84.3 Spring 2025

Published 17 September 2025

How robust is Australian democracy? Fifty years ago, an elected government was abruptly dismissed by a governor-general whose reasons, methods and secret correspondences have never been made clear to the Australian public. This season we turn to the cultural and political impacts of 11 November 1975 that continue to shape contemporary Australia. Tom McIlroy speaks to the remaining living journalists who covered the event. Njamal man and Indigenous jurisprudence scholar Tyson Kane looks at Pine Gap – the joint Australia-US military base placed on nuclear alert during Whitlam’s prime ministership without him or the Australian Government being informed – from a First Nations perspective. Virginia Haussegger tracks fifty years of political misogyny since the Whitlam Government appointed the world’s first Women’s Adviser to a national government and introduced Australia’s first Racial Discrimiation Act. Ben Eltham assess Whitlam’s arts and cultural legacy. Constitutional expert Anne Twomey touches on some of the constitutional sleepers that that threaten to undermine our democracy if tested. Compelling reading alongside fine poetry, fiction, memoir and review pieces makes this an historic edition of Australia’s leading literary journal that no Meanjin collection can be without.