Jenny Hocking

For me, one of the remarkable aspects of reading The Dismissal Dossier, Everything You Were Never Meant to Know about November 1975 is that the dismissal of the Whitlam government in 1975 seems to generate so little interest. The book isn't written for people like me who lived through the hours of November 11th with increasing shock and dismay, it's written for people who weren't paying attention at the time, or have come to adulthood in the ensuing years. I can't comprehend why people don't realise how much it matters for our democracy...

I'm not going to revisit the historical events of the day, because Wikipedia provides a readily available account and because the timeline of events is actually secondary to what matters. My father was one of those outraged by the Palace's role in these events, and he wrote to the Queen and in due course received the usual mealy-mouthed denial that the Queen had any responsibility for it. What matters is that this denial and all the others are shameless lies, and Jenny Hocking lays the deception bare in the first chapter 'What did the Palace Know?' The Palace knew what was going to happen beforehand, had provided advice beforehand, and went on to shower Kerr with honours after the event. So much for the oft-quoted assertion that the Queen is always neutral in matters of domestic politics. She wasn't neutral then — and she isn't neutral now because she is still refusing to release archival material that is obviously detrimental to the fantasy of Palace neutrality.

[Jenny Hocking took the case to the High Court to force the Palace to release the papers, and failed. You can read the judgement here, but the nuts and bolts of it is that the correspondence is not the property of the Commonwealth and therefore there is no authority to release them under the Archives Act. The Palace can embargo their release indefinitely...]

I was glued to the radio on November 11th 1975, and I remember the short-lived moment of relief when Whitlam returned to the House of Representatives after Kerr had dismissed him and the House carried a motion of No Confidence in Kerr's stooge Malcolm Fraser. I thought that everything would be resolved then... the Senate had passed Supply and it's the House of Reps that forms government in democracies like ours. But in the chapter 'Sir John Kerr's Second Dismissal' Hocking makes it explicit: from this moment on, this moment that I remember so vividly, Whitlam should have been restored to office.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/09/07/the-dismissal-dossier-by-jenny-hocking/… (mehr)

A tremendous biography of a remarkable man. In many ways Gough was so ahead of his time that perhaps he would have been better suited to the less conservative (in Australia that is!) 1980s than the 70s. I had forgotten some of the vast contributions he and his government made to public life in Australia - through multiculturalism, equal rights for women, the first Aboriginal land rights etc. His huge energy, towering intellect but also curious political naivety comes through well here. Even though we all know the outcome, Jenny Hocking holds us in suspense as the events around the Dismissal unfold - and Gough's naivety to the machinations of the Opposition is bewildering in retrospect. But such was his devotion to process and propriety that his anger is purely with those who break the conventions - mainly Kerr - rather than with those who used politics.

A tremendous biography and a real page turner… (mehr)