On Remembrance Day, 1975, the Governor-General of Australia, Sir John Kerr, sacked the Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam. The Dismissal was the culmination of almost three years of political conflict, as Whitlam's reforming Labor government rammed home overdue legislative reforms in the face of implacable, and increasingly bitter, conservative opposition. The focus of the Opposition's scheming was the Senate, where its leaders blocked supply in order to force a political crisis. Whitlam, famous for his 'crash through or crash' style, refused to compromise with his political enemies. After consulting secretly with the Opposition Leader, Malcolm Fraser, and the Chief Justice, Sir Garfield Barwick, Kerr abruptly informed the PM that he had withdrawn his commission. Half an hour later, Kerr swore Fraser in as 'caretaker Prime Minister'. At an election a month later, the conservatives were returned to office. Controversy and recrimination followed. Many Australians, including Whitlam himself, believed he had been the victim of a coup. In 1979, he published his own account of the events of 1975, The Truth of the Matter, an instant best seller. Out of print for many years, it is republished by MUP on the thirtieth anniversary of the Dismissal, with a new introduction by the author and other new reference material. Passionate, pithy, learned, witty, and vigorously combative, The Truth of the Matter tells the extraordinary political story of the only Prime Minister of Australia ever deposed from office.

Gough Whitlam, Australia’s twenty-first prime minister, swept to power in December 1972, ending twenty-three years of conservative rule. It was an ascendancy bitterly resented by some, never accepted by others, and ended with dismissal by the Governor-General barely three years later—an outcome that polarised debate and left many believing the full story had not been told.In this much anticipated second volume of her biography of Gough Whitlam, Hocking has used previously unearthed archival material and extensive interviews with Gough Whitlam, his family, colleagues and foes, to bring the key players in these dramatic events to life.Who was ‘the third man’ who counselled the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, in his decision to sack the twice-elected Whitlam government and appoint Malcolm Fraser as prime minister? How much did the Palace know about what was happening? And what drove the Kerr to take the unprecedented action of removing an elected government from office?This definitive biography takes us behind the political intrigue to reveal a devastated Whitlam and his personal struggle in the aftermath of the dismissal, during the unfulfilled years that followed and his eventual political renewal as Australia’s ambassador to UNESCO. And of course, through the highs and the lows of his decades of public life Whitlam depended absolutely on the steadfast support of the love of his life, Margaret. For this is also the story of a remarkable marriage and an enduring partnership.The truth of this tumultuous period in Australia’s history is finally revealed in this engaging narrative—Gough Whitlam: His Time.

What role did the queen play in the governor-general Sir John Kerr's plans to dismiss prime minister Gough Whitlam in 1975, which unleashed one of the most divisive episodes in Australia's political history? And why weren't we told? Under the cover of being designated as private correspondence, the letters between the queen and the governor-general about the dismissal have been locked away for decades in the National Archives of Australia, and embargoed by the queen potentially forever. This ruse has furthered the fiction that the queen and the Palace had no warning of or role in Kerr's actions. In the face of this, Professor Jenny Hocking embarked on a four-year legal battle to force the Archives to release the letters. In 2015, she mounted a crowd-funded campaign, securing a stellar pro bono team that took her case all the way to the High Court of Australia. Now, drawing on never-before-published material from Kerr's archives and her submissions to the court, Hocking traces the collusion and deception behind the dismissal, and charts the private role of High Court judges, the queen's private secretary, and the leader of the opposition, Malcolm Fraser, in Kerr's actions, and the prior knowledge of the queen and Prince Charles. Hocking also reveals the obstruction, intrigue, and duplicity she faced, raising disturbing questions about the role of the National Archives in preventing access to its own historical material and in enforcing royal secrecy over its documents.

This moment was not his alone, nor could it ever have come about without himaGough Whitlam turned to Graham Freudenberg, touched him lightly on the shoulder, saying, 'It's been a long road, Comrade, but we're there', and walked out to meet the spotlight... Acclaimed biographer Jenny Hocking's Gough Whitlam: A Moment in History is the first contemporary and definitive biographical study of the former Labor Prime Minister. From his childhood in the fledging city of Canberra to his first appearance as Prime Minister (playing Neville Chamberlain), to his extensive war service in the Pacific and marriage to Margaret, the champion swimmer and daughter of Justice Wilfred Dovey, the biography draws on previously unseen archival material, extensive interviews with family and colleagues, and exclusive interviews with Gough Whitlam himself. Hocking's narrative skill and scrupulous research reveals an extraordinary and complex man, whose life is, in every way, formed by the remarkable events of previous generations of his family, and who would, in turn, change Australian political and cultural developments in the twentieth century. Gough Whitlam: A Moment in History is a magnificent biography that illuminates the path that took one man to power.

When he became Prime Minister in December 1972 Gough Whitlam was the first Labor Prime Minister for 23 years. Within days he had abolished conscription, withdrawn the remaining Australian troops from Viet Nam, negotiated diplomatic relations with China and initiated Federal aid to State and church schools and land rights for Aborigines. In this new book, completed after his 80th birthday, Whitlam reviews his career, examines the repercussions of the US withdrawal from Viet Nam and the Portuguese withdrawal from Timor in 1975 and the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. He discusses the decline of the Hawke Government, the rise and fall of Paul Keating and the resuscitation of John Howard. And he speculates about the future of our nation, and propounds the case for a Federal Republic.

In the early 1970s, two titans of Australian and American politics, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and President Richard Nixon, clashed over the end of the Vietnam war and the shape of a new Asia. A relationship that had endured the heights of the Cold War veered dangerously off course and seemed headed for destruction. Never before—or since—has the alliance sunk to such depths. Drawing on sensational new evidence from once top-secret American and Australian records, this book portrays the bitter clash between these two leaders and their competing visions of the world. As the Nixon White House went increasingly on the defensive in early 1973, reeling from the lethal drip of the Watergate revelations, the first Labor prime minister in twenty-three years looked to redefine ANZUS and Australia's global stance. It was a heady brew, and not one the Americans were used to. The result was a fractured alliance, and an American president enraged, seemingly hell bent on tearing apart the fabric of a treaty that had become the first principle of Australian foreign policy.