Word: whitlam
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...deed was done so swiftly and so unexpectedly that rumors still linger in Australia about what really happened. From the day in November 1975 when Governor-General Sir John Kerr sacked Prime Minister Gough Whitlam of the leftist Labor Party and replaced him with Opposition Leader Malcolm Fraser of the Liberal Party, allegations have surfaced that the CIA had a hand in Whitlam's fall. In an article entitled "Dateline Australia: America's Foreign Watergate?" published this week in the quarterly magazine Foreign Policy, University of Delaware Political Scientist James A. Nathan retraces those accusations and other charges...
Nathan's premise is that "a plausible case is being developed that CIA officials may have also done in Australia what they managed to achieve in Iran, Guatemala and Chile: destroy an elected government." Nathan recounts the rise of Whitlam, from his 1972 victory to the distrust that quickly developed between Washington and Canberra. Whitlam gave the U.S. State Department good reason to be nervous: his government recognized North Viet Nam and North Korea, removed a ban on the sale of strategic materials to the Soviet Union, and sent its Deputy Prime Minister on a tour of North Viet...
...Whitlam government had so badly mishandled the economy that Opposition Leader Fraser succeeded in blocking passage of a budget bill in the Australian Senate. With the government about to run out of money, Kerr called Whitlam to his office on Nov. 11. As the duly appointed representative of the Queen of England, Kerr took the unprecedented but legal step of firing Whitlam...
Nathan offers other motives for Kerr's action. The lease for the base at Pine Gap was scheduled to expire on Dec. 10, Nathan says, and Whitlam had hinted that he might not renew the lease agreement with the U.S. In response, the CIA sent the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) a blistering cable. It said, in substance, that the U.S. agency might be forced to cut its ties to ASIO. The next day Kerr sacked Whitlam. Nathan notes that Kerr, an Australian-born lawyer, had been active in cultural front organizations funded...
...taxpayers' money. When Mollison bought Blue Poles from the American collector Ben Heller for the unprecedented sum of $2 million at 1973 exchange rates, the figure had to be made public. The issue was immediately seized on by the Australian press, whose management was bitterly opposed to Gough Whitlam's Labor government, as a prime emblem of artsy socialist mismanagement. The propaganda value squeezed from this episode certainly helped many Australians accept the virtual coup d'etat by which Whitlam's government was dismissed...