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 removal as prime minister after controversially being dismissed 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 prime minister of Australia is the head of government of the Commonwealth of Australia. The prime minister chairs the Cabinet and thus heads the federal executive government. Under the principles of responsible government, the prime minister is both a member and responsible to Parliament. The current prime minister is Anthony Albanese of the Australian Labor Party, who assumed the office on 23 May 2022.
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 prime minister. It has been described as the greatest political and constitutional crisis in Australian history.
A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members often have a different title. The terms congressman/congresswoman or deputy are equivalent terms used in other jurisdictions. The term parliamentarian is also sometimes used for members of parliament, but this may also be used to refer to unelected government officials with specific roles in a parliament and other expert advisers on parliamentary procedure such as the Senate parliamentarian in the United States. The term is also used to the characteristic of performing the duties of a member of a legislature, for example: "The two party leaders often disagreed on issues, but both were excellent parliamentarians and cooperated to get many good things done."
Simon Findlay Crean was an Australian politician and trade unionist. He was the leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and leader of the opposition from 2001 to 2003. He represented the seat of Hotham in the House of Representatives from 1990 to 2013 and was a cabinet minister in the Hawke, Keating, Rudd and Gillard governments.
The speaker of the House of Representatives is the presiding officer of the Australian House of Representatives, the lower chamber within the Parliament of Australia. The counterpart in the upper house is the president of the Senate. The office of the speakership was established in 1901 by section 35 of the Constitution of Australia. The primary responsibilities of the office is to oversee house debates, determine which members may speak, maintain order and the parliamentary and ministerial codes of conduct during sessions and uphold all rules and standing orders. The current speaker of the House of Representatives is Milton Dick, who was elected on 26 July 2022.
Laurence John Brereton is an Australian former politician who was a state minister, a federal member of cabinet, and kingmaker in the election of several Australian Labor Party leaders, including Paul Keating and Mark Latham. He was a Labor member of the Australian House of Representatives from March 1990 to October 2004, representing the Division of Kingsford Smith, New South Wales. He is credited with building Sydney's controversial monorail.
The deputy prime minister of Australia is the deputy chief executive and the second highest ranking officer of the Australian Government. The office of deputy prime minister was officially created as a ministerial portfolio in 1968, although the title had been used informally for many years previously. The deputy prime minister is appointed by the governor-general on the advice of the prime minister. When Australia has a Labor government, the deputy leader of the parliamentary party holds the position of deputy prime minister. When Australia has a Coalition government, the Coalition Agreement mandates that all Coalition members support the leader of the Liberal Party becoming prime minister and the leader of the National Party becoming the deputy prime minister.
The Cabinet of Australia, also known as the Federal Cabinet, is the chief decision-making body of the Australian government. The cabinet is appointed by the prime minister of Australia and is composed of senior government ministers who head the executive departments and ministries of the federal government. The cabinet is separate to the federal Department of the Prime Ministers and Cabinet.
Anthony David Hawthorn Smith is an Australian politician who was the 30th Speaker of the House of Representatives. He was a Liberal Party Member of the House of Representatives from 2001 to 2022, representing the Division of Casey in Victoria.
In the Parliament of Australia, the Leader of the House is the government minister responsible for the management of government business in the House of Representatives, including the order in which the Government's agenda is to be dealt with, tactical matters in reaction to impediments to such management, negotiation with the Opposition's counterpart about the order in which bills are to be debated, and the time allotted for debates. The position is currently held by Tony Burke since June 2022.
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.
Nigel Gregory Scullion is a former Australian politician who was a Senator for the Northern Territory from 2001 to 2019. He was a member of the Country Liberal Party (CLP) and sat with the National Party in federal parliament. He held ministerial office under four prime ministers.
A political family of Australia is a family in which multiple members are involved in Australian politics, particularly electoral politics. Members may be related by blood or marriage; often several generations or multiple siblings may be involved.
The basic annual salary of a Member Of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons is £91,346, as of April 2023. In addition, MPs are able to claim allowances to cover the costs of running an office and employing staff, and maintaining a constituency residence or a residence in London. Additional salary is paid for appointments or additional duties, such as ministerial appointments, being a whip, chairing a select committee or chairing a Public Bill committee.
The Leader of the Government in the Senate is the government's most senior cabinet minister in the Australian Senate and the main government spokesperson in the Senate. His or her Opposition counterpart is the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate.
In the Parliament of Australia, the political parties appoint party whips to ensure party discipline, help manage legislative business and carry out a variety of other functions on behalf of the party leadership. Additional functions of the government party whips is to ensure that a sufficient number of government members and senators are present in the chamber to ensure passage of government legislation and measures and to prevent censure motions succeeding, and to ensure presence of a parliamentary quorum. Their roles in the chamber include tally votes during divisions, and arranging pairs which affects the ability of members and senators to leave parliament during sittings, as well as the entitlement to be absent during divisions.
The history of the Australian Labor Party has its origins in the Labour parties founded in the 1890s in the Australian colonies prior to federation. Labor tradition ascribes the founding of Queensland Labour to a meeting of striking pastoral workers under a ghost gum tree in Barcaldine, Queensland in 1891. The Balmain, New South Wales branch of the party claims to be the oldest in Australia. Labour as a parliamentary party dates from 1891 in New South Wales and South Australia, 1893 in Queensland, and later in the other colonies.
In Australian federal politics, the shadow cabinet is the opposition's equivalent to the federal cabinet. It comprises the most senior figures within the opposition, headed by the leader of the opposition as the counterpart to the prime minister of Australia.
