Whitlam, Connor and their dismissals

Treasury posts in the world’s financial capitals soon reported puzzled inquiries from reputable financial houses, not only in relation to Khemlani, but also concerning a letter from the Treasurer, Dr Cairns, to a Melbourne dentist, indicating interest in arranging borrowings, and offering a 2.5 per cent commission. And this was from a country which hitherto had the highest standing in the world’s financial centres.

That Australia should be represented by such charlatans points not so much to the naïveté as to the reckless indifference of the government to the minimum standards of propriety and civilised behaviour.

Appointing Khemlani was a gross defamation on our international reputation.

This behaviour on the part of a Western government, more appropriate to an African military kleptocracy, could not have failed to be relayed to the media and the Opposition, with, as John Stone observes laconically, predictable results. In the meantime, the economy was moving from bad to worse, and eventually would come close to collapse, saved only by the intervention of the governor-general.

Such is the wisdom of the nation’s elites that Sir John Kerr is now painted as a villain, Mr Whitlam has achieved a secular canonisation in his own lifetime, Malcolm Fraser is held out as a model convert to some form of neo-Whitlamism - all his previous sins forgiven - and the constitutional system which put the final decision in the hands of the people is described as broken.

A detailed investigation into the events surrounding Connor’s dismissal may be found in Sir David’s book, Head of State, which has received little attention from the nation’s political journalists, and apart from Quadrant and has not, to my knowledge, been reviewed. Yet another indictment of the refusal of our elites to brook any challenge to the Whitlam canonisation, if not deification.

It is refreshing that Malcolm Farr, at least, is prepared to refer to Sir David’s work.

Sir David believes Connor, who died in 1977, was innocent of the charge of misleading his leader. He thinks Connor was the scapegoat to keep the Whitlam Government in office. Sir David has drawn on the documents of the late Frank Stewart, Whitlam's minister for tourism and sport, and vice president of the executive council. After perusing Stewart’s papers, Sir David believes he was troubled by Connor's fate.

Theses papers include copies of reports by the Bulletin journalist Alan Reid and Stewart's annotations on these.

Reid had reported that Stewart called Sir John Kerr on October 20, 1975 - six days after Connor's resignation - and told him Connor had been entitled to believe Whitlam had given him permission to maintain talks with Khemlani. Sir David believes Stewart's annotations on a transcript of a television interview and a Bulletin article by Reid support this report.

As Malcolm Farr says, if Connor had been punished unfairly, he never spoke of it in public. And Whitlam has never deviated from the official line about the forced resignation.

If Stewart had contacted Sir John Kerr, it would have strengthened his increasing suspicions about his prime minister. Acting as Mr Whitlam had so often insisted was the proper consequence of a failure to obtain supply, Sir John took the only course of action available to him.

This was both constitutional and democratic: to ensure that the issue was put to the people.