Читать книгу Lazarus Rising - John Howard - Страница 13

When Fraser became leader, he cancelled the standing threat Snedden had made to block supply, at the first appropriate opportunity. He said that the Government should not be forced to an early election unless there were ‘extraordinary and reprehensible circumstances'. In the light of what unfolded later in 1975, there was some scepticism about how genuine Fraser had been in withdrawing the early-election spectre. It was generally well received, as there continued to be a strong sense in the community that whatever doubts there might be about the competence of Whitlam and his team, they were entitled to a fair go, and that the threat to block supply which had precipitated the May 1974 double dissolution had been unreasonable.

Whatever his motives, and I believed that Fraser was genuine, his decision was clever politics. The consequence was to put the spotlight more sharply on Whitlam and his crew, precisely when their decline into chaos began to gather momentum.

The disintegration of Gough Whitlam’s Government was very public. Disunity in government is usually caused by perceived or real challenges to its leadership, or arguments over policy direction or a combination of the two. Neither was the case in 1975.

Whitlam remained a messianic figure to the Labor faithful; he had brought them to the Promised Land, and no matter what political disasters befell the Government, he would remain in charge.

Gough Whitlam, though, did have a vicious streak, which was demonstrated when he cut down the speaker, Jim Cope, on the floor of the house. Cope had named Clyde Cameron, the Labour and Immigration Minister, for defying the chair. Whitlam delivered a humiliating vote of no confidence in Cope by refusing to support the removal of Cameron after he had been named. Cope resigned on the spot. It was dishonourable treatment of a man who had given years of service to his party.

Cope had a keen sense of humour. Ballots for a new speaker are secret, with each member writing on a voting slip the name of the candidate for whom they intend to vote. The Liberal candidate in the ballot following Cope’s removal was Geoff Giles, the MP for Angas in South Australia. He had no hope against the ALP nominee, Gordon Scholes, and in the course of the ballot Jim Cope called out, in his piercing voice, ‘How do you spell Giles?’ It broke up the whole place.

The public beheading of Cope was but one example of Labor’s progressive fragmentation through 1975. When Whitlam reshuffled his team mid-year, Clyde Cameron noisily resisted removal from his beloved Labour and Immigration post. During a division on a bill I was handling in the Attorney General’s area, a very agitated Cameron worked on a document as he sat beside the Attorney General at the table. The Attorney said to him, ‘Think of the party, Clyde'. Cameron’s salty reply made it plain that all he wanted to do was pay out on Whitlam. It was impossible for us not to notice such unhappy division. They no longer seemed to care.

Not only was Whitlam’s big-spending and permissive approach to public-service wages growth aggravating the rising inflation and higher unemployment which had become a feature of the Australian economy, but the suspicion grew that there was something irregular, even improper, about the Government’s efforts to borrow money abroad for national development purposes.

The genesis of that suspicion was a meeting of the Federal Executive Council at the Lodge on 13 December 1974. It was an ad hoc meeting which emerged from a ministerial discussion involving Whitlam; the Deputy PM and Treasurer, Jim Cairns; the AG, Lionel Murphy; and Rex Connor, Minister for Minerals and Energy. The meeting authorised Connor to borrow up to $4 billion. The Governor-General was not at the meeting and did not know of it until the next day, itself highly unusual; the loan was described as being for temporary purposes when so clearly it was not. Under the financial agreement, overseas borrowings other than for defence and temporary purposes required the approval of the states through the loan council. It was also unusual that authority was given to Connor to undertake the borrowing; Treasury normally handled such matters through well-established and reputable channels.

The Government was never able to shake the impression of irregularity, especially when evidence emerged of dealings with fringe international financiers such as Tirath Khemlani, a Pakistani commodities dealer. When Australia had borrowed before, Morgan Stanley, a solid Wall Street bank, had usually done the work. Treasury could not understand why such a reliable path would not be followed again.

Labor’s new Treasurer, Bill Hayden, was an outpost of sanity: bright and economically sensible. If he had been there from the beginning, things might have been different. Hayden’s tragedy was that Labor was beyond the point of no return when he brought down his budget in August 1975. Its principal legacy was that of Hayden’s reputation. He came out of 1975 as by far the most credible figure in the Labor Party.

There was a steady drip of press stories, keeping alive the sense of chaos, even scandal, which surrounded the Government. Hayden’s budget was well received, but could not disperse the fog enveloping Whitlam’s team. By September the mood in Liberal ranks had hardened. Many began to argue that the Government was so bad that we had an obligation to force an early election. Remembering what Fraser had said in March, they claimed that the continuing loans saga amounted to ‘reprehensible circumstances’ and that the Coalition would be justified in blocking supply to force an early election.

The Loans Affair, as it became known, ultimately claimed the scalps of both Cairns and Connor. Cairns finally went in July, when it emerged that, despite having denied it to parliament, he had signed a commission letter to a Melbourne businessman. Connor’s resignation on 14 October was the final straw for the opposition; he had continued negotiations with Khemlani after his authority to do so was revoked.

Media pressure grew — typical being a front-page editorial from the Sydney Morning Herald, on 15 October, headed, ‘Fraser Must Act'. He did. That very day Fraser announced that the Coalition in the Senate would vote to defer a decision on the supply bills until Whitlam agreed to have an election. The next day the opposition used its numbers in the Senate to achieve this. The bills deferred were routine ones authorising the spending of moneys on the ordinary annual services of government. If the bills were delayed indefinitely, the Government would run out of legally available funds and the business of government would grind to a halt. In political and constitutional terms, it was the nuclear option. Supply had never been refused or delayed before; there had only been the threat of it in 1974. Then, Whitlam countered with an election. He would not do this in 1975.

Just before his announcement, Fraser assembled the entire shadow ministry, tabled his recommendation that the opposition vote to defer supply, and one by one he asked each shadow his or her view. Along with every other shadow present, I supported Fraser’s recommendation.

This should be recalled, as revisionism about 1975 has included suggestions that Malcolm Fraser had acted unilaterally on the supply issue. There was no dissent in the shadow cabinet ranks. Don Chipp, later to resign from the Liberal Party, form the Democrats and denounce the blocking of supply by Fraser, was one of those present at the meeting who strongly backed his leader’s position. There was enthusiastic support for Fraser’s push at the full Coalition party meeting, immediately following shadow cabinet. The late Alan Missen, a Victorian senator, was the only person to express concern. He stood and said, ‘Leader, you know I have qualms about this.’ Phillip Lynch, the Liberal deputy, replied, saying, ‘Alan, let’s have a talk about it.’ They left the room together. A short while later Lynch came back and said that ‘Everything [would] be okay'. Missen voted with the rest of his colleagues to defer supply.

Labor was understandably bitter at the failure of the Bjelke-Petersen Government to follow normal custom and replace the deceased Queensland ALP senator Bert Milliner with his chosen Labor replacement, Mal Colston. The Labor Party was foolishly stubborn in rejecting the initial request of the Queensland Premier to submit three names from which a choice would be made.

The upshot was that Whitlam was left with only 29 senators supporting him against 30 from the Coalition when the crucial Senate vote to defer supply was taken in mid October. Patrick Field, Bjelke-Petersen’s chosen replacement for Milliner, did not participate in the vote, but this did not alter the fact that if normal practice had been followed, the vote would have been tied at 30 each and supply blocked rather than deferred.

Several months earlier, the NSW Coalition Government had likewise chosen Cleaver Bunton, an Independent, to replace Lionel Murphy, who had been appointed to the High Court. This did not have the same consequences as the Queensland appointment because Bunton voted with Whitlam on the supply issue.

In 1977 the Australian people voted overwhelmingly for a constitutional change, effectively guaranteeing that when a casual vacancy occurred in the Senate the replacement would come from the same Party as the former senator.

Unlike May 1974, Whitlam did not call an election. He was determined to prevail, asserting that as governments were formed by the party having a majority in the lower house, the Senate had no right prematurely to terminate a government so formed by forcing an early election. Politically, he had no option. He would face annihilation at an early poll. Fraser’s biggest challenge was to hold the Coalition together as the weeks of deadlock dragged on.

His argument was as simple as Whitlam’s. Our Constitution gives coextensive powers to the Senate and House of Representatives, so the government of the day needs the approval of both houses to spend money. As the Senate had not given that approval, the Government could not continue to function and should call an election to resolve the issue. Politically, Fraser had to maintain his position. He knew that he would win an early poll, just as Whitlam knew he would lose it. Stripped of rhetorical excesses, it was a titanic clash of political wills between two determined men. A compromise was never likely once the Senate had deferred supply. Fraser did offer to pass supply if Whitlam agreed to hold an election the following May. This was rejected.

Once the two protagonists had staked out their ground, interest focused on who might blink first, and increasingly, as the weeks passed, how or when might the Governor-General act. Whitlam’s operating assumption was that Kerr would always do as he was told. He badly misread his choice as Australia’s effective Head of State. Kerr would be no cipher. No one understood this better than John Carrick. In the days that followed the deferral of supply, he said to me several times, ‘John Kerr will want the judgement of history. He will do the right thing by the office.’ Carrick had known Kerr for a number of years, and well enough to divine that he was not in any way beholden to the Labor Party.

John Kerr was called ‘Old Silver’ at the Sydney bar because of his impressive mane of white hair. Bob Ellicott knew him well. They had been barristers together. He shared Carrick’s opinion that Kerr would want to be seen as having done his Constitutional duty. On 16 October, Ellicott published a prescient legal opinion of what Kerr might have to do; in it he raised the option of dismissal of Whitlam and his ministers as a way through. In a drama which involved many lawyers (mostly from the Sydney University Law School), Ellicott emerged, courtesy of this opinion, as the real star.

Tirath Khemlani, the Pakistani commodities dealer who had been put in touch with the former Minerals and Energy Minister Rex Connor when the latter was on the hunt for overseas loan moneys, landed in Canberra in the middle of the imbroglio, wanting to see the opposition. Ellicott and I were given the job of talking to him and getting details of his contact with Connor. It was disconcerting; if Australia wanted to borrow large amounts of money for development purposes, it beggared belief that it would not act through traditional banking channels. Khemlani was at most a fringe operator, and Connor’s behaviour had made Australia look foolish. Bob Ellicott and I found Khemlani a likeable man when interviewed at the Wellington Hotel, Canberra, but we didn’t see him and Australia borrowing abroad as a natural fit.

Canberra had a beautiful sunny day on 11 November, not a cloud in the sky. The view down from the War Memorial (surely the most impressive monument of its kind in the world) must have been as spectacular as ever, so ordered and serene. Sir John Kerr must have felt anything but serene as he attended the Remembrance Day service, having already resolved upon a course of action which would result, almost certainly, in him being the only Governor-General in Australia’s history to dismiss an incumbent Prime Minister.

What followed is central to the political folklore of Australia. Judgements made are set in cement. It had been a defining political clash between two implacable foes. It fell to John Kerr to find a solution which referred that clash to the Australian people for resolution. He did just that, at immense personal cost.

The money was fast running out; Whitlam wanted a half-Senate election, which would resolve nothing; Fraser would not relent. So Kerr, recognising that it was, above all, a political stalemate, remitted that stalemate to the people for adjudication. It was a thoroughly democratic solution.

When Whitlam called on him to advise a half-Senate election, Kerr asked Whitlam if he would advise a general election, that being the only action which would secure Senate passage of the supply bills, thus resolving the deadlock. Whitlam refused to give that advice, whereupon the Governor-General withdrew Whitlam’s commission as PM, handing him written reasons for his decision.

Kerr immediately commissioned Fraser as caretaker PM, on condition that he advised a general election; secured passage of the supply bills; and made no appointments or conducted any inquiries into activities of the Labor Government. Fraser naturally agreed with these conditions.

Earlier in the day, none of us knew this was coming when the scheduled joint party meeting took place, although most sensed that time was running out and something would soon give. Phillip Lynch said, ‘Keep patient; I think things are coming to a head.’ He had just participated in a meeting of party leaders, convened by the PM to see if common ground to solve the impasse could be found. The meeting was a public-relations prelude to Whitlam advising Kerr to call a half-Senate election.

When the house met, a debate on the supply issue ensued. I continued my normal routine. Leaving the library, I ran into journalists in Kings Hall, who informed me that there would be a half-Senate election, because that is what Whitlam had told his caucus.

The house rose for lunch at 12.55 pm. After eating I went for a walk. As I returned through the front door of Parliament House, Frank Crean, Deputy PM, hurried, and I mean hurried, past me. We exchanged brief greetings. Later I would learn that he was on his way to a hastily convened meeting at the Lodge to talk to the just-dismissed Prime Minister.

I also encountered Tony Eggleton, the Federal Director of the Liberal Party. He appeared to be waiting for someone. It was Malcolm Fraser, who was on his way back from Government House, having just been sworn in as caretaker prime minister. Tony gave nothing away, and I did not then know what had happened. Only minutes later I was in the opposition lobby, and the door from Kings Hall swung open and in strode Malcolm Fraser followed by Tony Eggleton; they both disappeared inside the Opposition leader’s office. Fraser and I exchanged greetings on the way through. I noticed that he was holding something in his right hand. I realised later that it was the Bible on which he had just been sworn in.

The bells rang for the resumption of the house at 2 pm. I went straight to the chamber, and whilst the bells were still ringing Vic Garland, a shadow minister from Western Australia, came up to me and some other MPs and simply said, ‘Kerr’s sacked Gough.’ I was stunned. Moments later Fraser entered the chamber as the bells stopped sounding. I knew that Garland had not been kidding when the speaker, Gordon Scholes, who knew the procedures precisely, called Fraser, not by his customary title of Leader of the Opposition, but by the title ‘Honourable member for Wannon'. By then Fraser was no longer the Leader of the Opposition.

Fraser then told the house that he had been commissioned to form a caretaker government and that a double dissolution election would be held on 13 December 1975.

My lasting memory of the debate which followed — on a Labor no-confidence motion against the new caretaker Prime Minister — was the remarkable control that Scholes, the speaker, kept over the emotionally charged, angry Labor MPs. Only a few hours earlier, they had been told by their Prime Minister that there was to be a half-Senate election. They now faced an election for the whole parliament, which they knew in their hearts they could not win. That election would be fought on the record in office of the Whitlam Government.

The no-confidence moved by the Labor Party was carried on party lines, with little debate. The sitting was then suspended so that the speaker could call on the Governor-General with the motion, seeking the reinstatement of Whitlam as Prime Minister. Meanwhile, the Senate had met and passed the appropriation bills, thus guaranteeing supply, one of the conditions of Fraser’s appointment as caretaker PM. Incredibly, Labor’s Senate leader, Ken Wriedt, had not been informed of the dismissal and believed that the Coalition had capitulated when it agreed to pass the bills. This was a huge blunder by Whitlam. Armed with knowledge of the dismissal, the Labor Senate president could have delayed the sitting and at least given his party room for a tactical response.

After our sitting had been suspended, I mingled with a large crowd of angry Labor MPs, staffers and public servants that had gathered outside Parliament House. I ran into Clyde Cameron, who railed to me against what had happened. He predicted an anti-Fraser backlash and said, ‘You won’t win, and even if you do the country will be ungovernable.’ He was wrong on both counts. It was this crowd which, later, gave such a hostile reception to David Smith, the Official Secretary to the Governor-General, when, as tradition required, he read from the steps of Parliament House the proclamation of the Governor-General dissolving the two houses of parliament. Watching over Smith’s shoulder was Gough Whitlam, who then delivered his well-reported declaration, ‘Well may we say “God save the Queen", because nothing will save the Governor-General.’¹

All of us felt shock and disbelief at what had happened. It troubled me that Kerr had had to intervene. I knew that he would cop intense abuse from Labor supporters. Yet he had been left with no alternative. Only he,

exercising the reserve powers of the Crown vested in him under the Constitution, could sever the Gordian knot.

Opposition MPs gathered in small groups, discussing the day’s events, speculating about the campaign ahead and expressing just a tinge of apprehension about the reaction of the Australia public to such a momentous event.

That evening Bob Ellicott and I walked together through Kings Hall and came across Jim McClelland, Minister for Labour and Immigration in the Whitlam Government. Known in the Sydney legal profession as ‘Diamond Jim’ on account of his immaculate dressing, McClelland had, as a solicitor, briefed Kerr to appear in disputes involving the Federated Ironworkers’ Association. They had been bitter encounters, and Kerr and McClelland had become good friends. McClelland was very irate and said, ‘You had the Queen’s man in the bag right from the beginning.’ It was a revealing remark. It was untrue but, importantly, betrayed the fact that Labor had operated all along with the belief that because Kerr had been appointed by Whitlam, he would, when the crunch came, do what Labor wanted. It was a monumental miscalculation, for which McClelland, given his long association with Kerr, no doubt felt a special responsibility.

The next morning, the political analyst Malcolm Mackerras dropped into my office and boldly said, ‘You realise that you are now enjoying your last weeks as member for Bennelong. There will be a massive reaction against Kerr sacking Whitlam, and even a safe seat like yours will be lost by the Liberal Party.’ I both thought and hoped that he was wrong, which of course he was. Thirty-one years were to pass before Malcolm, in 2006 and following a redistribution which made my seat even more marginal, again predicted that I would lose Bennelong. This time his forecast proved accurate. In that three-decade period, both Australia and Bennelong had undergone much change.