Across the political and media elite in Australia, a silence has descended on the memory of the great, reforming prime minister Gough Whitlam, who has died.

A critical reason for his extraordinary political demise will, they hope, be buried with him. Australia briefly became an independent state during the Whitlam years, 1972-75. An American commentator wrote that no country had "reversed its posture in international affairs so totally without going through a domestic revolution".

Although not on the left of the Labor Party, Whitlam was a maverick social democrat of principle, pride and propriety. He believed that a foreign power such as the U.S. should not control his country's resources and dictate its economic and foreign policies. He proposed to "buy back the farm". In drafting the first Aboriginal lands rights legislation, his government raised the ghost of the greatest land grab in human history, Britain's colonisation of Australia, and the question of who owned the island-continent's vast natural wealth.

Whitlam knew the risk he was taking. The day after his election, he ordered that his staff should not be "vetted or harassed" by the Australian security organisation, ASIO - then, as now, tied to Anglo-American intelligence. When his ministers publicly condemned the US bombing of Vietnam as "corrupt and barbaric", a CIA station officer in Saigon said: "We were told the Australians might as well be regarded as North Vietnamese collaborators."

On 11 November 1975 - the day Whitlam was to inform Parliament about the secret CIA presence in Australia - he was summoned by Governor General Sir John Kerr. Invoking archaic vice-regal "reserve powers" Kerr sacked the democratically elected prime minister. The "Whitlam problem" was solved, and Australian politics never recovered, nor the nation its true independence.

johnpilger.com/articles/the-forgotten-co...their-ally-australia

US-UK undemocratically deposed Oz Labour ex-P.M. Whitlam, Oct 19, 1989: “Punters know that the horse named Morality rarely gets past the post, whereas the nag named Self-interest always runs a good race.”

right-wingers (including my pals) frothing at mouth over Whitlam whose greatest crime was trying to 'buy back the farm' for all Aussies.

As a result of his removal it's now still mostly owned by the British, Americans, Dutch and Germans.

hacks working for Rupert Murdoch who aided in his removal indulging in a fantasy hate fest yet ignore Whitlam left zero debt unlike every government after & before including troglydite Tony Abbot who has almost doubled debt in one year.

Even watched grim Tory commentator Gerard Henderson blatantly lie on TV yesterday when he claimed Whitlam never had a majority in the Senate : he had a one seat majority but one Senator died, another went ot High Court.

Tradition is that the State leader replaces those Senators with a member of the party they leaving Senator came from but they did the opposite for first time.

Whoever owns the news writes & re-writed history : King Rupert Murdoch yet mugs in UK cannot see it.