Many accused Malcolm Fraser of overweening impatience in his pursuit of the prime ministership. But on the day he was charged with the job—the day of the Dismissal, when Sir John Kerr appointed him caretaker prime minister, having withdrawn Gough Whitlam’s commission—he felt no special haste. Whitlam, he sent the message, could keep his office as long as he needed; nor would his predecessor be herded from the Lodge. Power might have come to Fraser peremptorily, but he had no immediate need of the trappings of it. 

There is still surprise in Fraser’s voice as, from behind a desk in his office high in a Melbourne skyscraper, he recalls what happened next. Soon after—it might even have been the next day—a duly appointed official arrived at the suite Fraser occupied as opposition leader. The prime minister’s office was ready. Facilities awaited. New stationery. Fresh flowers. Filing cabinets yawned. The glass-topped pedestal desk used by every prime minister for the preceding half a century had been cleaned out. It was as though the land’s highest office came with its own revolving door. Fraser was shocked. It seemed to him a ‘gross indecency’.