The Gair Affair was an episode in Australian political life in 1974, during the government led by the Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam.
Jenny Hocking has said of the affair: "The government's attempts to effect an additional Senate vacancy through Gair's resignation was constitutionally sound, strategically brilliant and an unmitigated political disaster.
By March 1974, a number of bills had been twice rejected by the Senate, which gave Whitlam the capacity to call a double dissolution, in which the entire parliament would be up for election.
In 1973, by which time the DLP's Senate numbers had risen to five, internal issues caused Gair to resign as leader of the party from 10 October, with McManus taking over.
He said he was thinking of leaving the Senate earlier than 1977, and suggested that he would consider accepting a diplomatic post should the government be minded to offer him one.
O'Byrne repeated this conversation to his Senate Leader Lionel Murphy, who devised a plan to use Gair's disgruntlement to the ALP's advantage, which he talked over with Whitlam.
The plan was to appoint Gair to an overseas post, which would require him to resign his seat in the Senate, and to arrange for this to occur before the writs for the impending half-Senate election were issued.
However, if 6 seats were up for election, the ALP could expect to win 3, and this would give it the bare majority it needed in the Senate to guarantee passage of future legislation.
Snedden decried it as shameful and "worse than any Tammany Hall effort that has ever been made in the United States", and compared it with what he called the "very fine appointment" of Sir Garfield Barwick as Chief Justice of the High Court.
[5] The Leader of the National Country Party (NCP), Doug Anthony, denounced the appointment as a cynical buying-off exercise.
[6] But Gair had to be kept at bay while the Governor of Queensland, Sir Colin Hannah, was consulted about the matter, as it was his sole prerogative under the Constitution to issue writs for Senate elections, albeit always acting on advice from the premier of the day.
Thus Maunsell stayed close to Gair the whole evening, shepherded him into the Senate chamber for a vote on the Petroleum and Minerals Authority Bill,[6] and then straight back to his office for more whisky and prawns.
About 90 minutes earlier, at 1:40 am, Bjelke-Petersen announced to the Queensland Parliament that the Governor had, on his recommendation, issued writs for the election of five senators at 11 pm on 2 April.
"[1] In the afternoon of 3 April, Gair was finally able to have his formal advice about his status conveyed to Sir Magnus Cormack through the Clerk of the Senate.
The letter had been prepared by the Government and edited by Gair, and it said: Dear Mr President, I publicly announced yesterday that I had accepted appointment as Australian Ambassador to the Republic of Ireland.
As you are aware, the position of Ambassador is an office of profit under the Crown and also carries with it fees for services rendered to the Commonwealth, within the meaning of Section 45 of the Constitution, which I had agreed to take.
Murphy arranged for a legal opinion supporting the government's position to be provided by the Solicitor-General of Australia, Maurice Byers, which was read out to the Senate.
At the election, all five Senate seats held by the DLP were lost, and that was the effective end of the party as a viable force in Australian politics.