In an extract from The Double Dismissal, Emeritus Professor Jenny Hocking, distinguished fellow of the Whitlam Institute within Western Sydney University, and Dr Matt Harvey, senior lecturer at Victoria University of Technology, describe the chaos that led to two dismissals on 11 November.

Whitlam left Government House unaware that the leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Fraser, was waiting in an anteroom at the other end of the corridor, emerging immediately after his departure to be sworn in as prime minister. Whitlam only found out from journalists the following day that by the time he left Yarralumla, Fraser was already prime minister. Nor did Whitlam know that Fraser and Kerr had agreed earlier that morning on the four conditions by which Kerr would dismiss Whitlam and appoint Fraser as prime minister. Whitlam’s actions following the Dismissal took place in that fog of constructed secrecy, confusion, and deception.

He went straight to the Lodge to meet his core advisers including Freudenberg, Enderby, Scholes and Menadue, many of whom thought Whitlam was joking when he looked up briefly from his steak to tell them they had been sacked. None of them knew then that Fraser was at Yarralumla when Whitlam arrived, and that he had already been appointed prime minister by Kerr: “Contingency plans for a complete departure from accepted parliamentary practice and the accepted role of Australian governor-generals had not been prepared,” Scholes drily recalled. Their focus, such as it was given the varying degrees of shock, was on getting the supply bills through the Senate and then re-forming government through a motion of confidence in the House of Representatives in Whitlam and a government led by him.

Whitlam drafted a motion of confidence to move in the House of Representatives calling for the governor-general to again commission the Whitlam Government. It should be noted that in this frantic half-hour which focused on securing supply in the Senate and confidence in the House, no one thought to advise the Labor leaders in the Senate of the Dismissal. Had they known, they might have withdrawn the motion or otherwise frustrated the passage of the bills.

The House of Representatives and the Senate both resumed sitting at 2pm, with many Labor members still unaware that the government had been dismissed and anticipating the announcement of a half-Senate election. The atmosphere was electric as news began to filter through that the government had been dismissed. The public gallery quickly filled with shocked onlookers, distressed and in disbelief, some hanging perilously........

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