The Latest Breaking News from Malcolm Fraser

Two former prime ministers have given a behind-the-scenes look at the machinations leading up to the Whitlam dismissal, 50 years on from the political saga.

Anthony Albanese has denounced Gough Whitlam’s dismissal from office in 1975 as “a calculated plot, hatched by conservative forces which sacrificed conventions and institutions in the pursuit of power”.

In his just-released memoir, historian and former diplomat Lachlan Strahan recalls being picked up from his Melbourne primary school by a neighbour on November 11 1975, the day Gough Whitlam was sacked as prime minister. His politically active mother “was so upset she didn’t trust herself behind the wheel”.

Tuesday November 11 will be the 50th anniversary of the dismissal of the Whitlam government by the then Governor-General Sir John Kerr. It was a dramatic day in our federal political history, with Malcolm Fraser appointed prime minister. Fraser then led the Coalition to a landslide victory in the subsequent…

At the end of the 1960s, there was every expectation the Great Barrier Reef would be drilled for oil.

Competitors felt betrayed by Fraser government singling them out despite continued trade with Soviet Union after invasion of Afghanistan

John Owen Stone AO was a legendary leader of the Commonwealth Treasury. He was secretary (departmental head) from January 1979 to September 1984 but was an intellectual driving force before then as deputy secretary from 1971 to 1978.

A shift in the public’s expectation of government is under way and, as Menzies realised in the 1940s, any party seeking to win over voters must adapt to stay relevant

I remember seeing footage, several years ago, of a jubilant Malcolm Turnbull, then prime minister and Liberal leader, speaking in Tamworth to loyal members of the National Party. These were the rank and file who had spent weeks stumping for their man in New England, Nationals leader and deputy prime…