Today marks 50 years since The Dismissal, one of those phrases that needs no further explanation as it captures both that historic moment and its extensive repercussions. Here at The Footy Almanac we thought we’d mark the occasion by inviting readers to share their memories of that day and the events that followed. Where were you? What were you doing before, during and after? How did you react? Who were you with? We’ll lead off by sharing a few memories from one of the Almanac’s editors. Please feel free to add your reflections in the Comments section below.
Dramatis personae: (no introductions required!)
Almanac editor Ian Hauser recalls that afternoon well.
I was 22 years old, in the course of completing my tertiary studies before starting my first teaching position just two months later. I’d graduated with an Honours degree in Politics a year earlier and was finishing off my Graduate Diploma of Teaching. At the time, I was boarding at Luther Seminary in North Adelaide.
I can’t remember exactly what alerted me to the events unfolding in Canberra. In all likelihood, given my routine behaviours at the time as well as my keen interest in the politics of the day, I was keeping a close ear on events via my trusty transistor radio, having followed for some days (even weeks) the sequence of events leading up to this day. What I do remember clearly is that I wanted to be alone, to listen to what was happening, to try to absorb and understand the implications, and to grapple with my feelings about it all.
The North Adelaide public golf precinct (North and South courses) are just down the road along Ward Street. In the six years leading up to November 1975 I played both courses numerous times, so it was familiar territory. I headed down that way as it afforded a setting where I could be alone and just walk around, listening to my radio, trying to take it in, and trying to process it all.
Like all ‘soft left’ people of the time, I was appalled and outraged by what was going on. The weeks and months leading up to The Dismissal featured any number of events/incidents where long-standing political conventions were trashed with the result that the numbers on the floor of the Senate allowed the Opposition to block Supply. Add to that the politicking and intransigence of Fraser combined with the duplicity of the Governor-General and the naivety of Whitlam – there was never going to be a conventional outcome. To an equally naive me, it seemed that both convention and due process were thrown out the window for purely political ends. And then, with the deed done, the hitherto obstructionist Opposition passed the very same Supply Bills! As RITV would say, “Give me strength!”
I must have walked around the golf course for a couple of hours at least. Then I drove over to Unley to see my friend to talk about it with him. As it happened we weren’t able to have much of a chat as he was in the company of his about-to-be in-laws, conservative folk from the West Coast. Their comment was along the lines of ‘At last!’ That didn’t go down well. But I suppose I knew that my parents, conservative country people in Queensland, were probably thinking exactly the same thing – probably with an expletive or two thrown in!
It was a day of high emotions, confusion in my mind, uncertainty about how the days and weeks ahead would unfold, and a belated realisation that politics is a nasty game and not for the feint-hearted. Not one of the better days. I can’t remember if I was able to eat dinner that night.
My enduring memories are of Gough towering over David Smith; Gough’s acerbic comments of “Well may we say…” and “…Kerr’s cur”; the animated crowds at Parliament House; and, perhaps most appropriately, given the absurdity of it all, the co-incidental presence at Parliament House that afternoon of comedian Norman Gunston (Garry McDonald).
My political allegiances have fluctuated since then, gradually becoming centrist and then mildly conservative. Gough was a breath of fresh air but chaotic, Fraser was an over-reaction and totally underwhelming, Hawke was one of the better PMs, Keating was entertaining for a while, Howard was the natural successor to Hawke, and it’s been pretty much downhill since then. I fear that these days, as an electorate, we’ve become so shallow (ignorant?) and divided into self-absorbed, feckless mini-tribes that we’ve got what we deserve across the whole political process. But, hey, what would I know?
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At that time I was working at a newsagency in Swan Street Richmond. People were rushing into the shop seeking any news they could but had to wait until the special edition of The Herald was rushed out, then it was utter chaos. Customers were pushing and shoving trying to get a paper, others were arguing and shouting, a scuffle broke out at the front of the shop, others just milled around stunned by the news wondering what they could do; yes, people were passionate about their politics back then.
On the day Gough Whitlam was elected Prime Minister 2 December 1972, I was in Adelaide’s West Parklands, at second base for the Elizabeth South Primary School’s baseball team in the final of the Chrysler Cup, playing off against Westbourne Park Primary. Overwhelmed by the opposition pitcher, we came off second best. That evening, the ABC News had a story (with footage) on our trivial sporting clash and I was briefly shown taking a throw from right field. The contrast between that historic day’s events and our minor recreational endeavours on the same news coverage still amuses me.
I certainly didn’t get any political guidance or otherwise from my parents, although my paternal grandfather was a big wheel in the Chamber of Commerce and I may have absorbed a bit of his free enterprise cf welfare state leanings in my younger days. The day to day ALP shenanigans in The Advertiser and The News regularly reported on the perceived incompetence of the Whitlam era (Rex Connor, Khemlani for example), overlooking the benefits brought by universal health care, free tertiary education, extricating us from Vietnam, recognition of women’s rights, the heightened recognition of the Arts to name but a few.
I am ashamed to admit being the co-author of a ditty submitted in 1974 to John ‘Vinny’ Vincent’s breakfast radio show, which began
Farewell Uncle Gough
We wish you’d nick off
Thought you’re eight feet tall
You can’t govern us at all.
(God help me, I was only fourteen)
However, I have no deep lasting memories of the lead up to and denouement of The Dismissal. I was in Year Ten (of Twelve) at Elizabeth High School in 1975 and I was now on Team Gough (and Team Don in the local comp).
On 11th November we had a whole of school sports day, but by sports I mean stuff like bean bag tossing, low hurdles and other “inclusive” activities. I’m not sure how or when we heard of the tumult in Canberra but I think that I knew what had transpired before we helped pack up the gear in Barry Reynolds’ PE shed.
At the time, The Dismissal felt like my team had lost a big match rather than being a disaster that rent my nation apart. I wasn’t angry, there was no personal rage to maintain. However, my disdain and distrust for authority surfaced that day and hasn’t gone away.
I also note that Whitlam and Fraser formed an unlikely friendship in their latter years. Maybe there’s a lesson there for me.
We were on campus at La Trobe U and the news ran around the Uni like wildfire. I’m pretty sure we watched footage of it in the office of the estimable John Flaus but given that we also watched Ali Vs Frazier in that same office on another day I could have conflated two different fights in my muddled memory. It was a hot time and like Swish I’ve never accepted the events of the time as being in any way fair. Some might like to read this piece from Jenny Hocking posted today. It points to a crucial misstep from Gough and highlights the extent of the villainy of Fraser and his conspirators. https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/11/the-second-dismissal/?utm_source=Pearls+%26+Irritations&utm_campaign=6c7ff8190c-Daily&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0c6b037ecb-6c7ff8190c-591057511
I was in Grade 4 at St Mary’s Primary School, Williamstown.
When my mum picked me up after school, she said “the prime minister has been sacked”.
I can say that since that time, I have been an avid consumer of all things “dismissal”.
Yes, I remember it vividly. I was sitting in Grade 8 Maths in A17, one of two primitive science labs at Oakey High, on the Darling Downs.
At that time, we took Dad and Mum’s lead. They voted for the Libs-Nats. Although Dad’s politics were a little more complex. He was fiercely anti-Communist yet, in the referendum, he voted against the banning of the Communist Party, citing political freedom as the more important right of a citizen.
My own political socialisation came through reading, viewing, observing, discussing. That’s a topic for another day.
I wrote about it in Memoirs of a Mug Punter, having put together the Salvador Allende Racing Alliance (SAMRA) to show how socialism can work in horse racing. Here are a couple of passages which describe my childhood:
“In our manse politics wasn’t very important…Politics was of the world
and the world was dangerous. My parents, though, were not immune to the political
climate of the day and the God-fearing Calvinist, Mr Menzies, was the perfect
protector-father of the Australian flock in the wolfish face of godless communism.
One of Mr Menzies’ strengths (which I now understand as a political strength)
was the way he was able to make his ideology appear natural. And people believed
it. They thought conservatism was apolitical. Mr Menzies and the Liberal Party kept
things going along as God intended them. The Left? Now that was politics. Not only
political but life-threatening. The ALP was one party meeting away from Moscow, the unions had little regard for Her Majesty’s laws (putting them on a par with SPbookies), and if it weren’t for Bob Santamaria we’d have all been drinking vodka.
Sometimes our TV was turned to Santamaria’s short program, ‘Point of View’.
Dad would nod his approval. We just wanted to turn back to ‘The Addams Family’ or
‘F-Troop’. I didn’t understand much of what was said…Mine was a simple world where tribes were clearly delineated. Here there was something I just couldn’t comprehend: my father and Bob Santamaria – wasn’t Bob Santamaria a Catholic (and a Carlton supporter)?”
And a few pages later…
“E. G. Whitlam was having his own troubles in Canberra. Not that I had much of an idea. When Joh Bjelke-Petersen defied convention and filled the Senate vacancy left by the death of Bert Milliner with an ‘independent’, my father defended him. There must have been a good reason. In our household Joh was a good man because he was a Lutheran. And besides, Gough was sending the nation broke. He was responsible for inflation and careless government spending. He had a Cabinet who gave in to the pleasures of the flesh – dreamy adulterers, fame-seekers and loan sharks.
I remember exactly where I was the morning that Gough was sacked. I was in A17 in a Maths class with Mr Taylor, a young Geordie who lived for Newcastle United and thought Malcolm MacDonald was God. (And I thought Larry Donohue was God.) Mr Roberts, a colleague, later to be my Maths and Physics teacher, came racing in without knocking and said, ‘The bastards have sacked him.’ I was shocked. I had never heard a teacher swear before.”
I look back on that and think about how my mind was expanded and my views changed. My teachers at Oakey had helped me look outwards.
Dad and Mum’s politics also changed over the years. I wrote a long essay about this for Overland. I’ll dig it out. But th signs had been there. They had taken us to Canberra to the old Parliament House where our local member Tom McVeigh took us to the members’ dining room for the evening meal. We saw Gough. We met Fred Daley, among others. Dad liked Fred Daley. Dad was full of contradictions. Sometimes he was quite blinkered. Other times his mind was open.
My History professor and supervisor, Geoffrey Bolton, never met Dad but was intrigued by my descriptions of him. “You father,” he surmised, “sounds like a progressive who voted for the Conservatives all his life.”
No wonder I related to the understandings of Gramsci and, in the Australian context, Bob Connell.
I was only 12 but I vividly remember Norman Gunston’s presence on the steps of Parliament House. What a time it was when Gough wholeheartedly allowed Norman to do his thing in what was such a momentous occasion in Australia’s history.
Yep, form 1 Maribyrnong High. Our teacher informed us we left after the last class that something historic had taken place, though she didn’t specify. No Iphones, Tablets, etc in November 1975.
I walked home. My mother was on the phone to her sister, our Aunty Norma. I sat there for an eternity trying to decipher it all. When Aunty Norma rang the calls were always lengthy, though my mother hardly got a word in.
Whatever was going on the two sisters were very unhappy, then the penny dropped. Fifty years ago, just about now.
Glen!
I was always a political junkie but my 20yo self shared a rental with country high school mates who had no interest. I had followed all the Senate and Fraser shenanigans in the lead up with close interest. On that afternoon I sat a 3 hour Accountancy exam (fat lot of good that did me – debits still go near the window in my mind). Came out of exam quarantine to the news and my recollection is feeling dumbfounded more than rage.
My world was in the same state as my exam Balance Sheet. Somehow Fraser had subcontracted the hit job to the GG – which was on noone’s bingo card. I probably sublimated my rage by getting pissed with my house mates (we maintained rage most nights for no particular reason beyond being young and stupid).
In hindsight my belief is that Fraser and Kerr did Whitlam a great favour. Whitlam was a great and generous visionary but as a man manager and organiser he “couldn’t run a chook raffle”. He deserved to serve his full term and would have been roundly defeated (as happened anyway) but goes down in history with the “we wuz robbed” defence.
When I went to Canberra to work for Neal Blewett at the time of Fraser’s last Budget in 1981 I tried to educate myself by listening to parliamentary speeches from the gallery. Late one night I lamented to Neal saying “wasn’t that rambling (drunken?) fool a Whitlam Minister?”
Neal’s response was “now you understand what Gough had to put up with”.
As a Professor of Political Science Neal believed that the faction ruled caucus election of Ministers favoured power brokers and time servers over talent. Frank Crean, Jim Cairns, Rex Patterson, Rex Connor, Clyde Cameron, Don Willesee (Mike, Geraldine and Terry’s dad) were all capable men – but old, jaded and time had passed them by in 1972. Blewett always thought they would have been excellent Ministers if the ALP hadn’t narrowly lost the 1961 Credit Squeeze election. (Buy me a beer and I’ll tell you the “not for publication” story about Whitlam’s Transport Minister Charlie Jones and the Commonwealth mission to oversee the first Zimbabwe election).
The good thing was that Hayden and Keating became Ministers late in the Whitlam government and vowed never to repeat the chaos. Their personnel and policy renewal by 1982 ensured Hawke inherited a government that could maximise his charisma and organisational skills to cement the best of the Whitlam policy legacy.
what a fascinating sequence of comments above, after Ian’s great work opening the bowling from the member’s end – thanks for the mention IJH “give me strength!!”
I was in Year 3 at Taabinga State School, Kingaroy. TSS is only a few miles from the Kingaroy air strip, also not far from the Bjelke-Petersen family property, ‘Bethany’.
Growing up in the Kingaroy district, the son of farmers, the weekly routine being Monday-Saturday work, Sunday attending the (Lutheran) Church could only mean one thing: Kingaroy Lutherans voted for the National Party, or the Liberal Party, in summary: certainly not for the ALP!
Joh was allowed to lay preach at St John’s Lutheran Church, his son John taught Sunday School. (as Joh himself had done back in the day) – my grandfather & Joh farmed together at one stage … seemingly, all was right with the world – Joh was always correct, and God was definitely Lutheran!
Politics, therefore, were very straight forward in Kingaroy in the 1970’s – my dad would have heard the news on ABC radio, either in the tractor, or in his pocket transistor radio that lived in the top pocket of his work shirt. He would have been off the tractor, showered, and seated at the kitchen table, the evening meal provided by my mother placed in front of him, all in readiness for the 7pm ABC (TV) news, complete with the 7:25pm weather forecast (silence in the house for the weather!)
Like Ian Hauser, over the years, my allegiances have fluctuated…
I look forward to reading further comments on this post in the coming days
Thank you, one and all
RITV
Swish, I love the baseball parallel.
Life is.
Detail in memory is a blessing.
I was nine and in year 4 at Kapunda Primary School. Being a Tuesday after lunch we had Singing and Listening. I imagine a song like Big Ted was playing which I especially liked because we could sing ‘Goodbye- yeeeee’ on the last word
Big Ted’s dead, he was a great old pig
He’d eat most anything, never wore a wig
Now he’s gone like snow on the water, goodbye.
That something as vital to our routine as Singing and Listening was interrupted told me that a serious event had happened.
Big Ted was interrupted because Big Ted had just been sacked.
I was only a baby, but growing up I recall hearing about this mythical event. And seeing footage of this big burly bloke with the arched eyebrows making a powerful speech. His eyebrows were almost as expressive as his voice.
In retrospect, the “villainous Fraser” couldn’t have been seen as that nefarious by the Australian public – he won the next three elections.
I was a twenty-eight year old teacher at an independent school in Adelaide. Many of the staff were left leaning as were, it seemed to me, more of the parent cohort than would be expected.
Staff colleagues, including myself, were gob-smacked at the news – except for the Head of History Dept, an English immigrant, who was overjoyed. His reaction was totally over the top.
Sorry I missed the ABC news that evening Swish.
Where can I send funds to purchase that beer PB?
Thanks Ian. Yes. All pretty much downhill since then. I was in Form 4 at a Catholic Boys School when he got the sack. The Rector announced it over the intercom. Each classroom had a speaker in the room. A wave of cheers came up and down the halls and stairwells. Coming from a labour family — I was appalled that people were so easily led.
I was 13 and in Year 8 at Belmont Senior High, in Perth. Rod Marsh had taught there years before, until he was distracted by becoming Australia’s greatest wicketkeeper.
BSHS was what the Murdoch press would describe as a hotbed of lefty radical teachers but as a student I enjoyed a place that allowed contemporary ideas into the classroom to engage and debate. For five years of high school, I was driven by the agora that was English and Lit classes.
At home, Dad described himself as a swinging voter, but he mostly swung between the Liberal party centre to centre right policy positions. He was not a fan of Gough.
Looking back, the Dismissal was a seminal moment for me as it was one of the first times I had to decide if I fell in with Dad’s view or searched for my own. I chose the latter and without knowing it at the time, that was a good decision. It started me on the road to trying to know thyself. Yes, as I read it, it sounds wanky, but it was a powerful motivator.
You can frame Whitlam’s faults and errors anyway you want but my god, his government set Australia alight, including putting a mirror to our identity, and in imaginative and pragmatic ways. I’m a fan through and through.
Whitlam’s government and the Dismissal awakened me to ask what a society is, what should we stand for, and what mattered more, the individual or the community. In navigating the confronting and complex ideas beyond these questions, which has only taken another 50+ years, I lean heavily into community.
Whatever your thoughts of the Dismissal, it is hard not to be blown away by what Gough gave Australia, he is the Dylan or Beatles or Michael Jackson of our politics and identity. His contributions loom so much larger than any other PM. And then there’s his wit! Which was sharper by far than most of our PMs of the last 70 years.
I was living in Stockholm in a tiny apartment in the suburbs. Because then as now, I was obsessively interested in politics, I was aware of the stand-off over supply, although my information was received haphazardly – letters from home with varying reliability of interpretations, a friend who was sending me newspaper clippings and regular visits to the Australian Embassy where newspapers could be read on delay. The actual event led the BBC World Service news when we woke on the morning of the 11th (late evening eastern Australian time). The BBC was our English-language lifeline while we lived in Sweden, but of course, Australian news and events rarely featured.
We were shocked, and we spent the next several days trying to interpret this extraordinary turn of events to Swedes and people from other countries who had a rare news item about Australia to consider. The Embassy facilitated our postal votes, which had to be sourced from and returned to London.