Four Corners broadcast a 20-year anniversary program on The Dismissal in November 1995.
Posts published in November 1995
Twentieth Anniversary: Maintain Your Rage And Enthusiasm
November 11, 1995
On the 20th anniversary of the Dismissal, Whitlam spoke at a commemorative dinner at the now Old Parliament House in Canberra.
The speech deals with many of the constitutional and political issues raised by the Dismissal, including the role played by the High Court Chief Justice Sir Garfield Barwick.
“Maintain your rage and your enthusiasm through the campaign for the election now to be held and until polling day.”
Ladies and gentlemen,
I refer emphatically to the next Federal election.
The ultimate answer to those who sought to deny the legitimacy of a Labor Government, not just in November 1975, but from the beginning, after December 1972, will be a Labor victory in 1996.
In quoting myself from my impromptu remarks out there on the steps, I want to be understood in a thoroughly contemporary sense.
Whitlam: The Coup Twenty Years After
November 8, 1995
This is the text of Gough Whitlam’s Address to the National Press Club on the 20th anniversary of The Dismissal.
Mr President, Citizens
It’s always a great pleasure for me to return to the National Press Club, not only because of our long association but because of its importance as a forum. In my time, the party leaders wound up their campaigns here. Now, Labor Prime Ministers use the lunch to launch policies and Liberal leaders to launch themselves.
There must have been a certain inevitability in my being invited back around the time of the 20th anniversary of 11 November 1975. Media interest has been intense and I have had to limit my acceptance of requests for interviews and articles. One of the reasons, frankly, is that I am not preoccupied with the Dismissal. My chief interest in the events of October/November 1975, dramatic as they were, now lies in their relevance to the development of Australia as a Republic. That makes it doubly important that the Australian public should have an accurate understanding of those events and the motives of those who took part in them.