This article is about the Australian meaning of the term. For the British sense (the right of tenant not to be evicted from their rented residential property without due process), see Leasehold estate §Tenancy at will.
Security of tenure is a term with multiple meanings according to jurisdiction. In Australia, it is used in political science to describe a constitutional or legal guarantee that a political office-holder cannot be removed from office except in exceptional and specified circumstances.
Without (political) security of tenure, an office-holder may find his or her ability to carry out their powers, functions and duties restricted by the fear that whoever disapproves of any of their decisions may be able to easily remove them from office in revenge. Security of tenure offers protection, by ensuring that an office-holder cannot be victimised for exercising their powers, functions and duties. It enables the democratic or constitutional methodology through which an office-holder comes to office not to be overturned except in the strictest and most extreme cases.
Method of removal
The standard form of security of tenure offered to officeholders is usually that they can only be removed from office by either of two methods:
removal from office following impeachment (a formal charge equivalent to a criminal law indictment) by parliament, using weighted majorities (usually a two-thirds majority);
removal by courts for incapacity (mental, physical or psychological problems make them no longer for the foreseeable future be able to function in office).
Most presidents of states worldwide and most monarchs have security of tenure. Governors-General do not and can be dismissed by their head of state when formally advised to do so either by the prime minister or by the cabinet.
In the United States, while three presidents were impeached in the over two centuries existence of the presidency, (Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump), no president has been removed from office to date.
Lack of security of tenure is regarded by some commentators as having contributed to the controversial decision of Australian governor-general Sir John Kerr to dismiss the prime minister, Gough Whitlam, in 1975. In the immediate aftermath of the dismissal critics, the Labor Party and much of the media criticised Kerr for not giving any advance indication that he intended to dismiss the prime minister. In systems where a head of state or representative of the head of state has security of tenure, both are in a position to exercise the third of Walter Bagehot's three maxims governing the rights of a head of state: the 'right to warn' that prime minister or government's actions or inactions are inadvisable and in breach either of constitutional law or constitutional conventions.
The problem for Kerr was that if he had made any threat to dismiss Whitlam, if the latter did not manage to solve the crisis facing Australia over the stalemate in parliament and the loss of supply could have been followed by a request by Whitlam to the Queen of Australia to dismiss Kerr and so pre-empt his own dismissal.
In a press conference after the withdrawal of his commission, Whitlam inadvertently highlighted this option when he told reporters:
"The Governor-General prevented me from getting in touch with the Queen by just withdrawing the Commission immediately. I was unable to communicate with the Queen, as I would have been entitled to do, if I'd had any warning of the course that he, the Governor-General, was to take."
As constitutionally, the Queen of Australia has no role in commissioning someone to form a government, or indeed in withdrawing someone's commission, her only active role would be with regard to who was governor-general. Other than that, her only possible role could have been to advise informally the Governor-General that it would be a mistake to dismiss Whitlam. (A then-advisor to Queen Elizabeth II indicated later that the advisor believed that she would have advised Kerr not to dismiss Whitlam had Kerr consulted her.)
Whatever about the wisdom of Kerr's decision to withdraw the commission of Whitlam, the lack of security of tenure meant that he had little room for prior consultation with Whitlam without raising the danger that he himself would be dismissed to halt any planned intervention. That fundamental design flaw forced an extreme solution of sorts on the crisis, whereas, protected by security of tenure, other heads of state would have had the option of informal consultation, even to the extent of warning the head of government that if the head of government persisted with a particular course of action, the head of state would have to intervene using the constitutional powers.
In contrasts, presidents of France, Italy, Ireland and elsewhere have been able in effect to warn prime ministers that they would have to intervene unless a solution to the crisis was found, with the prime ministers then being able to seek a compromise solution to the crisis to head off a head of state intervention.
The proposed Australian presidency
This design flaw in the Australian system was highlighted by international experts who briefed the Republic Advisory Committee in 1993 on the lessons to be learnt in moving from a constitutional monarchy to a republic. However, later that decade, Australia's constitutional convention produced a proposed model of Australian president that continued to lack security of tenure. During the 1999 referendum on becoming a republic, some critics asserted that the failure to provide security of tenure meant that the proposed presidency was fatally flawed from conception, with the officeholder unable to intervene except through a sudden, unannounced action such as that performed by Kerr in November 1975.
For that reason, support of the monarchy and other reasons, Australia voted to retain its constitutional monarchy in the referendum.
Additional information
Charles Lund Black, Jr. Impeachment: A Handbook (Yale University Press, 1998) ISBN0-300-07950-8
Constitution of the United States of America (see link below)
Jim Duffy, "Overseas studies: Ireland" in An Australian Republic: The Options - The Appendices (Republic Advisory Committee, Vol II, Commonwealth of Australia, 1993) ISBN0-644-32589-5
John M Kelly, The Constitution of Ireland (3rd edition, 1994)
David Gwynn Morgan, Constitutional Law of Ireland ( Roundhall, 1990)
Micheál Ó Cearúil, Bunreacht na hÉireann: A Study of the Irish Text (published by the All Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution, The Stationery Office, 1999).
Hans Louis Trefousse, Impeachment of a President: Andrew Johnson, the Blacks and Reconstruction (Fordham University Press, 1999) ISBN0-8232-1923-2
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 governor-general of Australia is the representative of the monarch of Australia, currently King Charles III, and performs many constitutional, ceremonial and community roles in the Australian political system. When performing these roles, the governor-general acts independently and is not the King's delegate or agent. The current governor-general is David Hurley, having been appointed on 1 July 2019.
The prime minister of Australia is the head of government of the Commonwealth of Australia. The prime minister heads the executive branch of the federal government of Australia and is accountable to federal parliament under the principles of responsible government. The prime minister is the chair of the federal cabinet and the national cabinet and a member of the federal executive council. 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.
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.
Loss of supply occurs where a government in a parliamentary democracy using the Westminster System or a system derived from it is denied a supply of treasury or exchequer funds, by whichever house or houses of parliament or head of state is constitutionally entitled to grant and deny supply. A defeat on a budgetary vote is one way by which supply can be denied. Loss of supply is typically interpreted as indicating a loss of confidence in the government. Not all "money bills" are necessarily supply bills. For instance, in Australia, supply bills are defined as "bills which are required by the Government to carry on its day-to-day business".
In a parliamentary or semi-presidential system of government, a reserve power, also known as discretionary power, is a power that may be exercised by the head of state without the approval of another branch or part of the government. Unlike in a presidential system of government, the head of state is generally constrained by the cabinet or the legislature in a parliamentary system, and most reserve powers are usable only in certain exceptional circumstances.
In political science, a constitutional crisis is a problem or conflict in the function of a government that the political constitution or other fundamental governing law is perceived to be unable to resolve. There are several variations to this definition. For instance, one describes it as the crisis that arises out of the failure, or at least a strong risk of failure, of a constitution to perform its central functions. The crisis may arise from a variety of possible causes. For example, a government may want to pass a law contrary to its constitution; the constitution may fail to provide a clear answer for a specific situation; the constitution may be clear but it may be politically infeasible to follow it; the government institutions themselves may falter or fail to live up to what the law prescribes them to be; or officials in the government may justify avoiding dealing with a serious problem based on narrow interpretations of the law. Specific examples include the South African Coloured vote constitutional crisis in the 1950s, the secession of the southern U.S. states in 1860 and 1861, the dismissal of the Australian federal government in 1975 and the 2007 Ukrainian crisis. While the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland does not have a codified constitution, it is deemed to have an uncodified one, and issues and crises in the UK and its constituent countries are described as constitutional crises.
Sir David Iser Smith was an Australian public servant. He was the Official Secretary to the Governor-General of Australia between 1973 and 1990, in which capacity he served Sir Paul Hasluck, Sir John Kerr, Sir Zelman Cowen, Sir Ninian Stephen and Bill Hayden.
Sir Anthony Frank MasonHonFAIB DistFRSN is an Australian judge who served as the ninth Chief Justice of Australia, in office from 1987 to 1995. He was first appointed to the High Court in 1972, having previously served on the Supreme Court of New South Wales.
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 head of state.
The Dismissal is an Australian television miniseries, first screened in 1983, that dramatised the events of the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis.
The monarchy of Australia is a key component of Australia's form of government, embodied by the Australian sovereign and head of state. The Australian monarchy is a constitutional one, modelled on the Westminster system of parliamentary government, while incorporating features unique to the constitution of Australia.
Australia is a constitutional monarchy whose Sovereign also serves as Monarch of the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Canada and eleven other former dependencies of the United Kingdom including Papua New Guinea, which was formerly a dependency of Australia. These countries operate as independent nations, and are known as Commonwealth realms. The history of the Australian monarchy has involved a shifting relationship with both the monarch and also the British government.
The Constitution of Australia is the supreme law of Australia. It is a written constitution that sets down the political structure of Australia as a federation under a constitutional monarchy governed with a parliamentary system and outlines the structure and powers of the Commonwealth of Australia's three constituent parts: the executive, legislature, and judiciary.
The official secretary to the governor-general of Australia and staff provide support to the governor-general of Australia to enable the governor-general to carry out their constitutional, statutory, ceremonial and public duties. Until 1903, the governor-general’s private secretary provided the support to the governor-general, when the official secretary position was established. The position was abolished in 1928 after the Parliament moved from Melbourne to Canberra, but was recreated in 1931. The position was established by statute in its current form in 1984. Since 18 August 2018 the official secretary has been Paul Singer.
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.
The governor-general of Tuvalu is the representative of the Tuvaluan monarch, currently King Charles III, in the country of Tuvalu.
The Palace letters, sometimes labelled as the Palace papers, were letters between Queen Elizabeth II, through her Private Secretary Martin Charteris, and Australian Governor-General Sir John Kerr around the time of the 1975 constitutional crisis, in which Kerr dismissed Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. The phrase 'Palace letters' originated in the work of Australian historian and Whitlam biographer Professor Jenny Hocking, who successfully overturned the Queen's embargo over these letters, as a reference to Buckingham Palace, the official residence of Elizabeth in London.
CIA involvement in the Whitlam dismissal is an allegation that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was involved in the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis, which culminated in the dismissal of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
