Australian Events

Posted in 1975

  • Prime Minister  Gough Whitlam, Governor-General  Sir John Kerr, and  Dr Jim CairnsCommonwealth Racial Discrimination Act comes into force.
  • Vietnamese refugees and other Asian immigrants are permitted to enter Australia under the policy of multiculturalism.
  • Family Law Court is established.
  • Order of Australia honours system is introduced.
  • Medibank, the subsidised fee-for-service federal health-care model is made universal. It is funded by a levy on income and aims for equity in health care.
  • November 11: The Whitlam Government is dismissed by Governor-General Sir John Kerr after the Opposition Senators suspended the Budget allocations (Supply), setting off a constitutional crisis.
  • The Governor-General's proclamation dissolving parliament ended with the words "God save the Queen". Mr Whitlam said: "Well may we say 'God save the Queen', because nothing will save the Governor-General."
  • Fraser (caretaker) Government, November 11: Sir John Kerr appoints the Opposition Leader, Malcolm Fraser, as Prime Minister and commissions him to form an interim government until elections are held.
  • Fraser Government, December 13: The Liberal-National coalition is elected with a large majority. The new government faces the highest unemployment for 40 years and the worst prolonged inflation in the nation's history.
  • John Warcup Cornforth is awarded the 1975 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his work on the stereochemistry of enzyme-catalyzed reactions". Born in Sydney he graduated from Sydney University with first-class honours and a University medal before attending Oxford on scholarship.
  • Colour television transmissions begin.

Whitlam Institute

† The Malcolm Fraser Collection

Australia's Prime Ministers

Nobel e-Museum