Edward Gough Whitlam was the 21st prime minister of Australia, serving from 1972 to 1975. He held office as the leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), of which he was the longest-serving. He was notable for being the head of a reformist and socially progressive administration that ended with his controversial dismissal by the governor-general of Australia, Sir John Kerr, at the climax of the 1975 constitutional crisis. Whitlam is the only Australian prime minister to have been removed from office by the governor-general.
The Liberal Party of Australia is a centre-right political party in Australia. It is one of the two major parties in Australian politics, the other being the Australian Labor Party. The Liberal Party was founded in 1944 as the successor to the United Australia Party. Historically the most successful political party in Australia's history, the party is now in opposition at a federal level and does not hold government in any Australian state or territory with the exception of the state of Tasmania.
John Malcolm Fraser was an Australian politician who served as the 22nd prime minister of Australia from 1975 to 1983. He held office as the leader of the Liberal Party of Australia.
The 1975 Australian constitutional crisis, also known simply as the Dismissal, culminated on 11 November 1975 with the dismissal from office of the prime minister, Gough Whitlam of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), by Sir John Kerr, the Governor-General who then commissioned the leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Fraser of the Liberal Party, as caretaker prime minister. It has been described as the greatest political and constitutional crisis in Australian history.
Sir John Robert Kerr, was an Australian barrister and judge who served as the 18th governor-general of Australia, in office from 1974 to 1977. He is primarily known for his involvement in the 1975 constitutional crisis, which culminated in his decision to dismiss the incumbent prime minister Gough Whitlam and appoint Malcolm Fraser as his replacement, which led to unprecedented actions in Australian federal politics.
James Ford Cairns was an Australian politician who was prominent in the Labor movement through the 1960s and 1970s, and was briefly Treasurer and the fourth deputy prime minister of Australia, both in the Whitlam government. He is best remembered as a leader of the movement against Australian involvement in the Vietnam War, for his affair with Junie Morosi and for his later renunciation of conventional politics. He was also an economist, and a prolific writer on economic and social issues, many of them self-published and self-marketed at stalls he ran across Australia after his retirement.
John Douglas Anthony PC was an Australian politician. He served as leader of the National Party of Australia from 1971 to 1984 and was the second and longest-serving deputy prime minister, holding the position under John Gorton (1971), William McMahon (1971–1972) and Malcolm Fraser (1975–1983).
The Loans affair, also called the Khemlani affair, was a political scandal involving the Whitlam government of Australia in 1975 in which it was accused of attempting to borrow money from the Middle East by the agency of the Pakistani banker Tirath Khemlani and thus bypass the standard procedures of the Australian Treasury and violate the Australian Constitution.
The following lists events that happened during 1968 in Australia.
The following lists events that happened during 1969 in Australia.
The following lists events that happened during 1970 in Australia.
The Whitlam government was the federal executive government of Australia led by Prime Minister Gough Whitlam of the Australian Labor Party. The government commenced when Labor defeated the McMahon government at the 1972 federal election, ending a record 23 years of continuous Coalition government. It was terminated by Governor-General Sir John Kerr following the 1975 constitutional crisis and was succeeded by the Fraser government—the sole occasion in Australian history when an elected federal government was dismissed by the governor-general.
The following lists events that happened during 1972 in Australia.
The following lists events that happened during 1971 in Australia.
The following lists events that happened during 1974 in Australia.
The following lists events that happened during 1976 in Australia.
The 1983 Australian federal election was held in Australia on 5 March 1983. All 125 seats in the House of Representatives and all 64 seats in the Senate were up for election, following a double dissolution. The incumbent Coalition government which had been in power since 1975, led by Malcolm Fraser and Doug Anthony, was defeated in a landslide by the opposition Labor Party led by Bob Hawke.
The 1975 Australian federal election was held in Australia on 13 December 1975. All 127 seats in the House of Representatives and all 64 seats in the Senate were up for election, due to a double dissolution.
The 1972 Australian federal election was held in Australia on 2 December 1972. All 125 seats in the House of Representatives were up for election, as well as a single Senate seat in Queensland. The incumbent Liberal–Country coalition government, led by Prime Minister William McMahon, was defeated by the opposition Labor Party led by Gough Whitlam. Labor's victory ended 23 years of successive Coalition governments that began in 1949 and started the three-year Whitlam Labor Government.
Sir Maurice Hearne Byers was a noted Australian jurist and constitutional expert. He was the Commonwealth Solicitor-General from 1973 to 1983, in which capacity he played a role in the Gair Affair and the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis. He had an unmatched record of success in his appearances before the High Court of Australia, and he has been characterised as the finest lawyer never to have been appointed to the High Court.
