The National Film and Sound archive has an excellent retrospective about media coverage of the Dismissal of the Whitlam government 50 years ago, but it mostly uses tv source material from Channel 7 camera operator Bob Wilesmith.
That is extraordinary in itself because, as the NFSA story explains, much of the footage from other networks has been lost over time.
The NFSA’s Sounds of Australia collection also has the Kerr’s Cur Whitlam speech.
Finding someone who filed for radio that day has been difficult.
Richard Carleton, pictured behind Gough in the main photo above, and Andrew Olle, pictured behind Malcolm Fraser, have both now left us.
We tried other radio press gallery stalwarts from past years. John Stanley was working in radio in Moree and would only get to the press gallery a few years later. Murray Olds was still in New Zealand at the time. 2SM’s Graham Howard has now left us, so has Peter Harvey.
There was a protocol in news media in the past – radio reporters would keep out of shot of the tv cameras, so most radio reporters who were there on the day would not have been pictured, because they were crouching down below the cameras holding up their microphones to capture the words of those who spoke on the day.
Norman Gunston was also there, as described in some oral history audio held in the NFSA collection, and the NFSA also has other radio audio in its colleciton, but it is not available for rights reasons.
Leigh Hatcher was working in radio at the time for The Macquarie Radio Network.
He got the news just after lunchtime and flashed it to the network. They didn’t believe him at first. It got to air in the 2pm news bulletin. Hatcher is currently in Canberra for Dismissal commemorations and activities. Read more of his account of what it was like in the radio press gallery offices on that day here.
At those Dismissal commemorations at Old Parliament House last night, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced that a new statue of former prime minister Gough Whitlam has been commissioned by the federal government to mark 50 years since his government’s dismissal by the governor-general.
Albanese says the dismissal was a “partisan political ambush” that had no real precedent or legitimate pretext. Despite the events that unfolded in 1975, Whitlam built a friendship with Malcolm Fraser over the years that followed Australia’s most significant political event. “In a remarkable lesson to anyone in public life who might be tempted to hold on to resentment or bitterness he rebuilt a friendship with Malcolm Fraser,” said Albanese.
Photos: Channel 7, held by the NFSA, used with permisison.