Five decades on from the dismissal of the Whitlam government, Australia is seeing a notable shift in the narrative that now recognises it as a calculated coup, and an assault on the conventions of government.

This month we marked 50 years since the dismissal of the Whitlam government by the governor-general, Sir John Kerr, one of the most contentious and polarising episodes in our political history.

In the five decades since, the eponymous ‘dismissal’ has become a cultural moment as well as a political one, with the obligatory merch at the Old Parliament House bookshop: ‘Well may we say’ tea towels, ‘It’s Time’ mugs, and even a Sir John Kerr ruler, a reminder perhaps of his eager reanimation of the ‘divine right of Kings’.

Thousands of words have been expended on the dismissal over the last 50 years, with every new revelation of Kerr’s deceptions and the involvement of others showing us how little we really knew at the time.

This anniversary, however, brought something new to this fractious history, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s recognition of the dismissal as ‘a calculated plot’, an unconscionable deception of an elected government and prime minister: “a partisan political ambush hatched by conservative forces which sacrificed conventions and institutions in the pursuit of power.”

Former attorney-general, Mark Dreyfus, and veteran ABC journalist Kerry O’Brien went further, both proclaiming the dismissal a ‘coup’: “It took me a long time to come to precisely this view, but I think when you put all of those pieces of the mosaic together, it was a coup,” said O’Brien.

The significance of this acknowledgement of the dismissal as a planned and scripted conservative usurpation of power, cannot be overstated. The language of the dismissal has changed irrevocably. The prime minister’s blunt assessment now stands as the foundational context within which Kerr’s unprecedented action must be understood – as one of intrigue, collusion, and deception that began, as Graham Freudenberg noted, with the election of the Whitlam government itself.

After 50 years, this is a pivotal step in the long journey towards unraveling the history of the dismissal of the Whitlam government.

For decades commentators have shied away from recognising Kerr’s actions as a calculated plot, much less a coup, preferring to see it as an essentially contingent response of a reluctant governor-general, forced to make a difficult decision ‘on my own part’, in which no-one else was involved and no other options were available when supply was blocked in the Senate by the opposition coalition parties.

A series of archival revelations in the decades since has demolished that simplistic whitewash of history, revealing a protracted, collusive, political strategy to remove an elected government which retained the confidence of the House of Representatives, by ‘stealth’ as Kerr termed it, while remaining silent to Whitlam who as prime minister was his chief advisor.

This culminated in what Dr Matt Harvey and I describe in a recent paper as Kerr’s ‘double dismissal’ of first, the prime minister and the government just as Whitlam was to call a half-Senate election, and second the parliament, ignoring the House of Representatives’ defining motion of no confidence in the appointed Fraser government.

Less widely covered were the equally significant remarks by the governor-general, Sam Mostyn, on the 50th anniversary of this political rupture. Mostyn has injected an openness and a welcome transparency into this arcane role and her comments on the dismissal stand in stark contrast to Kerr’s deception and failure to warn his responsible ministers.

“I would not act in that way,” Mostyn said, in relation to Kerr’s dismissal of Whitlam without warning.

“The job of the governor-general is to utilise the powers of encouragement and warning through to the prime minister and cabinet.”

By failing to warn Whitlam, Kerr had breached this most basic requirement of a governor-general in a constitutional monarchy – in Bagehot’s famous dictum, the right to be consulted, to encourage, and to warn. Kerr neither consulted nor warned Whitlam, a moral and political failing from which Kerr never recovered.

Of particular interest were governor-general Mostyn’s comments about ‘the Palace letters’, Kerr’s voluminous correspondence with the Queen discussing matters at the heart of the dismissal, including the contentious ‘reserve powers’ to dismiss a government.

In her interview with the ABC last week, governor-general Mostyn left no doubt as to her view of Kerr’s correspondence with the Palace seeking ‘support and guidance’ about such matters rather than his Australian advisors, including the solicitor-general: “I would not be corresponding in that way .. we would be managing that here. There is no sense that I would seek that support or information or guidance from the King.”

The resonance in this remark is that Kerr had received the advice of the Australian solicitor-general, Sir Maurice Byers, and chose to ignore it in preference for the direct advice of the Queen’s private secretary, Sir Martin Charteris, who of course writes for and on behalf of the Queen.

Byers advised that there was ‘grave doubt’ as to the continued existence of the reserve powers, which had not been used in England for nearly 200 years. The situation over supply in the Senate, Byers concluded, did not call for the governor-general to intervene.

One week before the dismissal Charteris wrote to Kerr with contrary and quite improper advice: “It is often argued that such powers no longer exist. I do not believe that this is true. I think those powers do exist … the fact that you have powers is recognised.”

In reanimating the ‘reserve powers of the Crown’ for the first time in nearly two centuries, Kerr chose to ignore the advice of his Australian authorities in preference for that from the Queen’s private secretary. It is this that gives a particular edge to governor-general Mostyn’s pointed remarks.

These comments from the prime minister and the governor-general, and others, on the 50th anniversary of the dismissal, are part of a notable shift in the dismissal narrative. It has taken 50 years to get there, but those key words acknowledging the dismissal as a calculated plot, a coup, and an assault on the conventions of government, have at last been said and a new understanding of the dismissal of the Whitlam government is now underway.