Progression After Its Leak
A special one-day sitting of the House of Representatives was held on 9 July 1975, during which the then Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam tabled the documents containing evidence about the loan and sought to defend his government's position.
Beset by economic difficulties at the time and the negative political impact which the Loans Affair conjured, the Whitlam Government was very vulnerable to further assaults on its credibility. Gough Whitlam was prompted to sack Dr. Cairns from his cabinet.
Although Rex Connor's authority to seek an overseas loan was withdrawn following leaking of the scandal, he continued to liaise with Khemlani. The Herald Newspaper based in Melbourne published documents confirming this and Connor was forced to resign from the cabinet. He was replaced by the Minister for Agriculture, Ken Wriedt.
The Melbourne Herald newspaper journalist Peter Game tracked down Khemlani in mid-late 1975 and following an interview, he broke the story that ultimately opened up the Loans Affair. When Connor directly denied Khemlani's version of events, as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, Khemlani flew to Australia in October 1975 and provided Peter Game with telexes sent to him from Connor that refuted Connor's denial.
On 13 October 1975, Khemlani provided a statutory declaration and a copy of the incriminating telexes sent from Connor's office, a copy of which was forwarded to Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. Upon receiving the documents, Whitlam dismissed Rex Connor from his government for misleading parliament. In his letter of dismissal, date 14 October 1975, Prime Minister Whitlam wrote: "Yesterday I received from solicitors a copy of a statutory declaration signed by Mr Khemlani and copies of a number of telex messages between office Mr Khemlani’s office in London and the office of the Minister for Energy. In my judgment these messages did constitute "communications of substance" between the Minister and Mr Khemlani."
The loans affair embarrassed the Whitlam government and exposed it to claims of impropriety. The Malcolm Fraser-led Opposition used its numbers in the Senate to block the government’s budget legislation in an attempt to force an early general election, citing the loans affair as an example of ‘extraordinary and reprehensible’ circumstances. Whitlam refused, and this led to the Australian constitutional crisis of 1975.
The Loans Affair was dramatised in the 1983 ABC miniseries called "The Dismissal".
Read more about this topic: Loans Affair
Famous quotes containing the words progression and/or leak:
“Measured by any standard known to science—by horse-power, calories, volts, mass in any shape,—the tension and vibration and volume and so-called progression of society were full a thousand times greater in 1900 than in 1800;Mthe force had doubled ten times over, and the speed, when measured by electrical standards as in telegraphy, approached infinity, and had annihilated both space and time. No law of material movement applied to it.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“One leak will sink a ship: and one sin will destroy a sinner.”
—John Bunyan (1628–1688)