Gough Whitlam

Edward Gough Whitlam (11 July 1916 – 21 October 2014) was the 21st prime minister of Australia, serving from December 1972 to November 1975. To date the longest-serving federal leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), he was notable for being the head of a reformist and socially progressive government that ended with his controversial dismissal by the then governor-general of Australia, Sir John Kerr, at the climax of the 1975 constitutional crisis. Whitlam remains the only Australian prime minister to have been removed from office by a governor-general.

Whitlam was an air navigator in the Royal Australian Air Force for four years during World War II, and worked as a barrister following the war. He was first elected to the Australian House of Representatives in 1952, becoming a member of parliament (MP) for the division of Werriwa. Whitlam became deputy leader of the Labor Party in 1960, and in 1967, after the retirement of Arthur Calwell, was elected leader of the party and became the Leader of the Opposition. After narrowly losing the 1969 federal election to John Gorton, Whitlam led Labor to victory at the 1972 election, after 23 years of Coalition government.

In its first term, the Whitlam government introduced numerous socially progressive and reformist policies and initiatives, including the termination of military conscription and the end of Australian involvement in the Vietnam War, institution of universal health care and free university education, and the implementation of legal aid programs. With the opposition-controlled Australian Senate delaying passage of bills, Whitlam called a snap double dissolution election in May 1974, in which he won a slightly reduced majority in the House of Representatives, and picked up three Senate seats to hold equal Senate numbers to the opposition. The Whitlam government then instituted the first and only joint sitting enabled under section 57 of the Australian constitution as part of the double dissolution process. His government's second term was dominated by a declining economy suffering from the 1973 oil crisis and the 1970s global recession, as well as a political scandal known as the Loans affair, which led to the removal of two government ministers. The opposition continued to obstruct Whitlam's agenda in the Senate.