To date the longest-serving federal leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), he was notable for being the head of a reformist and socially progressive government that ended with his controversial dismissal by the then-governor-general of Australia, Sir John Kerr, at the climax of the 1975 constitutional crisis.

The crisis ended in mid-November, when governor-general Sir John Kerr dismissed him from office and commissioned the opposition leader, Malcolm Fraser, as caretaker prime minister.

[10] His father was a federal public servant who later was Commonwealth Crown Solicitor, and Whitlam senior's involvement in human rights issues was a powerful influence on his son.

[16] He earned his first wages by appearing, with several other "Paulines", in a cabaret scene in the film The Broken Melody – the students were chosen because St Paul's required formal wear at dinner, and they could therefore supply their own costumes.

The Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, adroitly used the defection of a Soviet official to his advantage, and his coalition of the Liberal and Country parties was returned in the 1954 election with a seven-seat majority.

[36] According to Hocking, service on the committee caused Whitlam to focus not on internal conflicts consuming the ALP, but on Labor goals which were possible and worthwhile in the constitutional framework.

Most of the party's major figures, including Evatt, Deputy Leader Arthur Calwell, Eddie Ward, and Reg Pollard, were in their sixties, twenty years older than Whitlam.

In early 1963 a special conference met in a Canberra hotel to determine Labor policy regarding a proposed US base in northern Australia; Calwell and Whitlam were photographed by The Daily Telegraph peering in through the doors, waiting for the verdict.

[48] After years of politics being dominated by the elderly Menzies and Calwell, the younger Holt was seen as a breath of fresh air, and attracted public interest and support in the run-up to the November election.

[59] The conference also called for increased federal involvement in urban planning, and formed the basis of "The Program" of modern socialism which Whitlam and the ALP presented to voters in 1972.

[60] Since 1918, Labor had called for the abolition of the existing Australian Constitution, and the vesting of all political power in Parliament, a plan which would turn the states into powerless geographic regions.

[63] While the Liberal-Country Coalition had a huge majority in the House of Representatives, Whitlam energised the party by campaigning intensively to win two by-elections in 1967: first in Corio in Victoria, and later that year in Capricornia in Queensland.

[79] Other errors by McMahon, such as a confused ad-lib speech while visiting Washington, and a statement to Indonesia's President Suharto that Australia was a "west European nation", also damaged the government.

[84] With the Coalition sinking in the polls and his own personal approval ratings down as low as 28 per cent, McMahon waited as long as he could, finally calling an election for the House of Representatives for 2 December.

[85] Whitlam pledged an end to conscription and the release of individuals who had refused the draft; an income tax surcharge to pay for universal health insurance; free dental care for students; and renovation of ageing urban infrastructure.

[97] The duumvirate barred racially discriminatory sports teams from Australia, and instructed the Australian delegation at the United Nations to vote in favour of sanctions on apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia.

[98] It also ordered the Australian Army Training Team home from Vietnam, ending Australia's involvement in the war; most troops, including all conscripts, had been withdrawn by McMahon.

[120] After a campaign featuring the Labor slogan "Give Gough a fair go", the Whitlam government was returned, with its majority in the House of Representatives cut from seven to five and its Senate seats increased by three.

[124] In February 1973, the Attorney General, Senator Lionel Murphy, led a police raid on the Melbourne office of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, which was under his ministerial responsibility.

The New South Wales premier, Tom Lewis, felt that this convention applied only to vacancies caused by deaths or ill-health, and arranged for the legislature to elect Cleaver Bunton, former mayor of Albury and an independent.

[145] The next week, Whitlam removed deputy prime minister Cairns, who had misled Parliament about the Loans Affair amid controversy about his relationship with his office manager, Junie Morosi.

[156] This plan to prolong government without supply was presented to Kerr unsigned on 6 November, under the title "Draft Joint Opinion" (ostensibly of solicitor-general Maurice Byers and attorney-general Kep Enderby).

He concluded by taking the unilateral step of re-instating the traditional ending for a royal proclamation "God save the Queen", a practice the Whitlam government had abolished.

The Coalition attacked Labor for economic conditions, and released television commercials with the title "The Three Dark Years" showing images from Whitlam government scandals.

[194] Whitlam was appointed chairman of the National Gallery of Australia in 1987 after his son Nick, who was then managing director of the State Bank of New South Wales, turned down the position.

[215] The Welcome to Country was given by Auntie Millie Ingram and eulogies were delivered by Graham Freudenberg,[216] Cate Blanchett,[217] Noel Pearson,[218] John Faulkner[219] and Antony Whitlam.

In accordance with Whitlam's wishes, the orchestra performed "In Tears of Grief" from Bach's St Matthew Passion, "Va, pensiero" from Verdi's Nabucco, "Un Bal" from Symphonie fantastique by Berlioz and, as the final piece, Jerusalem by Parry.

[238] According to journalist and author Paul Kelly, who penned two books on the crisis, Whitlam "achieved a paradoxical triumph: the shadow of the dismissal has obscured the sins of his government".

Ross McMullin, who wrote an official history of the ALP, notes that Whitlam remains greatly admired by many Labor supporters because of his reform efforts and inspiring leadership.

Many would have spent months, even a year or more without employment.But what the Whitlam haters forget is that Labor had the misfortune to inherit government just as all the developed economies were about to cross a fault-line dividing the post-war Golden Age of automatic growth and full employment from today's world of always high unemployment and obsession with economic stabilisation.