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

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

_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.

The letters show that the Queens responses, and at times even advice, particularly in relation to Kerrs concern for his own position and the possible use of the reserve powers, played a critical role in his planning and in his eventual decision to dismiss the government.

Dissident Liberal senators poised to allow Whitlams budget to pass when Sir John Kerr struck

In this extract from her new book, The Palace Letters, Professor Jenny Hocking reveals key entries from dissident Liberal Senator Alan Missens highly confidential diary on the 1975 constitutional crisis. Five Liberal senators had resolved to abstain from a direct vote on the governments supply bills, which would have enabled the bills to pass, just days before the dismissal of the Whitlam government.

The Queens implausible denial

It beggars belief that the Queen did not know that John Kerr was planning to sack Gough Whitlam. She may not have known the detail of the coup in progress, but she knew the substance. But like Lord Nelson she pretends she did not see anything. Nonsense.

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

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

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.

John Menadue

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.