"The Dismissal" (1983) TV mini-series

Directors:

George Miller
Phillip Noyce

Writers:

Ron Blair (story)
Terry Hayes (writer)

Genre:

Drama | History

Plot:

The drama surrounding the dismissal of Mr. Gough Whitlam as the Labor Prime Minister of Australia - on 11 November...

Plot Keywords:

Australia | Prime Minister | Governor General | Government | Politics

Awards:

3 wins

Cast

John Allen	...	John Menadue
Vincent Ball	...	Justin O'Byrne - President of the Senate
Tony Barry	...	Press Secretary
Alan Becher	...	Ian Viner
Tony Blackett	...	Robert Ellicott
Robin Bowering	...	Jim Killen
Carol Burns	...	Cairns's secretary
Tim Burns	...	David Smith
Peter Carroll	...	Narrator / Victorian Delegate, Liberal National Executive
Paul Chubb	...	Customs Officer
John Clayton	...	Barry Cohen
Peter Collingwood	...	Tun Abdul Razak
Ruth Cracknell	...	Margaret Whitlam
Ed Devereaux	...	Phillip Lynch
Neela Dey	...	Junie Morosi
Arthur Dignam	...	Eric Robinson
David Downer	...	Tony Staley
Tim Elliott	...	Sir Fredrick Wheeler
Stewart Faichney	...	Billy Snedden
Les Foxcroft	...	James Cope - The First Speaker
John Hargreaves	...	Dr. Jim Cairns
Martin Harris	...	Kep Enderby
Nancye Hayes	...	Conner's secretary
Bill Hunter	...	Rex Conner
Veronica Lang	...	Reporter
Stuart Littlemore	...	TV Anchorman
Kevin Manser
Ray Marshall	...	Senator Ken Wriedt - ALP Senate Leader
John Meillon	...	Sir John Kerr
Dennis Miller	...	Gordon Scholes - The Second Speaker
Robyn Nevin	...	Lady Kerr
George Ogilvie	...	Senator Jim McClelland
Tom Oliver	...	Reg Withers
Max Phipps	...	Gough Whitlam
Sean Scully	...	Doug Anthony
John Stanton	...	Malcolm Fraser
Peter Sumner	...	Bill Hayden
Martin Vaughan	...	Senator Fields
Ken Wayne	...	Liberal Senator
Harry Weiss	...	Tirath Khemlani
Arna-Maria Winchester

Runtime:

Australia:90 min (3 episodes)

Country:

Australia

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Australia:PG

Filming Locations:

Australia

Company:

Kennedy Miller Productions

Quotes:

Gough Whitlam: [referring to Opposition Leader Billy Snedden] Before the Leader of the Opposition can talk about leadership, let him serve his apprenticeship. Let him do some on-the-job training. Better still, let him do some adult re-training.

A fiscal law without meaning ?

I first saw this docudrama in the UK in the 1980's, and found myself intrigued and then astonished at how such good intentions could go so wrong. Previous commentators (who are Australian) have explained the unfolding plot's detail better than I ever could, being Australian's, but I would like to make certain observations about what may lie behind the Governor-Generals 'UK Sovereign power'. Law's ,(or MODERN laws),as I understand them, need an ethical or philosophical basis to exist in the first place and to become A law at all. That being the case, and if say the Conner's/Khemlani mess had been' set up', then the Labour government would have been victims of 'entrapment',which would surely have had to have been 'investigated' by the Governor-General as or until he could see that the budget standoff was A genuine result of Whitlam's fecklessness, and NOT elaborate entrapment, sponsored by person or person's unknown ! If its the case that Kerr in effect didn't have to refer to the law because fiscal circumstances overrides everything, then 'royal power' borders onto unreason; the implications in any Commonwealth country is that 'fiscal'rules literally, and that any person or organisation has Carte Blanche to break any other rule, physical or mental, so long as they have the control over the purse strings ultimately.