What happened in the Australian constitutional crisis of 1975?

Answer 1

== == The most important thing about it was that whether Australians agreed with the double dissolution at the centre of the so called constitutional crisis, or not, we went to another election without fighting in the streets as would happen in most other countries in the world. It proved that our system of constitutional Government worked.

On 11th of November 1975, Australia faced the biggest and most serious political constitutional crisis ever in Australia. Sir John Kerr, the Governor-General at the time, fired Gough Whitlam's Labor government and called for an election.

After a year and a-half of success, Whitlam's Labor Government began experiencing problems. Some of these were of the government making, and some were not, but either way, they caused a double dissolution for Malcolm Fraser as the Caretaker Prime Minister of Australia and a political party to lose support of the people. The first incident that occurred was the resignation of Jim Cairns, after a close relationship with his head of personal staff, Juni Morosi became public. The reputation of the Government began to suffer. In 1974 a Democratic Labor Party senator named Vince Gair, who usually voted with the conservative parties, retired. This was after Gough Whitlam attempted to bribe him out of the senate with a job as Ambassador of Ireland. This was seen as a very cynical political move by Whitlam, and the reputation of the Government suffered again. After the world oil crisis, Australia's inflation rate rose 17%. Although the government could not control this, and other Western countries were suffering similarly, this fell back onto the government as being helpless, and their reputation was again at loss. This followed a rise in unemployment, again blamed on the government, because of dramatic cuts in tariffs, which made imports much cheaper and caused the closure of many Australian factories. The Australian farmers saw the Labor Government as being anti-farmer after Whitlam's Government abolished a Liberal farmer assistance scheme. The government then lost a lot of support in the bush.

After making obscene purchases of abstract art totalling in millions, and after an event called the 'Khemlani Affair' making the government look incompetent and dishonest, the Government began to fall apart. Whitlam argued that they had done nothing wrong, whilst the liberal party agued, with good evidence that the Labor government was not fit to govern. Malcolm Fraser of the Liberal Party wanted to force an election, so the people could have their say and vote Labor out. To do this, the Liberal Party (in control of the senate) refused to vote on the money bills until he was assured Whitlam would call an election. The Labor party believed that when the people vote a government into power, there does not need to be anything that could prevent them from governing, and if the people are not happy with the government, they can vote them out at the next election. It was found that the Australian constitution states that the government is responsible to the House of Representatives (where the forced election would take place), and is not answerable to the senate. The Labor government pointed to a weakness in the constitution, arguing that the government should not be forced into an election by the upper-house. Malcolm Fraser was breaking the convention that for 75 years previously that the senate never stopped supply. Labor believed this to be an irrational abuse of Senate power. When a constitutional crisis like this develops, it is the job of the Governor-General to find a solution. He chose to call a double dissolution (an election of all the seats of both houses of parliament) with Malcolm Fraser as a caretaker prime minister in the build up of the election. During this crisis, Australian society was divided, with some wanting to protest, and others saying it was a good thing. Even today many people have very strong feelings about what happened.

Answer 2

The Australian constitutional crisis of 1975 is generally regarded as the most significant domestic political and constitutional crisis in Australia's history. The crisis began in the upper house of the Australian Federal Parliament, the Senate, where the opposition Liberal-National Country Party coalition had a majority. The Senate deferred voting on bills that appropriated funds for government expenditure, attempting to force the Prime Minister to dissolve the House of Representatives and call an election. Such an action was unprecedented in Australian history, and has not been attempted since. The government, led by Labor's Gough Whitlam, dismissed such calls, and attempted to pressure Liberal Senators to support the bills while also exploring alternative means to fund government expenditure. The impasse continued for some weeks, during which the threat of the government being unable to meet its financial obligations hung over the country. The crisis was resolved in a dramatic fashion on 11 November 1975 when the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, dismissed Whitlam as Prime Minister and appointed his Liberal opponent Malcolm Fraser as caretaker Prime Minister. Kerr did so having secured an undertaking from Fraser that he would seek a dissolution of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, thus precipitating a general election.