THE KERR COUP - ANOTHER MYTH1


The recent death of former Governor-General John Kerr is
a good excuse to look back over the way the left reacted
to his sacking of Whitlam. It is a remarkable example of
how people who claimed to be radical leftists could tie
themselves to the coat tails of the Laborites. They
convinced themselves of all sorts of conspiracy theories
about CIA involvement and described the sacking as a
semi-fascist coup - a case of the ruling class abandoning
parliamentary institutions. The left's analysis of the
Whitlam sacking is second only to its stance on the Gulf
War as an example of its cretinism.

Essentially all Kerr did was to force the most unpopular
government in Australian history to face the electorate.
According to the left this was all terribly fascist
because the government's unpopularity was due to a
malicious media campaign engineered by the media barons
and multinationals. However, given the ability of the
Whitlam government to shoot itself in the foot every
other
week, it would have required the media to be actively
biased in its favour for it not to show the government in
a bad light. It was also the time of the worst world
economic downturn since the depression of the 1930s and
for that reason alone very few elected governments
anywhere in the world survived the mid 1970s.

The left was also outraged at the Liberal's blocking
supply in the Senate. The Labor Government liked to
describe the House of Representatives as the 'people's
house' and to claim that it was being de_ed by the Senate
which is elected on a less representative basis. This is
a funny argument given that Fraser's main interest was in
getting an election for the lower house, so that 'the
people could decide'. It was Labour that was keen to
avoid that at all costs. They had schemes for calling
half senate elections, anything but an election over who
was to govern.

Certainly the royalist institution of Governor-General
should be replaced by a president, but that is another
issue. Hopefully the appointment to the position of a
republican and atheist in the person of Bill Hayden will
do much to hasten its demise.


1  originally published  in  Strange  Times,  no.10
April 1991.  (This   article  was  written  well  before
Keating launched his  'republican debate'.) On 11
November 1975 the Australian Governor  General, Sir John
Kerr, dismissed the Prime Minister,  Gough Whitlam, on
the grounds that he was unable to  get the budget through
the Opposition dominated upper  house   (the  Senate).
Kerr  then  appointed  the opposition leader  Malcom
Fraser  caretaker Prime Minister and  called  an
election.  Fraser  subsequently  won  the election in a
landslide.