By Mike Steketee  Wednesday 5 November 2014

Photo: Gough Whitlam farewelled at a state memorial service in Sydney. (ABC News: Lucy Fahey)

The flood of tributes for Gough Whitlam will continue at his state memorial service and his reforms and successes will be highlighted, but the question is whether others will take up his baton, writes Mike Steketee.

The flood of tributes to Gough Whitlam on his passing have highlighted the long list of reforms he implemented despite spending only three years in office.

Largely overlooked was his unfinished agenda or what he called his abiding interests, some sparked by his dismissal in 1975 but others that he started championing from his earliest days in public life two decades earlier.

We are nearing 40 years since the dismissal but the principal issues it raised remain to be resolved. They centre on the question of how a parliamentary deadlock such as occurred in 1975, when Whitlam refused to succumb to an opposition attempt to force him to an election by blocking the budget in the Senate, should be broken.

Even conservatives who supported the actions of John Kerr as Governor-General often concede that the solution imposed on November 11 had its problems. The main one was that Kerr felt he had to actively mislead Whitlam about his intentions for fear of Whitlam asking the Queen to sack him first.

Kerr claimed that Whitlam made a threat along these lines but Whitlam argued that was never his intention. In his 1997 book, Abiding Interests, Whitlam wrote:

In the circumstances of a mere canvassing of options between a Governor-General and a prime minister, what justification could I have offered the Queen in November 1975 for asking her to dismiss the representative whom I had so warmly commended to her in February 1974?

Nothing could have been more embarrassing to her or to me, except the humiliation of a possible refusal or certain delay. The essential point, however, is that at no time during the crisis did I contemplate diverting my course and perverting my cause by switching my attack from the Senate to the Governor-General.

Leaving aside whether Kerr's concerns were warranted, it is hardly satisfactory to leave open a circumstance in which the prime minister and Governor-General play chicken with each other.

Taking away the Governor-General's power to dismiss the government would be one way to prevent a repeat of 1975. Whitlam argued that the Senate would have passed the budget, possibly as early as two days after November 11. Some prominent Liberals subsequently conceded as much.

In other words, a political solution was likely that would not have required the intervention of Kerr and all the political division and constitutional controversy that it triggered. It would have meant the Whitlam government continuing in office but only for another year or so before its almost inevitable defeat.

Ireland does not give its president the authority to dismiss a prime minister. But it is difficult to see how such a power could be taken away in Australia, even in the context of Australia becoming a republic, another unfulfilled Whitlam wish. It would require a referendum, which would not receive the bipartisan support that history tells us is required to secure its passage.

Another solution is taking away the Senate's power to reject or defer the budget. Whitlam's argument here is that the Senate is the exception in the Westminster system of government: the House of Lords lost the power over money bills in 1911, the upper houses of NSW did so in 1934 and those in Victoria and South Australia in 1984. The Canadian senate has the power in theory but the government can negate it by granting itself supply under existing legislation.

One argument is that the Australian Senate's power effectively is a dead letter because there is a tacit agreement between the major parties not to use it - an acknowledgement by conservatives that there should be no repeat of 1975.

But constitutional lawyer George Williams is one of those who begs to differ. "(The blocking of the budget) remains a very real political possibility," he tells me. "Sometimes in politics things can happen, even when it is unexpected or unlikely and when there is no legal impediment to it happening."

In August, Clive Palmer said he was prepared to vote to block the budget to prevent the introduction of legislation that would pay the states to privatise assets and put the money into new infrastructure. Without Labor's support, Palmer's threat is mere bluster. But a deeply unpopular budget such as this year's increases the temptation to take the populist path.

However, taking away the Senate's money power faces the same hurdle as changing the Governor-General's reserve powers - a referendum lacking bipartisan support. Though not in prospect, it is not inconceivable at some time in the future that there could be a change of heart by the conservative side of politics.

In the foreword to his 1997 book, Whitlam said that his abiding interests for Australia did not end with the dismissal of his government. "They shall only end with a long and fortunate life."

The Fraser government sponsored a successful referendum in 1977 that requires state government to appoint replacements from the same party as senators who have resigned or died, thus preventing a repeat of the 1975 situation in which the Senate had the numbers to block the budget only because of the support of a Queensland independent who replaced a Labor senator.

Whitlam proposed another reform: fixed four-year terms of parliament. He championed it in its own right but it also could be a solution, if not a complete one, to budget deadlocks. As he pointed out, in the US, which has fixed terms, the president and both houses of Congress often produce different budgets but they ultimately are reconciled without an election. Such budget crises, particularly the prolonged versions of recent years in the US, may not be ideal but they are preferable to the sacking of a government by an unelected representative of the Queen.

The opposition's threat to block the budget in 1974 and its actions in doing so in 1975 were designed not to produce a different budget but to force elections. Taking away such an option would not guarantee there would be no future budget deadlocks but it would put the onus on the politicians to resolve them.

There would need to be exceptions to the fixed term rule, such as if a government lost its numbers in the lower house. Four states and two territories have successfully introduced fixed terms with qualifications.

Whitlam wanted to go further and hold all elections, federal, state and local government, on the same day, as occurs in the US. "The cost of modern campaigns is the major source of political corruption in western democracies," he wrote in Abiding Interests. Seventeen years later, events in NSW have turned his words into prophecy.

His argument was that elections virtually were an annual event for the party machines, meaning constant pressure to raise funds. Moreover, impending state elections distorted the national debate. The most recent evidence of that is the pressure placed on the Coalition parties in Victoria over Tony Abbott's canvassing of a rise in the GST.

Permanent electioneering encouraged the "murder of reputations", Whitlam wrote. "Politicians can hardly complain of their low public standing when the public simply takes them at their own valuation."

In the foreword to his 1997 book, Whitlam said that his abiding interests for Australia did not end with the dismissal of his government. "They shall only end with a long and fortunate life."

The question is whether others will take up the baton.

Mike Steketee is a freelance journalist. He was formerly a columnist and national affairs editor for The Australian. View his full profile here.

Is there anyone to take up Whitlam's baton? - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)