The Stinging Bee and the Bloody Ambush: Why the Whitlam Dismissal Still Matters

DC4y...NUo7

13 Nov 2025

G'day, and thanks for dropping by. We're here today to talk about 1975. Not the year we nailed the greatest pub rock album or when we started calling everything "servo." Nah, we’re talking about November 11, 1975, a date that still feels like a stone in the national shoe, the day our democracy took a king hit.

It’s the story of the Whitlam dismissal, and while many old hands think they know the yarn, the archives, mate, they’re still coughing up secrets like a dusty attic. What we’re learning now—fifty years on—isn't just history; it’s a terrifying lesson about how easily unelected power can shove a democratically chosen government out the door. The simple truth, as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese recently put it, is that the whole affair was nothing less than a "political ambush" and a "calculated plot to remove elected government via partisan ambush." That’s the guts of it. It wasn't just a constitutional hiccup; it was a success story for conservative forces who had no qualms about attacking our democracy. And if it happened once, it can happen again. Fair dinkum.

The Calculated Plot: When a Governor-General Went Rogue

Let's quickly refresh the memory on how this all went down, because the audacity is what gets ya. Gough Whitlam, a Labor prime minister, was in the hot seat, but here’s the clincher: he had a clear majority in, and the confidence of, the House of Representatives. That’s the people’s house, where elections are decided. But the coalition of opposition parties, led by Malcolm Fraser, was using the Senate—the chamber of review—to block the government’s supply bills. They were holding the nation's purse strings hostage, demanding that Whitlam call an election before they’d let the government pay its bills.
Whitlam, being a stickler for the proper process, was in the process of calling a half-Senate election to break the deadlock. He was playing by the rules. But the then Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, wasn't.

Without a skerrick of warning, Kerr dismissed Whitlam and his entire government. Just like that. Gone. In Whitlam's place, he didn't call for a fresh election run by an impartial caretaker; he installed the leader of the opposition, Malcolm Fraser, as Prime Minister—a bloke who absolutely did not have the confidence of the House of Representatives. It was an unprecedented, shocking, and vice-regal intervention, and it sparked an intense, contested debate that still echoes throughout the Commonwealth today.
And here’s a beautiful metaphor for the man who did the deed, offered up by former Canadian Governor-General Jules Léger: “A governor-general can intervene just once to influence the democratic game, after which he must leave. He is like the bee that can sting only once and then dies… That is the case for Sir John Kerr.” Kerr delivered his sting, and boy, did he die a political death.

The Web of Intrigue: Secret Advisers and Royal Approval

For decades, the official line painted Kerr’s action as a solo flight, a lonely Governor-General reluctantly using the "reserve powers of the Crown" to save the nation from a financial crisis. What a load of old cobblers.
Thanks to legal action, tireless historical work, and some juicy details finally being prised out of dusty drawers, we now know it was a carefully planned intervention "steeped in secrecy, collusion and intrigue."

The Unseen Hand

It took nearly 40 years before one of the biggest secrets was revealed: the long-standing, secret role of Sir Anthony Mason, then a High Court justice. Mason was Kerr’s private adviser and guide throughout 1975. Get this: he even drafted a letter of dismissal for Kerr. This wasn't some snap decision; this was high-level, hidden legal guidance from a justice of the highest court helping an unelected official sack an elected government. It changes everything.

The Palace’s Nudge and Wink

Then came the Palace letters, which took 45 years and a High Court legal action to secure. These letters between Kerr and the Queen revealed the role of the monarch herself, her private secretary Sir Martin Charteris, and even Prince Charles (now King Charles III). Prince Charles famously approved, describing Kerr's action as "right and courageous."
But even the Palace letters didn't tell the whole story.

The Queen Approved, Mate

The latest, jaw-dropping revelations come from the archives of former Canadian Governor-General Jules Léger, who met with Kerr after the dismissal. Léger's meticulous notes are the first indication from Kerr himself that the Queen was fully across his position and, more importantly, approved of it.
In a meeting in 1979, Kerr—who was by then "rather defensive" and questioning his actions, a marked change from his earlier confidence—told Léger that "the Queen approved of his position, as did Lord Charteris." Kerr was utterly convinced that he had "served the monarchy well in Australia" and that the "republican wave" his action caused had "completely disappeared."
Think about that for a second. An unelected Governor-General, acting in secret consultation with a High Court Judge and the Queen’s private office, sacks the democratically elected government, and later boasts that the Queen herself approved, all while believing he was securing the future of the monarchy in the country. It was an anti-democratic masterstroke wrapped in "sycophantic grovelling," as Malcolm Turnbull once described Kerr’s deference to the royals.

Fall From Grace and a Conservative Heart

Kerr’s life after the sting was not smooth sailing. Léger's notes reveal that in 1977, Kerr was still obsessed with defending his position, offering a “plea in his own defence.” Yet, the man who was protected and even encouraged by the Palace immediately after the dismissal quickly became a liability.
The Queen, through Charteris and Prince Charles, had originally pleaded with Kerr not to resign, as doing so would imply he had acted incorrectly. But Kerr’s post-dismissal fall from grace was severe. His "bibulous excesses" became a national embarrassment—we’re talking about him falling face-down in the mud while attempting to put a gold medal on a prize bull at the Tamworth Show, and then swaying perilously while handing the Melbourne Cup to the winning jockey.
The Palace, Léger recounts, eventually had to intervene to convince Kerr to resign. The bee, having stung, was now a drunken, wobbling spectacle, and they wanted him gone. He resigned in July 1977.

The myth that Kerr was a neutral, non-partisan figure—a “Labor man” even—was also a crucial piece of the camouflage. But an editor's note on Kerr's own unpublished manuscript, Triumph of the Constitution, lays that lie bare. Kerr wrote that as the years passed, he "became more conservative" and supported the Liberal Party, not Labor, believing Whitlam was "too much of a political smart alec." His editor wrote in the margin: “I’d definitely cut this. It could be used against Sir John,” showing a deliberate attempt to maintain the charade of impartiality.

The Great Australian Cover-Up

If the dismissal was a plot, the aftermath was a cover-up. The archives—the bedrock of our history—have been treated like a security risk by those who’d rather the full truth stay hidden.
The contrast with the way the Canadian archives handled the request for the Léger correspondence is stark. In Canada, the relevant files were sought from the family, granted with no conditions, digitised, and sitting on a historian’s desktop within five weeks. No redactions, no delays, no years of legal action.
Here in Australia? It’s a national disgrace.

Access to files relating to the dismissal has been met with unconscionable delays, sometimes taking 13 years for a response. When files are finally released, extensive redactions often leave them incomprehensible. And it gets worse:

The Government House visitor books for 1975 have disappeared.
Gough Whitlam’s ASIO file was destroyed.
An entire box of Kerr’s letters from his significant royal and other supporters was accidentally burned in the Yarralumla incinerator.

This isn't just bureaucratic inefficiency; it smells like a deliberate, concerted effort to obstruct the truth. Prime Minister Albanese and Arts Minister Tony Burke have been urged to act now to end this obstruction and open all of the files on the dismissal. After fifty years, it’s high time the Australian public saw every shred of evidence regarding this successful attack on our democracy.

The Threat Looms: From the 70s to the 2020s

The dismissal was a successful, calculated plot by conservative forces who were willing to use unelected, secret power to crush a democratically elected government. The opposition blocked the money, the Governor-General used the hidden power of the Crown, a High Court Judge secretly advised, and the Palace gave its secret nod of approval. It was the ultimate, successful political ambush.
And that, folks, is why the Whitlam dismissal is more than just a historical event. It’s a blueprint. It shows that in a democratic system, the unelected levers of power—the ones that are meant to be purely symbolic or procedural—can be weaponised to achieve political ends.
Australian democracy was attacked successfully by conservative forces once as part of the Whitlam dismissal.

And here’s where we get properly serious. Today, we’re witnessing the rise of aggressive, anti-democratic movements globally, and they are not afraid to leverage every legal and constitutional loophole to seize and hold onto power, regardless of the popular vote. The threat of the anti-democratic MAGA US government looms over Australia—not necessarily in the form of a direct invasion, but in the corrosive example it sets and the pressure it puts on our own political system. The lesson of 1975 is that a political party, if motivated enough and given the opportunity, will use unelected powers—be they a Governor-General, a Senate blockade, or secret foreign influence—to overthrow an elected government. The seeds of anti-democratic action are already in our constitution, placed there by history. The precedent of a successful attack is already set. We have to understand that what was once a "calculated plot" fifty years ago could be once again if we are not vigilant against those who place partisan victory above democratic principle.
Open the archives. Learn the lessons. Protect the democracy. She'll be right... only if we make sure she is.