Fifty years on, could the dismissal happen again?
Tomorrow marks 50 years since the infamous moment when a clearly nervous spokesperson for the governor-general stood on the steps of Parliament House and announced that Gough Whitlam had been dismissed.
But what happened on Remembrance Day in 1975 wasn’t just an unprecedented political crisis — it was a warning. One that exposed the fragility of our constitution and the lingering power of a system designed to serve the monarchy, ahead of the people.
Since then, nothing has changed to stop it all from happening again.
Today, press gallery veteran Paul Bongiorno, on what the dismissal revealed about Australia’s democratic foundations – and why he says we need to become a republic to stop history repeating.
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