Fifty years ago today, Australians witnessed the opening of the final chapter of our greatest political drama – the demise of the Whitlam government. The catalyst was the political cause celebre of 1975 – the so-called overseas loans affair.

The minister for minerals and energy, Rex Connor, a storied Labor colossus, had solicited a massive loan in petrodollars (equivalent to 1/16th of Australia’s GDP) not through the orthodox channel of the global bond markets, but by the agency of a dubious Pakistani commodities trader, one Tirath Khemlani. Television footage of this dodgy, betel nut-chewing spiv being chased around Canberra by a cavalcade of journalists gave the affair a Keystone Cops quality which was a perfect – and very entertaining – metaphor for the shambles the Whitlam government had itself become.

Sacked prime minister Gough Whitlam addresses the crowd outside Parliament House after his dismissal on November 11, 1975. Credit: Fairfax Media

Whitlam ordered Connor to cease his dealings with Khemlani, who assured him that he had done so. But documents unearthed by the opposition demonstrated he had lied both to his prime minister and to parliament. On October 14, 1975, Whitlam dismissed him, thereby providing opposition leader Malcolm Fraser with the “extraordinary and reprehensible circumstance” which he had set as the test whether the Senate would block passage of the budget bills. Two days later, it did so, commencing the train of events which culminated in Whitlam’s dismissal on November 11. (We should brace........

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