The thirtieth anniversary of the dismissal is impossible to avoid, so I’m wagging Parliament today to attend the launch of The Great Crash, NSW Solicitor General and former Whitlam staffer Michael Sexton’s book on the prime minister he served.

Australiarnhas had three great prime ministers. Alfred Deakin and Sir RobertrnMenzies set the course for the first and second fifty years of ourrnCommonwealth respectively. The salesmanship and sheer star power of BobrnHawke, mixed with the brains, balls and bastardry of Paul Keating andrnPeter Walsh, brought about the structural reforms that have led to thernprosperity we enjoy at the start of our second century of nationhood.

And Gough Whitlam? He is our Ozymandias – a massive, fallen figure.

Whatrncaused his government to crack and topple? Perhaps we should take arnlook at how a man who is one of us but observed the events of 1975 fromrna distance surveys the ruin of the Whitlam government. Clive James hasrna brilliantly succinct essay on the events of November 1975 in therncurrent issue of The Monthly.

Herncentres it around the writings of Diamond Jim McClelland, Whitlamrnminister and one-time friend of Governor-General Sir John Kerr.

“Accordingrnto McClelland, the best Kerr can say for himself is that he couldn’trnwarn Whitlam that dismissal might be in the wind because if he hadrnwarned Whitlam, Whitlam might have dismissed him,” James writes.

He continues:

Kerr should have been thinking about more than the job.rnThinking about more than the job was the job, or else the job meantrnnothing. McClelland quotes devastatingly to show Kerr advancing his ownrnsilence as some kind of qualification. ‘I kept my own counsel as to thernconstitutional rights and wrongs of what was happening until I decidedrnwhat must be done…’ Keeping his counsel was exactly what Kerr couldn’trndo and still be acting according to the Constitution, since thernconstitutional provisions on the reserve powers stated clearly that therngovernor-general’s first duties were to advise and to warn.

Kerrrnhad already kept silent on the crucial loans issue. By being silentrnabout that, Kerr encouraged Whitlam to slide further into folly.

Byrneven thinking of raising money to govern without the Senate’s approvalrnof supply, Whitlam was preparing to govern without a parliament – thernvery thing the governor-general’s reserve powers are designed to stop.

Whilernproposing to govern without a parliament, Whitlam was already governingrnwithout a cabinet… The Loans affair was the latest in a series ofrnbizarre episodes that had reduced Whitlam’s administration to a wreck?

MalcolmrnFraser, leading the Liberal opposition, was ready to break the crisisrnby consenting to a double dissolution with a late election date.rnWhitlam refused the offer. Whitlam preferred the crisis: he thought herncould face the opposition down. And indeed he might have done if Kerrrnhad given him another week. But Kerr’s decision isn’t the issue. Thernissue is how Whitlam got his government into that situation. He did itrnby making his isolated will prevail… McClelland is ready to accusernhimself of having been bamboozled by Kerr. He is less ready to admitrnthat he was buffaloed by Whitlam.

Many others were “buffaloed.” Many still are.

Whitlamrnhimself remains bullish as ever. “I said not only maintain the rage butrnthe enthusiasm. I’ve maintained the enthusiasm, and I still do,” herntold AM on Monday.

Yetrnhis antagonist from three decades ago, speaking on the same program,rnhad it right. “The government couldn’t get its budget through,” Malcolm Fraserrnsaid. “The tradition had it that, you know, going back through a very,rnvery long period, both of Australian and of British history, that if arngovernment couldn’t get its budget through the Parliament, therngovernment did one of two or three things. It either resigned and toldrnthe monarch we’ll get somebody else to form a government, it might’vernrecommended itself to the monarch that somebody else should form arngovernment, it should modify the budget. But the one thing that had,rnuntil 1975, been totally out of court, regarded as wrong, and againstrnall precedent and practice was to ignore the position of the Parliamentrnand say well I’m going to govern regardless.”

It should alwaysrnbe remembered that the checks and balances in our democracy gavernAustralians two opportunities to overturn Kerr’s decision, andrnreinstall Whitlam as prime minister – the elections of 13 December 1975rnand 10 December 1977. Checks and balances matter, too, today.

No-one doubts Whitlam’s ability. But more would do well to remember that he fell, as James puts it, into “folly.”

“Whitlam’s government was big on symbolics,” The Australianrneditorialised on Monday. In and out of power, symbolics matter tornWhitlam. A certain grandeur? Did Graham Freudenberg write three greaterrnwords? Has there been any greater spin in the history of our nation?rnAny spin that has lodged more in our psyche?

Gough Whitlam is our Ozymandias. Impossible to dismiss, but a ruin nonetheless.