A Certian Hauteur

Time and again during his political career, and certainly at its most critical moment, Gough Whitlam’s overweening self-belief proved a fatal flaw.

For someone steeped in the classics, Gough Whitlam, Australia’s 21st prime minister, appears to have been under-acquainted with the Greek concept of hubris, or pride before the fall. Throughout this account of his political career, Whitlam repeatedly ignores not just the portents of a given situation, but the explicit warnings of wiser men (and it was almost exclusively men) around him. Why? Because Whitlam was incapable of conceiving that wiser men might actually exist.

His biographer, Troy Bramston, is a journalist and political historian. Prior to this, he was for ten years a Labor Party staffer, including a spell as speechwriter for Kevin Rudd, so he has first-hand experience of failed Labor prime ministers. And, significantly, he writes as one who believes the dismissal of 11 November 1975 was profoundly wrong.

He has written what is essentially and appropriately a Greek tragedy. Gough Whitlam: The Vista of the New catalogues the myriad falls of a profoundly flawed prime minister and the unshakable self-belief that almost always preceded—and often caused—them.

COMING TO POWER

But Gough Whitlam was nothing if not persistent, devoting the first three years of his time as Labor’s opposition leader to changing the party’s structure, then driving the formulation of its policy and finally, selling the product. He came close to winning the 1969 election; but for DLP preferences he would have been prime minister three years earlier than he was. Given the electoral thrashing Arthur Calwell got from Harold Holt in 1966, this was a considerable achievement.

Whitlam made a deliberate and hugely significant effort to attract not just a new generation, but a new class, of Labor voters. Ever mindful of Labor’s blue-collar base, Whitlam also understood that Labor would only regain power if enough middle class, and in particular professional, Australians could be won over. In this he clearly succeeded, and a significant proportion of these converts would stick with Labor, changing forever not just Australian politics but, by way of their “march through the institutions”, Australian society.

People considered him aloof and out of touch.

But widening the appeal of the Australian Labor Party was a long and difficult row to hoe. The party of Chifley and Calwell (who grew to loathe his successor as Labor leader) didn’t entirely trust this scion of a well-to-do Protestant family, the privately educated Sydney QC who dressed expensively and never hesitated to share his erudition in a markedly patrician manner.

The standout figure in Gough’s rise to the prime ministership is Mick Young, Labor’s national secretary from 1969 to 1973, and later a minister in the Hawke Government. Bramston effectively credits Young with making Australian political history in the lead-up to the 1972 federal election: “The modern political campaign was born: targeted seats, market research to shape policy, professional advertising, public relations, candidate training, local organising, disciplined messaging and rapid response.”

What I didn’t know is that while forever associated with the “It’s Time” phenomenon, Whitlam was in fact an electoral liability in the years leading up to, and for most of the 1972 campaign; party polling only identified him as an electoral asset in its final week.

And again, this was attributable to the man’s style. People considered him aloof and out of touch.

IN OFFICE

Whitlam did nothing to address this perception once in office. As ordinary Australians struggled with inflation rates more commonly associated with South America, their prime minister regularly went on grand tours of the world. While he certainly met with, and at times impressed, heads of state, foreign ministers and ambassadors—pursuing what he claimed was a more independent and nuanced foreign policy—he also toured ancient ruins and museums, appearing very much the happy classicist. There were no fewer than thirteen such tours, often lasting several weeks, and the optics were rarely good.

Memorably, and shamefully, he had to be coaxed by advisors back to Australia after Cyclone Tracy destroyed eighty percent of Darwin’s homes and killed 66 people on Christmas Eve 1974. Whitlam flew in, spent less than 48 hours in the country meeting officials and victims, then resumed his world tour. Acting Prime Minister, Jim Cairns, was much more engaged and empathetic; Bramston concludes it was Cairns’ finest hour.

Another theme of the book, less psychological and much closer to home for Australians in 2026, is the inflationary effect of runaway government spending. After twenty-three years in opposition, Labor came to power determined not just to make up for lost time but to transform Australian society, regardless of cost. This sets the Whitlam government apart from that of his acolyte Anthony Albanese; while Gough’s inflationary expenditure underwrote a sweeping, if misconceived, vision for the nation, Albanese’s is aimed at little more than staying in power. For all his faults, it cannot be said that Gough Whitlam viewed power as an end in itself.

Whitlam had no interest in economics, viewing it—to the exasperation of successive treasurers—as an irritant, an obstacle to his grand plan for Australian society. In this sense, he resembles no classical figure more than Nero, amusing himself with artistic pursuits while oblivious, or utterly indifferent, to the economic fire raging around him.

Bramston, much like his subject, fails to attach sufficient importance to the fact that inflation doubled in Labor’s first year in power, and over the course of its two short terms in office inflation and unemployment broke post-war records.

One sympathises with Bill Hayden, Whitlam’s third treasurer, who inherited economic chaos and implored his cabinet colleagues to, at the very least, defer their grand and hugely expensive projects. His pleas and warnings fell on deaf ears.

A NEW FOREIGN POLICY

Whitlam’s foreign policy was viewed by his supporters, at the time and ever since, as a mature and long overdue attempt to position Australia as an independent middle power that could contribute to peace and development in our region. It marked a departure from what was considered our post-war role of loyal handmaiden to the United States.

In fact, between 1972 and 1975, the Labor government’s foreign policy gravely discredited our nation. The communist government in East Germany was recognised and Soviet sovereignty over the Baltic states was accepted. Neither Whitlam nor his caucus expressed any concern for the millions being abandoned to tyranny.

The case of East Timor was admittedly more complex, the small territory being likely unviable after the Portuguese abruptly left it in 1974. Following its invasion by Indonesian troops on 7 December, Australia went through the motions of condemning the action in the UN General Assembly, but there can be little doubt that Jakarta was in part motivated by the Whitlam Government’s stated insistence that the Australian-Indonesian relationship was paramount. Pro-independence Fretilin leader José Ramos-Horta accuses Whitlam of treating the territory with disdain and effectively sanctioning its annexation by Indonesia.

Even more complex was China. Whitlam is hailed for finally acknowledging the obvious —that Taipei was in no way the de facto government of the hundreds of millions of Chinese who lived on the mainland. On his first official trip to China, as leader of the opposition in July 1971, he met Chinese premier Chou En-lai and stated: “If my party wins the next elections, you will be able to see the first visit by [an] Australian Prime Minister to the Chinese People’s Republic and its sole capital, Peking”.

Once elected, Whitlam made good on this promise, visiting Peking in October-November 1973 and meeting an ailing Mao Zedong. Previously, on 25 October 1971, United Nations Resolution 2758 had recognised the People’s Republic as “the only legitimate representative of China to the United Nations”. Taiwan’s representatives left the UN before it could become the first country ever to be expelled from the forum. In a sense, Whitlam’s recognition of communist China was an acknowledgement of geo-political reality, but it fitted neatly into his record of pro-communist diplomacy.

Vietnam was perhaps the most shameful chapter of this record. While Whitlam’s supporters like to claim he brought the troops home from Vietnam, by the time he came to power there were fewer than 200 Australian personnel in Vietnam, down from a peak of 8,000 two years earlier. The withdrawal of troops from Vietnam was actually initiated and overseen by the Gorton and McMahon governments. Whitlam’s only contribution to the emergence of post-war Vietnam was to recognise Hanoi as the legitimate government of all Vietnamese, once again acquiescing in the consignment of millions of human beings to a communist tyranny.

The most astonishing scandal was the so-called Loans Affair.

As an estimated 140,000 people sought to flee this tyranny following the fall of Saigon, Whitlam refused to accept most of those seeking a new life in Australia. Of the 5,629 Vietnamese sponsored for migration only 542 were approved. Under Whitlam a total of just 1,034 Vietnamese refugees were accepted, many of them orphaned children. Australia’s policy was quite deliberate and came directly from the prime minister’s office. The ‘correct line’? Australia was concerned that the refugees were from the far right and might undertake political activities, to the detriment of our relations with the new government in Vietnam. The truth is darker, and does Whitlam no credit. On 21 April 1975 as foreign minister Don Willesee was arguing for a greater refugee intake, Whitlam exploded, “I’m not having hundreds of fucking Vietnamese Balts coming into this country with their religious and political hatred against us!” It speaks volumes about Gough Whitlam—the man and his true motivations—that he refused to welcome any immigrant who might have experienced the reality of communism.

And what did the Americans make of it all? Bramston is particularly useful on this, debunking two abiding myths. His interviews with Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State to presidents Nixon and Ford, and senior State Department official Winston Lord, establish beyond doubt that while the United States was at times uncomfortable with Whitlam’s foreign policy, it never feared for the future of the US-Australian alliance or the shared defence facilities on Australian soil. Bramston also concludes there is no credible evidence whatsoever of CIA involvement in the dismissal.

SCANDAL PLAGUED

The Whitlam Government was nothing if not rich in incident. Its attempt to balance an ambitious suite of policies against hard economic realities was repeatedly undermined by a succession of avoidable scandals. These included Deputy Prime Minister Jim Cairns’ affair—denied at the time but subsequently admitted—with his principal private secretary Junie Morosi. (For all his personal foibles and starry-eyed socialism, Jim Cairns could read the political tea leaves. Late one night, just days before the 1975 election, my father met him in the Copperwood Restaurant in Lygon Street, Carlton. Cairns stated with complete confidence that Labor was going to be obliterated on the Saturday. Whitlam and his coterie were convinced that an outraged nation was going to sweep him back into power. Cairns was right.)

Another completely avoidable scandal was Lionel Murphy’s raid of ASIO’s Melbourne headquarters (quite possibly aimed at finding out what the agency knew about his dubious conduct and contacts).

But the most astonishing scandal was the so-called Loans Affair. It simply boggles the mind that a minister of the crown—in this case, Minister for Minerals and Energy, Rex Connor—could seek a loan of US$4 billion (equivalent to 8 per cent of Australian GDP) from unidentified Middle Eastern financiers, using a shady commodities trader from Pakistan as an intermediary, without informing, let alone receiving authorisation from, the Loan Council. Other conventions were flouted. Approval for the loan raising was given at a meeting of the Executive Council which was probably unconstitutional. Cabinet, caucus and the States knew nothing about the loan. Treasury and the Reserve Bank were excluded from the loan raising process, as was Treasurer Frank Crean. On 11 December 1974, when Crean was replaced by Jim Cairns, he warned Whitlam, “for goodness’ sake don’t have anything to do with this loan business”. Yet another warning ignored.

While other scandals were embarrassing distractions, this one was pivotal; it constituted the “reprehensible conduct” the Coalition had cited as a precondition for any denial of supply.

THE DISMISSAL

Numerous influential figures warned Whitlam against appointing Sir John Kerr to replace Sir Paul Hasluck as Governor-General in 1974. These included Bob Hawke, Fred Daly and even Whitlam’s wife Margaret. Kerr, they said, had changed over the years, and had ceased to be ‘old Labor’, becoming instead ‘establishment’ or perhaps DLP. Fatally, Whitlam ignored these warnings and appointed him to the job. Bramston argues that had the proposed appointment gone to caucus and cabinet, it would probably have been vetoed.

Worse, once Sir John Kerr became Governor-General, Whitlam disdained him, routinely calling him “my viceroy”. An aggrieved and genetically insecure Kerr became a potentially very dangerous adversary; reserve powers are just that—powers.

A fact unacknowledged by the outraged left, but highlighted during the 50th anniversary of the dismissal, is that Gough Whitlam had, as opposition leader in 1970, proclaimed the legitimacy of blocking supply bills in the Senate in order to remove a government. In 1970, the opposition caucus decided to vote against money bills in both houses. Former leader Arthur Calwell was vehemently opposed to this course of action, warning prophetically that an empowered senate would one day “destroy a Labor government”. Whitlam at first wavered, always wary of the pretensions of the upper house, but soon jumped aboard. On 25 August he told the House of Representatives:

Let me make it clear at the outset that our opposition to this budget is no mere formality. We intend to press our opposition by all available means on all related measures in both Houses. If the motion is defeated we will vote against the Bills here and in the Senate. Our purpose is to destroy this budget and to destroy the government which has sponsored it.

In 1974, when opposition leader Billy Snedden threatened to block the Whitlam government’s budget in the Senate, there was no expression of moral outrage from Gough. Rather, he seized upon it as an opportunity to call an early election he thought he could win (and narrowly did). In light of these significant precedents, Whitlam’s statements on and after 11 November 1975 were at best inconsistencies, at worst gross hypocrisy.

The chapters on the supply crisis and the dismissal are Bramston’s strongest. He sifts through the mountain of contemporaneous notes, departmental advice and written opinions, producing an account of events which is at once highly detailed but gripping reading. When combined with the recollections of key players, Bramston is able to produce a clinical assessment of the political strategies driving these events. Significantly, he finds no evidence of any Labor strategy at all. Astonishingly, there was no discussion of the supply crisis in cabinet, and little in caucus; a supremely confident Whitlam would go it alone.

Paul Keating, who had been sworn in as Minister for Northern Australia just a few weeks earlier, and who would later be a Labor treasurer and prime minister, bemoaned the lack of any contingency planning on Whitlam’s part.

Whitlam returning to the Lodge after his dismissal to eat a steak, rather than proceeding immediately to parliament house to rally his MPs and plot a response, was a fatal mistake but, Bramston asserts, one which reflected his solitary nature.

The incompetence of Labor’s response that afternoon, when ALP senators did not even realise Gough had been sacked and they were voting to grant supply to a caretaker Coalition government, is perhaps the perfect reflection of the chaotic nature of the whole Whitlam Government. And it once again stemmed from Whitlam’s fatal character flaw—his stubborn unwillingness to engage with others on matters of crucial importance. As Bramston concludes, “Not to include any senators or tell them about the dismissal was an unfathomable error.”

In contrast, the Coalition leadership was organised and ruthless. Bramston clearly deplores the opposition’s strategy, but he concedes, with grim respect, the discipline of its execution and, ultimately, its effectiveness.

Fraser turned the corrupted Senate into a weapon to dislodge a government made in the House of Representatives. He would put maximum pressure on his party to continue to defer supply. And he would threaten and intimidate the governor-general. He had destroyed John Gorton and Billy Snedden, and now pledged to destroy Gough Whitlam … There has never been a more ruthless opposition leader.

I didn’t realise the extent to which the exercise of the Governor-General’s reserve power to dismiss a PM was openly canvassed by jurists, academics and journalists in the lead-up to 11 November. Not only was its existence discussed, there was the view among a growing number that the exercise of this power was not just the Governor-General’s prerogative, but his urgent duty. By 16 October, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, the Melbourne Herald, The West Australian, The Canberra Times and The Australian had all called for an election of both houses. The Australian’s editorialising was particularly strident, leading several of its journalists to strike in protest. David Smith, Official Secretary to the Governor-General, stated that all the media were pressing Sir John Kerr to resolve the crisis and that Kerr was reading these editorials. This begs the question: given the widespread discussion of the option of dismissal, why the great surprise when it actually happened?

Again very usefully, Bramston establishes beyond doubt that Buckingham Palace played no role in the dismissal, calling it “a homegrown tragedy”. Kerr corresponded regularly with the Private Secretary to the Sovereign, Martin Charteris, and was repeatedly advised that any resolution to the constitutional crisis was solely the Governor-General’s responsibility, and that dismissal of a prime minister, while not inconceivable, was absolutely the action of last resort.

THE VERDICTS

Bramston is to be congratulated on producing what is probably the definitive biography of Gough Whitlam. While one may differ with some of the conclusions he draws, and the significance he attaches, or fails to attach, to particular events, Bramston sets down the facts of Whitlam’s life and political career in a thorough and painstakingly referenced work.

Whitlam’s statements on and after 11 November 1975 were at best inconsistencies, at worst gross hypocrisy.

Released last year, the 50th anniversary of the dismissal, the biography will remind older readers not just of that event, but of the reasons they either loved or loathed Gough Whitlam—few, I think, could be indifferent to him. And herein lies one of the book’s great shortcomings. For all of its discussion of the political and electoral implications of the Whitlam Government’s disastrous mismanagement of the Australian economy, not enough attention is paid to its human toll. Rampant inflation is more than just a political problem (something well paid politicians to this day too easily forget). It represents personal tragedies beyond number playing out across the nation.

In the December 2025 issue of Quadrant, Scott Prasser recounts how the policies of the Whitlam Government almost ruined his family’s small businesses—a fish and chip shop, a building business, a supermarket, and a drapery—in Ipswich, 50 kilometres west of Brisbane. Having survived good times and bad for decades, in just three years these enterprises were operating at a loss, the Prassers hoping grimly they could weather the storm of record inflation and interest rates, out of control wage increases and ever-expanding entitlements, without having to lay off workers. When the dismissal happened:

We didn’t care if what Fraser and the Coalition did broke with precedent, or if the Governor-General acted unconstitutionally (he didn’t), or if any of it was driven by ruthless politics or self-interest. What we understood was that Whitlam was doing us harm, and so must be doing Australia harm. We just wanted Labor’s amateurs and union mates and camp followers and the Whitlam Hooray Club out of office and out of our lives. If Fraser hadn’t stared down Whitlam who knows where the Prasser family and so many others like us would have ended up? Fifty years later it’s still a thought that brings a shudder.

The Prassers were not alone. The verdict of the people on 13 December 1975 was emphatic. Two years later, they were just as unforgiving.

This article from the Autumn 2026 edition of the