Fifty years ago I sent an article to Ian Mathews who was then the editor of The Canberra Times for which I was an irregular contributor.
I penned said opinion because on 14 October 1975, the minister for minerals and energy, Rex Connor, was dismissed. He had allegedly solicited a massive loan in petrodollars by the agency of a dubious Pakistani commodities trader, a certain Tirath Khemlani. Prime Minister Gough Whitlam had ordered Connor to cease his dealings with Khemlani, and Connor assured him that he had done so. But documents unearthed by the Opposition demonstrated he had misled both his Prime Minister and Parliament.
That sacking of a very senior minister provided the then-Opposition leader, one Malcolm Fraser, with the “extraordinary and reprehensible circumstances” which he had set as the test whether the Senate would block passage of the budget bills. On October 16, the Senate deferred consideration of Appropriation Bills (Numbers 1 and 2) 1975-76. The Opposition-controlled Senate refused "supply" (or votes) to the Whitlam government. It took the form of repeated deferral of the appropriation bills.
The article I sent to The Canberra Times was headed “It’s really a game of bluff and nerves”. It asserted that in Australia that "supply" is a grant of both houses, unlike in the United Kingdom where it is a grant of the House of Commons only. It acknowledged that Whitlam’s public determination was to “tough it out” but predicted the Senate would persist. Then the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, would sack Whitlam, having hoped in vain that Whitlam would recommend a general election of some sort.
Not only did I predict the sacking by Kerr, but I recommended he do so.
Being an irregular writer, I made no assumption that the article I had penned would be published. Since I had no status with the paper, I did nothing to promote it. However, out of the blue on the afternoon of Monday November 10, Canberra Times Editor Ian Mathews of whom I'd posted my piece to, rang me with a puzzled tone in his voice.
“Did you really write this article?” he asked. Upon me giving an affirmative answer he said: “You are the only pundit making this prediction. Do you still predict it? Every other pundit thinks the Opposition in the Senate will back down and allow supply to be passed.”
My reply was: “I don’t mind being unique because I might be uniquely right. I must admit, however, that in my desire to be uniquely right I might turn out to be uniquely wrong”.
A slightly amended version of the article subsequently appeared on the morning of Tuesday November 11 amid well-informed speculation that Whitlam would visit Kerr at Government House to ask for a half-Senate election. It had never occurred to me that the article would happen to be published on the very day of the dismissal but, in any event, I was invited to appear on a special ABC radio program to discuss the pending half-Senate election.
The late Allan Fraser MP (Labor member for Eden-Monaro 1943-72) was the special correspondent for Quadrant in those days. In an article “The Extraordinary Day” published in the December 1975 issue of Quadrant he wrote about the day:
“I heard Alan Reid declare the possibility that the Governor-General might reject Mr. Whitlam’s advice, but he considered it extremely unlikely. And I heard Ken Begg, of the ABC, report from an undisclosed source to be ready for a dramatic announcement in an hour or two, but no inkling what it might be. Malcolm Mackerras was stubbornly persisting that a half-Senate election would be a fraud and that the G.G. ought to dismiss the Prime Minister from office, but no one was taking much notice of all this.”
After reporting that Labor members were in a very good mood - one of expectation - Allan Fraser went on:
“Then suddenly the impossible happened. At ten minutes to 2 p.m. Alan Reid told me ‘The G.G. has sacked Gough!’ It was incredible. I don’t know whether he really believed it himself at that stage without checking further. But at the same time Frank Crean was telling the same extraordinary news to a group of Labor members in Kings Hall.”
It is bad taste to brag but it is quite okay to quote an outside observer on one’s own behalf, as I am doing with the long-deceased Allan Fraser. Then along comes a very recent journalist offering to do the same. On the morning of Wednesday July 9, 2025, Troy Bramston, senior writer and columnist for The Australian newspaper wrote to me an email:
“I am currently completing a biography of Gough Whitlam to be published by Harper Collins late in October. I came across the column you wrote for The Canberra Times on 11 November 1975 essentially predicting dismissal. I also came across a speech by former journalist and Whitlam’s press secretary Evan Williams. He gave it decades later, but he said that it was clear you had ‘prior knowledge of Kerr’s intentions and had been tipped off about them.’ Can you tell me if you were indeed tipped off? If so, I would love to include this in the book, fifty years on.”
The reply I sent told the story above. I was not tipped off. Furthermore, a close reading of the article would tell the reader that I did not write: “The dismissal will happen today.” I was lucky the article was published that day.
Once it was published, however, I stuck to it on radio later in the day at which point I said: “It will happen today and there will be a smooth double dissolution general election.”
Troy Bramston replied: “Thanks very much for your email and clarifying that you were not tipped off. That’s really interesting to hear the background about that article in The Canberra Times. What a prediction!”
What was I thinking?
It certainly wasn't a case of wishful thinking! I abjured wishful thinking as a basis for prediction at the very start of my career in 1955. But if not wishful, what kind of thinking was it?
Essentially, I believe that it is often a good idea to go for the “roughie” prediction. It shows that you do not live in an echo chamber. And this was my first “roughie” prediction. Subsequently, I claim to have been uniquely right in four major printed predictions and uniquely wrong in two.
The four further cases of my being uniquely right were in predicting the winner of the 1986 Queensland election, the winner of the 1993 federal election, the winner of the half-Senate election in 2004 and the winner of the federal seat of Bennelong in 2007. Of those four cases, the unique prediction of which I am most proud is that John Howard would win the 2004 half-Senate election courtesy of the victory of Barnaby Joyce to become a National Party senator for Queensland.
The two cases of my being uniquely wrong were in predicting the winner of the 1980 federal election and in predicting the winner of the 1983 Queensland election. In this latter case, Joh Bjelke-Petersen promised publicly in the tally room on election night to send me a scrubbing brush to scrub the egg off my face.
He kept his promise and that scrubbing brush, duly signed, continues to be a valuable item in my collection of political memorabilia.