At the bottom see an edited transcript of an interview I conducted with the ABC for a podcast series The Eleventh
It also includes some more recent articles on the Dismissal.
I was brought up in a lower middle-class home, a Methodist Manse. I assumed that my ‘betters’ must somehow be honourable and trustworthy people.
After November 11 1975 I came to the conclusion that even a Governor General, High Court Judges and a powerful media proprietor were not honourable and trustworthy. I learned that powerful people would trample on long-established conventions and institutions to protect the interests of themselves, their powerful friends and their class.
Some 45 years later my trust has not been restored.
See also below links to more recent articles in Pearls and Irritations.
Paul Kelly and Troy Bramston have suggested that the Palace and the Queen did not know of Kerr’s plans. That is nonsense, as Jenny Hocking pointed out very persuasively again on Monday night on Q & A.
The Palace Letters have blown apart the claim the Queen had no part in the Whitlam dismissal.
Dissident Liberal senators poised to allow Whitlam’s budget to pass when Sir John Kerr struck
Please click below to download the edited transcript of the Menadue section of The Eleventh series
John Menadue is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Pearls and Irritations. He was formerly Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Ambassador to Japan, Secretary of the Department of Immigration and CEO of Qantas.
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