no hint that Kerr was on the verge of dismissing the Labor government.
Sign up: AU Breaking News email
“We’re at the penultimate point of the crisis. Either this has been resolved between the two of them without me knowing, and they’re at the joyful conclusion of it, or why would such mirth be present on such an occasion?” Keating recounted of his thoughts at the time.
After the meeting, as he and Whitlam left the residence, Keating recounted the prime minister commenting on Kerr’s “leonine mane” of white hair.
“Gough gets in the Mercedes, puts his head back, and I said ‘he seems alright, Gough’,” Keating said.
“He [Whitlam] said ‘he [Kerr] is entirely proper. He’ll do the right thing.’ I put that to memory: ‘He’s entirely proper, he’ll do the right thing.’”
Keating described Kerr’s dismissal of Whitlam as “in every respect, a coup”.
In the interview, Keating recounted visiting Whitlam in his office soon after the dismissal, in which the then junior minister suggested Kerr be arrested.
Keating has recounted this story previously in other media interviews, but gave more in the Savva interview than prior appearances.
“I said [to Whitlam], ‘let’s think about this … Kerr has expropriated the kingly powers of the monarch, this is what has happened here … he may have done it with the monarch’s knowledge but he may not have.
after newsletter promotion
“‘I think you’re entitled to say to the queen that you recommend the appointment of a different and new governor general, and your authority for offering the advice is that the House of Representatives has voted no confidence in the appointed prime minister,’” Keating said.
“While this problem was not of the queen’s making, it was of the queen’s need to resolve it.”
As to Keating’s suggestion that Kerr could be put under police arrest if he resisted, Keating said Whitlam was not supportive.
“I said ‘the only thing you’d have to be sure about, Gough, is, of course, Kerr is technically the commander-in-chief of the soldiers, that is the chief of the defence force. Do not end up in a fight with the police,’” Keating said.
“In other words, you’d have to have the soldiers with you for this to happen.”
“He [Whitlam] said: ‘Thank you, you know-all, for that advice’ … he wasn’t of a mind to take the advice. He was a constitutionalist, Gough, he wasn’t into blood and gore.”
Savva asked: “Do you think there would have been blood and gore?”
Keating replied: “It depends whether the army would have stuck with Kerr against the police. That is certainly what I would have done if I had been prime minister.”
Keating said Whitlam remarked: “There’s something about you bastards from Sussex Street, you always want to lock someone up.”
