“I learned that powerful people trample on institutions and conventions” when it suits: Podcast ABC ‘The Eleventh’, February/March 2020

Dec 29, 2022
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, The sign at the entrance to the ABC Southbank building. The ABC is the Australian national government broadcaster

After November 11 1975, I came to the conclusion that even a Governor General, some High Court Judges and a powerful media proprietor were not honourable and trustworthy.

An updated repost from November 11, 2020

I was brought up in a lower middle-class home, a Methodist Manse. I assumed that the great and the good must somehow be honourable and trustworthy people.

After November 11 1975, I came to the conclusion that even a Governor General, some 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.

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.

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.

See also below links to more recent articles in Pearls and Irritations.

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

The Queen’s implausible denial

Download the edited transcript of the Menadue section of The Eleventh  series

Original article first published in Pearls and Irritations November 11, 2020

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