This Tuesday marks the 50th anniversary of the dismissal of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s Labor government by Governor-General Sir John Kerr.

On 11 November 1975 Kerr appointed the Opposition leader Malcolm Fraser to lead a caretaker government pending a double dissolution election of the House of Representatives and the Senate.

On 13 December 1975, the Coalition (the Liberal Party and what was then called the National Country Party) defeated Labor in a landslide.

I believe I am one of the few people alive who discussed and corresponded with Kerr about what came to be called the Dismissal. Outside his family, that is. I did so when he returned from England and retired in Australia in the 1980s.

I also discussed the Dismissal with Fraser and I knew Whitlam.

I was a columnist at the t

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