It is alleged that the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was involved with the events leading up to the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis, in which Prime Minister of Australia Gough Whitlam was dismissed by Governor-General of Australia John Kerr, who had several ties to the CIA and its predecessor.
CIA contractor and convicted Soviet spy Christopher John Boyce, several authors, including John Pilger, as well as some Australian politicians, allege that the CIA backed Kerr to dismiss Whitlam, due to Whitlam's perceived left-wing policies including Australian withdrawal from the Vietnam War, as well as his views on Australian sovereignty. His conflict with the CIA is alleged to have come to a head when he discovered several CIA-led operations occurring in Australia and overseas conducted by ASIO and ASIS, leading him to threaten cancellation of the lease on the Pine Gap facility, ending the US-led (nominally joint) operation, which was integral to the CIA's signals interception operations in the southern hemisphere.
Whitlam's threat to not renew the lease on the Pine Gap facility was allegedly seen by the CIA as compromising the integrity of intelligence operations pertaining to the satellite projects Rhyolite (subsequently Aquacade) and Argus (a proposed successor, later cancelled), used for monitoring and surveillance of missile launch sites in the Soviet Union and China, which were unknown to the Australian government at the time despite a blanket sharing agreement between the two countries.
Kerr denied any CIA involvement and Whitlam said Kerr did not need any encouragement from the CIA to sack him. Kerr allegedly maintained several links to CIA-funded organisations such as LawAsia and the magazine Quadrant, and was referred to as "Our Man" by the CIA according to whistle-blower and leaker Christopher John Boyce.
The action of an unelected representative sacking an elected prime minister and replacing them with a caretaker prime minister was referred to by Australian Labor Party and former Member of the House of Representatives Peter Staples as "the most blatant act of external interference in Australia's affairs and its autonomy as a nation and a democracy".
Background On 9 December 1966, the United States and Australia signed a treaty titled "Agreement between the Government of the Commonwealth of Australia and the Government of the United States of America relating to the Establishment of a Joint Defence Space Research Facility", which was signed by Australia's Paul Hasluck and America's Edwin M. Cronk, detailing that a facility would be established in Pine Gap, ran jointly between ARPA (US) and the Australian Department of Defence, and which was created ostensibly "a facility for general defence research in the space field", which would later be revealed by spy Christopher Boyce as a CIA satellite base, which operated as a relay for information from spy satellites under the programs named Rhyolite and Argus.
Pine Gap
On 14 August 1968, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia (The Tribune) posted an article which stated that without discussing with parliament, nor the people of Australia, the United States and the then-government of the Liberal Party had agreed to build Pine Gap. They also stated that questions had been put to the Australian government of Menzies several times but were evaded. The article, written by "Staff Correspondent" stated that Australians could make clear that their country was not to be used by the United States as a "forward outpost".
In December 1968, Dr Robert Cooksey, a lecturer in political science at Australian National University stated in The Australian Quarterly in December 1968 that the site was used not only for scientific research but as a "spy in the sky" for intercepting Soviet satellite communications and aiding The New York Times described this as speculation. He also stated that because of its role within, or as, an anti ballistic-missile (ABM) system, that Pine Gap as well as the US Navy communications base at North West Cape would be a priority target, and that the importance of such an issue was much greater than that of Vietnam because it was a matter of survival, threatening the "survival of peoples".
On 23 December 1968, The Canberra Times wrote a summary of an article stating that Cooksey had used technical journals on ballistic missile technology to inform his work, and that originally Pine Gap was conceived as an orbital bombardment system but was abandoned following the 27 January 1967 Outer Space Treaty signed between the USSR and the United States, prohibiting "plac[ing] nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on celestial bodies or station[ing] them in outer space in any other manner".
The article written by Cooksey also stated that the United States wanted to have a means of firing ICBMs towards China, but that doing so was not possible using a north-polar route due to the fact the ICBMs would potentially fly over the USSR, risking conflict. The solution to this problem, according to Cooksey, was a south-polar route, however, such a route would sacrifice the accuracy of the missiles, and thus, the Pine Gap base, among others, was constructed to aid in targeting. The detection of missiles which were theorised to similarly pass over a south-polar route fired by the USSR would be detected by the base in Pine Gap and relayed to systems on Johnston Island (presumably Johnston Island Air Force Base).
The New York Times on 29 December 1968 also stated that the Financial Review paper made the statement that if the implications of Pine Gap being a spy base were true, that then effectively Australia would become part of the United States in matters of strategic defence.
1969 Labor Party positions on Pine Gap During 1969, the topic of Pine Gap was widely discussed among politicians, the public and the press in Australia, with most criticism of the base being around the secrecy, lack of transparency and the risk its perceived role as a spying station played in placing Australia at risk of nuclear attack from the Soviet Union or China based on its political alignment with the United States.
On 27 February 1969, Australian paper The Tribune reported on an exchange between Labor Party MP Jim Cairns and then-Defense Secretary Sir Allen Fairhall of the Australian Liberal Party, in which Cairns revealed in reports that the project would cost $225 million AUD (equivalent to A$ in ).
Cairns also asked the secretary if he was aware that the site was being used for directing the launch of American nuclear missiles in the event of an attack on China, and for detection of any launches aimed at the United States. He concluded by surmising: "If this is so, would this not mean that Pine Gap would be a primary target in the event of a nuclear war?" Fairhall's response was that these were "wild guesses" and that he was frustrated that he could not provide him with a direct answer, although did not explain why.
The Tribune again reported on 7 March 1969 that Arthur Calwell of the Australian Labor Party had requested to be able to visit the facility at Pine Gap, along with Lance Barnard, which was refused by Fairhall, who stated "In the case of Pine Gap, there will be no facilities provided for inspection". The Tribune followed up reporting on Pine Gap on 21 May 1969, in which they stated that it was clear that the United States and the Australian government began the construction of a school at the premises which also doubled as a bomb shelter, stating "those in the know are obviously aware of Pine Gap as a potential target".
On 12 May 1969, The Canberra Times reported that Lance Barnard attacked the Liberal Party government for not allowing them to access Pine Gap, but that the facility was open for United States Senators to visit should they wish to do so. Barnard stated that "It seems the Russians know more about what is going on at Pine Gap than the people of this country". The paper concluded that the government had not revealed any further information about Pine Gap and that the revelations in the press were "speculations".
On 25 June 1969, Hal Alexander, writing for Australian Newspaper The Tribune, wrote that the Australian Labor Party Convention in South Australia steered clear of the issue of the "Secret Pine Gap Installation".
On 5 September 1969, the Papua New Guinea Post-Courier reported that newly elected opposition leader Gough Whitlam had visited Pine Gap for the second time, stating that he did not know what the facility was for, and that he would not be happy until all members of the opposition had visited it. He concluded by stating that if Labor came into the government, there were " 'some things' that the public should know about" the station.
1972 Labor Party election victory In 1972, Gough Whitlam, the leader of the Labor Party won an election with around 50% of the vote, defeating the Liberal/Country coalition leader and former prime minister William McMahon. He was described as being radical and a reformer, but was not a self-affirmed leftist, had several "run-ins" with leftist members of the Labor Party, but described as "an individualist of maximal proportions".
Previous governments had ruled on the basis of the policies of the Menzies government (1949–1966), which were heavily focused on conservative economics, trade and defence, which although popular in the 1950s and 1960s, had begun to lose popularity due to the re-emergence of "quality of life" issues, namely the quality of cities, schools and hospitals, which appealed to the baby boomer generation living in areas affected by these quality of life issues.
Previously, these "quality of life" issues were handled at the state level within Australia's governmental infrastructure, but Whitlam proposed that these should be handled by the federal Australian Government, acting under the Constitution of Australia. In addition to this, Whitlam's government was critical of the Australian involvement in the US-led Vietnam War, which led a significant amount of disaffection among the Australian population, and had by that point grown into widespread protests against the war, mirroring the public protests which were widespread in the United States against the war.
The conservative governments which had begun Australia's involvement in the Vietnam war and held a close relationship with the governments of the United States, which also led to disaffected segments of the population siding with the Labor Party. The liberal parties in Australia focused on the need to contain and limit communism, but did not completely withdraw troops from Vietnam, and opposition to relations with China.
In contrast, Whitlam's policies were perceived as radical, proposing (and later following up on) establishing Medibank to reduce healthcare premiums (which was later privatised), establishing the Australian Schools Commission and free tertiary education, establishing the landmark Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976 (implemented after his tenure), no-fault divorce, maternity leave, preventing drilling in the great barrier reef, abolishing national conscription and removing the Australian Army Training Team from the Vietnam War, and establishing normalised diplomatic relations with China.
Pilger, along with Joan Coxsedge, Gerry Harant and Ken Coldicutt, credit Whitlam's victory to the fact that, at the time, fewer than 20% of the population of Australia was self-employed, with most Australians belonging to the working class despite efforts among academics to promote them to the middle class on the basis of home ownership.