Interpreting the Dismissal Paul Kelly’s influence

If the present political malaise can be characterised by seriously diminished accountability, a propensity of the executive to stack the system or use mediating institutions as weapons against political opponents, or more generally embodied by ‘doing whatever it takes’ to win, or some mixture of these elements, then there is a compelling case that can be made that this condition has a parallel in the dismissal of the Whitlam government.

Yet it seems our task is doubly demanding, for, as this piece is being prepared, a distinguished public intellectual is even willing to write that no dangerous precedent was set by the sacking of a democratically elected government.¹

If the present political malaise can be characterised by seriously diminished accountability… then there is a compelling case that can be made that this condition has a parallel in the dismissal of the Whitlam government.

This admission underlines the mixed record, since 1975, of Australia’s elites in failing to name the actions of John Kerr and his collaborators as antidemocratic, and confirm the import of those actions.

Far from subscribing to a view that ‘a small library [has been] written on every aspect of November 11 [1975]’ our argument here is that too many elites have been too quick to dismiss the on-going relevance of the dismissal.

To the term ‘elites’ we ascribe the neutral meaning: elites are those whose social or political position suggests greater capacity to influence the course of events. In this non-pejorative use of the term, then, elites are to be criticised according to the quality of their contribution to a debate, not simply because they are an elite.

In the sometimes-useful/sometimes pernicious populism of the present, it seems necessary to say, more normatively, that elites have a particular responsibility to correct misconceptions that, if allowed to go uncorrected, would diminish the body politic. It is precisely this responsibility, in terms